ELECTION YEAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 172, 23 July 1928, Page 5

ELECTION YEAR.

THE COMING CONFLICT. THE RURAL PERQUISITE." remixtscenlks of slddox. IBy >. SAUN*DEIb>. tin- ;i 11 "An-vver -ii lor: indents"' column 1 should lm\t pleasure in supplying half a d"/.ci: iinjuiu-rs such further information ;ij I have at my disposal in regard to the operation of tlie -"rural quota"' upon the parliamentary franchise of this country. But my ahiMon to this subject a fortnight ago was not intended tu in\:U- a uiseu=--ion concerning popular representation, nor. as one of my critical correspondents suggest.-. to blame Minister® of the Crown for having been sent to Parliament by "a smaller but more intelligent community."' We New Zealanders. however, are >o prone to plnnie ourselves upon the length and breadth and depth of our democracy—our universal sinTYaee. our <jne-man-oue-vote, out old age pension? and the rest—that we are a little apt to imagine we are h'ad'iijr "lie \<-lioJ.> world in social progress and national achievement. Poli-

i • ;.us, if they happen to be on the winning side for the time being, encourage us in these quaint conceits, and it i- well, therefore, that we sh'iul 1 be reminded occasionally of our limitations. It is just upon fifty years ago—when there may have been the semblance "f an excuse for conferring upon the o;;:lying district- a disproportionate share of parliamentary representation—that tho twenty-eight per cent advantage was given to the remote settlers, and since then there has been no Government with courage enough to admit that the concession is no longer justified by its surrounding circumstances. This question. it may be,as well to repeat, has nothing to do with proportional repre : sentation. or preferential voting or anr other system of election bordering on party politics. It simply deals with the principle of equality at the ballot-box whether in town or country, and with the right of the man in the city to have the same share as the man in the country is given in shaping the destinv of the Dominion. Hazard of the Ballot. The correspondent who asks for particulars concerning the Home Parliamentary elections will find all he requires in the Constitutional Year Book, a work which styles itself '"a treasury of political information, and comes as nearly as may be up to its specification. It is published by the National Union of Conservative and L nionist Associations of London. but it is untainted by party bias and lull of useful information. It should be iu every public library in the Dominion, am! it it is not, some people are neglecting their duty. There is one page ill this 'treasury of information."' however, which doe- not augur well for the early application of proportional representation to the Home elections. At the nniver-ities in the Mother Countrv what is -tyled proportional representation is employed in the selection of their reprei -cntativcs in the House of Commons. At the election at Oxford in 1924 there were two Unionist candidates and one Independent. and at Cambridge also two I nionist- and one Independent. At Oxford t he Independent candidate polled nearly a thousand more vote.® than did the second Unionist candidate. but by the overflow of votes from the first Unionist candidate. Lord H. Cecil, the Unionist candidate at the bottom of the poll, was raised to second piac-e, and became with Lord Cecil the representative of Oxford University in the House of Commons. Practically the same sort of thing happened at other universities, proportional representation, ; when applied to small constituencies with only three candidates, becoming a form of alternative voting, which takes no heed of the rights of minorities, lie-nits of this kind inevitably mu-t give the electors a wrong impression of the operation of proportional election. The | tini ver-ities. one would have thought, i would have been the last constituencies tu rai-e -uch a monument to the author ot the system. The last general election at Home, that of lfhi4. left the Unionist Government with a majority of votes and a huge majority of seat-, its votes amounting to 5.039.."»9$ and it- seats to 41l'. while the votes of the Liberal. Labour ami Independent Oppositions amounted to S.COO.tiSI. and-its seats to -!4S. Obviously New Zealand is not the only place'in which single electorates under the first pa-t the post system may fall >hort of rcgi.-tering the will of the majority. A Man Who Did. Early iu the opening of each si>-ion i f Parliament tie- member- of the l.evri--hmve ( (.innei 1 and meiiiliers of the lion(f KcpT'e-ent ativ e- ray tributes to former member®—-may l>e of one ehambei > or of the other—who have pa--ed away | during th« recess. Thi- year the name oil tile obituary 1 i-1 that arrv-Ted attention \\ a — thin . ! Mr l he rle- Lewis. a .Miieii.nrv h.iy ,'iid man < f qti'te e\- • -e i -I iona i nan-, who \\a- destined to! hold up the tlal: of { on-ervat:-in. as Reform was unashamed to call itself in the nineties, in a vei-itaMe hot-bed of Liberalism. In lsf'ti the lion. W. P. lle.-ves having iv-bjiied his -eat in tiv- } llou-e as oi■ e of the three members for t hri- 1 •■i.'.nvh. mi order to take up the I l'osi? i-'U Auent-t ieneral in London.' Mr. .-aw his wav to rein-late! Mr. lib-hard Molesworth Taylor. e„m-j 'M"i'lv '■ in-All a- "Sydenham Tavlor." ( vv 11 1 had 10-: iii- seat at the p'ecOuillu I L -e:i"'-a] ei.-eThm. There was. however.! ."lothe; Taylor in the field. Mr. T. 1-" Taylor, whom ruanv of the Prime Minuter- ineiios thought a much more stii'camh'bite than th»ir leader's choice l'.ut \Tr. Sedihm had not yet measured

