PARLIAMENTS THAT COMMIT SUICIDE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 213, 29 August 1908, Page 4

PARLIAMENTS THAT COMMIT SUICIDE

When the Persian Parliament dared, the other day, to send an ultimatum 'o the Shah, it sealed its own death-war-rant. Oriental rulers are not used to receiving documents of thi3 sort from their subjects. The Parliament, which thus virtually committed suicide, was the first constitutional assembly of the kind ever established in a Moslem community. The augury is, to say the least of it, not a happy one. It is a somewhat significant fact, too, (hat the first Russian Parliament (dumal compassed its own destruction in a similar fashion. It formulated demands that the Tsar considered both insolent and arrogant, with the result that he at once dissolved it, and a considerable proportion of (hose who were once Us members are now in prison. This sort of thing, it may be pointed out, frequently happens to Parliaments that develop what they term "dignified firmness," and monurchs call " swelled head." History teems with such incidents. They have liappened even in England. One of the first acts of what was known as " the addled Parliament," for instance, was to remonstrate, with King James I. respecting benevolences, whereupon he dissolved it in anger. Another English Parliament, which sat for one day only, and then itself committed the "happy dispatch," possibly from dread of worse befalling it, was that which decreed the deposition of King Richard 11. ■- | ':*SISIS3» In France, during the pro-revolution days, Parliaments committed suicide, cither intentionally or otherwise, more often than not. But, eventually, one was found that, when turned out of its proper mceting-tplaee, declined to dissolve. Instead, it adjourned to a tennis-court, and voted itself a National Assembly. This was the lieginning of the revolution, and the downfall of the Empire.