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Otago Daily Times, Issue 7927, 19 July 1887, Page 3

" Pro Itege, laja Grcye." (For King, read Mob.) TO THE EDITOK. Sin, —It is, pnma fiwie, rather curious that although we insist on our lawyers and schoolmasters, and even the lower civil servnuts, passing examinations in order that their qualifications for their respective positions may be tested, yet for the highest aud most responsible positions in the State —for our legislators and members of the Government —no qualifications are deemed noccwory. You have merely to please the populace—by eloquence or bribery, or * any other way, —and you are elected! Would it not be possible to have special examinations for candidates for Parliamentary honours, by which at least their intellectual qualifications might be tested ? Among tho numerous chairs at our local university, could we not have a chair of "Statesmanship," whereby our future rulers, with the aid of good text books from FJato to John Stuart Mill, might learn something of the duties and responsibilities of the high oflices to which they some day hope to be called ? But what sort of a choice have we now before us in most of the electorates ? Putting aside for the moment the intellectual capabilities of the candidates, it would appear to be the generally-received opinion that the whole duty of a representative of the many-headed Democracy is to present to the electors a blank mind on which the majority may write their wishes aud commands. And the ablest man is he who can best foresee the tendency of public opinion! Plato long since described the present position exactly:—" All these mercenary adventurers do but teach the collective opinion of the many, which are the opinions of their assemblies; and this is their wisdom. I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of h mighty, strong beast, who is fed by him—he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times aud from what causes he is daagerous or the reverse, aud what is the meaniig of his several cries, aud by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further that when, by constantly living with him he has become perfect in all this which he ca'ls wisdom, he makes a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, not that ho has any real notion of what he is teaching, but he names this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute, when he has learnt the meaning of his inarticulate grunts. Good he pronounces to be what pleases him, and evil what he dislikes; and he cau give no other account of them except that the just and noble are the necessary, having never himself seen, and having no power of explaining to other?, the nature otjeither, or the immense difference between them."—(" Kepublic," Jowett's Trans., Book VI, 493.) And it is to this that the honourable names of statesmen and leaders of the people have beeu degraded and prostituted! The questions of Freetrade or Protection, of retrenchment or no retrenchment, sink into insignificance by the side of the real questions at stake. Is Democracy to mean government by the most ignorant 'i And are our rulers and guardians to be leaders and educators of the people, or slaves to their every caprice and whim; or, still worse, self-seeking, dishouest demagogues V If this is to be the net result of our " self-government," then the best we can do is to give up at once the ridiculous, expensive, and degrading farce and go back to the position of a Crown colony for a generation or two.

But is it a Utopia!! dream, an absolutely hopeless counsel of perfection, that the highest offices in a Democratic state should be filled by men of high principle and noble aims, lovers of wisdom and justice, and seekers after truth? If this is hopeless tor the future as for the present, if such men are not to be found, or, being found, are not to be chosen, if no approach to this Utopian dream is possible, then Democracy itself is doomed. For, to quote Plato again (and I make no apology for so doing, for there never was a time when the study of his philosophy was more needed than it is now): " Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness ?nd wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who follow cither to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never cease from ill—no, nor the human race as I believe, —and then only will this our state have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. There is no other way either of private or public happiness."—(" Republic," Book V, 473).—1 am, &c, Omen.

July 18.