SOME LESSONS OF THE ELECTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 7344, 17 October 1887, Page 1

SOME LESSONS OF THE ELECTIONS.

At the- meeting of the Financial Reform Association on Thursday night Mr Cohen said that he had not prepared any paper, but, believing that that was to be the final meeting of the Association (for some time at least), he desired to initiate a discussion on some of the lessons of the recent general election. Though a large number of side issues hadbeen imnorteif, the main questions on which the veidictArf the country had been asked were, he.took leave to say, these two : Were the financial proposals of the Stout-Vogel Government satisfactory? and, Should taxation to the tune .of over L 250,000 be imposed before every feasible attempt to equalise the revenue and expenditure of the Colony had been tried?.,' Though the verdict of the country was unmistakeably plain—that a policy of rigid retrenchment must be adopted and extra taxation avoided —there was not such a pronounced condemnation of the financial policy of the late Government as many politicians and journalists affected to believe. A careful analysis of the votes polled in the contested elections showed that the Stout-Vogel party were in a minority of only about 3,000 votes. He had purposed indicating in what directions the mind of the constituencies, as expressed by the views of the successful candidates, had manifested itself in regard to retrenchment; but, as M\ete was good reason for believing that Government intended to immediately give effect to it, it would be unnecessary for him to do so. There was a remarkable consensus .of opinion that retrenchment must begin at the'top of the tree; that the salary and allowances- of the next Governor must be materially reduced, even though the effect be, as some responsible politicians declare will happen, to reduce the < olony to the grade of a second-class one;'- that the salaries and ti a veiling allowances of Ministers must be reduced '' to suit the times "; that the numbers of members of both -Houses are capable of a large diminution - without "detracting from the usefulness of the legislative machine; that the honoraria must, be substantially reduced, failing the inability of this Parliament to reduce its members; that'the expense of administering the principle departments—as Defence, Education, and Public Works—must be largely reducid; and that Civil Service reform must not take the form of another "all-round" reductioa, but shall be as well-considered lines, aiming at amalgamation of offices wherever practicable, and the extension of hours, but interfering with no officer in receipt of a salary below Ll5O. In connection with the matter of legislative expenditure, he noticed that very few of the candidates had drawn attention to the necessity of subjecting the salaries of the legislative officers to review along with those of the other officers. Parliament rarely sat for more than three months, but the salaries drawn by the principal officers were out of proportion to the services required of them. The Speaker of the Council was paid 1600, and the Chairman of Committees L 40 0; the Speaker of the Lower House LBOO, and the Chairman of Committees LSOO. The salaries of the clerks also required looking into. On the subject of Education he wished to take advantage of the opportunity of saying that, so far as he knew the mien constituting the Executive and membership of this Association, there was no desire on their parts - indeed it was th* last thought in their minds—as had been insinuated in some quarters, to bring about the break-up of the existing national system. But many of them thought, and he hhared the feeling, that in view of the embarrassed condition of the country's finance?, large economies in the administration of the system could be practised without in any way impaiiing its efficiency. The system had now been in operation ten years, and he thought it was an opportune time for the appointment of a Koyal commission to inquire how far it was doing the work its framers expected, in what directions refoims were needed, and where economies could be obtained. That was neither the time nor place to enlarge upon these matters; but he wished it to be clearly understood that those advocates of reform who urged, among.other things, the raising of the school age in the towns to six years did not desire to close the schools against children under that age. What they aimed at was the establishment of kindergartens, wherein infants would be rationally taught cluring'a portion of the day; and of semiindustrial schools in the principal towns, and into these latter schools wuuld be drafted those children who oould n„t be expected to be received into the ordinary schools till they had passed a shoit probationary period. Another matter that required attention from the authorities was revision of the Standards. Elsewhere he would explain bis views in relation thereto, but he wished now to state his individual opinion that the State should only give gratuitous instruction up