AGE IN POLITICS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22608, 27 June 1935, Page 16

AGE IN POLITICS

OLD CONTROVERSY NO INFLEXIBLE RULES A few considerations on age in politics may be offered by way of pendant to some recent observations on youth in the same sphere (writes J. B. Firth in the London Daily Telegraph). There will be found the same difficulty about laying down hard-and-fast rules. Exceptions are so numerous and often so striking that they spoil the symmetry of the rule. We have just seen an elder statesman who should have learnt caution with the years plunge into an ill-prepared revolution with all the reckless impetuosity of a boy. The complaint is that there are too many " old men " in politics, that they paralyse enterprise and hold on too long. ':'.;/,' Aristotle—if it is permitted to quote, him as an authority in these days—considered that a man reached'the prime of his intelligence at about 50. By then he has acquired whatever stock of "phronesis" —i.e., the quality which enables him to form right and just judgments —he is likely to attain. If a man is at his prime at 50, he should still at 60 be fit for office and the conduct of public affairs, and the generally accepted idea of antiquity was that age—and even old age—was no disqualification for office unless, of course, accompanied by marked physical deterioration. IN ANCIENT WOULD. The age limits of the ancient world operated in a different way from ours. They prescribed that specific offices should' not be held in the attainment of a certain age. Our age limits, on the contrary, are mostly compulsory retiring limits. Under the Roman Empire there seems to have been a law requiring the retirement of Senators at 60, but apparently it was not in operation long. If elder statesmen are not to sit in Senates, where are they, to sit? The prevailing doctrine was that youth is reckless and ill-balanced, that middle age is meant for action, and that political wisdom increases with experience and age. Cicero speaks of the " ferocitas" of youth, the " gravitas " of the long middle period, and the " maturitas "of age. He would have agreed with Lear—ripeness is all. The crown of age was expressed in one word —" auctoritas." That view has sensibly weakened in modern times. The high average—as it is described —of the age of post-war Cabinets is often the subject of contemptuous remark as though it inflicted an injustice on younger men in their fifties and prevented post-war ideas from having a fair chance to shape or even to influence Cabinet policy. As a matter of fact, the average age of the post-war Cabinet has certainly been no higher than that of pre-war Cabinets. If the 1900 Cabinet contained a larger proportion of young men than most, it was because the Liberal Party had been out of office so long that " the old gang" had largely disappeared or bad become Old Parrs. "PAM AT EIGHTY."

Unless a man hag poor health he is just as likely to be capax imperii in his sixties as in his fifties. He may even run on well into the seventies without his natural force being abated. The danger then is lest he fall a belated victim to the ferocitas of youth and become "an old man in a hurry," like Mr Gladstone. The roll of British statesmen shows many remarkable septuagenarians. Palmerston retained his vigour, audacity and popularity to the (lay of his death, which found him, still Prime Minister, at 80. Yet more than 10 years lief ore Disraeli had written of him: "He is really an impostor, utterly exhausted, and at the best only ginger beer and not champagne, and now an old painted pantaloon, very deaf, very blind." Was ever the splenetic judgment of an adversary more decisively belied? If Disraeli himself had enjoyed either Palmerston'6 or Gladstone's robust constitution, or if he had climbed a bit earlier to the top of his greasy pole, there would have been more solid achievement in his record. "Power has come to me too late," he groaned in 1878. " There were days when f ' felt on waking that I could move dynasties and governments, but that has passed away." He lived to be more of the " old painted pantaloon " even than " Pam," but no one called him " ginger beer."

RELUCTANT GLADSTONE,

Nothing is more pathetic than the story of Gladstone's reluctant retirement at 85. He posed to himself even in his private diary as one longing to shake off the toils of public care and be free. ;

"My age did something, but not enough. The deterioration of my hearing helped, but insufficiently. It is the state of my sight which has supplied me with effectual aid in exchanging my imperative public obligations for what seems to be a free place on 'the breezy common of humanity.'" Yet, when a little later, a friend alluded sympathetically to his retirement, he turned to him swiftly and said, "Not retirement; 1 have been put out." So stubbornly did the old man stand on the order of his going. No one is so old, says Cicero, that he does not think he can live another year. Few men in high office are so old as to doubt their ability to carry on another 12-month. Earl Russell was an exception when, in 1867, he publicly declared that he had "decided never to take office again on a deliberate view of my past labours, my present age, and the future anxieties of the State."

His is the example to be commended. Rusßell quitted the banquet before his friends wished him gone. So did Lord Salisbury, to the great misfortune, as it proved, of the Conservative Party, for he was an incomparably better leader than his successor. Rut he yielded to age and the philosopher's desire for a time of quiet self-collection before the close.