Legislative Council.

I understand from him that he is in favour of the constitution of the Legislative Council being altered, and I here ask, Why alter it! Does he want the Legislative Council stronger than it is? If he wants that it will mean, I presume, that the Council shall oppose more vigorously than in the past the legislation that is proposed by the House of Representatives—in fact, that though our machinery has worked smoothly in the past, the Legislative Council shall be made so strong that we shall have an era of deadlocks. Does anyone want the Legislative Council any stronger? If not stronger, does he want it made weaker? If he wishes that, what does he mean? That there is to be less control over the legislation of New Zealand by this second Chamber than there has been in the past? If you will read what took place during last session of Parliament, you will find that the Legislative Council, while considering bills, never took the trouble to dispose of one clause at a time, but in Committee they actually voted for 100 clauses of bills at a time without a reading. It cannot be very well made weaker than it now is.—(Applause.) Why then, is the Legislative Council to be altered! I ask Major Atkinson, or anyone who desires an alteration in the constitution of that body, to say what he means, and whether the people of New Zealand are to allow a second Chamber to grow stronger, so that we shall have those ruinous deadlocks we saw occur in the neighbouring Colony of Victoria. Here I ask, Is a second Chamber necessary at all?—(A Voice: "No.") I assert it is not necessary.—(Applause.) I apprehend the only necessity of a second Chamber is to supervise and provide against hasty legislation. Now we can only judge of the good that our second Chamber has done by tracing its history, and I tell you that every vital bill—every bill that really touched our Constitution on a vital point, which was really a political bill—has never been checked, however crude. One has only to look at the Abolition of Provinces Bill—one on which the people had not been consulted, and one which, I believe, worked a great deal of harm to this Colony. What did the Legislative Council do with that bill? Only two or three members out of the whole of the Council saw fit to criticise it, far less to oppose it, If you look at the record of bills passed in New Zealand you will find that the only bill in reference to which the Legislative council seemed to take up a determined position was the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill—a bill nobody cared anything about—(laughter)—and at last they passed it. What good, I ask, has our second Chamber done? It has never taken up the position of saying in regard to a bill, "The people have not been page 3 consulted, and you must defer it until they can be consulted." There has been no bill altering a policy which has not at once been accepted. How are we to test its usefulness? I appeal to you to look at its past history, and you will find that in only two or three cases was any good done by its refusal to pass bills. And one has only to remember the history of second Chambers. How did they arise? Why, we well know from history that it was the House of Commons that was the second Chamber and that it was given to the people by the lords, in order that there might be some representation of the common people in England, and consequently the second Chamber grew in England out of political exigencies that we have not had in New Zealand. But we have had in New Zealand a legislative body that had no second Chamber. We had our provincial Councils, that had power to tax us—that had power to pass laws creating offences—power to deal with our whole social economy. They passed laws without any supervision from a second Chamber, and I say that if you weigh the laws they have passed they will stand just as careful criticism as any that have been passed by the two Chambers.—(Applause.) We therefore have tried the experiment, and I say that if there is any alteration whatever of the Legislative Council it will be an alteration that will cast greater power into the hands of the propertyholders—it will be an alteration that will give property greater weight and power than it now has, and if we are to alter it at all, the alteration I should suggest is that it be done without.—(Applause.) Now I come to the other point—" the functions of Government," and I regret that here we are now getting on to the twentieth century, and according to Major Atkinson's speech, after all our political training, after all the books on political science that have been published, after all the experiments in government we have had, extending back for thousands of years, we are reduced to this chaotic position. He says that what the duty or function of the Government, is, nobody knows.—(Laughter.) Certainly, if that is so, we are in a very lamentable plight. He says that the only thing that is to guide us is this: that we are to determine from time to time what it is for the advantage of the people that the Government should do. That is, a chance majority in the House is to determine what the functions of the Government are. I deny that that is so. I say that the function of Government, if we are to have true liberty in any State, must be limited, and that it must not depend upon a chance majority. Why, ladies and gentlemen, if the functions of the Government are to be determined by a chance majority, what will you say has been right or wrong in the past? A majority of people in England, and perhaps a majority of the people is Scotland, say that a State Church is right, and if you put the question to the people of Ireland, I have no doubt that a majority of the people would say that it is the duty of the State to support the Roman Catholic Church, I ask, If this is to be our test of the functions of Government, where is the true liberty for the individual—for the minority? I say that the whole function of Government is this: not merely to recognise the rights of the minority, but to recognise individual liberty; to so pass laws, to so manage its affairs, and to so administer the State, that there shall be given to every individual man the fullest liberty, subject to the like liberty to everyone else in the community.—(Applause.) I say that wherever the functions of Government tread on that liberty that Government is a usurper—that Government is becoming a despotism. I admit, however, to the full that in new countries—through want of historical associations, through want of the habit of organisation amongst residents in new colonies—the State may have to step in and do things that it is not necessary in old countries that Governments should undertake; but I say it is our duty to watch closely the inroads of the State on the individuality of the people. If we ever choose to say that the only limit of the State's functions are the views of a chance majority, we are laying the foundation for a despotism, the end of which we cannot now see; and I say that this theory of Major Atkinson's, that there is no limit of the State functions but what a chance majority may decide is the fallacy underlying the whole of his proposed political changes, with which I shall deal presently. And now I may say one or two words on taxation. He told us that Adam Smith's four canons of taxation were yet recognised as correct, and I may say this: it is almost marvellous, when one comes to read recent writers on political economy, to find how little they have yet done on this great question of taxation, and how little advance they have made beyond Adam Smith's four canons—"equality, certainty, convenience, and economy." The last three no one ever questioned; it is only when one comes to deal with the question of equality that any differences of opinion arise. I do not intend to go into Major Atkinson's figures—I have not time to do so—but I wish to say something about the question of the relative fairness of a