Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1880. AN APOLOGY FOR CONSERVATISM.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XIV, Issue 3962, 14 October 1880, Page 2

Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1880. AN APOLOGY FOR CONSERVATISM.

In a speech at Auckland on the occasion of conferring a law degree, Mr Justice Richmond uttered the following sentiments : " The political sycophant who, in our days, fawns upon the numerical majority as in former times he would have done upon the single tyrant, is ever ready to flatter the people by the ascription to them of unlimited authority. In the doctrine of this base school the divine right of mobs replaces the divine right of kings. But the jurist concurs with the divine in asserting that political power does not confer moral right. No man or set of men can have a right to enact iniquity. Power is not the exponent of right. All human power implies a trust, and ceases to be rightful when it is abused to selfish purposes, whether by classes or individuals." Then he adds: "The lawyer, as a legislator, will carry with him this conviction ; for his studies will have taught him that every stable system of positive law must rest upon the foundation of eternal justice." The present Prime Minister made a speech on one occasion, in which he stated the Conservative doctrine, that — " It was not the | right of tlie people to govern ', but it was the right of the people to be wellgoverned." This true Napoleon creed was never more speciously stated, and it is evident that the Hon John Hall and Mr Justice Richmond hold the same principles on the question of democracy. Tho Judge obtains a rhetorical triumph by comparing the " divine right of mobs " with the " divine right of kings," and appeals for the approval of his audience by the equally sophistical condemnation of those who would flatter the people by " the ascription to them of unlimited authority," There is throughout the Judge's speech a cunning attempt to bring popular principles into disrepute by associating with them low and improper motives. To flatter the people would be of course indefensible; but to ascribe to the people unlimited authority h in our opinion the foundation of representative government in its truest sense. Separating the vulgar motive from the principle, we see at once the sophistry and the arrogance of the denunciation. Let us ask, what is meant by the people? Mr Justice Richmond would reply " the numerical majority." Accepting this definition, how is the authority to be limited, and by whom ? If by law, the people make the law and can unmake it. By the wise men advocated by Plato in his .Republic ? Who is to select them, how are they to be known? By the machinery of nominee or hereditary chambers and permanent judges? Has the nominee principle discovered the wise men as seen in their acts? Has the hereditary system obtained even the approval of reason ? We have what is known as Judge-made law in the precedents or decisions embodied in the Reports. This law, amongst the most enlightened of our jurists, is the opprobrium of our system pf jurisprudence. Witness the efforts of reformers to get

it into the form of the statute, so that the mind of the numerical majority may be directly brought to bear. But " the people " is used by Mr Justice .Richmond in a sense synonymous with the term "mob." The distinction, however, is most material. If we made laws in the market place, and decided cases by the majority of citizens, as in ancient Greece, "government by the mob" would be perhaps somewhat appropriate. A mob is simply a portion of the people unorganised. What democrat in this country or in England has ever advocated disorder or confusion as a method of government ? The universality of the suffrage is based upon the right of every free man to have a voice in the government of his country, which right is arrived at from the recognition of the principle that the people (meaning the whole of the free citizens of a country) have a superior claim to govern. The people are not governed ; they govern. This is the chief corner stone of the edifice of complete freedom. When the Hon Mr Hall announces that the people have no right to govern, but have a right to be well governed, the fallacy appears still more glaring. From whom are they to receive this right? What implied or expressed contract is there giving the right to any autocrat, be he an enlightened and upright one like Oliver Cromwell, or a selfish and conspiring one like Louis Napoleon 1 Absolutely none but the toill of the person in power. It is the same with every governmental device apart from the expressed will of the people. Or take our nominee chamber. It has no right apart from the will of the people who, through more or less defective machinery, are always recruiting its numbers. "The foundation of eternal justice" is more rhetoric of the same flippant order. Where is this eternal justice to be found? Practically we see it every day exemplified in the litigation arising from disputed rights in the uncertainty and obscurity of the law. Eternal justice indeed ! Justice for the rich man, and submission for the poor. This is the eternal justice we find in practice ; and is it surprising if we come to the conclusion that the wrongs of society spring from the long-prevailing rule of selfish men who have surrounded themselves with the arbitrary means of frustrating the national will as expressed by the whole of the people? The system of "eternal justice " seems to be for the benefit of the caste, and not for the public. ' No doubt the maxims are very excellent — so good indeed that they are carefully embalmed in a dead language, and for the most part are hardly translatable. We are further told that " the political influence of lawyers is a useful restraining influence in modern democratical societies." This we suppose we must discover in the difficulty of obtaining any material reform of our monstrous legal system. The truth is, the interests of the nation are always on the side of democracy, the interests of professional castes are always on the side of conservatism. It has been so from the beginning, and will be so to the end. The wisdom of the acts of government, is generally tested by the tendency of those acts to promote the welfare of the nation, that is of the people as a whole, and the sole pudge must be the nation itself. This is the vital principle of all political action ; and the sophistry and pedantry of high-sounding phrases, or the ingenuity of legislative and professional checks, are but the shallow and stale devices of selfish men to continue to themselves a monopoly of the power and authority which are fast passing away from them for ever.