FREE DISCUSSION
ART OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. Speaking on the “Art of Self-Gov-ernment,” Mr G. M. Young said in a recent address “If discussion by talk, by writing or by print were limited, the political parties would never be able to frame a programme because they would not know what people were thinking or what they wanted. And when they came to legislate, they would not be warned of 'practical difficulties here, the sentimental objections there, and all the things which a free government has to take into account if its legislation is to work smoothly. Government would gradually drift further and further away from public opinion. Intelligent people would cease to take any interest in politics if they were not allowed to discuss them freely, and so first gradually, and then rapidly, the whole thing would slide toward a dictatorship—one party in power for ever, and keeping itself in power not by limiting, but by banning discussion altogether.”
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 December 1941, Page 3
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157FREE DISCUSSION Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 December 1941, Page 3
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