Untitled

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1807, 13 July 1906, Page 2

WESTLAND ELECTION

To-day the cloetoi'.s of the constituency of Westland ace called upon to decide the important question as to who shall represent them in succession to the late Premier. The contest has been invested with additional interest by the fact that one of the candidates is, in a political sense, a mere boy whose only claim to the confidence of the people is that he is the son of the deceased Premier, and that ho was born and nurtured in the district. For these reasons too he will probably succeed in capturing the majority of votes, although his opponent is an old and respected public man whose political uiiiors not from that of his.. embryonic opponent in any material sense or detail. If, therefore-, Hie anticipated result should happen we shall be treated to a most anomalous expression of democratic inconsistency, for if the accepted tenets of democracy mean anything they mean stolid opposition to hereditary' rights of succession. Hut principles and practice are not synonymous terms even with the leaders of democratic parties, and we have in this instance the example of the Premier and members of the Cabinet winking at the inconsistency or want of democratic principles, and urging the Westland voters to rally round the family scion, who by reason of his youth and hereditary associations they can mould into blind subservience, in preference to the matured and tried candidate wlio.se convictions are his own and not those of his forefathers. Such, however, are the methods of modern democracy as expounded by the present school of ruling politicians, and in the Westland constituency to-day it will he the rankest heresy on the part of the real democrats of that electorate who fail to obey the mandates of the alleged democratic rulers at the metropolis. Tiiese mandates, it is true, were but polite exhortations superlicially, though in reality they were mandates and nothing else, for they carried with them the implication that to do the will of Hie authors meant what the great deceased expounder of modern democracy always intended that such missives should mean, viz., political favors; and to disobey meant Un> Uloplcasure of the senders with its resultant disadvantages. Thus it will he seen that modern democracy has abandoned its ancient shroud and dressed itself in a new garment manufactured at the central depot in Wellington. According to the ancient democratic notion (which, by the way. had much to recommend it) the people of "Westland would to-day be the sole arbiters as between the two candidates’ claims, and the older and better equipped candidate would undoubtedly triumph; but the mandate of the new democracy has gone forth in its emblazoned garbs of Ministerial smiles and exhortation and votes will bo attracted to it like moths to a lighted candle. After all it- is perhaps appropriate that that should be the resnlt, for it would ill become the people of Westland to do anything that would so soon efface the cherished methods of their late member (to whom they owe so much) from campaigning tactics and modern democratic rule. He alone it was who was privileged to usurp the proper functions of the democracy and to call himself King Demos ; lie alone was permitted to command and to mould the will of the democracy to his own desire, not because the democracy conceded to him the right to do so, but because they loved him too much to oppose his imperious will, and knowing that to do that meant trouble. It will be interesting to learn from the ballot liox of Westland how many of the democrats will rank 'themselves under the genuine old banner of democracy, or under the new banner of quasi—liberalism. Therein lies the whole interest in to-day’s election for those who take a true interest in the politics of the country by discriminating between the value of principles apart from the personalities either remotely or ciosoly associated therewith.