Page 4 Advertisements Column 4

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2015, 26 February 1907, Page 4

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. In -an article in tlio Independent He view entitled “Twelve Months of Parliament,” Mr. C. F. G. Masterman, M.P., reviews the new House of Commons, its moods, members, and manners, as revealed to him during the experience of the past year. He is confident that the great Progressive majority will enter upon its second year practically united, although this unity is something of a surprise when the profound divergence of opinion is recognised between the extreme right and the extreme left of the party of reform. “At the one end are representatives but little, if at all, distinguishable from the Conservative freetrader, and in many respects more Tory than the Tories. At the other are advanced Radicals, win. object to armaments or democratic government which were the shibboleths of the fifties and sixties in England, and convinced eol- ! lectivists, who, on socialistic legislation, are prepared to push forward more rapidly than many of the Labor party. A skilful Opposition, skilfully led, with a general not too scrupulous —a fourth party such as that of the eighties which plagued a similar Liberal dominance —could, I believe, thrust great wedges between these various elements, and materially accelerate the process of disintegration But at present there is no alternative Government, and to this extent the constitutional balance has broken down. The whole philosophy of Conservatism and Imperialism—at their best two large and generous visions—seems to have crumbled into nothingness.” The Irish party has chiefly impressed Mr. Masterman by its restraint, and of the Labor party, he says that instead of proving a muscular, bloated, truculent, domineering navvy, the reality is “a collection of men who, with whatever deficiencies, are essentially idealists .nourished on the great literature of the age immediately gone; reasonable, good-tem-pered, refined, courteous, popular with all sections of the House alike.” Discussing men, Mr. Masterman says that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is a dictator in the new House. “He could appeal at the last extremity against nearly the whole of his Cabinet to the House of Commons and that House would endorse liis appeal.” Mr. Asquith has his great financial opportunities still before him; Mr. John Burns has covered himself with modest glory as a Cabinet Minister in a year when his Department has not been severclv tested, and the real test of his capacity as a statesman is to come with the introduction and control of some large and controversial Bill of poor law reform or municipal development, and of Mr. Winston Churchill, “the most exciting figure on the Government benches,” the writer says: “It would be foolish to deny his ambition; it would, I tliink, be false to brand that ambition as fixed entirely on personal aims. With all its restlessness and eagerness, anti impetuous desire to do things quickly, there is a. great impulse also towards a national service, and a high vision of an Imperial!, work at home and abroad.” Mr. Bill-ell is accorded the greatest advance in reputation of the year.