THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1908. ABSOLUTE MAJORITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13761, 28 May 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1908. ABSOLUTE MAJORITY.

Mr. McNab has long been a champion of the Absolute Majority theory ; from a statement made by Sir Joseph Ward at Eltham it appears that the Cabinet has been persuaded to adopt it, and that a ' Government Bill covering the matter will be introduced next session. There are two methods by which what is termed Absolute Majority" may be attained : the marking of the ballot paper, in any Parliamentary electorate in which more than two candidates are contesting a single seat, so that the elector mdictates a " second choice," and the taking of a Second Ballot, where an absolute majority has not been ; secured in such electorates by any I candidate, for which second ballot only the two leading candidates are eligible. In, either case the point aimed at is the samethat the member returned by the electorate shall represent a majority of the votes cast in the deciding contest. Theoretically, this presents itself as a most democratic proposition and is one which has appealed strongly '0 the sentiment of that Continental Europe where constitutional Government lias been fabricated by academic politicians for nations which have newly arrived at representative institutions. It installed "majority rule" as a sacred fetish among peoples who felt it essential to have an arbitrary authority to replace those other arbitrary methods which they had retained too long, and there is a visible tendency in this country to assert the Continental conception of the divine right of the bare majority. That it is logical as far as it goes is evident. If a count of heads in electorates is the only true method of self-government, if 501 persona may naturally and rightfully make laws for the other 499 of every thousand, if the more mathematically exact we make our representative system the more free and satisfactory our institutions, as is claimed by the Continental doctrinaires, then there is little more to be said. But it is at least worthy of consideration that Anglo-Saxon instiI tutions, at Home and in the colonies and in the United . States alike, which have " broadened slowly down from precedent to precedent," and have secured to us a freedom which the progressive parties of other countries admit to be unrivalled, have never yet been associated with an "Absolute Majority" system. The conscious a-yn has been to secure an approximate majority throughout a whole national constituency, this approximate national majority being attained by giving the representation of any and every electorate to the strongest party in the respective electorates, the aggregate result being that Parliamentary dominance and administrative control reflect the most potential political , party in the nation as a whole. This method is obviously one of compromise, of give-and-take, but is not " Absolute Majority," only a more pretentious compromise, which still leaves the fundamental premises of theoretic democracy practically unreached and only introduces complicating incidents. In any true conception of selfgovernment the electorate is only a convenient, division which is designed to simplify elections and to enable the general political sense of the whole community to be easily expressed. To concern ourselves with a microscopic examination of the voting in one electorate while ignoring the relative effect of the voting in other electorates is somewhat inconsistent. Mr. Ma-ssey analysed the voting throughout the Dominion at the last election, and showed that the Government following in the House was disproportionate to the votes cast for its candidates. No criticism or dissection of his analysis pretended to shake his main contention—that the actual strength of the Government in the country was very much less than might be assumed from its great majority in Parliament. Mr. McNab's eloquent indignation at the carrying of an occasional electorate by less than an Absolute Majority seems misapplied

ill the light of his comfortable acceptance of the exclusion from all representation in Parliament of strong minorities in an incomparably greater number of electoral districts. Academic theorists have, we all know, a remedy termed " Proportionate Representation" for the restoration to minorities of tin "rights" which under the electorate system arc completely forfeited, but we do not hear anything of this from our politicians. Nor do we advocate it. Our Constitution would survive under a " Proportionate Representation" system as without it, just as it will survive tinder an " Absolute Majority" system or without it, but that is not the point. Nothing is easier than to make futile constitutional changes, and nothing more entrancing to the unstable political temperament. But it is not by making changes which effect nothing and which are not- demanded by an aroused public opinion that free constitutions become rooted in the hearts and the confidence of nations. Those nations which have no great customs and traditions, no longestablished and slowly developing forms and methods, buttressing their civic liberties and guaranteeing their self-government, may as well -give trial to the superficial schemes of political doctrinaires. But every British State should alter its tried constitution, of which the existing voting system is among the most ancient parts, with caution and reluctance, demanding convincing reason from those who advocate change, all the more if these advocates are the leaders and controllers of a Parliamentary majority.