“OR the Hinges of Custom, off the Hinges of Reason.”

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXV, Issue 13053, 22 April 1910, Page 2

“OR the Hinges of Custom, off the Hinges of Reason.”

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The result of the late elections in Australia seems to come to some as a surprise, if not as a mild shock. Others, again, who have a turn for philosophy or observation, see in it only a step towards the ultimate goal that mankind (it is tolerably safe .to assume) is destined to reach. Unsuccessful aspirants to office in explaining away a defeat seem to be lacking in candour or else their capacity for observation is below normal. There was no fluke or accident about that result. If it was an accident, then the passing of the military and birth of the commercial regime was also an accident. When society from time immemorial has been shaping its course to a certain end one can hardly call a step in the direction of its attainment an accident. This construction may in the circumstances be considered good policy, but we are dealing with universal determining factors rather than with shallow expediencies. I often wonder why in a highly educated community a desire on the part of the labourer to better liis condition, and that of his children who come after him expressed generally in an agitation for higher wages or shorter hours should be counted iconoclastic or socially destructive in a greater degree than the landholder, for instance, who strives to monopolise more land than he needs for no obvious reason other than the pocketing the increment which society earns for him. We have become so used to a "property qualification” that probably the strongest argument against the, rise of labour will he found to be that we are not used to it. We are built that way—what we are used to seems right, what wo are not used to seems wrong. Creed is undoubtedly a great influence in modern life, as indeed at all times it has been, but second only you must admit to our standard (property). We seem to be so constituted that we invariably and at all stages have ridden onr bobby (standard) to death. For proof of this go to the most highly civilised countries —England and America —for instance, the great centres of commerce and wealth, and note the “nation wrecking” conditions that have grown up under a property qualification, also the relative importance ,of respective influences on modern life. [ must .confess that the. result of the Federal election, he the chosen part-’s reign long or short suggests to my mind a weakening of the property standard, and the embryonic beginning of something better, something more in harmony with the higher modern conceptions.—l am, etc., OBSERVANT. ‘ Fordell, 21st April.