THE CAUCUS SYSTEM.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5538, 27 December 1878, Page 3

THE CAUCUS SYSTEM.

(From the Argus.) The introduction into England of the American caucus system, or, rather of secret and irresponsible conventions, for the purpose of “working” elections in the interest of party organisations, is a proceeding which is naturally viewed with aversion and dismay by the beat friends of that representative government which it is calculated to subvert. That it should have received, the hasty ard inconsiderate approval of some prominent politicians In the mother country is not to be regarded as an argument in its favor. It is, on the contrary, another painful evidence of the fact that public men too frequently succumb to the temptation to subordinate their convictions as statesmen to the temporary exigencies of the party with which they are associated, and to sacrifice the interests of the country to personal ambition. It is a proof, also, that the perversion and deformation of the political institutions of the United States, which have resulted from the caucus and the convention, are very imperfectly understood in Great Britain. -For if there Is one point upon which high-minded Americans of all parties are perfectly agreed, and in which the most respectable aad independent reviews, magazines, and newspapers of that country concur, it is in declaring that “ the machine,” as it is called, is the perennial fountain-head of some of the greatest evils which afflict the nation. And the magnitude of these is scarcely susceptible of exaggeration. Soma of them were thus enumerated by Mi - . David Dudley Field in an article upon “ Corruption in which appeared m the International Review ;— ' 1

“Wo see 39 states, owing an aggregate of 382,000,000d01., and of which eight pay neither principal nor interest; we see counties, cities, and townships overwhelmed with debt; and all the while these various Governments—federal, state, and municipal—take from our people in taxes more than any Government of Christendom takes from its people. We see offices which it is the function of the President to fill, and which it is his plain duty to fill with the truest and best, farmed out to senators and representatives in Congress. We see Offices claimed and bestowed not for ,merit, but for party work, and, as a natural consequence, we see the public service inefficient and ' disordered. We see venal Legislatures and executive officers receiving gifts. We see. the roost depraved and least responsible newspaper Press in all the world.. We see a Customs tariff which taxes 502 imported articles, and 972 different grades of these articles, soma of them to the extent of 100 per cent, of their value, while the tariff of England taxes only 17, and the tariff of Germany 152, arranged in 87 classes. “We see depreciated paper monoy_ forced upon creditors who contracted for coin, and swaying prices back and forth like the swing of a weaver’s shuttle. We see a commerce which once covered the seas now so diminished that in this present year the tonnage of our sea-going steamers is 289,000, while that of England i is ,3,332,000. Fifteen years ago we were advancing with the stride of a giant to the dominiod of the seas; to-day the trident is in other hands.” The Hon. Carl Schurz, a member of President Hayes’ Cabinet, told the Senate that there was nothing resembling the depravity and corruption of political life in America in any other civilised country in the. world, that the great agency of demoralisation was the caucus system, and that, unless it were destroyed, republican institutions would run the risk of perish, ing of the dry rot. And another distinguished politician has described how, when a convention has been organised by fraud, it is “surrounded by an armed mob of bruisers and ballot-box stuffers, with a hireling judiciary to defend, and a venal Press to apologise for ft/’ and how a dozen wire-pullers control the nominations fer every high office in their State, because they can manipulate “ a sufficient number of men, trained for the purpose, who sneeze whenever their masters take snuff.*’. These conventions, under the name of executive committees, are being transplanted to the mother country; and form the subject of a well-timed article by Mr. E. D. S. ’Wilson in the October number of the Nineteenth Century. He remarks that it the yoke which Sir. Forster refused to pass under at Bradford should be once accepted by candidates for a seat in the House of Commons, “it will crush out individuality of character iu public life, .will extinguish the free discussion and competitive examination of opinions , before elections, will practically disfranchise minorities, will strike a sharp line between parties, and a lir e drawn not by real and natural differences of principle but by the controversy that may best ho twisted iatp a * cry/ and, worst of ail, will pass under the control of the wire-pullers, and will develop* oll'the evila which have degraded and defeated popular government in, the United States." A member elected under irach degrading conditions will bo merely a delegate, and will not bo even the delegate of the constituency, but of the little knot of wire-pullers calling itself an executive committee or a reform league, to which ho owes his nomination. This will be composed of professional politicians, who will have their own venal and. dirty objects to accomplish, and .from whom the , , delegatepmst submit to receive his ins tractions, undii penalty of being placed under the ban of bi? swtfra at the next general election, Nona

but sycophants, abject place-hunters, and men destitute of principle and independence will stoop to tho humiliation of entering a professedly representive Chamber by such despicable means ; and the result would be what has actually occurred in the United States—the ostracism from public life of tha moral worth, the eminent ability, and, in the true sense of the word, the natural aristocracy of the country. There would bo in every constituency a small self-appointed college of primary electors, “holding,” as John Stuart Mill remarked, “no permanent office or position in tho public eye,” deliberating in secret, utterly irresponsible, and exercising their functions from motives that might be simply capricious to-day and thoroughly corrupt to-morrow. When that philosophical writer discussed this subject twenty years ago, he apologised “for saying so much against a political expedient, which perhaps could not, in England, muster a single adherent.” The time has come, unfortunately, when this pernicious system finds many advocates, who perceive its utility for party purposes, while they are blind to the subversion of representative government which it would inevitably entail. It has destroyed individual liberty and individual responsibility in the United States, where it has established a new form of despotism, as odious and revolting as it is vulgar and debasing j and Mr. Wilson—who is himself a Liberal—may well declare that “there are no imaginable gains to be expected from the reconstruction of a Liberal majority in tho House of Commons that can be weighed for an instant in the scales of prudence, or in those of principle, against the complicated perils of organisation under the caucus.” If English politicians wish to be informed what fruits the system has borne in Victoria, the reply is this :—lt has substituted, voting machines for representatives in the Legislative Assembly ; it has suppressed the open discussion of questions of law and policy in that Chamber ; and it has enabled a clique of vociferous and unscrupulous agitators to combine to deny the right of public meeting and of free speech to their political opponents, 'Against such an intolerable tyranny the instincts, of our countrymen at Home will surely revolt. _____