POPULAR GOVERNMENT TO-DAY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2821, 12 July 1916, Page 8

POPULAR GOVERNMENT TO-DAY

Sir,—l notice by a letter in your issue of .Tuly 10 that at last ono poor worm has turned, stricken by the drivel poured out by ccrt-iiu so-called members of Parliament. He must'abandon hope unless some law could be added to the Constitution enacting that no man should become a member of Parliament unless he could pass an elementary examination in political k-onomy and various other branches of usefulness. As likely to afford mortgagees some comfort or consolation, I refer him to Price Collier's "England and the English," an estimable character sketch. The poition applicable to his trouble is as folloiVu:—

"It is by no means a good sign at the present time that instead, of wishing to attend to theii own business, so manv : butchers and bakers and candlestick makers are eager to enter Parliament to attend to other people's business. AVe havo millions in America who are juft learning the alphabet of free government, and they are still flatteied by political prasites with loud voices and leather larynxes. Our Parliaments and Assemblies have too large a proportion, not of the brawn and brains that have made America a. great nation in fifty years, but the semi-successful, the slippery, and the resourceful who live on the people and by the peoplo and for themselves: The time will come when the people will insist upon being governed by the k»st among them, by the wisest among them, by the successful among thrin, arid not by those whose living is deiived by governing others becausO they cannot govern themselves."—l am, "to. . ANOTHER VICTIM.