SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1908. EXPERIMENTAL LEGISLATION.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43382, 31 October 1908, Page 2

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1908. EXPERIMENTAL LEGISLATION.

Just exactly why the term experimental legislation should be applied in derision perhaps it would not be easy to ascertain. How can legislation be anything else than experimental ? For how caD politicians know until they have applied certain measures whether they are going to be a success or not ? Even older institutions than our Arbitration and Conciliation Act, when applied to the conditions prevailing in the Dominion may reasonably be regarded as possessing elements of uncertainty. It is purely as the result of a longcontinued series of experimenting that progress has been made in the various departments of human life, both individual and collective. And it is one of the great recommendations of political life in a new country like New Zealand, that shrewd men with honest intentions have scope for experiment, such experiperiment as may result in the solution of some of those social and industrial problems which in older lands, with graver issues at stake, would be fraught with much greater difficulty. What we do want to be sure of is that the men whom we entrust with political power are honestly bent upon securing the best interests of the country, and that they are shrewd and well-informed enough to realize what they are doing. What each elector needs for the guarding of his own and the country’s best interests is to return to Parliament I “ One good, strong man,” i

“ One who can rule and dare not lie.” not the kind of person whose motto might be identified with the old inscription “ Du zummat,” “ Du good iv ye can,” “ But du zummat.” • We claim that our legislatorial experimenting has not been entirely fruitless in the past. The prosperity of this country has not stood wholly unrelated to the various measures which have been placed upon our statute books. Our Advances to Settlers Act has done good. Even our labour legislation, in spite of the way in which the people for whose chief benefit it exists, have abused their privileges under its provisions, has not broken down, as some Job’s comfortors scemod to hope it might. At the sarao time wo cannot close our eyes to the fact that ono of the gravest dangors which can threaten, otty State is to be guarded nguinst

,e. <- in I lie Dominion, just as really .< i* i ■ i i America for instance—-we . ean the danger of corruption Under every form of Government this 'anger is present And under a form of Government in which the State has so many good berths in its gift, and so many advantages to bestow upon, or withold from elec torates, the peril is too manifest to need emphasizing. And our first question regarding any candidate .should be, not l * to what party does he belong?” but, “ is he an honest and capable man, one who will take a large and shrewd view of the various matters which have to be dealt with, and one who thinks more of serving his constituency, and through it the cou itry faithfully, than of keeping his seat ?” Some people are inclined to be pessimistic ani almost adopt the view that there are no such public spirited men to be found. For our ipart, we believe that every time has its nobility, and that would be an evil time indeed wherein no such men were to be found.

Perhaps one of the most serious dangers against which we need to contend is the e'oment of extreme socialism, the kind of socialism which threatens to take us collectively under its uncomfortable and stifling wing, and crush all the in' dividuality out of us. This is one of the last things to which we have any right to submit. For we hold that while men should be given equal chances of realizing themselves to the very full, it is wholly impossible, state enactments to the contrary notwithstanding, to make the result equal. You cannot make “ everyone to count as one, and no one as more than one,” when you come to measure a man’s performance, although you give every child an equal educational vote. We need to be very, very wary of these kind friends who are for handing over our private affairs to a too assiduous Slate, until there is nothing left for us to do except what the State permits, nay demands, that we shall do. What we do want, however, is that we shall each and all be accorded the privilege of contributing our very best work to the world’s good, the right to realize all there is in us to be realized, whilst being left free to part the hair on which side we choose, and to eat our strawberries with or without sugar as we may prefer.