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PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
A STUDY IN METHODS OF ELECTION
BY
JOHN H. HUMPHREYS
HON. SECRETARY, PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THE RT. HON. LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH
First Published in 1911
TO THE MEMORY OF
CATHERINE HELEN SPENCE
OF ADELAIDE
AN UNWEARIED WORKER IN THE CAUSE OF REAL REPRESENTATION
INTRODUCTION
BY LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH
I believe this book will generally be welcomed as opportune. Proportional Representation has made very rapid, almost startling advances in recent years. In one shape or another it has been adopted in many countries in Northern Europe, and there is a prospect of a most important extension of this adoption in the reform of the parliamentary institutions of France. Among ourselves, every political writer and speaker have got some inkling of the central principle of proportional representation, and not a few feel, sometimes with reluctance, that it has come to stay, that it will indeed be worked into our own system when the inevitable moment arrives for taking up again the reform of the House of Commons. They know and confess so much among themselves, but they want to be familiarized with the best machinery for working proportional representation, and they would not be sorry to have the arguments for and against its principles once more clearly examined so that they may be properly equipped for the reception of the coming change. This little book of Mr. Humphreys is just what they desire. The author has no doubt about his conclusions, but he goes fairly and with quite sufficient fulness through the main branches of the controversy over proportional representation, and he explains the working of an election under the system we must now regard as the one most likely to be adopted among us. His qualifications for his work are indeed rare, and his authority in a corresponding measure high. A convinced adherent of proportional representation, he stimulated the revival of the Society established to promote it. He was the chief organizer of the enlarged illustrative elections we have had at home. He has attended elections in Belgium and again in Sweden, and when the time came for electing Senators in the colonies of South Africa, and Municipal Councils in Johannesburg and Pretoria, the local governments solicited his assistance in conducting them, and put on record their obligations for his help. The reader can have no better guide in argument, no more experienced hand in the explanation of machinery, and if I add that Mr. Humphreys has done his work with complete mastery of his subject and with conspicuous clearness of exposition, I need say no more in recommendation of his book.
It may be objected that the Royal Commission which issued its Report last spring, did not recommend the incorporation of proportional representation into our electoral system. This is most true. One member indeed (Lord Lochee) did not shrink from this conclusion, but his colleagues were unable to report that a case had been made out for the adoption "here and now" of proportional representation. Their hesitancy and the reasons they advanced as justifying it must lead many to a conclusion opposite to their own. They themselves are indeed emphatic in pressing the limitation "here and now" as qualifying their verdict. They wish it to be most distinctly understood that they have no irresistible objection to proportional representation. They indeed openly confess that conditions may arise among ourselves at some future time which would appear to be not necessarily distant, when the balance of expediency may turn in favour of its adoption. They suggest "that some need may become felt which can only be satisfied by proportional representation in some form or another," and I do not think I misrepresent their attitude in believing that a very small change of circumstances might suffice to precipitate a reversal of their present conclusion. All who are familiar with the conduct of political controversies must recognize the situation thus revealed. Again and again have proposals of reform been made which the wise could not recommend for acceptance "here and now." They are seen to be good for other folk; they fit into the circumstances of other societies; they may have worked well in climates different from our own; nay, among ourselves they might be tried in some auxiliary fashion separated from the great use for which they have been recommended, but we will wait for the proper moment of their undisguised general acceptance. It is in this way that political ideas have been propagated, and it would be a mistake if we were hastily to condemn what are sure and trusty lines of progress. When the Royal Commissioners, after all their hesitations about the intrusion of proportional representation even in the thinnest of wedges into the House of Commons, go on to say that "there would be much to be said in its favour as a method for the constitution of an elected Second Chamber," and again, though admitting that this was beyond their reference, express a pretty transparent wish that it might be tried in municipal elections, the friends of the principle may well be content with the line which the tide of opinion has reached. The concluding words of this branch of the Report are scarcely necessary for their satisfaction: "We need only add, that should it be decided at any time to introduce proportional representation here for political elections the change would be facilitated if experience had been gained in municipal elections alike by electors and officials."
