PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10628, 3 December 1910, Page 1

PAYMENT OF MEMBERS.

REASON WHY LEGISLATORS SHOULD HAVE SALARIES. f (By Sir Gilbert "Parker, M.P.) J ' If .payment of M.P.s- were to he used; to enable the Unionist party to escape ,'fromi some political dilemma of its own, if it were to be used as a party manoeuvre for political advantage,, 1,. for one, /would not disposed to con-sider"-it or" to regard ,the. question with anything but repugnatice. This is not the case, however. The dilemma is not a Unionist dilemma ; ~it is a dilemma of'the Government in power, and it is a national dilemma. It certainly provides a means of escape from the necessity of reversing the Osborne judgment-, but it would be impossible for the Government _to enforce payment; of members upon the country unless there was the practical assent of all parties. It is one of those questions so national in its importance, with consequences so considerable to Parliament and public life, that a common agreement would bo essential to its application. : Some bitter things have been said by sections ot the Unionist- press of Mr F. H. Smith's suggestion that payment of members is an inevitable alternative to the reversal- of (the-Osborne judgment, and that the? Unionist party, should not declare it impossible.Mi: F. letter was a'plain' appeal for consideration and inquiry,., and none hut a Unionist wedded ,to prejudice .could or should refuse to inquire. , These are not days when the Unionist, party can thrive by, throttling. Mr F. E. Smith cannot decide whether the policy oi payment of members could under any circumstances be accepted by the Unionist partv.. That decision belongs to the' leader of the party backed by the assent- of.-the mass of the .party. The Unionist party _ will, not he well advised, in any case, in entering upon wholesale condemnation of payment of members."' Tliey cannot draw their illustrations from France or the United States, or sonir : other foreign country, to show the evils flowing from payment of members, without involving our colonics in the same condemnation; and that condemnation would be, 011 the whole, unjustified. I have lived and worked-in two great colonies, and although it. is twenty-five years since I lived in Canada and twenty-one years since I lived in Australia, still I have kept in pretty close. touch with affairs in these colonies as with affairs in New Zealand and South Africa, and I have no conclusive evidence that public and parliamentary life has degenerated in these colonies owing to the payment of members, or that it produces what is called "professional politicians. Professional politicians are not easily produced at £3OO or £4OO a year. The kind of man who becomes a professional politician on £3OO or £4OO a year is not the kind of man most constituencies •want; but there are many men with capacity for public service who could take a parliamentary position with credit and usefulness, for whom the few hundreds a year would ease their position so much tha/t *they could be enabled to enter Parliament and do effective public service. The situation now is, in effect, that men must have considerable money, on the one hand, or be supported by trade unions, on the other, or Parliament is no place for them, except through a harassing financial struggle which takes the heart out of them. Indeed, our present system gives parliamentary representation to a large extent into the hands of the very well-to-do or the paid representatives of Labor organisations or candidates subsidised by the great party organisations. This much payment of members would do, whatever its other consequences —it would: tend, to broaden the area from which piem-' bers of Parliament are drawfi:;3';;4 - . It must not be forgotten: organisations of the Unionist party and: the Liberal party, still remain, deciding" ■who shall and who shall not become a candidate. I know a number of instances in which active, highly intelligent, enthusiastic, and capable politicians of both parties would have been chosen as candidates, if they had a little more money, and because they had it not, these capable men were, as they .say in the street, "turned down." Candidates were chosen instead whose chief recommendation was plenty of pelf, and who otherwise would not have been chosen at all.

Is it not just possible that- tlie very evils which it is thought may flow from the payment of members are with us now, and witli us with that most dangerous of influences —the secret influence? There would be nothing ignoble, nothing that I can see degrading, in accepting, in the first place, payment of the returning officer's fees. It really is unreasonable that they should be paid by candidates, and a certain moderate State grant to members of Parliament themselves which would defray the inevitable expenses attached to their official poition ought not to produce degradation. The character of the people of England will not, in my judgment, be altered by the payment of a few hundred pounds a year to members of Parliament. and it will be the character of the people working through political, as 't works through all other public, or-ganisations-—commercial, industrial, fin. mcial, and social —which will control ;he character of Parliament. I do not lesitate to challenge any - student of ;hc question to show me whether there s evidence that the payment of mem>ers has produced in a single Colonial jegislature any gross cases of corrup;ion. Indeed, I only know of two in he history of the Australian Parliaiients. In the Canadian House of Comnons the personnel and character of hat House has not been lowered with >assing years. It is higher than in the lays of the great Canadian Pacific scanlal, which certainly was not the outlorae, even in spirit, of the payment of nembers. I should be well content to have hings go on as they are; at any rate, 10 reproach can be offered to those who lo give their service and their money n the truest public spirit, but personal dews, and feelings are not important n the solving of a great problem. It vould be loathsome to see the question nade one of partisan controversy, but ' am convinced the Unionist party ;houkl look at it from all sides before eftising to consider it, not alone in relaion to the Osborne judgment, but in its rider aspects.