THE LEGISLATURE

Press, Volume II, Issue 41, 22 February 1862, Page 1

THE LEGISLATURE

If our watch breaks, we take it to a watchmaker : we jo not take it to our bullock driver. If we break a w we send for the surgeon : not for the blacksmith, i/a merchant wants a clerk, he hires a man who is expert at accounts. If a stock owner or farmer wants a manager, he makes it his business to enquire for a servant who understands stock or farming. In every matter of private business, common sense and the necessities* of human life dictate the employment of those who comprehend the work which is required to be performed. If any man neglects this rule, failure is the result. Now in politics —in the art of Government,—is there any speciality which entitles us to expect success, if wo disregard the laws which govern human actions in all other matters? Is it preteuded that political knowledge comes, unlike all other knowledge, by intuition? that study and thought and information are unnecessary ? Knowledge in all human arts and sciences enables men to take advantage of the accumulated labors of the past human race. Men have tried variousexperiments, oradopted various courses of action, and have failed. Those who follow gain wisdom by the failure, and avoid the same course. Or, on the other hand, imitate and improve upon conduct which has been rewarded by success, and therefore succeed themselves. The records of the past are thus the basis of action in the present; and a knowledge of those records is the first element of success in any, career whatever. In politics this is more distinctly true than in any other science, because there is, perhaps, no conceivable organisation of human society which bas not at one time or another been tried : perhaps the words of the preacher are more applicable in this than in any other object of human intelligence, that ' there is nothing new under the sun..' All imaginable sorts and kinds of Government have been adopted in the world, with every degree of success or failure. Out of these innumerable experiments, have grown up certain fixed and irrevocable principles, without a full recognition of which no community can rise to permanent greatness. Out of them too, many other principles are still struggling upwards, hardly yet accepted as axioms, but towards the establishment of which, all civilised nations are slowly tending. The tendency of ignorance in Government, as in every thing, is to revert to old principles, and to attempt old expedients, which have been tried over and over again in the world, aud have failed. In all the above there is not a word which will not be universally accepted. No one will dispute the theory. It is when we come to the practice, that feeling 3 and passions interfere, and we act sometimes in the very manner we have readily condemned. To come to our own case. Who are the men we ought to elect to constitute our legislature ? who are roost capable of making wise laws for the country? That is a question which is put to us at every election. ar "l a question which the people are compelled to answer whether they will or not. Supposing thit no class feeling or party feeling Mislead our judgment, no sane man will for one moment reject the proposition that the wisest, the ablest, the most learned, and the rao-t experienced ffl en in the community, ought to be elected to be its lawgivers. We all value education. The most J gnorant man in the country is anxious to have his children educated. He recognises the patent truth,

that education makes a man better, happier, more powerful, and raises him altogether higher in the scale of created beings. Why do we make education a matter of such importance; why, of all subjects, is it that which the public regard with the greatest anxiety ; if it be not that we admit the superiority of the educated man ? Now a country which deliberately hands over the power of making laws to the ignorant part of the community, instead of entrusting the power to its wisest and best, must accept the inevitable result —bad laws. Unless we believo that foolish men can make better laws than wise men, bad men better laws than good men, ignorant men better than learned, we must acknowledge that the election of our best men to the position of law-givers is a matter of paramount necessity. In the long run a nation will prosper in proportion as it adopts wise laws; and it will adopt wise laws in proportion as it employs wise law-givers to make them. Now what is it which interferes with the operation of this obvious truth ? Why is it that in all colonial legislatures we see some men whom we would not dream of consulting in any matter of our own business; some men whom we know to be of very questionable character in private life; some men whom we know to be actuated not by independent love for the public weal but by motives of private gain and private interest; some men whom we know to bo thoroughly ignorant of every question which they will be called on to discuss in the legislature ? Let us not be understood to argue, as has beon argued lately, that the bad choice which the peoplo ! occasionally make, is a reason for depming them of their privilege of free election. That U the tendency of the articles in the London « Times ' o£ -jate, .which. have been quoted here as words of wisdom. To limit the electors to those who are supposed to be able to make a better choice of representatives, is the expedient proposed by some as a remedy for the eccentricities of democracy. We do not hold that view. The practical reason why better men are often rejected for worse is this—That we bring from the old country a rooted idea that men of what are called the higher classes will advocate measures which will benefit the higher classes alone, whilst the masses will be sacrificed unless they are represented by those who, however otherwise unfit to legislate, will stand by their own order. There is a great truth in this view. All history teaches us that no amount of learning or I ability will wholly emancipate any man fyp.m the prejudice in favour of his own class, or enable him to view the interests of other classes as they are viewed by themselves. However desirous therefore ofjgetting the best men into the legislature, wo decline rush into an opposite error and allow the popular assembly to degenerate into a clique of a class or a faction in the State. There is no remedy but one ; namely, that the people themselves shall learn that it is their own interest to place their best men in power. Now in Canterbury, it must be admitted, the choice made by the electors generally has been unusually creditable. As a matter of fact, there can generally be found as many educated and superior men on the popular side as on the other; if indeed any one side be entitled more than another to the denomination of I' popular' amongst us. It is true that where a ; superior candidate has presented himself for election in this province, he has almost always been elected in i preference to the inferior. We seem to have recognised the truth that here, whatever it may beat home, there is really little diversity of class interests; that gintlemcn and labouring men, employers and employed, \

