MAJORITY RULE

New Zealand Tablet, 23 October 1919, Page 19

MAJORITY RULE

(By Very Rev. Dean Burke.) During the coming three months we are likely to hear often of majority rule —its rights and its glories. Majority rule is one of the political fetishes of our time. The numerical majority, we are told, must govern; it has the right to governthe inherent, absolute right to govern. If there be anywhere in the nation a divine right to rule that right is with the numerical majority. The Sovereign is the majority, and to its enactments our loyalty and obedience are duesome say, even, “morally due.” Though the absolute right of the majority to rule is now taken as an axiom by the ordinary man, still there are reasons why this axiom should be questioned at least by the theorist. hat right have Macpherson and Hodgeson, the majority, to attack O’Brien, the minority, and deprive him of his pipe, tobacco-pouch, and loose silver? Why should 51 men have the right to tax and rule the minority of 49? Why should the property, freedom, religion, and even the lives of practically-one-half the nation be placed at the mercy of the other half? What are the grounds in history, common sense, or expediency for the axiom majority should rule? -The right of the majority to rule is certainly not an “innate idea.” Descartes does not mention it amongst his primary intuitions nor does Kant give it a place among his mind-forms! Primitive men had no notion of it. They settled political questions by cracking heads, not by counting them. The Greek democracies did not recognise it. The principle is of comparatively recent use in history. It appears for the first time in England in the 13th century. A rule of procedure was adopted in 1215 by a committee of 25 barons to whom the duty was entrusted of watching over Magna Charta, and seeing that its pro-* visions were observed, especially by the King: The rule ran thus; “If those 25 barons are present and disagree about anything, or if some of them after being summoned are unwilling or unable to be present, that which the majority of those present ordain or command shall be held as fixed and established exactly as if the whole 25 concurred in this”’ Obviously the difficulty of reaching unanimity led this committee to adopt the decision of a majority. The convenience of the regulation was its sole recommendation, and it was adopted at first only in smaller questions— no strong minority protest was made. The yoice of the minority was always heard —even of a minority of one! In 1221 Peter Roche, Bishop of Winchester, protested against paying - a feudal levy and his plea, duly made, was accepted by the Common Council as valid" There is no record in those times of serious opposition by a minority of • importance being defeated by a majority of votes. But as Parliaments and representative bodies came to have a large share in government, decision by majority grew into greater use and was extended to graver issues. It was found to be a very convenient mode of reaching decisions and so as an instrument of legislation it has triumphed. The habit and tradition of discussion and protest, of conciliation and compromise, have gone into abeyance, and , the importance and powers of minorities have in consequence diminished. Once the legitimately-made protest of one man could save him from paying, what he considered an unjust tax; now a law passed by a majority of one man can influence the whole nation; take away men’s property, against their will, by taxation; can change the conditions in which they could' successfully carry -on their business can take their : children. and paganise them by a new experimental system

of education; can even regulate what the minority is to issue an fbo?t n one Half h .^ ia ' i ° r rule > brought ho its logical issue, about one-half the nation can coerce the other half flfindlnTim rU “ ful J. exerc ise, minorities, even powerful and intelligent minorities, have no effective rights The spectacle, says Sydney Low, of millions of free men' in a fiee country habitually governed in opposition to their u^ n nrlferT d own convictions, is so astonishing that u e prefer to avert our gaze from it ■ t . So majority rule, at first a principle timid and tentaour 6 1 oval tv i’ml gr ,°T to be the sovereign fetish to which our loyalty and obedience are morally due! In another paper we shall inquire into what its 'justification in the nature of things, in reason and in expediency, may be