THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 1910. GOVERNMENT BY CAUCUS.
The Party system has come to be re garded as essential to the maintenance of the political equilibrium in all countries having representative forma of government. In democratic communities it secures to the majority the privilege claimed, by reason of the allegiance to Demos, of dominating the minority. The latter may have the rights a/id privileges of citizenship; it has these only at the will of the majority. If the democratic principle be conceded as just andjequitable, one has a "right to enquire how far it enters Into the conduct of the business of those States which professedly accept it. In New Zealand we have a democratic form of government, i.e., the majority is supposed to rule on all questions affecting the destinies of the people. But, in reality, the majority has no more to do with the moulding of the destiny of this country than has the man in the moon. Under our peculiar system of Party Government, men are returned to Parliament to do the will of Cabinet, and
not the will of the majority of the peopl?. For years past individuality has been sinking out of our Parliamentary institutions, until to-day we have government by caucus, pure and simple. A man may have fixed opinions upon questions affecting the moral and material we'fare ot the State, He may enunciate them from the publh rlatform and be returned to Parliament pledged to express them on the floor of the House, and staid to them through thick arid thin. When the division b:ll rings he fi.ids himself in the position of being compelled to vote against the dictates of his own conscience, and to violate a pledge he has made to his constituents. .Foi why? Because he has to surrender his individuality to Party. Because if he votes as his conscience dictate'', lis may be called a renegade. How ttanj members of the prese.it Parliament ave a voice in determining what legislation shall be iotro juced, and in what form it shall be introdued? Few indeed. How many outride the Cabinet can introdu:e a measure of reform with the prospect of its being plac d upon the Statute Book? -We-appear-to have arrived at that stage in cur national existence when the entire business of State i 3 transacted by a handful of politicians haphazardly selected fnm the rank and file, not so much by leason of J their fitness for Cabinet rai.k as to propitiate various sections of the community which command votes. Ask a man who has b2*n in the House : of Representatives for a period of ten or twelve years what is his impression of representative government, and he wli teil you, if he be candid, that it is represented by caucus. Every session of Parliament furnishes one or more glaring illustrations of the anomaly created by Party Government. What better illustration could have been afforded than the recant division on Mr Masaey'a land resolutions? There we found ardent leaseholders voting in favuur of the freehold, and equally ardent freeholders voting, practically, for the leasehold. Could a more humiliating spectacle be conceived'' And yet this is what is happening every session, and what will continue to happen so long as Party is to be placed before principle. How can the voice of the majority be heard in these circumstances? How can Democracy rule? there may be some little satisfaction fn.th.9 thought that New Zealand is not singular in its misfortune. Other and older countries are suffering from the evils of Party government. But how can the remedy, he applied? Is there no remedy? Switzerland claims to have found one in the elective executive. Other countiies have. _ resorted to the referendum. What is the intention of New Zealai.d? Will it continue to destroy the manhood of its public men, or will it seek a corrective in some form or another?
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Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10067, 15 August 1910, Page 4
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654THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 1910. GOVERNMENT BY CAUCUS. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10067, 15 August 1910, Page 4
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