Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1928. THE TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 285, 30 October 1928, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1928. THE TYRANNY OF GOVERNMENT.

Bureaucratic government is not good for any democratic country. It places too much power in tlie hands of Government servants, whose real duty lies in administering the affairs of the departments they control as directed by their Ministerial heads, the latter being responsible to the Legislature for those whom they have under them for the time being. In addressing the Christchurch Citizens’ and Ratepayers’ Association at its annual meeting on Thursday, the president (Mr H. D. Acland) made the following very impressive statement—

“Our liberty is being more and more curtailed, and tne Government of the country is not really in the hands of its elected representatives, but it is practically in the hands of the civil servico and the officials who control the country right through.”

Very few people will be disposed to argue to the contrary, for “Government by Regulation” lias assumed sucb proportions during the last few years that, unless we are very much mistaken, it has gone far beyond the intention of Parliament and even of members of the Cabinet themselves. Most Government measures nowadays carry with them clauses empowering the Governor-in-Council to make regulations for carrying out the provisions covered by such Acts and, in most cases, such regulations are drafted by Government officials, who have shown an increasing tendency to invest departmental officials with greater administrative powers, so much so that Ministers occasionally find their hands tied in matters wherein they should be free to act, and the public suffer in greater measure through further encroachments upon their liberty of action. There has been some pretty plain speaking upon this matter during the last few months, because, not only are many of the regulations made by the Governor-in-Council irksome in themselves, but the interpretation placed upon them by Government is apt to prove actually oppressive in their enforcement. The “little brief authority” with which some minor official is invested is, in some instances at least, abused in enforcing an obnoxious regulation, or in taking some individual to task for a breach of a regulation of the existence of which the latter is probably unaware. The late Mr Alfred Kidd used to tell a story of a fussy inspector who .was visiting farms in the South

Axickland district to see that the provisions of the Noxious Weeds Act were being properly observed. While inspecting one farm adjacent to a Government reserve, which was in a more or less neglected condition and showing a considerable amount of noxious growth, he discovered a few bits of blackberry growing on a recently cleared area of the farm. “You must get this stuff out,” he said, speaking to the farmer in dictatorial fashion, “or I shall have to send you a bit of blue paper.” “But why pick on me? Why don’t you go for the fellow across the road? The birds pick up the seeds on his land and drop them on mine. Look at the dirty state his land is in,” was the farmer’s reply. “I’ll - soon fix him,” the. inspector said. “Who is he at all?” The farmer, amused at his, manner, enlarged on the enormity of the supposed owner’s offence in leaving his land in that, neglected condition, but finally blurted out the fact that it was Government land, whereupon the inspector, annoyed at being thus fooled, turned angrily upon the fanner and said: “All right; you get that blackberry stuff out and if I find a root of it left when I come back in a month’s time, I’ll have a summons for you.”

INTERFERENCES WITH LIBERTY.

It is not, however, such comparatively trivial t interferences with the individual that constitute the gravamen of the complaints made by business men as tbe general regulation and interferences with business by State and municipal bodies. The trouble is not confined to New Zealand, for there is a fairly general tendency in democratic countries to so regulate the conduct of * business and the individual that there is a loss of liberty on the part of the subject that should not be permitted. There are, of course, certain matters in which it is not only wise- but actually necessary for the State to intervene in making regulations in the interests of the public health, to guard against the spread of infectious disease and to provide for the safety of the community. It is in other directions, however, that Government and local body interferences are objected to, and more particularly the lengths to which regulations are in some cases carried. Before sanctioning the regulations placed before them for gazetting, Ministers ought to, and should, more carefully consider their possible effect and not accept the responsibility attaching to them without due inquiry. It might indeed be well if (as in the case of the motor regulations) the opportunity was afforded those interested of stating their possible objections to any regulation it was proposed to make. Mr Acland quoted from Lecky’s “Democracy and Liberty” the statement that “No feature is more characteristic of modem democracy than tbe tendency to regulate and arrange by law countless industries which were once left to private initiative and arrangement.” If that was true in 1897 it is much more so to-day, the thirty odd years that have elapsed since the historian’s book was published having been marked by numberless interferences with business, and restrictions upon trade and tlie rights of the individual, many of which appear to be quite unnecessary, and in their enforcement have added more officials to the bureaucracy already overstaffed.