WELLINGTON NOTES.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 340, 13 September 1898, Page 4

WELLINGTON NOTES.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) TEN WEEKS OF TWADDLE. In the bad old days which the Liberals of 1898 refer to with profound pity for the ipuoranoo ot the early legislators, it was customary to dispose of the work of the session in ten or twelve weeks, and then the members would draw their one hundred guineas ami go home to attend to their lambing aud haymaking in early spring. The appearance of the first green shoots on the willow trees in Wellington acted on thym like a notice to quit, and whatever political hatchets might have been flourished during the winter nichts, they were buried and business brought to an end with the advent of whitebait. But in the bad old days politics was not a trade, with £2O per month and the garnish of free passes, coupled with the free membership of the beat equipped private club in the colony, where the whiskey is not only well matured, but selected by a House Committee of undoubted talent as connossicurs, waited on by attendants both numerous and knowing, with these aud other attractions life in Wellington is worth living, when that living is a charge on the Public Treasury. Brown and Jones and Smith, who toil and sweat to produce the revenue, may occasionally wonder where they come in, but they are not worth consideration. The_ spirit of the age has placed King Mob in possession of the consciences and intellects of the rulers of the day and the old belief that laws ought to be general and impartial has given way to the determination that they shall be biassed and framed to favour the exceptional classes. This outcome of our system is beginning to be recognised now by newspapers who • not long since were enraptured at what was called the enfranchisement of the masses. The Auckland Observer, the most radical paper in the colony, now owns up to the fact. In its last issue its editor writes : '" One of our contemporaries attributes the collapse ot the intellectual and moral standard of the House to the female franchise. It is not, however, the woman vote that is to blame. The fault lies more with the one-man-one-vote, and in saying this we make a humiliating confession, because the Observer was one of the staunchest advocates of an equal franchise amongst men. The principle that worked out so well in theory has not, however, worked out in practice. There are too many men who go to the polls in mobs like sheep, who give their votes blindly at the direction of selfconstituted and ignorant leaders, and who do not think out political questions for themselves. So long as this state of things continues, so loud will the one-man-one-vote principle be a failure, and so long also will the intellectual and moral standard of the House continue to fall." This change in the views of a widelyread paper, and one very popular with the masses, shows how the pendulum is swinging ; yet we find Parliament, at the present time, passing a Municipal Reform Bill to extend the one-man-one-vote to our civic life where the revenues are entirely furnished from property, and the local bodies who administer them arc merely trustees for other people's rates, just the same, in effect, as the directors of public companies. The fact is, the members of the Legislature who make politics a trade, are at present vieing one with another who shall bid the highest for distinction in the favours to be granted to Bill Sykos and his friends. It is not in New Zealand alone that public life is degraded by the professional popularity - hunter. The democracy in France has passed through many phases and spilt much blood in endeavouring to prove that all men have eciual rights. One would have thought that the lessons tof he Commune, with its petrolcuscs and other horrors, would have been sufficient for a century; yet, we find the anarchist principles still rampant there. In France, as here, they have Arbitration Boards for settling disputes between masters and man. Their fanctions are judicial, bnt the Central Committee of working men in Paris, a body analogous to our Trades' Council here, imposes on candidates certain conditions, of which the first clause reads as follows :—" Every candidate for the post of workman's candidate to the Board of Arbitrators shall declare that his object is the entire suppression of employers of labour and of wages. To attain this result, he shall declare himself a partisan in the struggle between the classes." In New Zealand the 'working men members are not so outspoken or candid as this. They go another way about extinguishing the employer, and merely endeavour to appropriate all his earnings, profits and, in the end, his capital. No one reading the interminable cases brought before these tribunals can come to any other conclusion. Go back in history as far as we will, and we will find that the character of a nation is modelled upon the character of its Government. Bad Governments have for their consequence a low level of popular morality. We need not go out of our way to find proof of this in any electorate in the colony. The Seddon Government has multiplied billets to reward followers and manufactured J.P. by the hundred out of very refractory material to foster the vanity of those who were too ignorant to turn into even rabbit inspectors. As for the Ministers themselves, one has only to ask their most devoted followers what they see in them to bow down and worship. Nine out of ten will say " Oh, Seddon is a leader of the people. He is the great promoter of social reforms and the protector of the poor aud needy," and the Hon. Minister for Bushy Park is admired for his Highland firmness and his determination to extinguish freehold tenures. The average Liberal never thinks of considering whether these claims are genuine or a 3 bogus, as the finance they dazzle the eyes of the ignorant with. The " Bun Tuck " Ministry asks the people to accept themselves at their face value, which is stupendous, and the Liberal throng not only endorse the Bill, but they recognise the value of the unrarned increment likely to arise in future elections. But the history of the past fortnight will do much to point a moral which any crude intellect can understand. A whole week spent in a obstinate determination to make Hansard ridiculous by the insertion of an entirely misleading map, by a Minister who remained out of. the House, leaving his colleagues to fight his battle for him, while the Opposition, much against the will of every member, was compelled to do its best to block this infringement, of a matter which the Speaker alone has the right to deal with. And to make the whole affair the more odious the Speaker himself, after being incapacitated for afornight by reason of a complaint which is remarkably Srevalent in legislative circles just now, 'as spirited away just when it became know that he would be capable of occupying the chair, and that lie would exercise his right to veto the map. On his arrival at Onehuuga the Press Association telegraphed the intelligence that his medical adviser had pronounced the complaint to be influenza, and that the Speaker would be convalescent by Thursday. This is very reassuring and comforting, and goes a long way to justify the belief that even doctors have their uses. What will probibly influence electors as much as auything when they again liave a chance of selecting their representatives will be the spectacle of fortunes rapidly acquired by the aid of politics, men who have in a few years passed from poverty to wealth Yesterday they were loaded with debt and today they own estates and shares in companies, scats on highly-paid boards, anil are the recipients of annua) valuable presents from other less prominent poli-

ticians whose welfare depends on their contributions in this cost of thing and a uever-ceasing barracking on behalf of the generous hand which hikes the largesse from A's pocket and transfers it to B's. Politics without morality are the ruin of society, but with the one-man-one-vote it is not in human nature to hope for morality. That is the conclusion the Auckland Observer has evidently arrived at, and many others who have changed their views now recognise that a man ought to earn his vote before he can exercise it, either by showing that he can govern himself by acquiring either property or intelligence, and the one usually includes the other.