Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 1879.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 671, 8 April 1879, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald AND East Coast News Letter. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 1879.

AMONQthe various political associa- j tions formed m New Zealand and the Australian. Colonies, there is springing up a desire to adopt a new system of Parliamentary Government by minorities as -well as majorities. This is known as Mr. Thomas Hare's theory, which some years ago was embodyed m a Draft Act of Parliament, but came to nothing m the end. At the time of Mr. Hare's proposed change it met with the unqualified approval of John Stuart Mill, and £» number of thinking men of the politico-philosophical school. In order that this system of Mr. Hare's may be properly understood, we give a brief* but intelligible review as sketched by Mr. Mill himself. He says: — " According to this plan the unit of representation, the quota of electors who would be entitled to have a a member to ' themselves, 'would be i .ascertained by the ordinary method "of taking averages, the number of voters being divided by the number of seats m the House, and every candidate who obtained that quota would be returned, from however great a number of local constituencies it might JOti •" gathered. The votes would, as at present, be given locally, but any elector would be at liberty to vote for any candidate m whatever part of the country he might offer himself. The electors, therefore, who did not . wiah to |o>e represented by any of the local candidates, might aid by their vote m the return of the person they liked best among all those throughout ' the : country who had expressed willingness to be chosen. . . An elector may deliver a voting-paper containing other names m addition to the one which stands foremost m his preference. His vote would only be counted, for one candidate, but if the -Object of his first. choice failed to be returned from not having obtained the quota, his second,' perhaps, might be more fortunate. He may extend the list to a greater number, m the order of his preference. . . . To .obtain t}ie full number of members required to complete the House, as well as to prevent very popular candidates/from engrossing nearly all the suffrages/ it is necessary, however many ; votes a candidate may obtain, 3shat no more of them than the quota should be counted for his return ; the remainder of those who voted for him would have their votes counted for the next person on their respective lists who needed them, and by their aid complete the quota." These then are the chief features which are •worked out by Mr. Hare m elaborate detail., It may be m the memory of many of our readers that when the new Electoral Bill was before the House last session, Mr. Whitaker brought before members an alternative measure which embodyed the principles of Mr. Hare's sy stem. It was then Mr. Stout took occasion, m a long, able and masterly, speech, to discuss these principles very fully, which, m the opinion of the great majority of the Representatives, conclusively disposed of the subject to the annihilation of ' Mr. Hare's revolutionary, scheme. In the outset he -desired that by such measures public opinion would be fairly ascertained, which . he considered as one of the 1 maiirf objects : of political machinery. Mr. Stout says : — " "What would Parliament then become ? I suppose it would become something like this : The brewers, along with the publicans, woul ( return a certain number of candidates ; the teetotallers would return their candidates; the same with the banks and the runholders ; and possibly, if there were any question affecting the grocers, they would return ascertain number; and in-

stead of having a Parliament as every Parliament should be; with Responsible Government, containing two political parties with a distinct aim, with, to use an American phrase, a " definite platform" on which to stand, we should merely have a Pai'liament consisting of little knots of members, each with a specialty, and unable to look m the face any wide political question -which might be brought before them." In support of his views Mr. Stout quoted very freely from a treatise on " Order and Progress," by Mr. Frederic Harrison, who is not only distinguished as a political economist, but, as a keen logician, and master of a terse and vigorous style. "It is the election agitation and contest, not the election," he says, " which shows the balance : if there "were no election agitation, the election would show nothing of the true distribution of force." And he illustrates this by taking the case of any 10,000 persons voting individually as units, and the same persons voting organically as a community m a contest. In the one case there will be 10,000 opinions without any means of judging which express force and which express feebleness. In the other case, premising a full and free political agitation, the forces will already have proved their relative strength by influencing the voters. He thus concludes that "it is the " turmoil of the election contest, not the election, which really indicates political force." For this reason, m that it eliminates from the voting process, and from the result of the vote, just that one feature with its verdict of practical force which gives any reality at all. Mr. Harrison's conclusions all plan for a discriminating franchise for minority suffrages, and above all, for personal representation. " Personal representation," he says, " collects the scattered votes of units which do not and cannot act together politically; for they are widely different m space, and do not even know each other. For these reasons they have no collective or organic energy, and consequently are not political forces. They may be musters of highly intelligent persons ; but the more intelligent they are, the more likely they are to diverge m opinion. It would be as wise to assure us that the only way for an orchestra to render true music is for the various players to perform separately their own favourite compositions. The result of the vote might give us a mine of valuable views — an inexhaustible * Blue-book,' but it would not give us force or other ponderable political energy. It would give us a catalogue of opinions without the one thing — the previous collection agitation — which can make votes instructive, and correspond to realities." Mr. Stout remarks that the argument against the principles of Hare's system can hardly be better put, and he proceeds to demonstrate some of the practical results as affecting public men and the constituencies which would almost certainly result from its adoption. Men known throughout the Colony, famous or notorious as the case might be, would have the best chance of election. Specialty men — "one-eyed men," as they have beencalled — would also stand a good show through the totting up of the votes of those who hold their peculiar views ; but the candidate, however excellent his qualifications and mature his experience, who was unknown out of his own district, would have very little show, his own constituency being split up into any number of cliques, each having their candidate somewhere m the Colony, whom with the assistance of cliques elsewhere, they might hope to return. " There would be," says Mr. Stout, "the Good Templar faction, the publican faction, the runholding faction, the small farmer. faction, and a dozen others. He (the local candidate) would have all three different entities m his own district voting for districts outside, and he would have no chance whatever of obtaining a seat m the House." The advocates of Hare's system must be prepared to face this difficulty, which is likely to influence popular opinion upon the subject much more than the abstract merits or demerits of the scheme. The average ele itor does not understand much about political forces, their action and incidence, but he would be at once alive to the inexpediency of losing his local representation, and having some unknown utterly irresponsible individual, most probably "with a shingle loose," m his place, who has been elected, perhaps, by the aggregate votes of the Free-thinkers, Rechabites, or vegetarians. ,