A REPRESENTATIVE OR A DELEGATE?

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5379, 24 June 1878, Page 3

A REPRESENTATIVE OR A DELEGATE?

(From the Australasian.) A curious theory of the duty of a Parliamentary representative to his constituents has been broached, and even acted upon, by a Mr. Button, member for Hokitika in the New Zealand Parliament. This worthy gentleman has resigned his seat on his own spontaneous motion, because he believed that his constituency was in favor of the Grey Ministry, and ho, being opposed to that Ministry, was undosiroiv* of representing a minority. Now, it may be admitted that in this Mr. Button displays a high degree of conscientiousness, and that conscientiousness is at the present time not a quality of which there is a superabundance in our colonial Parliaments. But it is none the less true that in this instance Mr. Button’s scrupulosity is wholly misdirected. So far as we can supply a rational theory to his action it appears to be that directly a representative Ims reason to think that the popular miud has turned in a direction different from his own it is his duty to resign. In other word- - , that Parliament, instead of being a directing and steadying force on the currents of public opinion, should be but a cork on the eddying surface of the stream. Since an opposition necessarily represents a minority, Mr. Button thinks there ought to be no opposition, and its utility in moderating the policy of the Government and in softening the effect of the transfer of power from one party to another he wholly ignores. It would be useless to refer honest Mr. Button to an authority who has reasoned out this subject of minorities aud majorities, and who tells us that in such a case as his, “ you have to apprise the unwise man even as you do the unwiser horse, ‘On the truss of tares I took your vote, and have cheerfully fulfilled it; bnt'iu regard to choice of roads and the like, I regret’you have no competency whatever. No, my unwise friend, not by the left turn, by this turn to the right runs our road ; thither, for reasons too intricate to explain at this moment, it will behove me and thee to go. Along, therefore!’” It would be very unreasonable to expect language of this kind from the average trimming, flaccid, molluscous, characterless, plastic, reprraentative whom democracy supplies us with at the present day. That it can ever be the duty of a man to stand fast in the position in which he find himself, disregarding the fitful gusts without and the fickle gyrations of the vane which indicate the variations of public opinion, is clearly an idea which implies a soul above Button’s. The notion of that sensitive gentleman was that he was sent to Parliament merely as a mouthpiece of the views of his constituency at the moment of sending him, and that when those views change, if he were unable to follow their changes, it was his place to retire. In protesting against the elevation of this theory to a general principle we have no wish to doubt its correctness in the particular case. Evidently Mr. Button is a creature too wise and good for the work of practical politics, aud it is perhaps better for him, and better for the Parliament he leaves, that he should take the step he has.