the spirit of Canterbury, nor realised the quality of the younger man, and he had his own way. The result was the return of Mr. Lewis, to tlie surprise of almost everyone but himself, and the beginning of a very remarkable political career. lie was returned for the City of Chrietchurch again at the general election at the end of the year, and yet again in IS9O. but .on the abolition of the three-member city constituencies he thought it wise to move out to the country. from whence he returned as member for Courtney, a hinterland of Christ* church. to hold the seat through two Parliaments before finally retiring from politics and taking up his residence ia the North Island. To have won in Can* terbury live elections for the Opposition of the day between ]S!m> and wa«s really a wonderful achievement which no other politician of the day would have thought of attempting. A loyal friend and a chivalrous opponent, a Una believer in himself and in the righteousness of his cause. Mr. Lewis was a knight of high order in the wide field of politics. Politician and Prophet. It is too eariy in the <\ ;v >be sue -ulating in figures over the result of the approaching Parliamentary flection, and probably neither Mr. Coate- nor Mr. Holland has quite made up his mind as to the numerical strength of the force he will lead into the House of Representatives next year. Speculation i 3 rife enough, but it is timid speculation and only tentative, offered rather as aa inducement to the other fellow to express his opinion rather than to accept yours. The problem was a much easier one in Mr. Seddon's days, when there were practically only two parties, end the leaders did most of the organising and much of the canvassing. Mr. Seddon succeeded in this particular branch of political strategy because he knew every move of the game and loved it; Sir William Russell failed because he knew only enough of the game to cordially detest it. The faculty that the great Liberal leader enjoyed in this respect -was almost uncanny, and never failed to disturb the equanimity of his political opponents. On the eve of the general election of 1595 he wired the editor of a friendly newspaper in Christchurch the names of the Liberal candidate? he expected to be returned on the following day, and they all succeeded save one. The exception was a candidate closelv related to the editor, and his name, doubtless. was included in the list out of unnecessary consideration for that gentleman. Telegraphing on the eve of the historic election of 190-j, which gave him 60 out of the SO seats in the House, he somewhat enigmatically expressed a hope that there would be "a score of survivors after the poll." His hope was realised in the return of 15 Conservatives and five Independents, but he did not live to marshal his unwieldy battalion, and in other hands the record majority gradually melted away.- With Mr. Seddon's passing the return to well-balanctd partie® began. but it ha- been rudely interrupted by the arrival of a party that' would reach the political millennium only by the short cuts which lie for afield from the safer tracks blazel by the great Liberal leader.