A QUESTION OF LIBERALISM. The Disciplining of Mr Collins.

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 14, 6 October 1900, Page 6

A QUESTION OF LIBERALISM. The Disciplining of Mr Collins.

IT is fortunate indeed that there is at the head of the great Liberal party a firm disciplinarian like the Eight Honourable K. J. Seddon. If it were otherwise, we would have no end of political heterodoxy. Liberals would be thinking for themselves, and giving expression to sentiments opposed to those of their chief, and the result of this conflict of opinion would be the downfall of the great Liberal party, which has done so much in New Zealand for freedom of speech and equal rights between man and man. * # # This being so, it is difficult to see why Mr W. W. Collins, one of the members for Christchurch, should resent the discipline to which he has been subjected by the Right Honourable the Premier. Mr Collins's offence was a grave one. He spoke his own mind. Now, if Mr Collins were a consistent and loyal Liberal — as we know them in New Zealand — he would have no mind of his own. It is Mr Seddon's business to furnish the mind for the party, and having done this, the party ought to be content. But if individual members like Mr Collins are to be allowed to use their own minds and think for themselves, what on earth is to become of the party ? * * # Mr Collins's grievance is this. He made a certain speech containing sentiments opposed to those of the Premier, and this speech was printed and circulated amongst Mr Collins's constituents by one of the Premier's bagmen. Mr Collins thinks this was an impertinent and unwarrantable interference between his constituents and himself, and was intended to weaken the confidence which the aforesaid constituents repose in him. Wherefore he is very wrathful with the Premier. * • # But Mr Collins must not forget his fault. His constituents did not send him to Parliament to voice his

opinions or exercise his judgment. They elected him as a follower of Mr Seddon, believing that he would think and speak precisely as Mr Seddon does, and that he would vote obediently at the bidding of Mr Seddon. Otherwise, he would not be a Seddonian Liberal, which is a different variety of Liberal from the old variety, and which "never thinks of thinking for itself at all." • ♦ # Surely, in view of all this, Mr Collins must deserve discipline. Why, as Mr Seddon says, if each and every member of the great Liberal party thought and voted as he pleased, there would be no great Liberal party at all. Just think of that now. How easily an awful catastrophe might be brought upon the country by shortsighted party men such as Mr Collins, who calmly ignore the first palpable duty of a Liberal — to deaden his judgment and subordinate his own opinions to the opinions held by his chief. The great Liberal party has been built up and consolidated by casting forth into outer darkness men of the Pirani stamp who thought and spoke for themselves in utter disregard of the opinions of Mr Seddon, the greatest of all Liberals. And shall Mr W. W. Collins be treated differently ?