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Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3077, 5 April 1892, Page 2

[n referring to the resolution recently passed by the New South Wales Labour Electoral League, " That the Legislative Council be abolished, and that the principle of the referendum be adopted as a substitute," the Sydney Mail makes the following sensible remarks: — " A second chamber is not intended to act simply as a check upon hasty legislation. That is one of the purposes of its existence, but not the only one. A second chamber is intended to revise the work of the lirst, and to submit for consideration proposals for the improvement or the perfecting of that work when, in the light of a second discussion from a new standpoint, changes •vith that end in view may seem desirable or absolutely required. It should not be forgotten that the Assembly is the second chamber for measures first introduced in the Council as much as the Council is second chamber for the measures that originate in the Assembly. The principle of the foundation of the whole system is that a second and independent discussion of a Bill by another set of men, in another House, is the arrangement best adapted to discover error and eliminate it; to promote sound legislation, and to prevent crude or mischievous measures passing into law. The referendum may stop legislation and prevent Bills, whether good or bad, taking effect, but in ihe nature of the case it must leave the work of revision unattempted and undone. The very existence of a Parliament is a recognition of the inability of the people as a whole to discuss and settle the provisions and details of public law." If the people were competent to revise and amend Mills under a referendum, they could deal with them in the first instance, and the question would not be whether the second chamber should be abolished, but whether the Legislature should be abolished and a staff of half-a-dozen draftsmen under the Executive put into their place. But whilst the referendum, if adopted, would nominally be a system under which the will of the people, for or against a given law, would be directly and authoritatively expressed, it would in reality be something very different. We have not here to consider how the system w.orks amongst the Swiss, but how it would work in a community of British desceut, and trained under representative Government. We may be almost certain of this, that the referendum, instead of procuring a genuine expression of the will of the people, would be a test of the relative strength of the organisations into which a large proportion of the people is divided. The wire-pullers would round up the members of the organisation who would be cajoled, or coerced, or stimulated to vote ' Yes' or ' No,' and, as an appeal to intelligent opinion, the referendum would be a sham. There is too much of this sort of thing alread} 7 in the election of members, but to allow such influences to predominate in the direct work of legislation would be destructive to the best interests of the community."