THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 1908. THE MORALS OF POLITICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9026, 13 January 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JANUARY 13, 1908. THE MORALS OF POLITICS.

On Thursday last the Hon. J. A." Millar, Minister for Labour, addressing a meeting at Ellerslie, made special reference to the coming General Elections, the object of his remarks being to cement the Liberal and Labour Parties together. He has serious fears of a split, and a split would upset all calculations when the day of the Great Ballot comes round. He deprecated any action that would enable candidates to come forward and split the votes of the Liberal Party. "Let the Opposition," said Mr Millar, "put up their man and we will put up ours, and I have no fear of the result." He added that he was not afraid of a fair fight. This sounds very well indeed, but in poliI tics the meaning of the term "fair fight" has not yet bten specifically defined, and each party in a political struggle interprets the tern: as j best suits it. As a matter of"fact. fair fighting on the part of the Government in political contests lias been a minus quality for many years past, and, we fear, is likely to remain so until public conscience is aroused, and a more honourable system of political ethics is insisted upon. Is it a "fair fight" when a Ministry with the power of the State's Treasury behind it is enabled to hold out expectations during election time of lavish expenditure upon the districts its candidate are interested in, knowing that the electors know an Opposition or Independent candidate if successful would leave the electorate more or less beggared when the

Public Works Estimates came down? Is it a fair fight when Ministers travel the country from end to end free of personal cost, with ,a sheaf of lavish promises in one hand and a rod of threatening in the other, to advocate the cause of their nominees and kill the chances of all hostile or independent candidates? Is it fair fighting to use the funds of the State, just before a General Election in finding employment for thousands of men, who are discarded as being unnecessary shortly after the contest has been decided? Do these questions need answering? All this and very much more has been done in the past to influence elections, and have resulted .in securing a huge majority which has enabled the Government of the day to keep possession of the Treasury ■ Benches. There has been, as we have said, no fair fighting on the part of the Government during an election, and Mr Millar is uselessly throwing dust in the eyes of the people when he talks about such a thing. The people are not blinded by the dust; they have become too used to it. They can see the way the cat jumps through it all, and act accordingly. They do not want to have their districts penalised, and »o are constrained to vote for those who are best qualified by circumstances to dip their hands in the Treasury box. The political morality of the thing is shocking. The Ministry yearly brings down a sheaf of bills for Parliament to pass to make the generality moral by Statute law, ignoring *,he practices by which the same Parliament has been got together for the purposes of passing laws! Truly over the portals of the Parliamentary Buildings there should be inscribed in letters of fire the appropriate legend—"Sham."