BRITISH CONSTITUTION

Taranaki Daily News, 30 November 1934, Page 10

BRITISH CONSTITUTION

SATISFACTORY AND SOUND EVOLVED FROM EXPERIENCE. ADDRESS TO EMPIRE SOCIETY. The view that the British constitution was sound and stable because it satisfied the Englishman’s habit of common sense, compromise and reverence for tradition was expressed by Professor J. Rutherford, of Auckland University College, in the course of an address to members of the Auckland branch of the Royal Empire Society. In discussing the merits of the constitution, Professor Rutherford said it must not be assumed that he was preaching counsels of perfection. The British constitution, in his opinion, was no ideal constitution. It was full of grave imperfections, anomalies and anachronisms, and encumbered by masses of useless usages, empty forms and flagrant camouflage, which had developed in the course of centuries of growth. Nor was the constitution all that it appeared to be on the surface. It had a great capacity for deceit, for changing its real meaning and method while preserving an ancient outward form. PRACTICAL GOVERNING METHOD. It was essentially a practical governing method evolved from experience, not erected in conformity with any consistent body of political theory or legal principle. It had evolved by reason of an endless chain of political compromises, and had emerged as something that was supremely illogical, absurd and unsystematic. “Its only redeeming feature,” said the speake - , “is that it works well, and that such is the illogical nature of the Englishman that it would be difficult to remove or alter. any *of its fundamental parts withdut doing grave harm.” Paradoxically, Professor Rutherford continued, it was satisfactory and sound because of its very imperfections. Its imperfections and inconsistencies stood for past compromises between divergent viewpoints, some of which were still entertained to-day, for links with the tradition of the past of which the average Englishman was not averse, to being reminded. The average Englishman, if there were such, was not logical like, say, the Frenchman; he was the man of plain common sense with a capacity for reconciling the irreconcilable. He was. also a profound conservative, in the better serise of the word, with a reverence for the past and an indisposition to give up what he already possessed. One of the chief virtues of the British constitution was the fact that it had never been defined or embodied in a set of regulations binding upon its rulers. Much of it was, of course, written in the sense that it was based on statute law. The constitution, rested partly upon statute law, partly upon case law, but essentially upon constitutional usages and customs—the “conventions” of the constitution—which had no binding legal force at all, and were simply a matter of custom and convenience. “The Crown does not now exercise a veto on legislation, though there is no law to prevent it,” • said Professor Rutherford. “Cabinet is unknown to the law, and the whole of the Cabinet system is a matter of practical convenience and precedent. Until recently the Prime Minister was equally unknown in law, and is now only recognised in the sense that he has an official place in the order of precedence. His place on the front, bench ’he holds in virtue of being First Ldrd of the Treasury, arid he collects his.salary for tha._ same reason.”

Because; it was notjrijnutely defined and depended so much on custom, the constitution was. flexible ' arid idapP. able. - There were rib special ■ impediments blocking constitutional' amendments in England as there were in the United States. Parliament, not the constitution was supreme. A flexible constitution had the supreme advantage of easy adaptability to changing conditions. The British Constitution had developed from a corrupt, aristocratic Parliamentary system to an efficient modem democracy, as compared with the United States, which was 150 years out of date. A REACTIONARY MEASURE. Referring to Magna Carta, of 1215, the speaker said it had often been regarded as the foundation stone of English liberties. In its own time it was essentially conservative and ■■ reactionary, not progressive or liberal at all. The importance of the document in later times was due to the fact that the event set up the principle that the King was under the law, and, secondly, to the fact that it had been completely misread by a group of Puritan lawyers in their search for legal precedents to quote against Charles I. “Nowadays, when dictatorship appears to be a panacea for all political ills, constitutions are Insecure to the extent that they impede concentration of authority,” said Professor Rutherford. “The English constitution need have no fear. It is a flexible instrument, and has a place all ready prepared, for the dictatorship of any outstanding political genius who can dominate Cabinet by the sheer force of his personality. But it is a sane dictatorship that safeguards against disaster by basing it upon the approbation of the public as expressed through the general election and the House of Commons.” For Britain and the colonies in general the constitution provided as sound and practical a governing method as was attainable, and one that was capable of development as need arose. So long as it preserved the ancient merit of continuity of evolution, as opposed to revolution, it had nothing to fear.