A few words may be permitted in reference to the line of defence advanced by the Commissioners against the inroad of proportional representation. Mr. Humphreys has dealt with this with sufficient fullness in Chapters X and XI which deal with objections to proportional representation; and I refer the reader to what he has written on the general subject. My own comment on the position of the Commissioners must be short. Briefly stated, their position is that proportional representation "cannot be recommended in a political election where the question which party is to govern the country plays a predominant part," and, as elsewhere they put it, "a general election is in fact considered by a large portion of the electorate of this country as practically a referendum on the question which of two governments shall be returned to power." The first remark to be made upon this wonderful barrier is that a general election avowedly cannot be trusted as a true referendum. It produces a balance of members in favour of one party, though even this may fail to be realized at no distant future, but the balance of members may be and has been under our present system in contradiction to the balance of the electors; or in other words, a referendum would answer the vital question which party is to govern, in the opposite sense to the answer given by a general election. This is so frankly admitted in the Report that it is difficult to understand how the Commissioners can recommend adherence to a process which they have proved to be a delusion. Even on the bare question of ascertaining what government the nation desires to see installed at Westminster, the present method is found wanting, whilst the reformed plan, by giving us a reproduction in miniature of the divisions of national opinion, would in the balance of judgment of the microcosm give us the balance of judgment in the nation. If a referendum is really wanted, a general election with single-member constituencies does not give us a secure result, and an election under proportional representation would ensure it. A different question obviously disturbs many minds, to wit, the stability of a government resting on the support of a truly representative assembly. Here again it may be asked whether our present machinery really satisfies conditions of stable equilibrium. We know they are wanting, and with the development of groups among us, they will be found still more wanting. The groups which emerge under existing processes are uncertain in shape, in size, and in their combinations, and governments resting upon them are infirm even when they appear to be strong. It is only when the groups in the legislature represent in faithful proportion bodies of convinced adherents returning them as their representatives that such groups become strong enough to restore parliamentary efficiency and to combine in the maintenance of a stable administration. It may require a little exercise of political imagination to realize how the transformed House of Commons would work, and to many the demonstration will only come through a new experience to which they will be driven through the failure of the existing apparatus. Meanwhile it may be suggested to doubters whether their anxiety respecting the possible working of a reformed House of Commons is not at bottom a distrust of freedom. They are afraid of a House of chartered liberties, whereas they would find the best security for stable and ordered progress in the self-adjustment of an assembly which would be a nation in miniature.
COURTNEY OF PENWITH
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Current constitutional and electoral problems cannot be solved in the absence of a satisfactory method of choosing representatives. An attempt has therefore been made in the present volume to contrast the practical working of various methods of election; of majority systems as exemplified in single-member constituencies and in multi-member constituencies with the block vote; of majority systems modified by the use of the second ballot or of the transferable vote; of the earlier forms of minority representation; and, lastly, of modern systems of proportional representation.
Care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the descriptions of the electoral systems in use. The memorandum on the use of the single vote in Japan has been kindly supplied by Mr. Kametaro Hayashida, the Chief Secretary of the Japanese House of Representatives; the description of the Belgian system of proportional representation has been revised by Count Goblet d'Alviella, Secretary of the Belgian Senate; the account of the Swedish system by Major E. von Heidenstam, of Ronneby; that of the Finland system by Dr. J.N. Reuter, of Helsingfors; whilst the chapter on the second ballot and the transferable vote in single-member constituencies is based upon information furnished by correspondents in the countries in which these systems are in force. The statistical analyses of elections in the United Kingdom were prepared by Mr. J. Booke Corbett, of the Manchester Statistical Society, whose figures were accepted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as representing "the truth as correctly as circumstances will permit."
The author is greatly indebted to his colleagues of the Proportional Representation Society, Mr. J. Fischer Williams and Mr. Alfred J. Gray, for the cordial assistance rendered by them in the preparation of this book. Acknowledgments are also due to the editors of the Times, the Contemporary Review, and the Albany Review, for permission to make use of contributions to these journals.
J.H.H.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE NATIONAL WILL
The spread of Representative Government—The House of Commons and sovereign power—The demand for complete sovereignty—Complete sovereignty demands complete representation—Strengthening the foundations of the House of Commons—The rise of a new party—The new political conditions and electoral reform.
CHAPTER II
THE DIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS
The exaggeration of majorities—The disfranchisement of minorities—The under-representation of majorities—A "game of dice"—The importance of boundaries—The "gerrymander"—The modern gerrymander—The "block" vote—The election of the London County Council—The election of aldermen of the London County Council—The election of Representative Peers of Scotland—The Australian Senate—London Borough Councils—Provincial Municipal Councils—Summary.
CHAPTER III
THE INDIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS
False impressions of public opinion—become the basis of legislative action—Loss of prestige by the House of Commons—Unstable representation—Weakened personnel—Degradation of party strife—The "final rally"—Bribery and "nursing"—The organization of victory—Party exclusiveness—Mechanical debates—Disfranchisement of minorities in bi-racial countries—Defective representation in municipal bodies—Wasteful municipal finance—No continuity in administration—The root of the evil.
CHAPTER IV
THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES
The Limited vote—The Cumulative vote—The Single vote—The need of minority representation.
CHAPTER V
THE SECOND BALLOT AND THE TRANSFERABLE VOTE IN SINGLE-MEMBER CONSTITUENCIES
Three-cornered contests—The second ballot—Experience in Germany, Austria, Belgium, France—The bargainings at second ballots in France—The "Kuh-Handel" in Germany—The position of a deputy elected at a second ballot—The Alternative vote—The Alternative or Contingent vote in Queensland, in West Australia—Mr. Deakin's failure to carry the Alternative vote—Probable effect of the Alternative vote in England—The Alternative vote not a solution of the problem of three-cornered contests.
