Evening Post SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1915.

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 86, 9 October 1915, Page 4

Evening Post SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1915.

THE OLD BAD METHODS Reformers will have to revise their opinions about the mischiefs of Party Government in the light of the experience of the present session. Party Government abounds in contradictions and anomalies and absurdities, and therefore provides a very easy target for indignation and ridicule. The best general defence that can be made of the system is the negative one, that to abolish a bad thing is not sound business unless you have got something better to put in its place. Nobody has yet explained how the necessary motive power to work the machinery of Government is to be provided if the power of party spirit is to lie taken away. Nor has anybody been able to indicate how many of the evils that are rife under Party Government are really the products of the system, and how many are necessary incidents of the original sin of political human nature, and therefore inseparable from any method of government. One of the improvements that it has seemed reasonable to expect from the abolition or mitigation of the party system is with regard to Parliamentary procedure. What other system would tolerate, for instance, such an immoral absurdity as the practice of keeping back important business until the closing days of a session, and then rushing it past members disqualified by physical weariness and impatience from dealing with it at a pace which would be utterly impossible if their faculties were in a normal condition? So much at least of the case against Party Government seemed to be made good as soon as it was found that a "Reform" Government had to resort almost as freely to the methods of "legislation by exhaustion" as the predecessors whose flagrant offending in this respect its members had so fiercely denounced j when they were in Opposition. But the experience of the last few days makes it necessary to reconsider this judgment. In the small hours of yesterday morning the House presented the exact appearance to which we were accustomed towards the close of a session in the bad old days. At 3 o'clock there were about a dozen members in the House, of whom not more than half appeared to be awake. And the House rose at 4.30 a.m. It had sat through the previous night and on till 5.30 a.m., and started work again at noon. Members had no reason to be ashamed of feeling sleepy, yet they were only allowed an adjournment of six hours and a-half before starting again. In the palmy days of legislation by exhaustion the periods were often 'more prolonged, but it would not be easy to find a case of two consecutive days with a worse showing than these. 'Yet this has happened under a National Cabinet which has temporarily effaced party lines and had not to face the organised obstruction that supplied party leaders with an excuse for long sittings under the old system. Last night, when another prolonged sitting was expected to conclude the session, genuine obstruction did make its appearance, and then Mr. Massey took the proper course. Instead of battling on till daylight in order to wear down the Labour Opposition to the Factories Amendment Bill, he moved to report progress, and after making reasonable progress with other less contentious business, brought the sitting to a close soon after midnight. It is, of course, a hardship on members to be detained till Monday or Tuesday when they were expecting to get away this week, but from every other standpoint but that of their personal convenience the result is satisfactory. In the endeavour to close down this week the National Cabinet had already, as we have pointed out, gone much too far in a reversion to the old bad methods, which are deplored even by those who have been constrained to practise them. The House will work infinitely better in the daylight on Monday than it could have worked in the small hours of this morning, and obstruction will have less ecope in an atmosphere of greater leisure.