WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 September 1920, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. REVIEWING ITS CONSTITUTION. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, Sept. 17. The statement made by Sir Francis Bell in the Upper House yesterday will relieve him and his colleagues iff the Cabinet frorn the suspicion, which haa been widespread in political circles here, that they were conspiring with the reactionaries in both Houses for the removal of the Legislative Council Act of 1914 from the Statute, Book, Sir Francis made it clear that he had no sympathy with Mr. Cow's motion towards this end, and presumably he his colleagues as well as for himself. He would not be a party, he said, to legislation contrary to the Act of 1914, nor would he remain a member of a Ministry which would make such legislation a Government measure. In face of this emphatic declaration it is impossible to believe the Prime Minister is coquetting with the reactionaries. FAVORABLE TO REPEAT,. There can be no doubt, however, that there is an element in the Council, numerically strong, which would be very glad to see the elective principle, so far as it threatens their occupancy of their comfortable seats, consigned to the limbo of discredited and forgotten things. -It is safe to say that threefourths of the members of the present Council would not have the slightest chance of being confirmed in their positions by any system of popular election. The devotion of these members to the nominated system is not necessarily due to a sordid desire to retain their seats against the will of the people. In some ca,ses, at any rate, it is due to an honest conviction that the Government's prerogative of appointment is a desirable cog in the parliamentary machine, and that without it the country would be afflicted by a constant turmoil of legislative unrest.

\ THE PROGRESSIVE VIEW. Sir Francis Bell, however, is a safer guide in matters of this kind than are the gentlemen who are supporting Mr. Gow's motion for the repeal of the Legislative Council Act. Easily the most far-seeing member of the Cabinet, he realises, as none of his colleagues does, that much of the social and industrial unrest afflicting the Dominion at the present time is due to the subconscious sense pervading the whole community that its legislative institutions are not really representative of the mass of the people. The Legislative Council, as one of the progressive members of that Chamber lias put it, does not pretend to be representative of the popular will, exc'epF"so far as that will is represented by the head of the Government, who, even if he enjoys the confidence of a majority of the electors to-day, may be in a very different position before the term of his nominees expires,. All this contributes to the growing dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs.

TALKING AT LARGE. The loose fashion in which some members of the Council deal with matters of fact, which ought to be well within their knowledge, was exemplified again during the course of yesterday's debate. Mr. Gow. in moving his resolution, said the operation of the Act he wished to have repealed had been suspended at the instigation of Sir Joseph Ward, implying that the late Liberal leader had been opposed to the elective principle and to proportional representation. The truth is that Sir Joseph Watd was favorable to both these reforms, but objected to the method in which it was proposed to introduce them. Then Sir William Hall-Jones, who might have been expected to be more precise, argued that the Government's "increased majority" at the polls of last December proved it had the confidelice " o'f' the people. As a matter of fact, the Government was in a minority of 28,000 in the constituencies at the election of 1014, and in a minority of 12i>,000 at the election of 1019.