LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL REFORM.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1585, 31 October 1912, Page 5

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL REFORM.

Sir,—The legislative Council is to bo commended for having rejected that insidious proposal by the Government to whittle away our Constitution with tl\o avowed aim of making our safety and our social rights depend upon ' the will of an tenis fatmis glorified into a psetulo personality called tho people. Sir Frederick Pollock, in his "History of the Science of Politics" epitomising Edmund Burke's criticism of the ' "Social Contract," writes thus' .

"Wo are bidden," ho says, "in the name of the supreme authority of the peoplo to recognise as a matter, not of extraordinary necessity, but of common right, an unlimited power of changing tho foundations of government. What ru;o the people? A number of vague, loose individuals—the imaginary parties to the. social contract—aro not a people, neither can they make themselves one off-hand by convention. A multitude told by heads, is no moro a peoplo after it has been told than before. Tho corporate unity of'a peoplo is artificial indeed; but art is long, aud for that very reason a nation is easier unmade than made. And how is tho supremo authority of the people exercised? By the will of a majority. But what power lias the majority to bind tho rest ? Again an artificial power, nay, a most artificial power. First there is a fiction to make one corporate person of many men; then another fiction, 'ono of tho most violent fictions .of positive, Taw,' to enable a majority to net as this one person. And on these artificial and judicial conceptions, confusing, as Burke says, judicial with civil principles, the : French revolutionary speculators would rest the authority of positive law .itself. Whether a majority shall have power to decide, in what cases, and what majority is an affair of convention. Theso peoplo have no right, on their own principles, to exerciso any of tho authorities of a State. If prescrip- . tion and long possession, form no title to property, what better claim have they than a horde of brigands or squatters to the territory called France? Civil society will not come by counting of heads; it is a social. organisation and a social discipline. And if it is artificial in its perfection, yet.Vit is moro truly a state of nature 'than a savagb and incoherent pode of life,*' or rather it is this because it is artificial for 'art is man's nature.' Such is the substance of Burke's comment on the fundamental axiom of Aristotle. Man is born to be a citizen in that ,he comes into an existing social order, and is attached to it by duties of others'to Jiimself and himsidf to others, which are not, and cannot be, of his own making. He does not come into the world as an unrelated unit, and acquiro by some convention a fantastic title to some hundred-thousandth individual part •of tho indivisible sovereignty of the people." Tho so-called will of the people is created by, and finds expression in the voice of, ■ tho blatant_ demagogue, who, perhaps by foroo of his own personality, or more, probably by the prostitution of social organisations formed for other purposes, establishes himself as leader, and holds that position after having carefully impressed upon his victims that the exercise of individual judgment will result in harm to tho man who presumes to express an opinion unfavourable to tho leader or his machinations. Politicians may be divided into four classes: (1) The scholar who has the interest of the State at heart; (2) tho 6cholar who subordinates the interests of the State to his own' personal ambitions; (3) the Empire who is impressed with the notion that his function in life is the regeneration of society; and (4) the Empiro whoso ruling factor is self-interest. The demagogue usually belongs to the last class. The man who holds himself out ns a representative of tho people ceneral]y, belongs to the third class. The man of letters who playj tho people for all they are worth belongs to second cldss, and ho is the most dangerous of all politicians. How many of tho Reform party belong to tho first class? How many of ; tho -Befornr ;party ■ guard their views against "tho unconscious bias of Eelf-interest"? Is it in tho interests of the State that members of the Second Chamber shall owe continuance in offico to the goodwill of the party for the timo being in' ? Is' it in I .tho interests , of the State that the Second Chamber shall be selected by the crude process of telling by heads? Is it in the interests of tho State that the expression of an honest opinion may bo the cause of tho country being deprived of tho services of a man of widespread experience in human affairs? Tho vote of tho Legislative Council has answered these questions in , tho negative and no statesmanlike answer to tho contrary could have been given. It is now time for the Eeform party to realiso that Reform is not always synonymous with fresh experiment, reform in one of its meanings signifies a return .from chr.os to a pre-existent state of order. Tho pre-existent state of tho legislative Council—nomination for life by the Governor without responsibility to his political advisers—stood this country.in good stead for thirty-eight years.'' Politicians of tho third or fourth class tampered with its constitution. If .tho Reform party belongs to the first class of politician it will return its original 'constitution to the Legislative Council find restore to it the character of being a body of men- secure in officc, free from the toils of party and selected in the interests of tho country as opposed to tho interests of party.—l am, ctc., Wellington, 21st October, 1912. B