CHAPTER VI
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
The essential features of a sound electoral method—Constituencies returning several members—Proportional representation of the electors—Experience in Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, German States, France, Holland, Finland, Sweden, Australasia, South Africa, Canada, Oregon, The United Kingdom—The success of proportional representation in practice—An election by miners.
CHAPTER VII
THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE
Its present application—An English movement—The system in brief—Large constituencies—The single vote—The vote made transferable—How votes are transferred—The quota—A simple case—The transfer of surplus votes—The elimination of the lowest unelected candidate—The result—Different methods of transferring surplus votes: The Hare method—The Hare-Clark method—The Gregory method—The Gove or Dobbs method—The Model election of 1908—The counting of votes: general arrangements—The first count—The quota—The transfer of surplus votes—The elimination of unsuccessful candidates—The fairness of the result—Improved arrangements in the Transvaal elections—Criticisms of the single transferable vote—Effect of late preferences—Elimination of candidates at the bottom of the poll—Quota representation the basis of the system.
CHAPTER VIII
LIST SYSTEMS OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION.
The Belgian electoral system—The Franchise—Compulsory voting—Partial renewal of Chamber—The presentation of lists—The act of voting—The allotment of seats to parties—The selection of the successful candidates—A Belgian election, Ghent, 1908: the poll—The counting of the votes—The final process—Public opinion favourable to the system—The relation of the Belgian to other list systems—The different methods of apportioning seats to lists—Criticism of the d'Hondt rule—The formation of Cartels—The different methods of selecting successful candidates—Panachage—The single vote and case de tête—The limited and cumulative vote—Special characteristics of Swedish and Finnish systems.
CHAPTER IX
A COMPARISON OF LIST SYSTEMS WITH THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE
The influence of previous conditions—Party the basis of representation in a list system—The freedom of the elector within the party—Comparative accuracy—Panachage—Applicability to non-political elections—Bye-elections—Relative simplicity of scrutiny.
CHAPTER X
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND PARTY GOVERNMENT
Proportional representation and the two-party system—Burke's view of party and party discipline—Narrow basis fatal to a large party—Proportional representation and party discipline—"Free questions" in Japan—The formation of groups—The formation of an executive—A check on partisan legislation—Unlike the referendum, proportional representation will strengthen the House of Commons—Proportional representation facilitates legislation desired by the nation—Proportional representation in Standing Committees—Taking off the Whips—New political conditions.
CHAPTER XI
OBJECTIONS TO PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
The question of practicability—The elector's task—The returning officer's task—Time required for counting the votes—Fads and sectional interests—The representation of localities—The member and his constituents—Objections of party agents—Alleged difficulties in the organization of elections—Alleged increase of cost—The accuracy of representation—Summary.
CHAPTER XII
THE KEY TO ELECTORAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
Electoral problems awaiting solution—Simplification of the franchise—Redistribution—Should be automatic—Secures neither one vote one value nor true representation—The problem simplified by proportional representation—The case of Ireland—Three-cornered contests—Partial adoption of proportional representation not desirable—Proportional representation and democratic principles —Constitutional reform—Federal Home Rule—Imperial Federation —Conclusion.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
THE JAPANESE ELECTORAL SYSTEM—THE SINGLE NON-TRANSFERABLE VOTE
Failure of single-member system—Multi-member constituencies: Single Vote adopted 1900—Equitable results—The new system and party organization—The position of independents—Public opinion and the new system.
APPENDIX II
THE SECOND BALLOT: A NOTE ON THE GERMAN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1903 AND 1907
The effect of unequal constituencies on representation—The effect of second ballots—Second ballots and the swing of the pendulum—The second ballot and the representation of minorities—Summary.
APPENDIX III
THE SWEDISH SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
The former constitution of the two Chambers—The struggle for electoral reform—The Swedish law of 1909—The Swedish system of proportional representation—The allotment of seats to parties—The selection of the successful candidates—Free voters and double candidatures—An election at Carlskrona—The poll—The allotment of seats to parties—The selection of the successful candidates—The election of suppliants—Comparison with Belgian system—The system and party organization—The great improvement effected by the Swedish system.
APPENDIX IV
THE FINLAND SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
The influence of the Belgian system—Schedules and "compacts" in place of lists—An election in Nyland—Returning officer's task—The allotment of seats—Successful candidates in the Nyland election—Equitable results—Elector's freedom of choice.
APPENDIX V
STATISTICS OF THE GENERAL ELECTIONS, 1885-1910
Explanatory notes—The representation of minorities.
