PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

Evening Star, Issue 9910, 23 January 1896, Page 1

PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

A somhwh.aT curious correspondence appeared in the Melbourne 'Argus' lately which revives the once much-discussed question of payment of members. It appears that General Tdlloch, who for several years occupied the position of ! Commandant of the Victorian Forces, | after his retirement and return to Eng--1 land contributed an article to the ' Nineteenth Century' in which he denounced the Victorian system of payment to members, attributing to it apparently all the evils which have affected the political and social life of Victoria. The failure of the banks, the alleged drift towards State Socialism, the rapid accumulation of the public debt, the conflicts of past years between the Victorian Houses, the cost of education, and railway construction in excess of the wants of the community, are all set down by General Tulloch as due to the system of payment to members of Parliament. If this system could only be altered, General Tdlloch thinks that "confidence in Australian undertakings "would be re-established, and English "money would be forthcoming in any "quantity for investment." Attention was drawn to this article in the Victorian Assembly as one calculated to defame and injure the colony ; the attention of the Agent-General (Mr Gillies) was drawn to it ; hence the correspondence to which wc have alluded, and which consists in a lengthy letter from Mr Giluks and a reply from the gallant General, in which he sticks to his guns with the true spirit of a British soldier. It would scarcely be worth while following General Tulloch in the various arguments ho uses in defence of his article. It will be sufficient to give one quotation showing how General Tdlloch, who is evidently not lacking in the power of verbal ingenuity, connects payment of members with the downfall of the Australian banks : You ask what payment of members had to do with failure of banks. I made no statement to that effect, vide that part of the article to which you refer —viz., page 30 ; but as you broach the subject, I may in a few words point out that payment of members does in due couree iiffeot the banks. Payment produces the impecunious professional politician. To satisfy his constituents and thereby retain the position on which he lives he must secure his electors employment at the usual rate of wages. Protection of local trades by high import duties is one method of so doing, j but the most simple way, and one which has largely been made use of, is the construction of railways and other great undertakings on money provided by the State, an operation which is too often largely assisted by what is known as log-rollin;;; when money becomes plentiful booms naturally follow; what the effect of booms has been on the banks the unfortunate colonies know only too well.

The argument of General Tulloch may, we think, be stated in shorter terms than the General states it. Paid politicians, in order to please their constituents and thus retain their places, go in for heavy expenditure; excessive expenditure creates "booms," and the booms bring disaster on the banks. There is no need to take this argument too seriously. The conclusions may be sound enough if the premises were granted. But, unhappily for General Tdlloch, the promises cannot be granted. The member of Parliament who is not paid is just as anxious to retain his seat as the member who is paid ; and if the only way to retain a seat is to vote for a large expenditure of money—a proposition we could not admit—then both classes of men would find themselves under the same obligation to vote for it. With this remark we may leave General Tulloch. The probability is that on his return to England he wanted something to write about, and chose the subject of payment to members as the easiest of treatment that occurred to him. It was, in our judgment, a mistake on the part of the Assembly to notice the article at all. The idea that a nation can be injured by a magazine article is an extremely provincial idea which these colonies should now be about outgrowing. The Colony of 'Victoria could no more be injured by an article in the ' Nineteenth Century ' than the poetry of Keats could be injured by the attack—" so savagely and tartarly " of the ' Quarterly Review' ; and even the notion that poor Keats himself was killed by it is known to be a fable. ' It is too late in the day now to go into the question of payment of members. The system is one which has evils of its own and advantages of its own. Members are not supposed to be "paid" in the sense of receiving a salary. The theory is that their membership should not be a direct pecuniary loss to them. If they give up valuable time to the work of tli3 public, and so incur a loss in their business, they are not supposed to be, and in the colonies are not, recompensed for that. The essential point is that every member should be enabled to attend his parliamentary duties in comfort and respectability, so that no'man whose services might be valuable would be deterred from entering political life. There is a sense in which payment of members stands in the same category with manhood suffrage. It is no doubt true that manhood suffrage admits a good many to the exercise of the franchise who are not qualified by much intelligence for using their vote ; but it at least excludes a greater evil that of drawing an arbitrary line through the community, excluding not only men who bear their share of the burdens of the State, but many who, lacking property, .may by no means lack a high degree of intelligence. In a much greater degree would honorary membership exclude intelligence from Parliament. There must be thousands of intelligent men in this community who but for payment of members would feel themselves for 'ever debarred from public life. They may not wish to enter it as it is, but they at least are not precluded by an invidious and' offensive disqualification which has no connection whatever with intelligence. It would be a very welcome sight "to most people to see the entire representative body composed of perfectly independent men, if such a consummation could be arrived at without creating invidious distinctions, and without excluding from representation the intelligence that is so often associated with very humble circumstances. That cannot be .done, however, and of two evils it is wise to choose the lesser. There is reason to believe that, quite apart from the exaggerations of General Tulloch, a good many of the evils of parliamentary life are attributed to payment of members which have no connection with the system. The Parliament of New South Wales has been honorary in the past, and the Victorian has been paid ; but no one could maintain that the former had shown an example to the latter in the conduct of public business. Aud after all men who can by private means afford to devote their time to political life are only independent in one

sense—the. -pecuniary. Anyone at all familiar with of parliamentary life in England cannot fail to have been struck with the scramble for place and pay and from which the highest and the richest in the land have not been exempt.