The Dominion. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1907. COALITION.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 74, 20 December 1907, Page 6

The Dominion. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1907. COALITION.

r PeriiapS the extinction of his Waikouaiti constituency, and the fact that ,the only seats .open to him are to be contested by Opposition candidates, have as< much to do with the decision of Mr. T. Mackenzie, M.P., definitely to throw in his lot with the Government as any new of Ministerial virtue that he In ay have made. It is not easy to convert an Independent M.Pirtinto a Dependent when he is a popular man and possesses a safe seat -'"but wh'eir his constituency has disappeared he becomes wonderfully open to conviction. In G. B. Shaw's "Major Jiarbara," the cannon-king Undershaft declares that it is ,easy to convert a. starving proletariat if , you do it with bread in one hand and a Bible in the other; on those teriiis, he would undertake to coiivert the whole of the East End to Mohammedanism. The political application of this cynical doctrine is obvious. The, Ministerial, dreed—Socialism, land nationalisation and all—will be accepted by any Independent suddenly deprived of a constituency, and alive to the fact that his only chance of getting another one lies iii his becoming a concert. We have not turned our attention to Mr. Mackenzie,/ however, for the purpose of cjuoting him as a justification of the 'Tj ndershaft view of politics, or as an illustration of the hie-, thods of the "sitter on.the rail." Of more interest than his discovery of the Ministry's excellence, is his suggestion that there is nothing left now for sane men to do save to join the Premier's following. "I cannot' refrain from expressing the opinion," he said, /'that unless at this juncture or in the near future other public men; should see their way to do likewise [iie.yto 'join the Ministerialist party], it will, I fear, require no, gift of second-sight to foresee into whose hands the balance of power in- this country will iall." In Mr. Mackenzie's cas6 the incitement'to coalition is an attempt to justify his " conversion," at which most .people will smilfe, but the idea of a Massey-Ward coajitiori is to be feasible by many sensible people, as well as by the Government's regular journalistic ; chafiipioiis, who are' sO confused in their ideas that they denounce the coalition rumour as a stratagem of the enemy, and simultaneously urge Mr. Massey to join the Government becaUSe he has no real differences with it. 'I

At ■PukekbM./.Mf. Massey showfed quite clearly tile impossibility of a Massey-Ward coalition under present conditions. Even with Mr. Massey and his party on'the benches of protest, tli6 Government last session took a long stride in the direction of land nationalisation. How. far would the Government not go if there were no Opposition to check it? How far would it not have 'gone in 1906 ? : But for the Opposition thfe ' Government would, amidst the applause of its supporters, have passed a Land Bill which Dr. Findlay has denounced as-having beeii so deeply tainted with injustice and folly as to defy all attempts at' improvement. Here, then, is one good reason' why a nlan nlay .be! sane arid' yet refuse to bring his weapons into the camp of the Government. " This policy of interference with individual liberty," said Mr. Massey, " was part of a progress towards Socialism which . . . was quite antagonistic to true Liberalism." It is not impossible for a sane man to find other points of detail to 'dissaude him from following Mr. Mackenzie's example. The attachment of the Government to the " exhaustion " tactics, introduced' by the late Mr. Seddon, necessitates a party of opposition. But of infinitely more

importance than any other question of general politics is the question of public finance. To the admirer of State Socialism there may appear to be something low and sordid about a concern for prudence in financial administration, something of the muck-raker in the man. who worries over the nation's debts. On this question Mr. Massey has nothing but a policy of negation, as Moses had of old. To the Government he says: "Thou shalt not borrow recklessly," and " Thou shalt not use loan money to do what should be done by revenue." Coalesce with the Government he may, if coalition does not require the swallowing of principles; but he and his party liave for so many years flaunted their desire for sound finance, as against ledgerjugglery, that to support that ruinous jugglery in fear of a Labour dominance would be a more remarkable tergiversation than Mr. Mackenzie's judicious descent from' his fcnce into the most profitable paddock; A reversion to prudence in finance, and genuine Liberalism in legislation—the old Liberalism t that freed the individual from the fetters of tyrailny, and not the present-day Socialism that seeks to replace the old fetters by new ones—; will ,make a coalition easy. But in the meantime the only coalition that would 1 not be jarringly, discordant would be' the formal alliance of the with the Socialists. Their entente has lasted so long that it may as well be. signed and sealed and registered.