THE TEST OF NUMBERS

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 2731, 10 May 1924, Page 4

THE TEST OF NUMBERS

A FALSE STANDARD FOR DEMOCRACY. (Contributed by the N.Z. Welfare League.) Tlie Socialists never tire of talking majorities. To them apparently, democracy means majority rule, particularly if they chance to be the majority. In Russia the word Bolshevist means majority and the Bolshevist were the majority party in politics, at least; that was assumed because they counted votes with a rifle and all who opposed them were disfranchised by imprisonment, exile or death.

The “N.Z. Worker says that the majority voted against the Singapore Base Proposal in the recent British Elections, therefore it should go. Putting aside the absurdity of the assumption, how does the matter of numbers settle the merits of this scheme for defence? Mr P. Fraser, M.P. is busy in Wellington seeking to have the question of local work settled by Referendum without any regard for the merits of the work proposed. We could give a thousand instances, if necessary, where appeal is made that the merits of an issue shall be made wholly subsidiary to the test of numbers. Majority rule is assumed to be the sole standard of democracy. When Abraham Lincoln voiced his famous definition of democracy “government of the people, by the people and for the people,” it is evident that he meant the whole of the people—the minority as well as majority, the individual as well as the collective body has to be considered in any right plan for “government of the people by the people and for the people.” Human beings live primarily as individuals and the State which forgets that fact is taking a short cut towards national suicide.

Of recent times several nations have run to dictatorship and autocracy —Russia, Italy, Spain, and some others in lesser degree —This has been commented on as an evidence that democracy was proving a failure and parliamentary government going to wreck. In our opinion these recent happenings have been rather due to the people of the countries named never having developed a true appreciation of what democracy really means. There have been false standards of mobrule and parliamentary forms without. a- living democracy behind either, and these have given place to powerful dictation simply because the nation must live.

A danger that confronts seemingly better established countries lies in the disposition to assert that democracy means government by the mass however the said mass is brought into being. It is the reliance wholly upon numbers and deciding by the counting of heads, without regard to what brains are in the heads or what sense comes out that constitutes the great danger to-day. A Referendum in place of -Judges and a plebiscite to determine a question of science or art, and the result is likely in general, to prove harmful all round.

Let it not be thought that wo acclaim minorities in place of majorities. In certain exigencies the lest of numbers alone can apply, find then the majority should govern, but it is wrong to call .that democracy.- It is but an expedient to avoid undesirable conflict, nothing more. Democracy as government of the whole people by the people themselves, is necessarily many sided. It rests on the rock of liberty. It requires that these things which belong to the individual shall be left to the individual. It demands that human qualities of knowledge, reason, sentiment, and justice shall have full consideration in all decisions. It is the living spirit of the mass which must find expression in individual and collective freedom before democracy is truly realised. The mere counting of individuals, setting up of forms' which assume Ihe presence of general knowledge and consent, these are but the shell and often but a hollow imitation of what is true democracy. The test of numbers has nothing to do with tile truth of science, art or religion. The crowd is still prone to cry out give us “Barrabas.” Numbers do not constitute democracy, and when our people fully realise that truth they will be clear of a false standard and less subject to the guidance of demagogues.