APPENDIX VI
PREFERENTIAL VOTING: THE TRANSFER OF SUPERFLUOUS VOTES
I. The element of chance involved: Its magnitude. II. Method of eliminating the chance element—Example.
APPENDIX VII
THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: SCHEDULE TO MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATION BILL, 1910
APPENDIX VIII
THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: SCHEDULE TO TASMANIAN ELECTORAL ACT, 1907
APPENDIX IX
THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: REGULATIONS FOR THE ELECTION OF SENATORS UNDER THE SOUTH AFRICA ACT, 1909
APPENDIX X LIST SYSTEM: BILL PRESENTED TO THE FRENCH CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, 1907
APPENDIX XI
LIST SYSTEM: LAW ADOPTED BY THE CANTON OF BÂLE TOWN, 1905
INDEX
"The object of our deliberation is to promote the good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences."
—BURKE
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE NATIONAL WILL
"The virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons, consists in its being the express image of the nation."—BURKE.
"It is necessary," said Burke, "to resort to the theory of government whenever you propose any alteration in the frame of it, whether that alteration means the revival of some former antiquated and forsaken constitution or state, or the introduction of some new improvement in the commonwealth." The following chapters are a plea for an improvement in our electoral methods, and although the suggested improvement and the arguments with which it is supported are not new, yet it is desirable, in the spirit of Burke's declaration, to preface the plea with some reference to the main feature of our constitution.
The spread of representative government.
The outstanding characteristic of the British Constitution, its fundamental principle, is now, if not fully so in Burke's time, the government of the nation by its chosen representatives. Indeed, so much is this the case that, in spite of the continued presence of elements which are far from representative in character, originating in that distant past when commoners had little, if any, political influence, the British Constitution and Representative Government are almost synonymous terms, and the "mother of parliaments" has given birth to so long a succession of constitutions of which the cardinal principle is representative government—the association of the governed with the government—that we cannot now think of our House of Commons save as the most complete expression of this principle. Nor, despite the criticisms, many of them fully deserved, which have been directed against the working of parliamentary institutions, has the House of Commons ceased to be taken in other lands as a model to be reproduced in general outline. New parliaments continue to arise and in the most unexpected quarters. China is insistently demanding the immediate realisation of full representative government. Japan has not only assimilated western learning, but has adopted western representative institutions, and in copying our electoral machinery has added improvements of her own. Russia has established a parliament which, although not at present elected upon a democratic basis, must inevitably act as a powerful check upon autocracy, and in the process will assuredly seek that increased authority which comes from a more complete identification with the people. The Reichstag has demanded the cessation of the personal rule of the German Emperor, and will not be content until, in the nation's name, it exercises a more complete control over the nation's affairs. Parliamentary government was recently established at Constantinople amid the plaudits of the whole civilized world, and although the new régime has not fulfilled all the hopes formed of it, yet upon its continuance depends the maintenance of the improvements already effected in Turkey. Lord Morley signalized his tenure of office as Secretary of State for India by reforms that make a great advance in the establishment of representative institutions. Some of these experiments may be regarded as premature, but in the case of civilized nations there would appear to be no going back; for them there is no alternative to democracy, and if representative institutions have not yielded so far all the results that were expected of them, progress must be sought in an improvement of these institutions rather than in a return to earlier conditions. The only criticism, therefore, of the House of Commons that is of practical value must deal with those defects which experience has disclosed, and with those improvements in its organization and composition which are essential if in the future it is to discharge efficiently and adequately its primary function of giving effect to the national will.
The House of Commons and sovereign power.
"The essential property of representative government," says Professor Dicey, "is to produce coincidence between the wishes of the Sovereign and the wishes of the subject…. This, which is true in its measure of all real representative government applies with special truth to the English House of Commons." [1] This conception of the House of Commons as the central and predominant factor in the constitution, exercising sovereign power because it represents the nation which it governs, has been notably strengthened during the last fifty years. A change having far-reaching consequences took place in 1861, when the repeal of the paper duties was effected by a clause in the annual Bill providing for the necessary reimposition of annual duties, a proceeding which deprived the Lords of the opportunity of defeating the new proposal other than by rejecting the whole of the measure of which it formed a part. This example has since been followed by both the great parties of the State. Sir William Harcourt embodied extensive changes in the Death Duties in the Finance Bill of 1894; Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in 1899, included proposals for altering the permanent provisions made for the reduction of the National Debt; Mr. Lloyd George, following these precedents, included in the Finance Bill of 1909 important new taxes which, prior to 1861, would have been submitted to both Houses in the form of separate Bills. The House of Commons, however, has not yet attained the position of full unqualified sovereignty, for, whilst the relations between the King and the Commons have been harmonised by making the King's Ministry dependent upon that House, the decisions of the House of Lords are not yet subject to the same control. The Lords successfully rejected the Education, Licensing, and Plural Voting Bills, all of which were passed by the Commons by large majorities during the Parliament of 1906-1909. Further, it refused its consent to the Finance Bill of 1909 until the measure had been submitted to the judgment of the country, and by this action compelled a dissolution of Parliament.[2]
The demand for complete sovereignty.
