PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 102, 16 September 1912, Page 5

PARLIAMENTARY ORATORY.

POLITICAL DECADENCE. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent). Wellington, Saturday Night. To those who have frequented-Parlia-ment for a number of years it is becoming painfully apparent'that the standard of speech has undergone a considerable decline since the beginning of the session. The House has been engaged in discussing proposals of national importance, proposals rendered more important than they would otherwise be by the fact that a new Government occupied the Treasury benches. One might easily have anticipated that the peculiar circumstances of the political situation would have been sufficient to bring out oratorical efforts of an outstanding character. The reverse is the case. The political situation is the most important and significant that has been known for over twenty years, and there is scarcely a man in the House who is able to express himself intelligibly on the subject. It is not intended to detract from the standard of intelligence of members. Many of them are highly capable men, within certain limitations, and they can argue the claims of a mile of railway or a station verandah with an ungrammatieal glibness that would easily pass muster in a political nursery. It is, nowever, significant to observe that scarcely one of them lias the faculty of direct speech. Always members appear to be obsessed by the fear of being challenged in the future as to their utterances, and they resort to the subterfuge of indirectness, in the hope, apparently, that they may escape; responsibility if called upon for an explanation. That is the most charitable view to take. The more reasonable view is that most members are laboring under I hi; delusion that words only are required to constitute a speech. Quantify, not quality, would appear to be the motto of the average members. There are, of course, some exceptions—none of them very notable, by-the-bye—-but it is :i melancholy fact that the standard of oratory in the House has gone down at least seventy-five per cent, during the last twenty years, and is getting rapidly worse Comparisons, it is said, are odious, but those who remember the davs when there -was such a thing as oratory in the House cannot but think the public has sent to Parliament an inferior brand intellectually, however strong they may be in political principle. 'Oratory is" not'the be-all and end-all of Parliament, but the ability to express one's thoughts in decent English is generally cou-ideted to be part, of the equipI meat of a member. In that, important respect many members fail lamentably.