Voting and Voters.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 17624, 8 October 1921, Page 7

Voting and Voters.

As we were unable yesterday to iind room for the ltev. bather Hurley's lecture on Proportionai liepresentation —a subject, in tact, on which anything short of a verbatim report has very little value—we do not propose now to criticise it. That is to say, wo shall offer no comment on Bather Hurley’s exposition of it. But we may, without any unfairness to him or to other exponents, say that there is not the slightest warrant at the present stage of society for asserting that Proportional Representation would give us better Parliaments.

A better Parliament is a wiser Parliament, and in spite of tbe grave defects of the rough-and-ready method of election now in force, the legislature reflects with rather uncanny fidelity both the intelligence and the integrity of the electors. The most that any one claims for Proportional Representation is that it would bring Parliament into a kind of mathematical conformity with all sections of the populace. But even if it did that —and it would do it only if there were no thimble-rigging by ehtei'prising committees, and no blundering on the part of bewildered voters—the result would not be anything to boast about if the voters re. mained as they are. And the voters of any country change about as rapidly as its mountains.

It is no doubt desirable that legislative- assemblies of any kind should be broadly representative of tbe people for whom they legislate. It is not, for example, tolerable any longer that Parliament should be open only to landholders ; or to those professing a particular religion; or to men possessing a specified amount of cash. But no one seriously suggests that the “first past . the fiost” system produces tyrannies ike those. And if it be granted, as no one can refuse to grant, that the members of the Press Gallery, say, detect no essential difference between the people they listen to when Parliament is sitting, and the men they meet outside during the recess, it is a little difficult to regard any other voting system as a thing worth fighting about.