These assertions of authority on the part of the House of Lords called forth from the Commons a fresh demand for complete sovereignty—a demand based on the ground that the House of Commons expresses the will of the people, and that the rejection by the hereditary House of measures desired by the nation's representatives is directly opposed to the true principles of representative government. In consequence of the rejection of the Education and Plural Voting Bills of 1906, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in June 1907, moved in the House of Commons the following resolution: "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House, should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limit of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail." The first clause of this resolution advances the claim already referred to—that the House of Commons is the representative and authoritative expression of the national will—and in support of this claim Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman quoted the declaration of Burke, that "the virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the nation." In the Parliament elected in January 1910, further resolutions were carried by the Commons defining more precisely the proposed limitation of the legislative power of the Lords. It was resolved[3] that the House of Lords should be disabled by law from rejecting or amending a money Bill, and that any Bill other than a money Bill which had passed the House of Commons in three successive sessions should become law without the consent of the House of Lords.
These resolutions were embodied in the Parliament Bill, but the measure was not proceeded with owing to the death of King Edward, and a conference between the leaders of the two chief parties met for the purpose of finding a settlement of the controversy by consent. The conference failed, and the Government at once took steps to appeal to the country for a decision in support of its proposals. Meanwhile the House of Lords, which had already placed on record its opinion that the possession of a peerage should no longer confer the right to legislate, carried resolutions outlining a scheme for a new Second Chamber, and proposing that disputes between the two Houses should be decided by joint sessions, or, in matters of great gravity, by means of a Referendum. The result of the appeal to the country (Dec. 1910) was in favour of the Government. The Parliament Bill was re-introduced, and this measure, if passed, will mark an important step in the realisation of the demand of the Commons for complete sovereignty.
Complete sovereignty demands complete representation.
The Parliament Bill does not, however, contemplate the establishment of single-chamber Government, and it would appear that complete sovereignty is only claimed whilst the House of Lords is based upon the hereditary principle. For the preamble of the Bill declares that "it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis," and that "provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber." But whatever constitutional changes may take place, the national will must remain the final authority in legislation, and the ultimate position of the House of Commons in the constitution and in public esteem will depend upon the confidence with which it can be regarded as giving expression to that will. It cannot claim to be the sole authority for legislation without provoking searching inquiries into the methods of election by which it is brought into being. At a General Election the citizens are asked to choose representatives who shall have full power to speak in their name on all questions which may arise during the lifetime of a Parliament. But, although invariably there are several important questions before the country awaiting decision, the elector is usually restricted in his choice to two candidates, and it is obvious that this limited choice affords him a most inadequate opportunity of giving expression to his views upon the questions placed before him. There can be no guarantee that the decisions of representatives so chosen are always in agreement with the wishes of those who elected them. Even in the General Election of December 1910, when every effort was made to concentrate public attention upon one problem—the relations between the two Houses of Parliament—the elector in giving his vote had to consider the probable effect of his choice upon many other questions of first-class importance—the constitution of a new Second Chamber, Home Rule for Ireland, the maintenance of Free Trade, the establishment of an Imperial Preference, Electoral Reform, the reversal or modification of the Osborne Judgment, Payment of Members, Invalidity Insurance; in respect of all of which legislative proposals might possibly be submitted to the new Parliament. Obviously before the House of Commons can be regarded with complete confidence as the expression of the national will, the elector must be given a wider and more effective choice in the selection of a representative.
It is, however, contended by many politicians that the main object of a General Election is not the creation of a legislature which shall give expression to the views of electors on public questions. "A General Election," says the Report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems,[4] "is in fact considered by a large portion of the electorate as practically a referendum on the question which of two Governments shall be returned to power." But were this interpretation of a General Election accepted it would destroy the grounds on which it is claimed that the decisions of the Commons in respect of legislation shall prevail "within the limit of a single Parliament." Some means should be available for controlling the Government in respect of its legislative proposals, and the history of the Unionist administrations of 1895-1906, during which the House of Lords failed to exercise any such control, demonstrated the need of a check upon the action of a House of Commons elected under present conditions. Mr. John M. Robertson, whose democratic leanings are not open to the least suspicion, has commented in this sense upon the lack of confidence in the representative character of the House of Commons. "Let me remind you," said he, "that the state of things in which the Progressive party can get in on a tidal movement of political feeling with a majority of 200, causes deep misgivings in the minds of many electors…. Those who desire an effective limitation of the power of the House of Lords and its ultimate abolition, are bound to offer to the great mass of prudent electors some measure of electoral reform which will give greater stability to the results of the polls, and will make the results at a General Election more in keeping with the actual balance of opinion in the country." [5] The preamble of the Parliament Bill itself implies that the decisions of the House of Commons may not always be in accordance with the national wishes. It foreshadows the creation of a new Second Chamber, and the only purpose which this chamber can serve is to make good the deficiencies of the First.
