Comment on Current Topics

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 10

Comment on Current Topics

GOING TO THE COUNTRY

AFTER a series of prolonged caucus meetings of the Reform and United Parties, the Coalition Government has at last decided not to ask Parliament to prolong its existence. Ministers have undoubtedly taken the wisest course. Only the very gravest reasons could justify the members of Parliament extending their term beyond that for which they were elected, and no such reasons have been given. The war precedent is discounted by the fact that an election was actually held in war time, in 1914, and the postponement in 1917 was at one of the gravest crises of the war. The plea that the work of Parliament was so urgent that no time could be spared for an election sounds rather curious in the light of the waste of time lately, and the argument that the people might reject at the polls the advocates of necessary -but unpalatable financial measures and so ruin the country—that our Parliamentary Solons knew what was best for the people and should have power to force any measure they thought necessary down their throats without giving them the chance to object—was sheer impudence. As for the plea of economy, considering the waste of time, and in consequence money, during every parliamentary session, the advocates of postponement were rather chary of pressing that point. This plea of saving the people from .themselves is being plausibly urged in many countries at present to cover attempts to filch power from the hands of the people, and it is an insiduous danger against which all democrats should be on the alert. Like every other form of political organisation, democracy has its drawbacks —even its follies and vices—and in times of stress like the present we are acutely conscious of these, and are tempted to take the short cut of autocracy in one of its many forms. We have been so long accustomed to take our freedom as a matter of course that we are apt to forget how slowly and painfully it has been won, and how easily it may be lost. One cannot be too jealous *of any attempt to encroach on the power of the people by even little would-be Mussolinis. That the attempt to lengthen the life of parliament' for two years should have been championed by the head of a Liberal Government and apparently was supported by the majority of a Liberal party, shows either the depths to which Liberalism has fallen in this country or how widely this distrust of the people exercising political power has spread.