The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1912. PARLIAMENT AND PEOPLE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1384, 9 March 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1912. PARLIAMENT AND PEOPLE.

It is not in Now Zealand alono that people sometimes have to ask themselves whether they are truly represented by the legialativO i bodies which they elect. The English nation certainly did not ask for Mb. Lloyd-George's National Insurance Act, and ever since the two Houses, at the weary close of _ last . session, agreed to make it law, it has become increasingly clear that the country is not pleased with it. This is shown not merely by the protests of the doctors, some of the chiefs of the [ Friendly Societies, the controllers of ! hospitals, and large_ employers of labour, but also by the results of the by-elections. The workers were expected to bo particularly grateful for the scheme, but at present a large proportion of them appear to be not so much impressed by the contingent future benefits than by the immediato and certain inroad upon their wages. These facts have been the basis of a very interesting controversy between Mr. G. K. Chesterton and the Westminster Gazette. The fact of the unpopularity of the Insurance Act seems to have been taken as common ground, and Mr. Chesterton insisted that its passing "with the consent of all parties" proved the unrepresentative character of British Parliamentary government at the present time. He wrote to the Westminster Gazette: You put it with perfect truth when you say that the Insurance- Act has been approved "by all parties in the State." . . . You can say with absolute accuracy that all parties in the State agree with it. But you cannot say—l defy you to say—that all people in the State agree with it, or even most people. You dare not say it is approved by all parties in an omnibu9, or a railway train, or a club, or a crowd, or a ohuron, or a public house. Notoriously the negative of it can be heard on all cidea. . The Westminster Gazette, in its reply, had resort to a general principle: We think it a mistake to suppose that a system of government ceases to be representative ii on every question that arises tho House of Commons does not exactly Toflect the opinion of tho people at tho moment. There are somo questions in which wo think wo may fairly expect tho representatives of tho peoplo to be a little in odvance of the people themselves. Of coitrse, "in advance of the people" if) a question-begging phrase. Mr. Hilaire Belloc's paper, the Ei/e Witness, seized upon it and demanded what .tho Westminster Gazette meant by being "in advance." "Does it mean beins right , ! If so, who is to judge 1 The people or their 'representatives'?" The Westminster Gazette probably meant that tho representatives might fairly be expected to think to-day what the public would think to-morrow, and might thus bo "in advance" of the people in point of time, though no authority would be competent to say which was right. Tn this sense it is quite proper for the representatives to bo "a little in advance of the peoplo themselves." They would be so on very many—perhaps on most— queations if they carefully and thoroughly deliberated on every important matUr plswd before them. Ilwt in what tliny wo olooted fox. u

Parliament ie not to be a deliberative body, it would be better for the Lloyd-Georges to put their vast and complicated measures directly before the public by way of a referendum. A true deliberative body would naturally arrive sometimes at conclusions to which the people themselves would not immediately assent. If they assented after a lapse of time, the wisdom of their representatives would be justified. But will that be so in the case of the Insurance Act? The indications are not hopeful. The real wrong that has been done to the people of England in this instance is not that their representatives have differed from them, but that those representatives have not deliberated. We have in previous articles drawn the attention of our readers to the way in which the Bill, with hundreds of amendments introduced at the eleventh hour, was closured through the Commons and passed almost without discussion by the Lords. The result is admirably summed up in a letter from Lord Hejjeaqe to the Spectator: No doubt it is technically correct to state that the National Insurance Act has received tho assent of the three Estates of the Realm, but it is in no other sense the result of tho deliberations and wisdom of Parliament. The Insurance Act contains only one principle on which Parliament has agreed, and which was the leading principle of the Bill when it wns read a second time in the House of Commons, i.e., tho contributory principle. The clauses of the Act and its confused and contradictory wording and details are not tho results of duo consideration by either House of Parliament, or even by the Cabinet. Mr. Lloyd-George and his subordinate colleagues who followed his instructions aro alone now responsible, and no one knows what tho law really is until it has been interpreted by the irresponsible and autocratic Commissioners appointed to carry out the Act according to their own views and without any appeal. . . . The Insurance Bill is now the law, but it cannot bo expected to carry with it the force of real Parliamentary legislation when it is merely the product of ono masterful Minister without any practical knowledge of the subject, and carried through the House of Commous under guillotine and closure in haste at the bidding of tho Irish Dictator. These are the facfe which constitute the true popular grievance. Tho rulers are at fault, not because they differ from the people, but because they have not done their best to serve them. They have not used their knowledge, their critical faculties, their judgment, their conscience, upon the measures proposed to them by the Minister. Had they done so, it would have been a fa,ir presumption that they had anticipated the enlightened judgment of the electors from whose temporary opinion they differed. As things are, the- presumption is the other way. The people, troubled at the prospect of a scheme which will revolutionise half their social and .industrial life, are presumably right, and the legislators who adopted that scheme without understanding its details, have presumably decided amiss. The only way out of tho difficulty seems to be that proposed by Mr. Bonab Law, who announced the other day that, if the Conservatives came into power, they would immediately repeal the Insurance Act in order to make a thorough reconstruction of its provisions. If.the politicians are right in thinking that the people really want national insurance in some form, the proper courso is to wipe out and do over again what has been inconsiderately and therefore badly done.