MAN UNFIT FOR SOCIALISM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 2988, 8 September 1891, Page 3

MAN UNFIT FOR SOCIALISM.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,-"During the last two or three years there has been some half dozen correspondents under various nom • de plumes writing in your Waiicato Times. They are all so alike in their ideas that it is generally considered that the half dozen arc one and the same. It certainly would be satisfactory if one was the writer of what has been represented as the writings of six, because it would be very much to be desired that there was only one man in the district who was not very wise instead of six. Your correspondents referred to all hail from Hamilton, or are supposed to. I may state that these •orrespondents arc all advanced socialists and I wish to say a few words to show that we, the people, are so inconsistent and unjust one to another that socialism in the first would be that the man of greed would triumph over and at the expense of the man who was not greedy and in the end the result from such would be that the whole of our present civilization would be thrown to the winds aud horrid barbarism would ensue. Mankind is composed (I will not say the proportion) of two different classes of men. There are those who would feel it more pleasant to give than to receive, there are others who would feel it much more pleasant to take than to give, the consequence would be that under socialism the liberal would be denounced as illiberal; for socialism to exist man would need to tc all alike, for then each would he able to hold his own with the other. We have all heard of the old woman who borrowed a pot for twenty years, and when she did at last get a pot of her own remarked that now borrowing and lending must cease Mr Editor, I ask your correspondents could Socialism and the ideaa of that old woman be compatable or co-existing. Your correspondents may talk or write in a grandiose style that the time has now arrived when injustice is to cease, and that the tyrants of old are doomed, and that the political present and future is that the rights of man are triumphant, and that whereas in the past _ politics were oppression, but now that is at an end, and in future justice will reign. Let me tell your correspondents that is all very grand and eloquent, but very shallow. I would ask your correspondents will the giving the old woman of the pot the franchise, will her having a vote, make her lend her pot. No ! All the voting power in the world will not alter her or any other one ; depend upon it, man's regeneration is not gointr to come from the extension of the franchise. In truth wo will be fortuuate, very fortunate, if this extension of thu franchise, this* one man one vote, does not land us into fearful evils. Mr Hurlbert, the American literstcur, has lately written that in future the duty of the people will be to restrain Parliaments. What does this imply. It implies that Parliaments as now created by the one man one vote, Buch as we have, are Parliaments of injustice, and that it will be the duty of the people to restrain that injustice. I cannot see how Parliaments are to be restrained ; to me it appears to be contradictory. The peoplo elect the Parliaments ; they elect the unjust Parliaments,

and to say that the clouting of auch t arliaments and the restraining of such Parliaments can bo hold as co-existing is contradictory. The truth is that the same factor which elects these Parliaments is the identical same factor which withholds the power that could restrain these Parliaments. Mr Editor, the only hope of our political regeneration lies in >his, that our individual unjust wishes for our own unjust benefit must not be sought for by us at the expense of the many.—l am, &c., Harapepe.