WORKING MEN’S POLITICS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1087, 23 February 1883, Page 3

WORKING MEN’S POLITICS.

(Horning Post ) { We have already expressed incidentally our dissent from the propo al made at the Trade’s Union Congress to create a specia fund for the return and payment of-working men as members of Parliament. As it seems that a similar proposal has boon made on 'he put of the Working Men’s Conservative! Association, wo shall hardly bo suspected of party m taves in setting forth at somewhat greater length ■ur views as to any scheme of the kind. We do not deny that a greater variety in the composition of th“ House of Commons would be of public advantage. The presence of real and independent representatives of the class influence, and even the class prejudices and mistakes, of our skilled artisans would certainly contribute to the interest and value of debates upon many important social and economical questions. It would not be a little redound to the benefit and instruction of the working class itself that its peculiar crotchets should be set forth with the clearness, distinctness, and directness required in legislative proposals ; and stall more, that their ideas and the arguments by which they are upheld shou d be subject to the sharp, incisive, telling criticism they would be sure to - receive in the House of Commons from phWticd lawyers, trained econmists, and far-sigh'el statesmen. It is the great misfortune ■’f the thinking portion of the artisan class that they are so liable to be misle 1 by plausible views, set forth with much vehement eloquence, of principles laid down as if unquestionable, without an opportunity of hearing thorn answered and examined by competent and well-informed men. On nearly all the subjects in which they arum >st deeply interested and most likely to go astray they hear only one side, and that their own. Even when they read the works of scientific economists I they hardly find there own peculiar | views fully appreciated or directly answered. It was the especial merit and use of the writings of men like the late Mr W. R. Greg and his colleagues oi the Economist that they did understand and explain the prevailing mistakes current among working m m, and answered them in language and by reasoning which doubtful and impartial artisans were well qualified to understand. But even the more popular books have a comparative y small circulation and iuflu.-nca, and even on those who read them they do not tell as does the direct open co fliefc of opinion and interchange of argument between the i.remost representatives of antagonistic i leas ; nor do we pretend that +liis is all that would be gained by p irliamentary debate between capable representatives of the employed and employing clas es in presence of those whose scientific training and comparative disinterestedness mark them as fitting arbiters between the two. It is not only the working men who have something to learn from their opponents; and perhaps the most valua le of all results would be that silting of the true from the false, the practicable from the preposterous, in the proposals and principles domi-, nant in such a body s the TradeUnion Congress that would result from parliamentary discussion. Both parties would learn what can be conceded and what can not, how far the wishes of the artisans can be met, how far they neither can nor oug’-t, and how far their interests and those of the capita ists really come into direct and irreconcilable conflict.