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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 67

Flaws Essential to Guard Against

Flaws Essential to Guard Against.

In contradistinction to these two classes of politicians there is a third, which believes that no true representation can be obtained where the system which seeks to provide it permits

(a)Any considerable section of voters to go unrepresented;
(b)Interferes in any appreciable degree with the liberty of choice of representatives on the part of the voters; or
(c)Narrows down the issue upon which representatives are to be chosen to anything below a national one.

Any system which does any or all of these things cannot but be vicious in its very nature, and is bound to be productive not only of bad, wasteful, immoral government, but of a depraved national sentiment regarding public matters which must ultimately work the ruin of any community cursed by it.

We in New Zealand are just now deploring the existence among us of very many of the evils referred to, and in our political agony are seeking page 14 (some of us) for a panacea on the right hand and oil the left. "Turn out the Government," cries one, who thinks he sees the fitting remedy. "Stop borrowing," cries another, feeling the burden of the property tax. "Drastic retrenchment, let us have that," exclaims a third, "the Civil Service is ruining the country." "Centralize," says another. "Give us back our Provinces," yet another. "Rogues all," cries a final one; "make us a Crown Colony for twenty years longer, we are not ready for representative institutions."