The Dominion. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1908. MINISTERS AND METHODS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 134, 29 February 1908, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1908. MINISTERS AND METHODS.

. The sympathy wliicli tlie President of tte Canterbury Cliamlier of Ciom-merco;-.]ias been, expressing towards our. overworked" Ministers, directs renewed attention- to tile nietliods employed by. tlie Ministry in conducting' public 'business.,■ -It is,' ask-ing.-too '.touch' of tlve Premier to expect him to admit that he is, not giving'' 'the country of his' best : in spending weeks in a remote district, going into such questions, amongst others, as Koniata North's demand' ■ for a school, or lluntly's "anxiety concerning a. pillar or tlie , appointment '• of a; lettercarrier in Waihi... It is not difficult ,to imagine the feelings of Sir Joseph Ward were he tb' discover that the managers, of his private businesses were consistently tying 50-dollar men to ten-cent jobs, as the Americans put it. -He would quickly alter that state of things. Yet lie will not admit that the; principles of . efficiency' which should' govern private' business should also govern the administrative side of politics. Yet there is an authority upon the methods of statesmanship to wliich we would have felt certain the Premier would give /attention even if he had not the other day, in a speech at Newmarket; recognised the respectability of its canons. We refer to the writings of the Old Testament, which the London "Spectator" has more than once explored; with the best results as a guide to statesmanship, as it' is a guide to all moral perfection. latest article, appearing on January 4 'last, was a wise and luminous discussion, not of those theoretical principles of political, goodness which Sir Joseph Ward, ofiers to a public hungry for something substantial and concrete, but of'the practical rules of business that every statesman should get printed and hung up in his office. The extraordinary " up-to-dateness" and perennial freshness of much of the writings of the prophets are, of course, familiar to everyone who reads, the Old Testament, and has some acquaintance >vith the Talmud. The " Spectator" points out that although the ' experience of these old Hebrew writers '" was, in many cases, of a people still in the nomadic state of society,'they nevertheless laid down administrative principles, the statement of which could not be bettered by the ablest philosophers of to-day." Of the two long quotations given by our contemporary, only one is to our present purpose. Tlie passage in question is that which relates the talk which Jethro had with Moses, when he, visited his son-in-law in the desert. The principle laid down by Jethro is peculiarly appropriate to recall to the New Zealand public at this moment. In its essence, Jethro's little sermon, as the " Spectator" might have noted, is a paraphrase of the modern American business man's creed of efficiency.

It is, indeed, an expansion of the Westein rule that a fifty-dollar man should not he put at tcn-cent work. Jethro, it will be remembered, watched Moses at work, and then proneeded fo give him some excellent advice, which Moses, like a wise man, took to heart:—

And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto tho evening. And when Moses' father-in-law saw all that, lie did to tho people,'lie said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittost thou ; thyself alono, and all the pecjplo stand by thee from morning unto even? And Moses saifl unto his father-in-law, Becauso the people oome unto me to inquiro of God; When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between , ono and another, and I do make them know tho statutes of God and His laws. And Moses' father-in-law said unto him, The thing that thoti doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is .with theo:. for this thing is too heavy for thee:,.thou art not ablo to perform it thyself alone'./ Hearken now uuto my voice, I will givo thee counsel, and God shall bo with thee: Bo thou for,tho pcoplo to God : ward, that thoh mayest bring tho causes unto God: And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws,' and shalt: show .thera the way wherein they must walk, and tho work that they must do.' r

Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as\- fear God, . men of truth, hating , covetou'sikss ; and placo such over them, to be rulers of thousands,, and rulers of hundreds, and rulers of fifties, and rulers, of tens: And let them judge' tho pcoplo at all seasons: and it snAi.L be that evekt great . MATTER THEY SHALL SUING UNTO THEE, BUT EVERY' SHALL MATTER TUEY SHALL JUDGE J 60 EHALL IT. BE EASIER; FOB THYSELF, AND THEY. SHALL BEAR THE BURDEIv WITH TTIEE. If tIIOU shalt tlo ; this thing; and God command tlieo so, then thou/shalt bo able to eiidure, . and all this pooplo'shall also go to their place in peace. So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law; arid v did all that iho had said. And Moses chose able men out, of all Israel, and made them heads 'Over the pc-aplo, rulers of .thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers' of fifties}' and rulers of t-ens. And they judged tlio peqplo at all seasons: tho hard causos they brought unto Moses, lnit overy small matter they judged, themselves.

. The Ipassage hardly needs interpretation. It fits itself at once to pre-sent-day 'politics in ' every constitutional' country. - Occasionally, of course, as tlie " Spectator" observes, "some man of daemonic energy, like the first Napoleon " —or, on a smaller scale, ,• and in a narrower orbit, : like the late Hr. Seddon—may, for a time, attend to big principles and. small details, but " in the end- lie lias not only •worn himself out, but lias ruined the administrative ' machine." New: Zeai'ariders, better than most people,, can realise the extraordinary correctness of this conclusion. "We have seen Mr. Seddon carrying ■ an ever-increasing burden of work, and finally collapsing under the terrible strain of an impossible task. We have seen the administration ■ of the .Public Departments contracting, diseases, and the gradual conversion of public works adininistrationr.into a vote-catching machine; the,' fruits of whicli have been" wasteful-. ness : and bad business. We still wit■liess: this bad policy of Ministerial zeal oyer.trivialities. it did not sdem to occur' that in .Moses!- practice there was any other danger l than-.the danger of ultimate, inefficiencyl " ''But, as. we have seen, the neglect, of Jethro's principle leads to other undesirable results. The.-administration not only loses its efficiency, but ultimately, in tlie absence of f single-minded patriotism, becomes corrupt as well. The Premier, as his 1 own speeches show, is chary of admitting into politics the fundamental principles governing 'private life and morals; At Newmarket, the other day, l he repudiated, in his character as a politician, the Biblical injunction to'turn 'the''Other cheek'to the smiter. " This command',", die said, " might be, and ought to bi3, followed in private life, but in'politics when a man hits you very hard in one eye, your business is to hit him slapbang in the other.", .Sir Joseph's expression was confused, but his meaning is clear enough, and we are not going to say, that lie is wrong. But he cannot deny the permanent truth-of (fethro's political teaching. He can do little better, in the leisure moments of his Northern tour—in the intervals between settling pillar-box "problems and appointing letter-carriers—than give some time to the study of the passage, quoted above, which he will find, in' the Eighteenth Chapter of Exodus;