IS PARLIAMENT ON TRIAL?

Hokitika Guardian, 29 May 1926, Page 4

IS PARLIAMENT ON TRIAL?

EUROPE’S CK UMBLING. INSTITUTIONS. By Sir Sidney Low. Author of “The Governance of Eugt.vrid’.” Speaking in Rome on the seventh anniversary of the foundation of tl.o Faseisto movement, Signor Mussolini made one of his direct and pregnant statements. His system, lie said, may he denounced but it is inevitable. “It is absolutely logical that the outside world of demoeifitie Liberalism and plutocratic clannishness, which is without any country, should he against us. . . . To {.Tie responsible authorities in foreign States we say. Von will have to go tlirough what we have gone through. If you want to live you must do away with gfirrulous parliamentary institutions. ’ ” Ts, then, the representative method nut of date? Is our most prized and cherished political invention doomed to pass away? These are questions which' nobody would have thought of asking 39 or JO years ago. Wo in Britain, at least, would have deemed them irrelevant or merely flippant. In the nineteenth. century it- was assumed that the Parliament and Cabinet arrangements was the ultiirnte example of perfected political machinery. Absolute monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, had had t’lu-ir turn and ceased to he. Democracy had come to stay, and of democracy the fine flower was a Ministry responsible to Parliament and the electorate. We lmd got that in Great Britain and we looked confidently to sec it adopted by all other civilised and organised communities. ENGLAND THE PATTERN. .

For a time it seemed ns if we were right. One after another the nations set up Parliaments on,' the English model. Some, such as Belgium, Italy. Holland, took over the- whole apparatus of constitutional monarchy. The republics and autocracies could not do that. But they provided themselves with Pnrliiunonts, chosen Tffrder a wide popular franchise, and tried to make their Chambers of Deputies and 'Senates as much like the House ol Commons and like House of Lords as the local conditions would permit. The Westminster Assembly was the Mother of Parliaments; soon. we

thought, iLs daughters would sit in their honoured place in every laud. Before the opening of the Great War, the Parliaments were widely spread. All the British Empire States bad them; so had France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Scandinavia, the Balkan kingdoms, Japan, even Turkey and Persia.

They were not all pattern Parliaments, ncr did some of them conform quite closely to the Britlanic scheme. •Still, Parliaments they were; Parliaments, we assumed, they would re-

And lion-:- The war, which was fought to “save democracy,” lias weakened and shaken the -Parliaments and the parliamentary Cabinets. One country after another lias been engaged during the past few years in extinguishing responsible government and repricing it by autocratic rule, more or less complete. PARLIAMENTS TH AT HAVE GONE. Italy is the most conspicuous example! partly because of the striking personality of the loader of the reaction.' iiut lesser men can do the trifle. To-day we face the fact that Parliaments have been suppressed or tire held in abeyance not only in Italy, but in Spain, Austria, Hungary; Bulgaria, Turkey, bind now Greece. In Russia, where an oligarchy rules more tyrannically than ever did the Czars, the brief experiment of the Duma bias led to nothing; in Persia, the absolute monarchy lias been restored. .Most of the dictators are soldiers, with some military backing, hut :t is not clear that they have been imposed by armed coercion upon unwilling nations. On the contrary, popular opinion is some times on their side, as it is to an overwhelming extent on that of Mussolini and to a lesser degree with Prime, tlortliy, and Kenial Pasha. .Even when the Dictator is not a man of genius lie- seems to be regarded as an acceptable, or tolerable, substitute for politicians who rise to power through Parliaments. Tn Italy and Spain these talkers and intriguers had allowed public affairs to drift into confusion, bad muddled the finances, and permitted Tlabour unrest to express itself as revolutionary Socialism. When that situation grows intolerable to the great mass of peaeablc, quiet-living citizens there comes nil irrepressible yearning for the Strong Man who will sweep nwav the incompetent debaters, and the selfseeking machine-politicians. THE READ TEST. This is the opportunity for a Cromwell. a Diaz, a Mussolini, somebody who seems capable .of facing realities and acting with resolute energy. Even a nation like Fra lice, essentially liberal and democratic, may grow tired of government, nr lack of government, by electioneering groups who will not combine to form a stable Administration or pass necessary laws. The Dictators spring into life from the corruption and degeneration of party polities. Parliaments, said tlie Italian Duce, will be tested by their ability to deal with, the gravest problem of our time, the relations between Capital and Labour. What is the “Mother of Parliaments” going to make or l that? Perhaps the next few months u ill help us to answer the question, on which so much depends. Tt is a test-ing-time for the parliamentary system, even in the lands where it is most firmly rooted land has been most deeply reverenced