Party Government.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17808, 6 July 1923, Page 8

Party Government.

It is hardly a tribute to Mr Hunan's growth in wisdom that he should seek, after a quarter of a century in public life, to substitute theory for hard experience. It is, of course, naturpl that he.should wish to eliminate par;y now that party has eliminated him, and certainly not unusual that he should eall this reforming public- life. But a man who sat at the feet of Seddon, who grew up politically under the wing of Sir Joseph Ward, who held Cabinet rank in the Coalition, and follows Mr Wilford now into the lobbies, knows far too much of the natural history of legislation to propose such a reform in the belief that it would make for cleaner politics. Party government is like the brake on a bullock-waggon: it screeches horribly, but works. It might even be said to work very well, when we consider the sadly imperfect material of which Parliaments are necessarily composed. Its worst fault, and it is rather an inconvenience than a fault, is that it gives rise to situations in which members vote, . not according to their immediate, but to their ultimate convictions —record not what they think on the question,now before them, but what they think on the final question of who should govern the country. Mr Hanan calls • this putting/party interests before national interests, instead of what it Teally is, viz., refusing to allow your opponents to put their party interests before your party interests under the cloak of the national welfare. Nor is it true even that a majority forces its will on a minority as a big boy forces his on a little bay. In Parliament,--and for a time, tho majority rules; but only the moat arrogant majority ever originates and passes laws without any regard to the opinions of tho minority. The opponents of party know—especially opponents with Parliamentary experience—that the laws actually passed represent the will of tho majority modified by the criticisms of the minority. When, if ever, that ceases to be the ease, the parties speedily change proportions and places. For it must not bo supposed that only revolutionary republics give the people the., power of recall: in plain fact these grant it less effectively than tho "absolute tyrannies" of Capitalism-

as every one can see who compares Bussia with Britain, and thinks of recent by-elections. A non-party Government would have to become a party Government or no Government at all. It would either spend all its time arguing, and adjourning to arguo again, or it would fall naturally into groups, and be the thing that Independents condemn. The explanation uia-v be Sir Henry Maine's —that man, as he is a fighting animal, is necessarily also a partisan; it may be Mr Sidney Low's—that party is a historical accident which works first

into a tradition, and at last into a national habit; it may be Lord Courtney's —that men must be,' and always have been, drawn into camps of pro gross and of caution (from the cradle ''littlo Liberals or little Conservatives"); but the simple fact is that a system which gets things done, however crudely, is better than any theory or combination of theories, which merely says airily how things ought to be done.