The Daily News FRIDAY, JANUARY 19. THE BRITISH DEMOCRACY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8032, 19 January 1906, Page 2

The Daily News FRIDAY, JANUARY 19. THE BRITISH DEMOCRACY.

It is a particularly cheering circnmstanco that for the next seven years : Balfour is robled of the influence he wielded for ill, for, with the overwhelming defeat of Toryism, it is scarcely likely that, with a Government as strong as Campbell-Ban-nerman's appears to be, anything can happen to induce the people of the Old Country to accept again as their mentors a Government which considers " class " first and " mass" nowhere. A statesman who, as Balfour did, told starving unemployed that Government aid would " destroy the fibre of the workers," deserves political death, and should be forgotten on political resurrection-day. England has up to now had no experience of a strong Labor Party in the House of Commons, and with so eminent a Liborite in the Cabinet as Mr John Burns, the future is big with the promise of great and glowing reforms. * * * ♦

Tue force of habit, so long ingrained in the Englishman, is apparently weakening. The fact that Sir Thingummy's father represented a constituency for half a century and did no particular harm—and very little good—appears to Ije insntlicient for worker John Bull now-a-days. John Bull is, in fact, waking up, not only commercially, but also politically. It doesn't follow, however, that because a politician is a millionaire, or the heir to a great title, that he cannot be a Liberal as to politics. By far the larger majority of ri;h Englishmen are rich because they can't help it, and riches was the only way to politics up to a few years ago. The idea of a working-man with grimy lingers being fit to help to legislate for the greatest country on earth is even yet repulsive to a majority of hereditary rulers in the Old Land, who, of course, cannot be blamed for seeing with the visiun of their forefathers. The rule of the fat man at. Homo is going to be less irksome than formerly, merely because the inherent honosty of (he Britisher has krgely done away with the wholesale buying of seats, not until recent years considered a crime. Indeed, within our recollection, it was the rule for the biggest spender of beer-money to get the seat he was bidding for. * * * *

As all wealth is the outcome of mere manual labour in the first instance, it is but bare justice that mere manual labourers shall have some say in the spending of the money they produce. Where is this not recognised are likely to have a Labour Parliament, where the horny-handed shall have as good a chance as the wellmanicured to suggest reforms that may make for the smooth working of industrial life. Russia has revolted agair.st the fat men ; against the rule of the monied drone. There is no room in this world for the drone, nor is there a necessity for the piling of two mcu's work on the shoulders of an underpaid individual. All the same, the purely Labour Government would bo a curse to England, for any people who suddenly become pa.Messed of a new power nearly always use it without reison, and usually destructively. That's why the L ibjur Parliament in the Commonwealth did not survive, and that is why the long-curbed people at the time of the Fiench Revolution soaked the earth with bloo.l. The power of a people acquired gradually and by process of e lucational enlightenment is the best and most lasting power, and the awakening of the AngloSaxon race to the urgent necessity of having the needs of the people represented by those best able to gauge the necessities of the whole is the surest sign that "there's a good time coming," and it won't be long, * * * *

Still another exhilarating evidence of the enfeeblement of the fat man is the stoppage of the Chinese supply to our fellow Briton, Cohenstcin, or Beit, or Eckstein, or any other of the great patriots for whom our soldiers she! tbeii bluo•', and foi whom the hide-bound Tories spent British millions. The Liberal Government for England means that Britain will pursue a freeteade policy, and that that great man Chamberlain, and his fiscal furies, will be iiiocuuiis for at- least a time, foe which there is sufficient reason to shout, "Hurrah!" Perhaps the British elections do not ali'ect us in New Zealand except in a moral sense, for we shall all be glad to see a lessening of the power of the hereditary rulers. It is something of a pity that tho elections do not affect the personnel of the House of Lords, which will still havo the power of veto. There doesn't seem to be any method of clipping tho wings of the Lords, and the possibility of the said Lords doing anything to curtail that power themselves is very far remote indeed. * * * <i

Ji is within the bounds of possibility that the Labour Party in the new House of Commons will strongly advocate the acquisition by the Government of large estates, in order tr make it possible to recruit the rural population from the cities. [f the rural population of the Old Country were tenants of the Government, and the Government was not packed with landholders, the coercion of votes would be less frequent. It has become a duty for the labourer to vote for the squire, and for the city dweller to vote for the landlord. Home of these days England. " the seeing that the people will, in vory truth, be represented in Parliament, The day is all the nearer by the advent of a Liberal Government, which, on the face of it, seems as if it hiid