to a revised Fifth Standard, which should leave off exactly where the work of the secondary schools began. The secondary and higher schools muat be made more selfsupporting than they now are; and no child should be permitted to enter a high school who could not pass an examination equal to the revised rifth Standard of the primary school. The Stale should, by means of liberal scholarship?, encourage the best boys and girls in the primary schools to continue their studies. Technical instiuction must have more attention paid to it by the State. He doubted if mitre than rudimentary manual instruction could be given in the primary schools, owing to the inability of boys to remain as.long at school as was needed; but technical instruction ought to become a leading feature of the curriculum of the secondary schools. If subjects over and above those taught in the revised standards were required by children who remained in the primaiy schools, their parents ought to be called on to pay fees for bucli tuition. Indeed, he had alwayß f*lt that the framers of our Education Act f.u! n.-Je a mistake in entirely abolishing fees. The indications were plain that the religious difficulty must be faced soon, but he hoped that the friends of the national system would keep a watchful eje on the present agitation, and see that there did not underlie it the possibility of a great danger. Another lesson of the election was that the question of more Protection would come up It <Vtermination, very shortly. The Protectionitu ■ i- 'vhichtermhe included the extremists of luot party—were particularly active and demonstrative in the principal towns, and had succeeded in returning a goodly number of members to the new Parliament who were pledged to go " the whole hog." Though he had been called by some of bis opponents an ardent Freetrader, he had never urged a course opposed to our circumstances. - The Colony had adopted moderate Protection, and the question at issue was whether we ought to extend it in the direction of prohibition, or should we revise our Tariff in order to remove restrictions on trade and at the same time encourage local manufactures where we could legitimately do so. He urged the appointment of a Commission ot permanent Parliamentary Committee, to be charged with the duty of advising the Legislature as to what industries could be encouraged, and to what extent that encouragement should be given; but (and here he joined issue with the Protectionists) that assistance should be transferred whenever the point of payableness was reached by the State-aided industry. This Commission should comprise representatives of the mercantile, manufacturing, and laboring classes, because he recognised that the interests of the last-mentioned were quite as large as either of the ether two. Electoral reform was sorely needed. .It was little short of ft scandal that persons in receipt of charitable aid should be in the position of being able to turn Sn election. In no other part of the British dominions that he knew of was such a condition of things permitted. The preparation of the rolls was still perfunctorily done, and there was reason to believe that many of the elections had been practically decided by persons whose qualification to vote was open to question. To these and similar causes was, he feared, due the rejection of some of the ablest and best men wh> had ever sat in our Parliament, and whose absence f rum the present House was a ground of general regret The division of the country into single electorates was far from being an unmixed good. At all events the cities and their suburbs, possessing as they did community of interest, should have been amalgamated; and had that been done results that had been much deplored could not have happened. The system of electoral rights had worked well in Victoria, and it might be adopted here; and it occurred to him that means might be devised whereby any bolder of an electoral right could cast his vor&Jn whatever part of the Colony he happened to be on polling-day. General election day ought to be proclaimed a public holiday, and all publichouses be closed. The issues to be determined were most important, and affected for weal or woe the fortunes of the, Colony for three years; therefore, every means by which the decision of the country could be .given with the fullest freedom and sense of responsibility should be adopted. In reading the nuttings speeches he had been struck by the preponderance of opinion in favor of reducing the number of the members of the House, and of imposing oh' the local bodies many of the duties now performed by the Legislature. With an amalgation of county councils and an enlargement of tb% fwrntjona, there was no reason why these bbfcM I*dsd not be entrusted* with tire management ofpobßo works, land, education, eta, within their

