Legislation v. Administration.

In the following pages I propose to draw a clear distinction between legislation and administration. Generally speaking legislation comes from the people, and its character is determined by public opinion, which originates outside of the parliament.

In the whole range of legislative enactment no important statute can be quoted, the principles of which were not carefully cultivated by public argument and discussion before the legislative stage was reached. Only after the enthusiastic individual reformer has become the centre of a group, when the group has increased to a multitude, when platform, petition and widespread contention have each done their quota of education, when the proposal for legislative reform has won the warm sympathy and support of platform, press and people—only then do political parties seize upon proposals popularised by forces to which, in a majority of cases, they contribute nothing, and a Government and a party becomes the channel through which an irresistible public opinion flows until it assumes the form of legislation.

The land, labour, liquor, old age pension and women's, franchise, laws of the past 12 years, for the passing of which the present Government page 4 claim exclusive credit, were all subject to the evolutionary processes described. All these reforms were practically passed by a fully-developed public opinion before they became law. Those earnest men and women who earned the opprobrium of their opponents—who spoke and wrote on behalf of their convictions., who sacrificed leisure and means on behalf of the "faith that was in them"—those are the real authors of legislative reform, and in pronouncing judgment upon the claim of conflicting parties at the approaching General Election, I submit that the claim that any particular group of public men are entitled to the exclusive credit for this or the other law deserves to be deliberately weighed, and, if fairly tested, in many cases the claim would be rejected.

I do not contend that the public is not indebted in some measure to members of Parliament who give expression by their political efforts to the people's demands for reform, but in all great movements the bulk of the hard educational work necessary to lift them on to the legislative plane is not done by Parliament, political parties or by Government, but by the rank and file of private citizens, and for these unanswerable reasons I urge the electors to remember that they are the actual authors of legislation, and only concede a just measure of credit when any political party makes preposterous claim to the authorship of beneficial legislation.

The general character of a country's legislation measures the character of the people and discloses the ethical standard of their political ideas.