POLITICAL FEUDALISM.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 36, 10 August 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

POLITICAL FEUDALISM.

• The following extract from a lecture delivered by Mr. G. B. Wellington to the students of the Buffalo Law School, retorted in the Law Times of 29th June, contains suggestive remarks not inapplicable to the state of politics in this colony : — A duty which a lawyer, as a citizen, owes to his commonwealth is to hasten the it bolition of feudalism. Feudalism has nevei gained recognition wit L.us as to estates in land. We boast that all tenure in thia country is allodial; that is, is not subject to ;i superior lord. But all that the feudal lord could claim was work, or military .survice, or rent : he could not and did not claim his tenant's soul. But there is a feudalism in our midst more degrading than that which, under monarchies, was almost a necessity ; it is feudalism in politics. You know that formerly a tenant of land, even though a freeman, holding an estate under the lord of a manor, was known as " the lord's man," and to keep his property he had to render certain service. That is all üboliahed with up, but now our chosen representative in government is toe frequently some "boss'swan." His tenure of office is conditioned upon his rendering service or paying tribute, or both, to hit boss ; and under the " people's representative " are serfs and villains (in the modem aenße), who perform such service and pay such tribute as their superior may require. These services are often of a demoralising sort. They are adapted to one sole end— the establishment of the boss's supreme power. To that everything, everything must give way. The test of fitness is displaced by that of subserviency ; one's loyalty to party comes to mean one's loyaltj to one's immediate superior in the system, and resistance is party treason. The first ign of an independent, intellectual life, whioh, allowed to develop, might giow intc a. genuine fitness for the position held, v looked upon as dangerous to the monarchy, and a more pliable tool soon takes the protestor's place. Independence, integrity, common honesty, are the rent given up under this, our modern American feudalism, and it is not too much to say that under il a man is expected to give up his soul. Dc not imagine that the occasional protests oi the people, as shown by one year's vote, render future activity unnecessary. So long as we have a large illiterate and ignorant vot« in our cities, just so long will scheming political "leaders" ply their trade, and jual so long will they have an organisation, and at its head will be the king of bosses. Hit effrontery will grow with his power, anc shortly he will take, not unkindly, Agamemnon's title, " Bang of Men."