The fact that our electoral methods are so faulty that their results produce in the minds of many electors deep misgivings as to the representative character of the House of Commons must materially undermine the authority of that House. All who desire the final and complete triumph of representative institutions—a triumph that depends upon their success in meeting the demands made upon them—all who are anxious that the House of Commons shall not only maintain, but increase, the prestige that has hitherto been associated with it, must, in the face of possible constitutional developments, endeavour to strengthen its position by making it in fact, as it is in theory, fully representative of the nation. For Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's quotation from Burke is double-edged, and may be expressed thus: "the virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons departs as soon as it ceases to be the express image of the nation." Such a House cannot furnish an adequate basis of support for a Government. For the Government which issues from it will not command public confidence. The debates in the House in 1905, before the resignation of Mr. Balfour, bore testimony to the fact that the strength and power of a Government which, according to the theory of our constitution, depends upon the number of its supporters in the House of Commons, in reality rests upon its reputation with the country. There was quoted more than once with excellent effect this dictum of Sir William Anson: "Ministers are not only the servants of the Crown, they represent the public opinion of the United Kingdom. When they cease to impersonate public opinion they become a mere group of personages who must stand or fall by the prudence and success of their actions. They have to deal with disorders at home or hostile manifestations abroad; they would have to meet these with the knowledge that they had not the confidence or support of the country; and their opponents at home and abroad would know this too." [6] The strength and stability of a democratic Government thus depend upon its capacity to interpret the will of the country, and the support which the House of Commons can give is of value only to the extent to which that House reflects national opinion. The Commons, if it is to maintain unimpaired its predominant position in the constitution, must make good its claim to be the representative expression of the national will. The measures for which it makes itself responsible must have behind them that irresistible authority, the approval of the electorate. If then our electoral methods fail to yield a fully representative House, and if, in consequence, the House cannot satisfactorily fulfil its double function of affording an adequate basis of support to the Government which springs from it, and of legislating in accordance with the nation's wishes, the resultant dissatisfaction and instability must give rise to a demand for their improvement. The House of Commons must re-establish itself upon surer foundations.
Strengthening the foundations of the House of Commons.
Each change in the constitution of the House of Commons—and its foundations have been strengthened on more than one occasion—has been preceded by a recognition of its failure to meet in full the requirements of a representative chamber. Large changes have again and again been made in consequence of such recognition since the day when Burke alleged that its virtue lay in its being "the express image of the nation." At the close of the eighteenth century, when these words were spoken, it could be alleged with apparent truth that 306 members were virtually returned by the influence of 160 persons.[7] The consciousness that such a House could not be the express image of the nation produced the Reform Bill of 1832, and a further recognition that a still larger number of the governed must be associated with the Government, produced the further changes of 1867 and of 1884, embodied in measures significantly called Acts for the Representation of the People. These changes, by conferring the franchise upon an ever-widening circle of citizens, have, from one point of view, rendered the House of Commons more fully representative of the nation at large. But even whilst the process of extending the franchise was still in operation, it was recognized that such extensions were not in themselves sufficient to create a House of Commons that could claim to be a true expression of the national will. The test of a true system of representation, laid down by Mill in Representative Government, has never been successfully challenged. It still remains the last word upon the subject, and, until the House of Commons satisfies that test with reasonable approximation, it will always be open to the charge that it is not fully representative, and that in consequence its decisions lack the necessary authority. "In a really equal democracy," runs the oft-quoted phrase, "any and every section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the representatives; but a minority of electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully represented as the majority." [8]
Mill's philosophy finds but little favour in many quarters of political activity to-day, and the rejection of his philosophy has induced many to regard his views on representative government as of little value. Even so staunch an admirer as Lord Morley of Blackburn has underestimated the importance of Mill's declaration, for, in a recent appreciation of the philosopher[9] he declared that Mill "was less successful in dealing with parliamentary machinery than in the infinitely more important task of moulding and elevating popular character, motives, ideals, and steady respect for truth, equity and common sense—things that matter a vast deal more than machinery." Yet Lord Morley, in his attempt to make a beginning with representative institutions in India, found that questions of electoral machinery were of the first importance; that they, indeed, constituted his chief difficulty; and he was compelled in adjusting the respective claims of Hindus and Muhammadans to have recourse to Mill's famous principle—the due representation of minorities. Mill, as subsequent chapters will show, understood what Lord Morley seems to have insufficiently recognized, that the development or repression of growth in popular character, motives and ideals, nay, the successful working of representative institutions themselves, depends in a very considerable degree upon electoral machinery. Its importance increases with every fresh assertion of democratic principles, and the constitutional issues raised during the Parliaments of 1906, 1910, and 1911 must involve a revision of our electoral methods before a complete solution is attained. The demand on the part of the House of Commons for complete sovereignty must evoke a counter demand that that House shall make itself fully representative.
The rise of a new party.
