LOG-ROLLING IN POLITICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15056, 27 July 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOG-ROLLING IN POLITICS.

BY FRANK MORTON,

Is a conceivably better world than this, all men concerned, or desiring to be concerned, -with legislative duties would be actuated solely by the ambition to serve the State, and thus to facilitate the onward march of humanity. Such a condition of affairs would bo ideal, and is in all likelihood not possible of attainment. To start with, there is no present prospect of arty absolutely unselfish man ever being born. Nor is it yet proved that humanity is marching onward at all. The race is, I think, pretty much what it always has been, with some additions of social convenience and mechanical contrivance, Men who lived in what we loosely term the dark ages were just as bad and just as good, just as irrational and just as reasonable, -just as cruel and just as kind as men generally are to-day. The Christion virtues wero practised thousands of years before Christ; the Pagan virtues will be esteemed by the intelligent thousands of years after your dust and mine has blown down the breeze or breathed in the rose— at» that time this odd world should still exist, I merely mention these things in case, otherwise, I should be accused of muttering counsels of perfection. One must by some means save one's face, even when one writes of such a disreputable subject as contemporary politics. I am even prepared to admit that complete unselfishness in any man would be a supremely disorganising and uncomfortable 'virtue, while enlightened selfishness is probably the most, shining virile quality of this ago of shoddy pretensions. I admit with perfect frankness that if you removed any average thousand of the world's politicians to-morrow, and substituted them by an average thousand other people, we should be no better off than we awl now, and might be very much worse off. I neither denounce nor satirise politics, therefore, I am, in fact, politics' industrious apologist. But log-rolling I detest. • It may be impossible to make politics pure or holy, elevating or refined ; but even your politician might dare some pretence of dignity. Let me suggest a comparison. If I know an actor (as, alas! I do, in deplorably numerous instances), I am not supposed to declare with frantic emphasis that he is the finest actor on earth. It is not demanded of me that 1 shall declare that Bill Smith in the next street sells the finest raisins and the most delicious butter in the town, merely because I happen to be on terms of smiling acquaintance with Bill Smith. But if I know a politician, the caso is altogether different. Knowing him, if I criticise him publicly, if I state the obvious fact that his political morals are corrupt and his political intelligence is rudimentary or simiesque, if I assert that he is a shocking caricature on the perception of his constituentsif 1 do any of these things, he will at once condemn me for a bad and virulent fellow, and have none of me.

Politicians, in point of fact, may upon occasion be absolute rogues, but they are seldom absolute fools. They realise that if their co-conspirators and the press don't roll logs for them they would in many cases have no plausible excuse for their political existence. This utter unwillingness of everybody concerned with politics to lolerate candid criticism is a most outrageous thing. When men come to me with songs they have written or essays they, have laboured at, and I tell them that in my opinion the song is paltry and the essay dull, we can still smile into each other's eyes and be good friends. When men assure mo (as they frequently do) that I am a flagrant aristocrat and a very insolent fellow, that my tendencies are pagan, that I am a false guide of simpering youth— well, I merely laugh as usual and bear no malice. Even when friends who should know better hint at these things, I don't lurk savagely in the dark to smite them with bludgeons. 1 hate hypocrisy and I loathe the sin of Judas; but, otherwise, I am no end of a tolerant chap. INo, it is only with regard to politics that a man is tactiiy expected to prostitute his manhood and degrade his common-sense in order that he may slavishly pour adulation on the herd of the inept and foolish. Why is it? I don't know exactly why it is, but I have some ideas. It is, in part, because any active interest in politics breeds in small minds a most colossal and i incorrigible vanity, with a groping personal greed to match. Your average politician is an instinctive poseur, and the moment you criticise him he feels that he is detected. Ho is naturally a small person; but when he clambers on to his tuppeny in the place of noises -he immediately suffers from tha shocking and inexplicable delusion that ho is as big as a mountain and as necessary as the sun and moon. So the typical' small legislator, tacitly agrees with other typical little legislators at his end of the globe that this business must be fixed up and the public are by no means cosened. Brown, Jones, and Robinson, members of Parliament, meet in convivial conclave and scratch each others' backs. Then they waddle far away to remote rural places and mount their chosen platforms. Brown assures the gaping and credulous rustics that Jones and Robinson are mighty men and infallible saviours of the country. " Jones tells his little lot that BrOwn and Robinson are great white lights of the glorious new era which is about to dawn. Robinson cries in the wilderness that Jones and Brown are the very fellows the country has been hankering after for fully 20 years. It is all very amusing, if you like, but unquestionably it is all supremely ridiculous. The habit or fever of log-rolling is the worst malady of contemporary politics. It is a malady that the press has done something, and might easily do more, to cure and extirpate. After all, public affairs are concerned with principles rather than with persons. Newspapers may be loyal to causes and still retain their right to scarify muddling politicians who bungle the causes approved. What I mean is that I may fully believe in the efficacy of housepainting and black draughts, and still deride the fellow who paints badly or the chemist who dispenses nostrums not in accordance with the prescription. Apart from the benign influence of the press, this malady of log-rolling cannot be cured at all; because your log-roller, though he may upon occasion commit political suicide, "cannot cure himself or his fellow-sufferers. Tell him that such or such a man of his cabal. is a limping dullwit or economic nincompoop, and he-'ll argue about it. Argue him down, and he'll retreat to his last corner and squirt, confusing blackness like a squid. He'll say, Yes, what you say may be all quite true but he's a staunch man for his party, that fellow!"

Now, politics as we know it is a thing impossible without party. .The politician who gets his head into a cloud of self-con-ceit and his feet into a morass of indecision, and says that he will belong to no party, ought ' to be taken quietly away somewhere and chained up. But log-roll-ing never yet helped or saved a party, though occasionally it may have postponed the dismal day of reckoning and disaster. Log-rolling is not a process intended to strengthen or increase the solidarity of a party; "it is merely a device to safeguard droves of asses who have no earthly right to be in any party at all. A good and strong man may be loyal to his party, and still preserve his self-respect and personal independence. The logroller is a nuisance and causa of offence, however loyal to his party he may be. He is an impudent dog who strives to make secure his place in the Kingdom of Gab by sticking a needle through the eye of a camel— patient, bovine, credulous, undiscerainu camel, tho public.