For the last two hundred years and more there have been in British politics two famous parties, named Whig and Tory formerly, and Liberal and Conservative latterly. Though perpetually contending against each other for office, they are not really opposite or contradictory. Society requires the operation of distinct principles for its maintenance and growth. Liberalism supplies one class of these principles, and Conservatism another. So far from being antagonistic, the one is really the complement of the other. Their true relationship is illustrated by likening them to the two forces by which our planet is propelled and kept in its orbit around the sun—the centrifugal and the centripetal. If either of these forces were annihilated, our globe would pass off and perish in the cold wilds of infinite space, or it would be drawn with increasing rapidity into the consuming heat of the central sun. So civilised society would be ruined, if either the force we term Liberalism, or the force we term Conservatism, ceased to operate. Being thus complementary, the one as necessary as the other to the welfare and progress of society—the one supplying what is lacking in the other—there is no incompatibility or real hostility between them. Now-a-days the two are united in happy wedlock, Conservatism seeking to preserve all that is good in our civilization, and Liberalism seeking to reach higher and further good.

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The great political battle of the time is not between Conservatism and Liberalism, but between Conservative Liberalism, and the Liberalism that is radical and revolutionary. A deep chasm separates these thoroughly antagonistic parties, one of whom seeks to conserve and improve our institutions on the lines of natural evolution, while the other seeks to upset and revolutionize society. In New Zealand we have numerous adherents to both parties who alike claim to be Liberals—the True Liberals and the new—Liberals of the old historic type, and the sham or counterfeit Liberals who form and support the Government now in office. One of the chief objects of The New Zealander is to expose our Government's travesty of Liberalism. The simplest way of doing this, and of exhibiting the difference between the genuine article and the brummagem imitation of it, seems to be to formulate the universally acknowledged principles of historic Liberalism. And, then, in the bright light which those principles pour forth, to inquire whether the legislation and administration of Government he in accordance with, or in opposition to, those principles.

The Liberal platform, in American phraseology, consists of seven planks. In British phraseology, historic Liberalism has seven notes, or characteristics, or points. Most people have heard of the five points of the People's Charter, and of the famous six points of Calvinism; and, in harmony with this mode of expression, we would set forth the seven notes, characteristics, points of the true Liberalism, to enable us to distinguish it from the fraud that now holds office.

I. Liberalism is the embodiment of true and great principles in legislation.

II. It claims for every one the utmost liberty compatible with the equal liberty of all others.

III. Taking its stand on the institutions our fathers have transmitted to us, it declares for Individualism against Collectivism, on State action in the common affairs of life.

IV. It upholds the institution of private property, and every one's right to the fruit of his own, but not of his neighbour's labour.

V. It advocates the co-extensiveness of taxation and representation.

VI. It is the reformer of all kinds of abuses.

VII. It is essentially progressive.

We maintain that these seven points or characteristics are all page 3 found in true historic Liberalism, and are all wanting in the new sham Liberalism of the day.