LIBERTY AND THE CITIZEN.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18354, 27 August 1929, Page 11

LIBERTY AND THE CITIZEN.

GROWTH AND BURDEN OF BUREAUCRACY. Walt. Whitman, the great American Democrat poet, wrote at one time of “the never-ending audacity of elected persons.” He was in this rather too severe on the politicians. As a philosopher, the poet loved and exalted the ideal of personal liberty. Free citizenship was to him the crown and glory of Democracy. In this he interpreted the feeling and aspirations of the average person—the gTeat mass desire liberty to the length of thinking they possess it, even where by supineness they have bartered it for a name or a theory. In the making of Government, national, local and subsidiary, civilised peoples have created a veritable frankenstein which becomes more and more a monstrous restricter rather than protector, for private freedom. The eternal grinding machinery of bureaucracy is not either the hand or brain work of the politician. It is the creation of all of us. The rulers and the ruled are alike its slaves. We look back to the earlier period when society was less complex, and life altogether more simple. Then the citizen was largely left to his own devices. He was free to regulate, control, and direct his own life's activities. The material, social and moral problems were for him personally to solve. Citizenship meant the exercise of character in the mass by the liberty of initiative afforded the individuals who compose it. With the increase of population and more involved conditions of life, we have turned to the scheme which seemingly required less trouble, that of exercising our citizenship by proxy. Representative Government, at least so-called, has been evoked to take the place of personal enterprise. What seemed at first the open door to greater freedom has proved in many directions the source of restraint, subjection and muliflcation of what were conceived as our j civil rights. The representative and the substitute has so far replaced the citizen that what we named bureau- ! cracy may be oetter defined as mass subjection to bureaucracy. Of the

making and administering of laws, regulations, Orders-in-Council (and without Council) there is little limit or end.

The citizen who suggests a halt in any of these proceedings is regarded as a heretic to the social order, or a person who is not taking politics seriously. Think of how the cult of being ordered has grown and developed. From a conception of the State as the Authority to keep the field clear and order the wrongdoer, the public mind has changed to think of it as the power to direct, regulate, control and subject all to its will. Citizens who paid taxes and rates to meet the circumscribed expenditures of the State and municipality are now taxed and rated to advance political schemes which entail fresh burdens of expenditure almost beyond limit. The bureaucracy we write of is not merely the power of public officials. Behind these, even when their actions are arbitrary, is the authority of representative Government and the indolent aquiesence of great numbers of the people. It is the order and system which places the State apart from and above the citizen to dominate, over-rule and direct in disregard of the value of individual liberty. The citizen is forced to pay tribute to the crippling of enterprise. In some instances, he finds his business regulated, controlled and directed by external authority as to leave him doubtful whether the ownership is anything more than nominal. To secure their common rights individuals find themselves forced to contend with, and even go to law, with the public bodies and often only those well placed or organised can secure justice. From being servants of the people, the State, representative and officials, have become the masters. That there must be public regulation, all will agree. That it has become excessive is the new slavery which the citizen has to combat. VOICES IN PROTEST. Nobody with understanding can fail to discern the growing evil of this bureaucracy. The Lord Chief Justice of England, speaking in Canada, the United States and Britain, has trenchantly dealt with this menace to our liberties. He stated that “he did not propose to hold his tongue on the subject so long as he had a tongue to use.” These are strong words from so eminent a man, and deserve serious attention from the public and Governments. Lord Hewart points out that the tendency of administrative departments to acquire wider powers and more stringent means of enforcing them, is gradual but constant, and that nothing can stay its growth but public opinion, and that constant vigilance is necessary if we are to preserve our traditional liberties. Our great Government Departments tend more and more to become directors, and sometimes rather arrogant directors, of our national affairs, and this is mainly due to politicians, often transient, being put in control of what are really vast business concerns. If this tendency for the servants of the public to become masters is allowed to grow unchecked, the name of self-government becomes, as Lord Hewart says, "a mockery and an irritating mockery.” In making these comments we do not desire to reflect on our heads of Departments, who are earnest and able men, but we do seriously call on the public to realise how bureaucratic interference with our private rights is growing, and urge that this growth be vigorously combatted before it has gone too far. The well-known slogan of President Harding, “less Government in business and more business in Government,” which our politicians have merely toyed with, is another protest. We will quote the fuller statement. “Government’s highest function is to serve business, and to give it the fullest opportunity for righteous activity. Business is wholly a private function. It is founded on the genius and enterprise and efficiency of those who conduct it .... . About the greatest service the Government could render is to take its hands off legitimate and honest enterprise, and tell it to go ahead and do the most and best that is possible. That is what makes a great commercial and industrial nation.” That bureaucracy is being recognised as an evil in the body politic is best known by the fact that leading Socialists in Britain and elsewhere are straining to find how they can establish Socialism without extending bureaucracy. In various directions they are suggesting State control under private ownership. One of their leading writers, Mr G. D. H. Cole, says: “The idea of socialisation remains; but perhaps we shall find that we no longer want to ‘nationalise’ any industry at all, in quite the old sense.” However, we find the Socialists speak with mixed voices. At one time they wish to limit bureaucracy, and on another we find this same Mr Cole speaking thus:— “We must go outside of Parliament. We must not try to be too Democratic. Democracy is no good for getting things done. The only means to achieve our ends is the widest bureaucratic power.” The truth that Socialism and Bureaucracy are very close akin; and whilst some Socialists wish to retain the former and dispense with the latter, others recognise that it is impossible to make the demand for "the widest bureaucratic power.” The]

ordinary citizens should rouse themselves to combat both of these in the interests of liberty and good citizenship.” (Contributed by Welfare League).