"NON-PARTY POLITICS,"

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1702, 19 March 1913, Page 6

"NON-PARTY POLITICS,"

It is a contradiction in terms, of coursc. But so many well-meaning • people and so many political thinkers of established repute (it is enough to mention the name of Mn. Harold Cox, who has exchanged Parliamentary life for the editorship of the Kdinburyh Review) hope and believe that party can be erased from politics that it is worth while looking at the reasons why party government may advantageously eicist so long as n penny may be allowed a head an? a tail. Nothing could be more attractive than the idea of a Parliament of wise patriots controlled by a Cabinet of wiser patriots still—a Parliament in which the country's business would be transacted wisely and expeditiously, in which every member would on every question vote according to his purified convictions. It is an idea to which a great proportion of members of Parliament . become slaves for a time, but which those members who care more for the facts of life than for their own abstract speculations about it sooner or later abandon.

No doubt- a good many of our readers have seen Mn. Haroi.d Cox's article in the January JidinbitTf/h Review, and Mr. A. A. Baumann's in the February Fortnightly. We jneed_ not quote from these excellent articles, which do no more than marshal very brilliantly i the defects ■ of the party system, j which are obvious to everybody who | gives any attention to polities'' any- ' where. But neither of these 'two ablii writers seriously attempts to make

out a case for the possibility of a Parliament in which party lines will bo obliterated by the erosstramplings, of independent feet. Mit. Baujunn, indeed, winds up bis indictment by saying: "Nor, to say the truth, do I know how we can do without parties; they are a necessary evil," But are they an evil'/ Gladstone did not think so when, after 20 years of intense political study on the iloor of the House, ho wrote, out of his knowledge of men and of the biology and psychology of politics: "I am always disposed to view with regret the rupture of party ties—my disposition is rather to maintain them. . . . My

opinion is that party ties closely appertain to those principles of confidence which we entertain for the House of Commons." ' Nobody, looking below the surface a little, can fail to recognise that in England, and in most other countries, the men who walk into the Government lobby are upon the whole attached to the principles of most of the Government's policy, and the Opposition members opposed to most of those principles. The New Zealand Parliament is not much to the poiiit here just now, for _ although there is a clear and united Ministerialist party, there is no Leader of the Opposition and no coherent Opposition party. But even here there will be a sorting out, -and an Opposition will emerge as a Radical-Socialist party. We are convinced that, in normal times, the application of • some sort of hypnotism to a Parliament such as would make every member vote exactly according to his strong convictions would produce a series of division lists which would not differ importantly from the actual division lists of the natural and tinhypnotised "party-ridden" body. As a matter of fact, men are elected as supporters of- this or that party (excepting when, as sometimes happens; they are elected l to support definitely named leaders). They arc not elected as plenipotentiaries: they are not given blank cheques. And what a task it would be—a task _ no ■ unselfish, wise, and patriotic man would essay—to pre-, serve one's independence, and at all times vote so as to satisfy at the same time one's convictions and the wishes of one's constituents!

To those.who. imagine that an" Elective Executive and noil-party government will make the Statutebook a truer picture of the mind of Parliament, we would recommend the reflection that under the party system the Statute-book does generally reflect the averaged opinions of members. Sometimes, it is true, there may be a Government which simply dragoons its followers, and makes a Statute-book which is unrepresentative of Parliament, but representative only of the central despot or despots; but this is a very exceptional case. Private members do get a chance, and on the whole as much chance under the party system as under any other system, to affect tho shape of the Acts. Those who, in spite of such considerations as we have set forth, still feel sad and rebellious at the thought of pure "party votes," insincere votes, and refuse to think that in tho : long run "non-party" government, will produce the same laws as party government' does, should ask themselves .whether even their "Elective Executive" will banish party. It is as impossible to extinguish party in one form or another without extinguishing government as it was to scour away the blood-stain on the key of Bluebeard. Expel party by a legislative device, and it will re-establish itself immediately. And who can really feel sorry that this is so? For, as one of Mr. Harold Cox's critics pointed out, while the drawback of our party system is that it tends to squeeze a great many varieties of opinion into two rather rough moulds, yet "it corresponds to the simple and massive views which Englishmen are accustomed to take of politics; and it is a far more efficient machine for practical purposes than any other that ha,s been evolved."