borders The men who &re to-day administering our local government are. for the most part, members of the Land ami Education Boards. The multiplication of governing bodies apneared to him to be a great mistake. Concerning one of the chief revenue departments—the railways —the elections showed that there was a widespread anil apparently well-founded feeling of dissatisfaoiion with the existing mode of managing the lines. The 'Cojony appealed to be heartily tired of the meddling and muddling policy that has been pursued for some time, and which refused to allow the divisional managers power to deal with the ever-varying circutn.'tances of localities. There certainly was a "roar" against the adoption of the mongrel boards proposed by the Hon. Mr Richardson. He (the speaker) had been sorry to read and hear the strictures passed by Mr Pearson on the Victorian system of railway management, because he was convinced that that gentleman had either not read up that branch of his subject, or had shut his eyes to the facts. In the Victorian Parliament and out of it there was an almost unanimous opinion that the change wrought by the Service-Berry Government in removing both the railways and public service out of political control had been a wise step and had been productive of excellent results. Colonel Sargood, as an ex-Cabinet Minister and as head of one of the largest J business establishments in Melbourne, was well qualified to pass judgment, and at the last annual meting of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce he thus expressed himself:— "When it was proposed t© hand over the management of our railways to a non-political railway board of experts, some opposed the plan, and many shook their heads doubtfully. The result had, however, fully proved the wisdom of Parliament in passing the Act; and they all felt that their thanks and hearty congratulations were due to the Railway Commissioners, and more especially to the chairman (Mr Speight), for the grand financial position attained by the Department." What was that " grand financial position " ? Though the Commissioners h*d been able to reduce the traffic charges and passenger rates by LIOO.OOO, the next earnings of the Victorian lines during 1886-87 were L 1.040,000, or 4.33 per cent, on the money borrowed for railway construction, and 4.11 per cent, on the total expenditure on lines opened for traffic. After paying the interest on loan moneys, there was an actual profit of L 54,495; and it was estimated that but for the Windsor accident the profits for 1887-88, above working expenses and paj meat of interest, would be close on LIOO.OOO. A very important function performed by these Commissioners was the collection of data on which Parliament based its authorisation of the construction of new lines. At the head of the Commission was a gentleman who had passed through every important grade m the service of one of the greatest English railway companies, and who would be glad to have his services to-morrow ; and the opinion of those in the Victorian railway service, whose opinions roust be received with the .utmost respect, was that Mr Speight was the right man in the right place, tie (the speaker) had mentioned some of the results of Victoria's experience of removing her ra'lways from political control. As the outcome of his visit to Melbourne, and personal inspection of the system, Premier Parkes had asked the New South Wales Legislature to give a non-political railway board to that Colony ; and Premier Playford was following suit in South Australia. It was therefore beyond the region of experiment, and New Zealand could not go fai wrong in following the example of the other colonies in this respect. Minor lessons of the elections were that the Crown and Native Lands Rating Act would have to be repealed, as the country was averse to the continuance of subsidies of that kind or of the distinctions between the two race 3. There was a strong feeling against tbe continuance of the San Francisco subsidy, and against tbe Property Tax. The Midland Railway was an important factor in our politics, and gave to Sir Julius the control of the most compact following in the House. If provincial feeling was to be perpetuated and intensified in this way, Otago would have to cast about for combinations that would ensure her receiving justice in regard to her public works. There was little reason for hoping that the Colony would for very many years to come carry the Otago Central beyond what had been somewhat indefinitely termed "a payable point." Mr Pyke was pressing his Bill to hand over to a syndicate the construction of the rest of the line to Clyde by means of land grants. There might not be much objection to this, if a plan could be devised whereby the lands to be set apart were plaeed in trust, so to speak, in the hands of the county councils interested, who would be charged with the duty of seeing the lands settled. What was much needed was some organisation by which a healthy public opinion could be stimulated. He had hoped that the parliamentary unions would have done this, but, unfortunately, they had languished in the principal towns. The electors required to b • educated on several question*, such as direct taxation and proportional representation, before these matters could be altered. The chief thing to be borne in mind by the electors was that if the will of the country in regard to rigid retrenchment was to be carried out at this juncture, the hands of the Government must be strengthened in every possible way. The difficulties of the position were great, and had been well stated by the Hon. Mr Bryee in one of his recent addresses :