are not arranged on opposite; sides as two political parties, but that the employed of one year is himself the employer of the following year; whilst many of the best friends of the laborers arc the men of the mosl educated miuds and most refined tastes in the community. The reason, then, why there is such a lack of intellect and education in our Council, does not arise, in Canterbury at all events, from any jealousy on the part of the electors of men in the highest social station. It is not tho masses who arc to blame. But thero is a fault somewhere : and it is clear that it lies with the upper classes themselves. It is n crying evil in this country, that those who are most fitted by their education, their intelligence, their position, and their character, to make laws for thocommunity, do not present themselves for election. The farm, and the merchandize, and the newly married wife, are all pleaded as sufficient excuses for a neglecf, of the highest duty which citizenship imposes upon every man. Now do the educated classes ever seriously consider the immeasurable wrong which they arc doing themselves, their class, and their country, by this indolence/ We sometimes hear tho Provincial Council spoken of as 'snobs,' and described as an assembly of low men, aping the customs of its more dignified prototypes; and that by men who forget that tho electors have, made the very best choice of the candidates submitted to them ; and that the real fault lies with those whoso interest and whoso duty it was to have como forward themselves, but who have neglected to do so. We say Avith full conviction of its truth, that there are in this province men far moro than enough to constitute a chamber which, in point of intellect and character, and capacity for public business, and acquaintance with sound principles of government, would ba one-iiuwJuchi it-.TCQultLba,no,.diagi'ace, ia any statesman to hold a seat, and whoso councils "it would be an honor to any man to direct. It would bo a credit and honor indeed to Canterbury to see such a Council in Session. And ifc is painful to feel that she is deprived of that honor by tho very men, and the very class, who ought to strive most earnestly for such a result; Let us remind our friends of this. No man and no class of men can neglect their plain and obvious duties without inflicting suffering upon themselves and upon those around them. Men of large property i of superior intelligence, of cxtensivo influence in their several districts, are morally bound to fulfil all the duties assigned to them as necessary adjuncts to their position. If they abandon the field of public action to their inferiors, it is they alone who are to blame. It is they who arc guilty of imposing a lower class of men on the country as lawgivers and senators. It is easy to say " I have no time to devote to politics." le I cannot afford to leavo my farm." Those would be good arguments, if public affairs were an unremunorative amusement. But a man may as well say—«• I have no time to sow seed; or " I am too busy to shear my sheep this year; ,, or "I am too poor to insure mv store." In a country where there is an entirely free democratic constitution, attention to public business is a part of the condition on which all property and all social position is held. As in olden times a knight or baron held his estates under a tenure of feudal service to his lord ; so in a free country every man holds his social position under a tenure of service to the state, when called on for his time or abilities. If the fiftree will not leave his sweetness, nor the olive-tree his fatness, the bramble will reign with us as surely as in Jotham's fable of old ; and the fig-trees and olive-trees not only must not complain, but must incur the odium they richly deserve for the thorny government they have been the means of inflicting on the country. In two of three months, thirty-five members will*

have to be elected for the Provincial Council of Canterbury. We have written thus much in the hope that, apart from all idea of supporting one party or another, —the government or an opposition—the electors, or the most influential amongst the electors, in each district, will carefully consider who is the best man they can get to represent them in the council. It is a great honor to a district to be represented by a distinguished man. If there is no such feeling as this, then all constitutional government is a miserable farce, and we had better get rid of it. Success in free government can only by possibility be achieved where a seat in the legislature is deemed an honor, and where constituencies deem it a matter of honorable rivalry to send up the best and most influential men to represent them. There would indeed be some excuse, if men o* refined aild retiring habits and manners were compelled to expose themselves to the brutality of fiercely contested elections fought with unworthy weapons by unscrupulous candidates; but it has never been so in Canterbury. To our honor and credit be it said that, in almost every case, where men of low and bat characters have contested elections under the pretenci of being popular candidates, they have been ignomini ously rejected. There has been a craving on the par of constituencies for the best men they could «et: anc many have procured seats solely upon sufferance, whe never would have got in, had any other candidate beer proposed. Far be it from us to say that the elections ought to be confined to one class. All classes ought to be represented. We have known mechanics here, who were gentlemen of nature's making, and who were far better educated than many a man in a higher social scale • and we know, alas! gentlemen, so called, who are snobs from the crown to the sole. Far be it from us to advocate a chamber all of one way of thinking. In a popular assembly the truth is elicited by the collision of mind, as fire by flint and steel. All we ask is that in each district, the best men shall be put forward. The men who in private life are most respected; the men to whom one would go in a difficulty for advice - the men who we know have already distinguished themselves in their various careers; above all, the men of known integrity in whose hands we would implicitly trust our characters and fortunes. We hope the reform bill of last session,—which we see by the late Gazettes, has'received the Governor's assent,—may be justified by the appearance of an enlarged Council in August next, which shall vindicate the superiority which has sometimes been accorded to this province, as standing socially and intellectually in ihe van of the colony.