PARTY POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 225, 21 March 1912, Page 6

PARTY POLITICS.

To the Editor. Sir,—-Those who favor an elective Executive as against the present system of party government seem to me only to grasp half a truth. They contend that the House as now constituted consists in the main of two parties, the Government and the Opposition, and that these two groat opposing forces are consolidated internally by unity of ideas and community of interests, and that they represent, as it were, the two poles of political thought. But this assumed consolidation is more imaginary than real, for it is doubtful if any two members of the Legislature are in agreement upon every issue that comes before them. The House divides itself automatically just as its factors are progressive or conservative, each joining the camp most in harmony with his political thought. But if either of these great parties were to be obliterated there would still be two parties in the House, because of the simple process of subdivision that would take place in the party remaining. In fact, par.tv would show itself in a House of two just as it would in a House of two hundred. The terms "Liberal" and "Conservative" are compositive, not arbitrary.. We hear of non-party politicians and a non-party press, but these terms are simply verbal contradictions, and have no more meaning than high lows or square rounds. If a man advocates anything he must be a party of one or more, while a non-party press would be a freak of journalism, the editor of which would be like the Rev. Stiggins' foolish young Waterman going down the stream of life thinking of nothing at all. Party is not necessarily- » question of numbers. A man who s opposed to the political tendency of the age, and despairing of bringing the world to his way of thinking, resolves to buy a gun and form himself into a republic is a party in the political sense of the term. The groundwork of all political strife is that there is no finality about politics, and where there is no finality there is no unity, and where there is no unity there must be party. The world has failed to give us one statesman who could say of any political problem: "I have solved this question now and for all time." Each generation adds its quota of obsolete laws to the political scrap-heap of the ages. What democracy mistakes for progress is often a journey upon a political treadmill, and It lifts its head only to find that it is still beside the old familiar land marks. If someone could discover a panacea for all political ills humanity might then attai nthe absolute, and march in step. But this only alternative to party strife is not at present visible between us and the sky-line.—l am, etc., FRANK BELL. Toko, March 19.