OUR POLITICAL ASSASSINATION.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 274, 8 November 1911, Page 2

OUR POLITICAL ASSASSINATION.

(By

Demos).

Au election is upon us and, as usual, the electors are plunging into the fray as though there were some direct relation between an election and the administration which follows For not a few years elections have dutifully, if sheepishly, obeyed the mandate of the "democratic franchise.” and they have obediently forgotten that they have only achieved an administrative autocracy.

Disraeli said that the perfect government would be an absolute autocracy, tempered by assassination. Disraeli may have been humorous or he may have been serious. But it is probable that he was nearer the truth than he fancied.

Any community grows speedily intolerant cf the weakness of a weak government, just as any community may be forced to tolerate the strength of an autocratic government. But the weak government carries with its weakness the advantage of being easily unofficed, while the autocratic government carried with its strength the disadvantage of being difficult to depose. Now, Disraeli knew enough about government to :know r that strength can make itself more tolerable than weakness. But he also knew and meant that 'strength’ was not necessarily ‘right.’ He knew that strength could become intolerable just as he knew that weakness was always dispised. He realised that the only remedy for strength was strength. He knew that the antiquated strength of absolute autocracy necessitated the counteracting strength of occasional assassinations, just as wc know that the an tiquated evil of medieval marriage necessitates the modern evil of easy divorce. Disraeli bad possibly heard of the French Revolution. Perhaps he had pondered over that revolutionary phenomenon. Possibly he deplored it. But undeniably he knew that more than being inevitable it was justified. He knew that the tyrannous immority of all autocracy had necessitated the corrective immorality of some assassination. But the strange fact about the revolution is that France did not herself discover her imbecility. It was discovered for her. It was the notorious Louis who, in discovering that he was the State, discovered to France her imbecility in tolerating the affront of autocratic government. Then she

assassinated. But let Louis have been what he may, he was no worse than a professed autocrat. He knew and professed nothing of democracy. And he was net democratically elected to his autocracy as are many modern administrative autocrats.

Now it is difficult to depose a modern, precisely because it is difficult for us to be assassins. Assassination is too mediaeval as a remedy and too Latin as an amusement. It is hardly habitual among Teutonic races. They have so I habitual and healthy a contempt for the salutary virtues of assassination that they are unable to indulge their power of political assassination. Yet if Disraeli meant anything at all he meant that an absolute administrative autocracy could only be made tolerable by absolute political assassination.