TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1912. A FATUOUS PROPOSAL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 14 May 1912, Page 4

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1912. A FATUOUS PROPOSAL.

Ihere are people who still keep asking for legislation to compel all enfranchised persons to vote at Parliamentary and municipal elections. It is somewhat odd that this should he• persisted in, as it has been for years, for it is backed up by no public opinion, there is no public demand for. it, and its advocates have never been able to assign any creditable reason for their own faith in the thing. Perhaps, however, a- clue to their advocacy may be found: in this very fact. If they had a better 'acquaintance with the principles o£reason>and the processes of reasoning, the^;- wouyl be unlikely to identify themselves with the advocacy of compulsory voting.,. For who are the peopie who do not jiise the votes which the law gives them? With iihe exception of those \sho 'cannot vote through illness1 or absence^ or accident, mischance, oi' misadventure, are they not thos? \hu k,no\y nothing of or care iiothmg for the questions or matters at issue? They must be, for there is no other way of accounting for their failure xo vote. Why, then, should voting be made compulsory with a view "to constraining'such persons to support <-r oppose this or that candidate Or polkvor proposition? Their exercise of thY franchise would be utterly useless as a test of the value of the public verdict, ox; of the fitness of candidates, or tl••> wisdom of this or that policy or proposal. Why, then, should they be compelled to vote to no purpose? -No doubt some of those who vote voluntarily vote

with this tirieffectuality, but the^a^is not, through the agency of constraint a party to this puerile result. It has fulhlled its duty to the utmost by investing every adult with the right to vote, « but it exercises supreme wisdom m retraining from compulsion a.s a means to ensure that all, will they nill they, must use their votes—the ignorant not less than the informed, the indifferent as well as the interested, the foolish as well as the wise, the mentally unbalanced not less than the mentally sound. The law that did this Mould prove nothing so much as lack of com- j prehension and reflection in.its makers. As a general principle, all adults must be invested with the franchise, especially in a democratic country like New Zealand; but to compel all to vote would be to exemplify political purism "or the academical spirit run mad. As we showed in a recent article, there are, oven jn New Zealand, a considerable minority jf people who are not mentally norm id, but addicted to explosive eccentricity. In so far as they reason at all. they are for the most part*strangely inconclusive; while, in so far as they are incapable of reasoning, they are the victims'of morbid emotional conditions. 1 ersons of this unfortunate typo are not likely to decrease in number as time goes on; and why should they, now or hereafter, be compelled to precipitate their instability into the otherwise sufticently agitated welter'-of public, affairs ? To do so would be to ensure the country's periodic subjection to the enforced influence of considerable numbers of people, whose influence is never to. be desired in any sphere, least of all in politics, where unreason and hysteria are apt to intrude even under existine conditions. The London Times lately said that physicians were "familiar with a kirfd of patient, not devoid of intelligence, who must be in evidence and saturated with excitement, to who™ strife is congenial, to whom life vould not be worth living but for grievances and wrongs, and who must have a daily doss of rousing sensations. The craving for this may take the form of violent outbursts of religious feeling, moods of exaltation, ill-judged incursions, without talents, into literature or art, or the espousal, with the exaggeration natural to Aveakness, of some cause which happens to be much tflked of. Physicians with large experience come across many cases in which there is so much mental instability, that any public excitement disturbs'the balance and produces nervous tension and fits of hysteria, showing itself in violent conduct or violent loquacity." New Zealand has its full share of this unhappy type, which doubtless has representa"tives on the country's Parliamentary and municipal rolls. Some of them may vote ouite voluntarily, but, surely, to compel them all by law to vo+e wo^ld bp to go to the utmost limit- of fntuity. We hope to hear less and less of compulsory voting: to hear nothing a± all vvould be akin to entering into possession of a generous portion of "measureless content."