But the relations which should subsist between the two Houses of Parliament, whether the upper House is reformed or not, is not the only question which is giving rise to a closer examination of the foundations of the House of Commons. To this external difficulty there must be added the internal, and in the future a more pressing, problem created by the rise of a new organized party within the House of Commons itself. The successive extensions of the franchise have given birth to new political forces which are not content to give expression to their views along the old channels of the two historic parties, and the growth of the Labour Party must accelerate the demand for a more satisfactory electoral method. For a system which fails in many respects to meet the requirements of two political parties cannot possibly do justice to the claims of three parties to fair representation in the House of Commons. It is true that some statesmen regard the rise of a new party with fear and trembling; they imagine that it forebodes the bankruptcy of democratic institutions, the success of which, in their judgment, is necessarily bound up with the maintenance of the two-party system. The two-party system must indeed be a plant of tender growth if it depends for existence upon the maintenance of antiquated electoral methods. But those politicians who deprecate any change on the ground that single-member constituencies afford the only means by which the two-party system can be preserved, have failed to explain why this electoral system has not prevented the growth of Labour parties in Australia and in England, or why numerous parties and single-member constituencies go hand in hand both in France and Germany. Single-member constituencies may distort and falsify the representation of parties, but they cannot prevent the coming of a new party if that party is the outcome, the expression, of a new political force.
The new political conditions and electoral reform.
Why should the rise of a new party cause so much uneasiness? Can democracy make no use of that increased diffusion of political intelligence from which springs these new political movements? Mr. Asquith takes no such pessimistic view. He, least, realises that our present system is not necessarily the final stage in the development of representative government. He does not imagine that, whilst we welcome progress in all things else, we must at all costs adhere to the electoral methods which have done duty in the past. Speaking at St. Andrews, 19 February 1906, he declared that: "It was infinitely to the advantage of the House of Commons, if it was to be a real reflection and mirror of the national mind, that there should be no strain of opinion honestly entertained by any substantial body of the King's subjects which should not find there representation and speech. No student of political development could have supposed that we should always go along in the same old groove, one party on one side and another party on the other side, without the intermediate ground being occupied, as it was in every other civilized country, by groups and factions having special ideas and interests of their own. If real and genuine and intelligent opinion was more split up than it used to be, and if we could not now classify everybody by the same simple process, we must accept the new conditions and adapt our machinery to them, our party organization, our representative system, and the whole scheme and form of our government." This is not a chance saying, standing by itself, for a fortnight later, speaking at Morley, Mr. Asquith added: "Let them have a House of Commons which fully reflected every strain of opinion; that was what made democratic government in the long run not only safer and more free, but more stable." Mr. Asquith's statements take cognizance of the fact that a great divergence between the theoretical and actual composition of the House of Commons must make for instability, and his pronouncement is an emphatic reinforcement of the arguments contained in the earlier portion of this chapter.
On a more important occasion, when replying to an influential deputation of members of Parliament and others,[10] Mr. Asquith, with all the responsibility which attaches to the words of a Prime Minister, made this further statement: "I have said in public before now, and am therefore only repeating an opinion which I have never ceased to hold, namely, that there can be no question in the mind of any one familiar with the actual operation of our constitutional system that it permits, and I might say that it facilitates—but it certainly permits—a minority of voters, whether in the country at large or in particular constituencies, to determine the representation—the relative representation in the one case of the whole nation, and the actual representation in the other case of the particular constituency—sometimes in defiance of the opinions and wishes of the majority of the electors. The moment you have stated that as a fact which cannot be disputed, and it cannot be contradicted by any one, you have pointed out a flaw of a most serious character, and some might say of an almost fatal character, when your constitutional and Parliamentary system appears at the bar of judgment upon the issue whether or not it does from the democratic point of view really carry out the first principles of representative government. I therefore agree that it is impossible to defend the rough and ready method which has been hitherto adopted as a proper or satisfactory explanation of the representative principle. It is not merely, as more than one speaker has pointed out, that under our existing system a minority in the country may return a majority of the House of Commons, but what more frequently happens, and what I am disposed to agree is equally injurious in its results, is that you have almost always a great disproportion in the relative size of the majority and minority in the House of Commons as compared with their relative size in the constituencies. That is the normal condition of our House of Commons. I have had experience of some of the inconveniences which result." In speaking at Burnley in support of the Parliament Bill during the electoral campaign of December 1910, Mr. Asquith again laid stress upon the need of making the House of Commons fully representative. "It is," he said, "an essential and integral feature of our policy … that we shall go forward with the task of making the House of Commons not only the mouthpiece but the mirror of the national mind."
There can be no doubt that the question of electoral methods must now occupy a prominent place in all discussions which centre around the purpose, efficiency and authority of the House of Commons. John Bright, in addressing the people of Birmingham, on the eve of an election, exhorted them to "bear in mind that you are going to make a machine more important than any that is made in the manufactories of Birmingham … a stupendous machine whose power no man can measure." [11] Can we afford in the manufacture of such a machine to be content with rough and ready methods of election? Accuracy and precision are being demanded with ever-increasing force in all other departments of human activity; on what grounds then can we in the most delicate of all—that of government—refuse to recognize their value? The necessity of ensuring the predominance of the House of Commons in our constitutional system, the problem created by the rise of the Labour Party, the increased recognition of the need of reform, cannot but contribute to one result. The House of Commons will make itself more fully representative by the adoption of more trustworthy electoral methods, and in so doing will not only increase its stability and efficiency, but will render its constitutional position impregnable.
