THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1910. DEMOCRACY AND SECOND CHAMBERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14532, 21 November 1910, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1910. DEMOCRACY AND SECOND CHAMBERS.

♦ I ■— The comfortable persistence with which our own Legislative Council takes an active and quite important part in the making of our Dominion laws should help us to understand that there is no instinct which compels mankind to choose its lawmakers by ballot or feel tyrannised and degraded. Without entering into any discussion as to the right or wrong, the wisdom or folly, of various drastic amendments made by pur Legislative Council to various Bills of great public interest, we would point out that the community does not arise in its wrath when determinations of the representative Chamber are thus cavalierly set aside. When Mr. Beehan or the Hon. Mr. McGowan takes it upon himself to eliminate the decisions of the nation as expressed by Mr. Glover or Mr. Lawry we do not commonly feel that our liberties are at stake, although Mr. Glover and Mr. Lawry have been dedicated by the ballot-box to the governing of New Zealand, while the ; others owe their authority to no more sacred source than the favour of a party in power. Theoretically, we ought to be conASJQced that all wisdom, all justice,

all capacity/: lay in the elected Chamber, and that the Second Chamber was not merely useless, but a distinct,; political evil. Yet our Second Chamber is endured 'with equanimity and supported in its functions by many New Zealanders who,, had they remained in Britain, would now be excitedly declaiming that Second Chambers are useless and non-elected Chambers wholly pernicious. The truth is, however, that the democratic instinct for individual merit and capacity is so dull and uncertain that the electors are driven to choose legislators from the most superficial reasons and without any great regard to quality and capacity. It is almost impossible for a Cabinet to create a nominated Second Chamber of inferior character to the elective chamber which modern democracies create for themselves; and as beneath all their shortcomings and misconceptions the people have a very practical mindwithin its limitations—they accept nominated Second Chambers without any bitterness and without any markedly ill results. Sometimes they elect their Second Chambers, but the momeiit they do so, as in the case of {/he Australian Senate, the Second Chamber begins to seize and to hold dominating authority had the Australian Senate been composed of members nominated yearly prolonged terms— the State Governments, the Commonwealth would obviously possess a much more stable form of government, with power firmly installed in its House of Representatives and council enshrined in the caution of its senators. But everybody who has political consciousness knows that it is not the dogmatic process of popular election which is really dear to the European mind, but • the ideal conception of government by the capable with the prevention of tyranny by the watchful care of representatives. It is natural and normal that men should look favourably upon the advice and suggestions of great national chiefs, and that national questions should usually be sifted down to a battle royal between rival leaders. Democracy has its value in so far as it furnishes to the lists of Parliament sturdy henchmen and servitors of the champions, but its cardinal weakness is that it does not and cannot provide a regular supply of coming champions because it has little sympathy with, and its political machinery has no place for, the individual qualities and personal characteristics from which alone leadership comes. There are forms of organisation in which one of the purposes of the master-minds is to' watch for and encourage brilliant young men, and there have rarely been occasions when, in any British community, the elder generation, could not point to the.rising leaders of the years to come. It is not possible now to point to the New Zealanders upon whose shoulders the burdens of State will fall should crisis come upon us. We may all think. we know men whom occasion might bring to the front, and whose ability would then win the public confidence which gives to any trusted statesman, in a crisis, the power of a Tsar, but the steady rise of the competent and able is made impossible by the political demand for the incompetent and the dull, who will play the part of cogs in the party machinery. ;: Everywhere the same process is going on, and -renewed life is thereby being given to the Second Chambers, wherein it may still be possible to assemble the select whom democracy will . not elect. A House of Lords composed of the great men who have demonstrated by long and meritorious work their right to be regarded as our national leaders, and of men elected by those who would have strong reason to select the able and the competent, would be the most influential body in the Empire. If we can endure in New Zealand the active participation in legislation of the worthy but hardly representative gentlemen whom the Government has nominated to our Second Chamber, surely Britain and the Empire could endure and benefit by the active participation in both British and Imperial legislation of the nen who have won their way to the front rank in one or other of the activities which are essential to the existence of the State and of civilisation.