SIR ROBERT STOUT ON LOCAL SELF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12695, 25 October 1904, Page 4

SIR ROBERT STOUT ON LOCAL SELF.

• Sir Robert Stout, in an article on the " Federal Experiment in Australia," touches upon the danger of the State Governments becoming weakened by - the tendency of the Federal Government to usurp all function? of government. He says:—"There are two ideas, as Pomeroy points out,' in government : ' The idea of local self-govern-ment, and the idea of centralisation. The one is the safeguard of liberty, the other the source of power/ Perhaps some of the State Governments have not sufficiently provided for local self-government, and the State Governments may have become too much the home of a centralised Government. •If this has happened, there is the greater need of taking care that the Federal Government does not Become centralised, thus leading inevitably to autocracy and despotism. Iu New Zealand we lost much by the aDqlition, of our admittedly imperfect Federal system. We had it under an educated public opinion and a keen interest everywhere in political affairs. I doubt if our communities have the self-reliance they possessed, or take the same interest in politics that they did, 30 years ago. The weakening of State Governments does not make for good government. To quote Pomeroy once more, he says, writing of the United States : 'Blot out the States, or reduce their functions to a mere form, and the General Government, although elective, would ere long become a despotism.' It is a passage written by a man who has made a profound study of one of the most successful federations the world has seen. The town meeting, the municipal life, the training of the people in self-government which their local institutions give, lave done more to preserve the United States than the Acts or doings of their Federal Parliament. And so it will be in Australia. Weaken the States, underrate them, train the people to look to the Federal Government and the Federal Parliament for everything, and the Australian people start on a journey that has despotism as its goal. The existence of a free Government needs liberty, free and open discussion, and men trained to civic duties, with power and liberty to manage their affairs. Deny these, and you may have universal suffrage, but behind it and controlling it you will find the party boss t and over all tho shadow of Tammanyism. Those who believe that the Federal idea of government is the highest yet devised by men look to Australia to maintain it. Who knows that if successful in this great continent we may not see what the poet pictured?— " The vast republics that may grow, 'The Federation and the powers, Titanic forces taking birth In clivers seasons, clivers climei*, For we are ancients of the earth Ami in the morning or the times."