BRITISH FREEDOM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22659, 26 August 1935, Page 11

BRITISH FREEDOM

The British Parliamentary system has grown out of our obstinate determination to manage, individually and nationally, our own affairs, says The Times. Because our self-government has grown out of our character and our conditions, and because, as Mr Baldwin has said, it has grown out of the common sense and good nature of people who prefer elections to street fighting and talking shops to revolutionary tribunals, it must not be supposed to have giown all by itself, without thought and without effort. If it is true that we are the only people who have made a success of democracy, one reason for that must be that we are the only people who have always declined to “ wear our fetters in our souls.” the only people who have alwavs been telling some encroaching Power or other to look out. The freedom which is the breath of our being has alwavs had to be protected against domination from this side or from that; and it is the translation into action of our instinctive determination to resist any form of tvranny that has from time to time preserved us. The price of liberty, said Mr Baldwin on a former occasion, is eternal vigilance; and he went on to declare that “ democracy is the most difficult form of government, and therefore the more worthy of giving our lives to make it a success.”