Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1911. PARTY GOVERNMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10261, 13 June 1911, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1911. PARTY GOVERNMENT.

There is a .growing feeling in New Zealand tlhait the .country is not getting the best from either its men or its money in a system which places the exigencies of party before the present and fixture needs- of the people. Ndbc% who lias watched the trend of politics can fail to be ©truck with the anomalies created iby the present system. It is as''full of anachronism and absurdity as an egg is 'full of meat. And yet we cling to it with a tenacity which iis abounding. For wihy? Chiefly because it is supported by -the superstition we call tradition. Look at the great British Parliament itself, and what do we find? The very destiny of the nation is in the hands Of a small minority of people, who are .banded together for a specific purpose. Who can deny that the system of party government has handed over to the Nationalists & power which, under rational conditions, they could not possibly have possessed? Wfliat is happening in Great Britain, and has happened in the Commonwealth of Australia, will most assuredly occur in New Zealand nnless the people; .themselves demand that tthe interests of individuals and party shall be sxibordinated. to those of the country. What has robbed the Dominion of the services of its best men ? Party Government. What has been responsible for ~.the extravagances tin our'administration? Party Government. What (has reduced our Public Service; to the verge of sycophancy, and made it wi laughing-stock in the community? Party government. What has sapped lavmen and politicians of their

virility, their individuality, their manhood? Paa-ty government. As a Southern contemporary well asks, ' why in the name of common-sense should party be put before patriotism? Why should it 'be .thought nee- , essary for ,seven-eig'htbjs of the ability and energy of our public men to be dissipated ein profitless party strife, and only one-eighth given to the real work of the country? In any other department of human activity, such an irrational and wasteful state of things would not ibe tolerated for a day. Yet Sor centuries it has been tolerated in political life; | and the Anglo-Saxon peoples, the j most virile, original, independent | and inventive on the face of tlie I

earth, have not been able to free themselves from the chilling effects of long custom, which lies upon them "heavy as frost and deep almost as life." The .solution of the problem, how to abolish party government, ia not difficult by any means; but even in the vigorous Britains overseas no body of men has yet been found bold enough to shake off the party shackles and initiate a new system.