The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1911. THE PEOPLE'S MISREPRESENTATIVES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 58, 28 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1911. THE PEOPLE'S MISREPRESENTATIVES.

In reviewing the political position in British countries at' the present' time the student is forced to the conclusion that the average politician no more concerns himself about the business for which he is elected than the average schoolboy concerns himself about the Aurora Borealis or the flooding of the Nile. The newspapers are called upon to wax enthusiastic in "scare-heads" at the vaudeville "turn" put on by members of the New South Wales Parliament, who have recently exhibited their "statesmanship" in the election of a Speaker, making the whole affair an exhibition of the smallest kind of personal selfishness and boorish truculence. The supposedly stately House of Commons and the dignified "Lords" have lately shown a disposition to adopt the colonial method of rising in one's place to say, in effect, "You're another!" or to use other recognised and cultivated terms of derision and sarcasm. In matters of moment where members, dragooned by party leaders, vote on more or : less serious measures, "bare bones" is sufficient. Where parties in any of the Empire's Parliaments fight like fiends for the preservation of place and privilege, their quarrels are carefully recorded all over the world. The great British publics pay huge sums of money in order that a small number of politicians may bicker and squabble over their own intimate affairs. The public in Britain, in Canada, in Africa, and particularly in Australia, has been trained to believe that Parliaments are working hardest when they are quarrelling the most vigorously. It does not concern the world so much that Canada and the United States may reciprocate in the matter of trade as that Mr. "A" called Mr. "B" a liar, and that there is some chance of one party losing its payable job. The calling out of the Sergeant-at-Arms to prevent one member sjaying another is glorified into a matter of national importance. It is pitiable that most sessions of all Parliaments are so largely used for the passage of the most flagrant banalities and in strife for place. In respect to colonial Parliaments, there is little doubt that if they shut down for a year or two the countries that pay them for quarrelling would have a needed rest. It is impossible to convince the latter-day politician that in his endeavor to decry the other side he is not doing his duty by his employers. Although wo have it on the authority of prominent politicians that this class of person lives a "dog's life" and would much rather be cracking stones for a living, we are every day shown that these single-souled public men give far more thought to their own paltry and party affairs than to the affairs of the people they so frequently misrepresent. The absolute inutility of the "work" done by parliamentarians and reported as being of vital importance is more pronounced as the years go by and the "people" are more widely represented. There has arisen in politics during the past twenty years a new class of representative, who believes that flagrant rudeness and the expression of ignorance is the highest type of democracy. The affairs a small quiet board of competent business men would settle without friction in a short time are seized upon as subjects for interminable quarrels by bodies whose importance is over-estimated by society at large. British Parliaments are threatened with a still greater influx of the class of man who believes he is serving the country by serving himself. . The intolerable presumption still existing in every Parliament throughout the Empire that a party label and not personal common-

sense or ability is the only necessity debases much political life to a mere exhibition of personal animosity and jealousy. Until Parliaments consist of men who are self-sacrificing and believe their duty is to the people before the party, the grotesque and extensive absurdities so commonly reported will continue. In Australian Parliaments, particularly, no one would be surprised at a Minister breaking out into a song and dance, or the Labor Party clearing the Chamber with sticks at the defeat of a party motion.