The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1868.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 40, 18 February 1868, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1868.

The practice now so prevalent of requiring from candidates for parliamentary honors definite pledges on public questions involves objections wliich do notrestupbn any merely technical considerations ofthe principle of representation. The custom indeed is unquestionably productive of many serious practical evils, and although we have enly one election at this moment on the tapis, such occasions are continually cropping up, and the consideration of the subject can therefore never be deemed inopportune. Foremost amon** these evils we may place the mischief resulting from violated pledges. We canuot suppose that in all the cases in which the promises nude upon the hustings have been disregarded in the Provincial Council or General Assembly, there has been any deliberate dishonest design. It is obvious that it must frequently happen that a candidate, fresh from pledges given iv the excitement of an election, fiuds, on a discussion of the subject in a calmer spirit, with men of wider experience, and under the responsibility of actual legislation, that his views require considerable modification. He is thus placed in the diLmma of either voting contrary to the best lights he has been able to obtaiu or of violating his pledge. If he keep his word, he does an injury to the country. If he breaks his word, he offends his constituents. Such cases are undoubtedly far more frequent tban might at first sight be supposed. We meau no offence when we say that the great majority of our candidates for senatorial honors do not possess any large amount of political knowledge. The less familiar with political speculations they are, the more hasty and the more crude are their iirst impressions likely to be, and in all probability, we may add, the more positive will they be in asserting them. Even if they hesitate, the temptatiou to gain a little popularity by laying down some extreme opinion, aud by pledging themselves to its support, is very considerable. Unfortunately, too, it generally happens that the most difficult and complex questions are those in which the public is most interested, and on wliich they are consequently most eager to obtain pledges. We suppose that few persons will deny that the best mode of arranging the financial embarrassments of the colony is a question of no ordinary difficulty and of no ordinary importance. Yet there is scarcely a constituency in the province which would not expect from any candidate for its representation in the General Assembly a pledge — not to take the utmost pains with the enquiry and to give an honest and true deliverance on the question, according to the best of his knowledge and ability but — to vote for some specific measure upon this subject. It is, of course, fit ahd even necessary that candidates should state to their constituents their general political opinions j but it is injurious alike to the representative and to the electors to hamper any member with positive and specific pledges. Not a little of the loose political morality of wbich we occasionally hear such com-

plaints, is due to this system. If a man tampers with his moral sense in one matter, he will have less hesitation in doing so in another matter. If he can reconcile himself to breakiug his plighted word in the case of an injudicious pledge, he will soon come to think that all is fair in politics, as in love, nnd that political honor aud political morality nre measured by other standards than those which regulate private life. A similar feeliug very naturally extends to his constituency. When they see the shuffling aud evasions, aud even downright falsehoods, of men in whose promises they trusted, they lose all faith iv public men, and look upon politi 8 simply as opening a career for selfish aggrandizement. Another evil arising from the system of pledge-giving is a tendency to lead a constituency to attach more importance to the views of a candidate on some one favorite topic than to his general character and talents. When the public mind is strongly excited on some particular question, the candidate who is willing to pledge himself to the popular view is sure to be returned, while his opponent, though in every other respect he may be better qualified, loses his election iv cousequence of his opinions on a single poiut. Hence we not unfrequently see persons who bave made, on certain subjects, the most liberal professions, act on every other subject in defiance of every liberal principle. But the true friend of the people, if he will not yield on a single point his conscientious opinion, is displaced for a professing liberal, whose sole merit often consists in chiming in with the cry of tbe day. We think, therefore, that constituencies, so far from requiring, should refuse to receive pledges from candidates for parliamentary honors. They should require a full statement from each candidate of his views upon public questions. Tbey should -abstain from expressing any opinion of any candidate until the actual day of election arrives. They should endeavor, by all practical means, to become acquainted with the antecedents aud the general character of the candidates on some better evidence than their own speeches. They should give their votes in the full consciousness that they were conferring a great power and a most important trust ; that they were not merely sending a messenger to Nelson or Wellington to record their opinion upon one or two public subjects, and to look after their local interests, but that they were choosing a representative, with full powers to act for them, by whose acts they and their children, their lives and their fortunes, would be bound. If the public were to form just views of the true nature and powers of representative assemblies generally, candidates would be less ready to promise everything that they were asked, and constituencies would less frequently sacrifice for a trifling, or even a doubtful advantage, their great and permanent interests.