THE COLONIST. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1919. A REFORM BOSS.

Colonist, Volume LXII, Issue 15244, 4 December 1919, Page 4

THE COLONIST. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1919. A REFORM BOSS.

The disclosures made by Mr. W. B. Matheson, one of the Independent Reform candidates for the Masterton seat, are of interest for more reasons than one, Mr. Matheson spoke as a man with a grievance, and he really seems to have been hardly treated by the autocratic Sir Walter Buchanan, who appears to wield dictatorial powers in the Reform councils in the Wairarapa «iis>trict — we do not know how much further his influence extends. Mr. Matheson's melancholy story is told in another column, and it need not be recapitulated here. Two aspects of the matter which cannot fail to impress every reader of the statement of this gentleman who has braved tho wrath of Sir Walter Buchanan and let the whole country into the secret of the methods of party management practised antl countenanced by tTie Reformei's, are the unreality with which the incident invests their ceaseless claim to bo the only repository of true democracy, and the utter futility and hollowness of their professed anxiety to end the party system—"tho demoralising party system with all its iniquities and drawbacks," as Mr. Massoy describe it in his manifesto —and unite tho best brains of the country in one party which should be actuated by the highest patriotic motives. Prominent members of the Reform Party, from Mr. Massey and Sir James Allen downwards, have been insisting in season and out of season upon the essential identity of the two great parties, and the futility of their contending with each other. And at the same time no organisation existing for tho purpose of perpetuating tho party system has been more active or aggressive than theirs. The Masterton incident reveals the party machine at the last stage of its development, at its head a boss whose fiat determines the candidate to be presented for the electors' endorsement, that is, saving the presence of such contumacious aspirants as Mr. Matheson. What will happen to him in consequence of his not only insisting upon standing when Sir Walter Buchanan had told him so distinctly and peremptorily to desist from his unpatriotic course, but having actually the temerity to make the whole transaction public, we do not venture to predict. However, such striking evidence of the democratic proclivities of the Reform Party must give the electors furiously to think.