SOME ELECTORS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2855, 2 December 1908, Page 87

SOME ELECTORS.

By Jessie Mackat. "The tumult and the shouting dies" ; the cannon-smoke clears; and each party now beholds the other with a measuring clarity of vision impossible till now, as they array opposing forces on the political counter peaks oi Ebal and- Gerizim for another three years' spell. » Philosophy recks not 6t party as party. Names axe but names ; asses axe capering asininely in lion-skins; -daws are uifling uneasily -' in chining peacock plumes that only show up the- native sootiness below ; 'tis not the cowl that makes the monk, nor the lobby that fixes the colour. But while the old shibboleths ring hollow on the practised ear, the individuality of the elector at large j 5 a lasting source of amusement to the > etached philosopher. This individuality wreaks out in a score of new ways trien-l-ially; but after all these fleeting local manifestations ar» reviewed, it is the same old types that are seen bobbing up in the end. Who does not know the Hardshell elector f Before Parliaments were, his fathers made their wooden mark on history as the m»n who bowed to the Crown "wherever seen, were it hung on a gooseberry bush. The Hardshell takes the Constitution strictly as a machine, and counts members as marionettes. Dress a pair of tongs in party garb, labelled -with The Ticket, and in default of a live nominee the Hardshell will, vote tongs in and man out with alacrity — nay, with a sort of giming pride in the fixity of his ironbark convictions. Also, 'the Hardshell has measured off the political course, beyond which even the- Party must never stray on peril of anathema. He lives for ever in the twilight of an administrative Golden Age, fixed uniformly some 70 years back. Only he will not own it twilight, but eclipse: the beauty and blessing of ordained authority will again blaze forth out of the vapours of anarchy ; it will be seen at last how well the world was wont to step to the stinging music of the cat o' ninetaris. How it is to be got back after so long a lathering of moral suasion is a knotty problem ; but he keeps on voting for The Ticket and hoping for earthquakes.

Bather more common than the Hardshell is the Weathercock. The Weathercock is as proud of his variability as the former is of his fixity. His convictions are kept in his pocket as long as be has a halfpenny there to toss for the issue. In default of a football match, a political meeting of any colour attracts him. He is a most voluble convert thereafter, hut only till the next ear-tickler comes hi* way ; for he is a wi6p of muslin esseni iaily free of party starch. Catch him in his good mood, bottle him in spirits <>f wine till polling dar, and he is your -nan. But beware lest he meet a spar-

ow on the way, for so much as a counter • fitter would unsettle the airy thing he

alls his mind. The Weathercock likes a lx>ld, swinging policy, and toys with halfmillion loans as deftly as <a kitten in pursuit of its own tail. The Weathercock has no ulterior motives, and is usually captured by the party that has nothing to give him.

Then- these is the- Log-roller, who is proud of having no politics beyond the sphere of his own backyard. While any general scheme of government is concerned," the Log-roller composes himself to ulumber ; but the merest whisper of a road, a bridge, or a water race would bring him back from the gates of Paradise. He misses no candidate ; and weighs each and all in his private scales from a bridge and water-race point of view ; he who tips the scale of promise by so much as an. ouncs is the Log-roller's man. For him, Parliament is merely a milch cow, whose total achievement is tolled up jealously by the quart every tkree years.

A fiequent type is the Leveller. His historical prototype was the Trimmer, of whose family the Log-roller is also an offshoot. The Leveller has certain affinities with the Hardshell, but prides himeelf on his open mind, in proof of possessing which he usually votes Gide about, and the party which has him to-day is lucky if it can claim him to-morrow. The Leveller is guided by two leading principles, not to let his memher ever feel secure or comfortable, and not to let heaven come- down too soon. The Levelle- expressly states that he is a reformer, but a sane one. He likes his reforms mellow. Most people would call them mouldy at a similar stage. Reform is such a precious thing, h© believes, that the country can ouly take it in email doses till it gets used to it. He lovts propounding ' schemes of betterment 1 , compensations, abolishments that will advance an inch a year like a travelling glacier -. any statute that will accompli>h its object under half a century is a rushing of legislation that jrives him cold shivers down the bacS. He believes in discipline for his member. The discipline is essentially of that masterful character exercised towards Mr Boffin by

Silas Wegg in the plenitude of his power. The Leveller never 6wdms with the stream. If the country is mad on leasehold, he is a freeholder ; if it leans to freehold, he swings back to Henry George. He constitutes himself a brake on the coach political. The most awful contingency he can imagine is Parliament getting -its own head on any line of action.

And what of the woman elector? Seeing her species is only 15 years old, one may hesitate at final classification. At the same time, the recent date of her political debut causes some interesting freaks of development to-day. One type has already passed away. The Romantic Elector believed that Parliament was a tournament where knights battled for lore of chivalry. That there were eelf-seeking ' Fronts-des-Bceufs and passion-scarred BoisGuilberts among the Ivanhces she well believed, but a smile fcom the Queen of Love and Beautj- would, scatter them as the dawn scatters the forces of darkness. Rapt in these airy imaginings she inadvertently took one sniff at the political stockpot, and died But she left a vigorous daughter behintf— the Hero-worship-per. The Hero-worshipper takes her politics stronjgiy, but relatively. All Parliament is only a S€tting for the gem of her adoration ; all causes are weighed only as they affect his chances or are affected by him: The- Hero-worshipper is a factor, and not a elight factor, m the political world. Her devotion is never wasted on a worthless object ; her ultra regard for the Man, not for Measures, always results finally in men and measures. The Hero-worshipper is an annual that flourishes in aH soils. I have seen her bloom alike in bower and scullery. The Hardshell is politically duplicated in his mate. But the ironbark resolution of the female Hardshell is more brittle, and therefore more jealously guarded. Not only will she not change *tbe convictions she inherited with her grandmother's spoons, she will not even trust herself to listen to counter-argument. She is even more suspicious than her mocdy lord, and never accepts co much as a * legislative pound of sand from the other side without an innate conviction that in the depravity of their hearts they have adulterated it -with sugar. As the Hardshell is, nearly always up in years, she is a difficult person to handle in argum-ent. The Plaintiff is a present, but passing, type. She is an exclusively feminine species, having somehow twisted the questions of sex and politics into one huge myriad-sided grievance. She was theperson who previously organised antifranchise demonstrations. As a woman, she is permanently offended at the placing of masculine responsibilities on her sensitive ehoul&ers. She carefully cherishes an aggressive ignorance of candidates and their riews, and in describing herself as dragged to the polling booth by the cords of debased public opinion, is" careful to I assign some contemptuous caprice as the ground of her final selection. Anything like a conviction would destroy her prestige as an objector. Curiously enough, this shrinking flower is never found in that cloistered retirement for which her fcoul ostensibly longs. On the contrary, fibe is well to the fore in the social world ; | and whether at church or fair, market or j junketing, never fails to obtain "her own at,, any rate." I have safd nothing about the Perfect ; Elector. Painting angels is pernickety j work, and I have always felt perverse .irritation at the shadow-less platitude of ' Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior." But ■ the perfect man elector exists, in whose ' clear sight public and personal factors I blend towards selfless issues. To such a j one add a deeper strain of loyalty, a fresher touch of enthusiasm, a more" suffusing touch of spirituality, and you have the perfect woman elector. And both are j as easy to find in this young Dominion , of ours as in any land that ever was, as well as in every land there in.