PARLIAMENT CRITICISED.

Shannon News, 14 June 1921, Page 3

PARLIAMENT CRITICISED.

The chastening gift of seeing ourselves as 1 others see us is offered to New Zealanders in a two-volume work “Modei’n Democracies,” by the distinguished ambassador and litterateur Lord Bryce. Lord Bryce is a very extraordinary figure in the British intellectual world, and be writes partly from observation on his tour of the Dominions after resigning the ambassadorship in Washington in 1913-. The Parliament be saw m New Zealand was that, elected in 1911, and it is open to any member of that body to take action if he disagrees with the following estimate of its capacity and attainments; “The New Zealand House of Representatives i 3 in one sense too representative, for its members are little above the average of their electors in knowledge or abality. . . . The Assembly is left to persons five-sixths of whom do not rise above the level of town councillors of an English town. . . . The standard not only of attainments, but of debates and of manners alsoi leaves something to be desired. Thinking bears a low' ratio to talking. . . . There is certainly what one may call a. sort of commonness, a want of that elevation and dignity which ought to raise above their ordinary level those who administer the affairs of a self-governing community with a great future, and this lowers the moral influence of Parliament upon the community itself.”