THE CURSE OF GOVERNMENT BY PARTY.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XV, Issue 4722, 17 July 1890, Page 1

THE CURSE OF GOVERNMENT BY PARTY.

(James S. Little, in the Circle.) It seems to me that party governnjeDt has coma to be a vehicle for self-seekers' ambition. It Is a snare and an antiquated delusion. Political programmes of party are snares also. True men should owe allegiance to measures, noc to party, and every government should be content ito champion one important measure, and only one at a time. A Government should come in to pass a certain measure and it should pass it and have done with it; if it be able to pass other measures all very well, but members should be eleoted to pass or oppoße one measure only, and ba free to act jast as they may ohooae, ns to any future measures submitted to them. Thus all honest men oould divide upon a dlstlnot issue, which isßue being decided, they , would be free to follow their old chief or oppose him. May be this could never be, because men are not archangels, and, moreover, too many members of Parliament are in no sense patriots, while some are mere place-hunters. But we must try to get a little nearer to this ideal: a government; by brag and shout cannot be tolerated for ever. If that hateful fiend party opuld be slain, political warfare might be parried on under far less debasing conditions.' In every political struggle there would be [a nearer approach to trna unity on • either side, instead of a false and forced cohesion of chance particles. A party man discovers his advocacy is compelled to a measure distasteful or eveo hateful to hlin. If he breaks with, his party, and join the opposing camp,, the same lot will be his fate. To be minus party is, under the present baneful system, to be minus political influence. Party allegiance results in a want of force and hartiness in political life. A man' Compelled against his will, to vote, and to think in the same way as his is a man robbed of the power to use his faculties. What ;is-the result of this blighting infiuehoe but a politioal .dead-lock ? Let us revert, as Sir Bartle Frere once said, to .earlier, simpler, and purer methods, We.havehad enough of government by party. The system has become corrupted at Its very- root — for concessions to rebellion .and rank i intolerance are ten thousand; times: woEae, and more to be deplored, then were all the abuses the Reform Bill of 1832' swept away. Oar present Bystem of government is eating into tbe very marrow of : our national life ; It is making all men think with the cynic, that this very words, patriotism, honor, .truth, .earnestness, : and the like should be relegated to a glossary of obsolete phrases. Life-long allegiance and subordination to a party, or to a chief, mean, to the thinking man, life-long Intellectual enslavement, for the thoughts of men are diverse. It is impossible to conceive of a nun, not being a drone of half-witted nonentity, who cm find himsalf in accord with the views of any party or chief whatsoever upon all points. There must be some different planks in his Political principle under the party system comes to mean political Smothered insubordination and halfhearted political action are the : inevitable products of this accursed legacy of party government, seeing that no man can give heart-whole help to measures he seoretly despises.

We are all Liberals or Conservatives, even our little children, aa Mr Gilbert haa so humorously said. Nor do grown men know any better than- little children: why they are Liberals and Ounaervativce ; as a matter of fact there lsrno real or satisfactory meaning in the terms.. Da away-wlth partygoverument and makegrand measures a worthier "line of cleavage," and we should strangle out of existences whole army of political crocheters, The stings and bites of such can make life verytinpleasant, while it too often happens, that their very number and persistency threaten to obstruct onr further progress altogether. Let these politicians of" the vlllagp go to their ioaal boards and fight out their differences, and let us have an Imperial Parliament -swept of the advocates of' follies which may fitly be oompared to old women's nightmare, or the conceits of the nursery. It is an undoubted fact that ourpolitloal procedure, not our polUioal life, is, much in the same way as are oar. religious systems—a very different thing, let;me add, from onr religious life—tottering' tb its grave ; It is more tban festered and rotten, It is in its death throeß. The future will prove whether a fairer, grander life.will be his, or as he is the friend of a friend'of the author's, or the reverse.

Compare one of these, smart.young njen with the erudite scholars of the past generation- the men whose work wps as close and perfect as a bit of Japanese enamel-: who have chapter and verse for every assertion, and could put their fingers, on references and quotations of whioh onr modern young.lion knows about as much as he does of Chinese—and then.measure the distance of the. downward Btep that literature has-made. What was onoe'Solid heart-of-oak is now the flimsiest veneer. What was once mastery: of the whole subject is now a quick study, a book of wellchosen extracts, and a serviceable memory wh en called on. That which waßonoe a grave and honorable profession has now degenerated into a noisy, pushing, selfradvertiaing trade ; and he who would teach is not alwaya abreast of those whom he undertakes to instruct. The olaBaios; are discarded for personal gossip ; the. continuity to ba found in history runß'lnto the sand out of whioh a new politic»l fad is built; the human nature which has never varied in essence from the earliest times up to now is glibly supposed toba undergoing a transformation whioh will enable men to stand on their .heads and talk with their heels; the goiden apple has become the " purry pome," and ,the democratic wave has covered tho garden of the Hesperides with mud and slime. Literature is not the honorable: profession it was when practised by the learnod gentlemen and scholars of the past generation, and it does not confer the aame dignity—because the standard' of selfrespect has fallen like the standard of qualifications because Duloamara has displaced Bacon, and Dt Marigold is tbe best representative of a philosopher the rank and file of modern literature can i show.