Politics Defined.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 17, 30 June 1911, Page 14

Politics Defined.

"What is the object of politics ? Politics in its largest sense includes the whole control and management of public affairs by the government in power, together with the whole process of agitation by which the masses oi people not in power seek to influence and alter the conduct of things. Now, if you look in the text books you will find that the object of government is order. But what is tho object

of order ? Law and order are not absolutes, but merely moans to an end. To mistake them for ends in themselves is to regard tho shell as the important element in the egg ; the fence as the important element in the field.

'The cry of "Order for Order's sake" is as ruinously foolish as that of art for art's sake, or money for moneys sake. It is for the sake of humanity that all these must exist.

Behind order there is life, and it is only in so far as it tends to increase the sum and improve the quality of life that any system of government or schemo of positive law is ethically justifiable.

If you analyse the rights commonly regarded as essential and inalienable — tho right to property, to personal safety, to marriage—you will find, as the common source- of them all, this right of life.

And by life I mean not merely physical existence, but tliat rich human existence which can be had only in community, that sort of life which Edmund Burke had in mind when he described the State as "a partnership m all science, a partnership in all a/ 1 -, a partnership in every virtue, and in ail perfection."—T. M. Kettle.