Retrenchment must be carric 1 out to the very utmost. He said t« with rather an unusual sen c of the responsibility of Baying so, becaus; his experience of attempts at retrenchment was uoi cf such a kind m to be very encouraging to him, and he would assure item that all attempts at ret enchment in the House would utterly fail, unless the people of the Colony supported those who aro making that retrenchment and insisted on it being effectually carried ou f . During his term if office in the Ministry ho had effected retrenchment in the civil police /ore? by reducing the number of inspectors. Every kind of pressure was brought to rear on him. But though he bad rea'sted It during his term of effic ■, all his work bad been undone by the very next Ministry reappointing the men whom he had dismissed to their old appointments; and this was done amidst the approval of the whole Colony, as tar a« could be gathered. What encouragement was there in that ? He hid Inst favor for hie attempts at retrenchment, while his suoeessors had the praise and regularity for undoing the work he had done. Could they wonder, then, that when he was asked where savings cou'd i e effected, he hesitated to speak with the confidence of some of the younger candidates? lie knew the purgatery a Minister bad to go through before he could make reduction even in his own depirtmrnt. I'< would be futile, worse than futile, for a Minister to make reductions unless strongly supported l>y public opinion. Where there was a w(!l there was a way; but that will must be the will of the people as well as of the members and of the Government These Reform Associations should not be disbanded, but through their executives should keep strict watch over the doings of the representatives, and take the earliest opportunity of letting tbe public know if any serious divergence of promise and precept occurred on the part of hon. members who lu4 pledged themselves to effect financial reform. Mr Dapxinc, while agreeing with Mr Cohen as to the desirability of the city constituencies being amalgamated, did not think the impression eonveyed by Mr Cohan's remarks an altogether fair one. Mr Cohen had stated that owing to the present system of str«?!e electorates in our leading towns eminent pubiio men bad, during the recent election, been rejected, •nd those not distinguished by public service or political knowledge elected in th/iir stead. Such a remark could, he thought, only point to one electorate. The amalgamation of city constituencies would not have affected Mr Bryce's position, nor would it have mad i any difference to Mr Rolleaton's rejection; there therefore re-1 mained, so far as he knew, only tha Dunedin East electorate. Having taken spme little part in the contest in that constituency he did not care , to say very much; but this he would say, that so fai from the result of the election being a national calamity, he ventured to think the majority of colonists looked upon it as the best thing that could have happened, not only for the Colony, but for the defeated candidate himself. One lesson, however, he thought the recent elections taught was this: that the vast majority of our colonists could distinguish between a true Democracy and genuine Liberalism, and what he would terra the sham Demoeracy and shoddy Liberalism to freely indulged in by certain politicians. Certain men secured to claim a monopoly of what they termed Liberal measures and Liberal principles, and yet they had no conception of the terms in their truer, deeper senso; their liberalism consisting of a liberal expenditure of public funds, and a liberal promise of support to their followers and adherents. Another matter he would mention was that thd elections showed very elearly Jhat large numbers of electors appeared to be incapable of exercising their privilege in an honest and intelligent manner. When are faund men returned by a large majority, whose characters would not bear the light of day, men utterly unfit tc occupy the honorable position of a peopled representative, it disclosed a melancholy state of affairs, and it { was useless upon the part of the people to cry out about bad government when they permitted men things to exist. Wo could not under such conditions look for good government or truer prosperity. Mr A, 0. Kimbeul agreed that there was ample room for reform in the electoral laws. He mentioned casjs within his own knowledge of persons entitled to vote, who had never parted with their qualification, having been struck off the roll without their knowledge,

A conversational discussion ensued as to the node of conducting the future meetings of the Association, and eventually it was decided to leave the matter in the hands of the Executive.