OUR HISTORY.

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2319, 25 March 1914, Page 2

OUR HISTORY.

THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

A PLAYFUL DESCRIPTION

MR REEVES'S RECOLLECTIONS

In a long article in the February issue of the New Statesman, Mr W. Pember Reeves describes the steps whicli have been taken at different times to make the New Zealand Legislative Council what a Second Chamber ought to be. Referring to its establishment in the first place, MiReeves says that, though Sir George Grey endeavoured to take into account local feeling on the matter, he either could not or did not wish to run counter "to the predilection ofDowning Street in favour of a nominee Second-Chamber of members appointed for life." The admitted object of the Home authorities was to obtain a body which should he independent both of popular opinion and of the Government of the day.

After describing the struggle with the Council in the early 'nineties, MiReeves says: ' 'In twenty years the Liberal leaders never -appointed to it a single member of the Opposition. On the other hand, they did not make tlie mistake of victimising Councillors who showed spasms of independence. Broadly it was assumed that at the end of their seven .years' term all members should be reappointed. Good, bad, or indifferent, they were kept on. The practice helped to keep them in good humour. Now and again one of them might' swing his tomahawk, but after a while he would grow quiet'again.-. The Council did nothing shocking; it did nothing amusing; it did nothing in particular. It certainly did no damage to the colony beyond costing the taxpayers, a" few thousands-a year. But from 1898 to 1911 a more commonplace and less interesting body could hardly have existed in the Empire."

Fir sixty years, Mr Reeves goes on to state, the Parliament of New Zealand managed to get on without any provision for forcing Bills which were rejected by the Council or for preventing deadlocks. "For this the Council may claim some credit. Indeed, it has usually had enough dreary good sense of its own to avoid going to extremes. Only during the seven years from 1891 onwards was it persistently pugnacious. Then it was in the end beaten all along the line. All its pet'aversions became law; nearly all of them are still law."

As for the present day, Mr Reeves says the Council has given the present Government as little trouble as may be, so that "why Mr Massey's Ministry should wish to meddle with so unresisting a Chamuber is not at first easy to see. A Council so habituated to pass Government Bills might probably be. trusted to go on doing so."

The result of the present scheme of reform, Mr Reeves thinks, "will most likely be an Upper House of somewhat more ability and a good deal more energy than the present. After a time, the Labour element will almost certainly be strong. Indeed, if the Conservatives are looking, for anything in the shape of a bulwark against democracy one is inclined to think that they will be disappointed. .13ut they will probably always be able to count on having a strong minority of respectable mental calibre there. At the outset they may even command a majority. They need never be swamped, except through utter bad management in the country."