The indispensable preliminaries to any such change are, in the first place, an analysis of the results, both direct and indirect, of existing methods and, in the second place, a careful comparison of the improvements possible. The subsequent chapters will be devoted to both these aspects of the problem, for in the elucidation of the system most suited to British conditions, the experience of those countries which, faced with the necessity for change, have already introduced new methods into their electoral systems, will be found to be of the highest value.
[Footnote 1: The Law of the Constitution, p. 81.]
[Footnote 2: Our constitution is an ever-changing one, and had the country endorsed the action of the Lords in withholding its assent to the Finance Bill of 1909, a great blow would have been dealt to the authority of the House of Commons. The Fabian Society, in its Manifesto to members, issued on the eve of the election of January 1910, put this aspect of the case very forcibly: "It may justly be claimed by the Socialists that they have steadily refused to be misled by idle talk about what is and what is not constitutional, and have recognized that the only real constitution is the sum of the powers that are effectively exercised in the country. If the House of Lords boldly refuses supply and compels a dissolution, and the country, at the election, supports the Lords, that support will make the action of the Lords constitutional in spite of all paper denunciations by the defeated party" (Fabian News, January 1910).
The verdict of the country, as interpreted by the present mode of election, condemned the action of the Lords by a substantial majority. Yet the figures in Chap. II. p. 19, show by how small a turnover of votes that judgment might have been reversed.]
[Footnote 3: 14 April 1910.]
[Footnote 4: Cd. 5163, par. 126.]
[Footnote 5: Manchester Reform Club, 2 February 1909.]
[Footnote 6: The Law and Custom of the Constitution, p. 372.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 124.]
[Footnote 8: Representative Government, Chap. VII.]
[Footnote 9: The Times, Literary Supplement, 18 May 1906.]
[Footnote 10: 10 November 1908.]
[Footnote 11: Thomas Hare, The Election of Representatives, p. 18]
CHAPTER II
THE DIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS
"I therefore agree that it is impossible to defend the rough and ready method which has been hitherto adopted as a proper or satisfactory explanation of the representative principle. It is not merely, as more than one speaker has pointed out, that under our existing system a minority in the country may return a majority of the House of Commons, but what more frequently happens, and what I am disposed to agree is equally injurious in its results, is that you have almost always a great disproportion in the relative size of the majority and minority in the House of Commons as compared with their relative size in the constituencies."
—THE RIGHT HON. H.H. ASQUITH[1]
"English writers," says Mr. Archibald E. Dobbs, in the Irish Year Book, 1909, "often write as if election by a bare majority was the only natural or possible mode of election, as if it was like day and night, seedtime and harvest; something fixed and in the nature of things, and not to be questioned or examined or improved." The unquestioning habit of our minds goes even farther than Mr. Dobbs suggests. For, although prior to the Redistribution Act of 1885, every great town in the United Kingdom, with the exception of London, was a parliamentary unit, yet the system of single-member constituencies made general by that Act is now regarded by many as another essential and permanent feature of the English parliamentary system. But if, as this chapter proposes to show, existing electoral methods may result, and have resulted, in a complete travesty of representation, if these methods fail in every respect to fulfil the requirements of a satisfactory electoral system, then neither single-member constituencies nor the majority method of election can be permitted to stand permanently in the way of effective improvement.
The exaggeration of majorities.
Since the Redistribution Act of 1885, when the system of single-member constituencies was made general, there have been eight General Elections, and these are amply sufficient to illustrate the working of this system. A complete analysis of these elections, prepared by Mr. J. Rooke Corbett, M.A., of the Manchester Statistical Society, appears in Appendix V.[2] It will be sufficient for present purposes if attention is directed to some of the more obvious of their lessons. The General Elections of 1895, 1900, and 1906, resulted in the return to the House of Commons of a number of representatives of the victorious party far in excess of that to which their polling strength entitled them, and this result, repeated three times in succession, has given rise to a widespread belief that this system necessarily and always yields to the victors an exaggerated majority. There is, however, no clear conception of the extent to which these exaggerated majorities diverge from the truth, and an examination of the figures is therefore desirable. Here are the totals for the General Elections of 1900 and 1906:[3]—
GENERAL ELECTION, 1900
Parties. Votes Seats Seats in
Obtained. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Unionists 2,548,736 402 343
Home Rulers 2,391,319 268 327
Majorities 157,417 134 16
GENERAL ELECTION, 1906
Parties. Votes Seats Seats in
Obtained. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Ministerialists 3,395,811 513 387
Unionists 2,494,794 157 283
Majorities 901,017 356 104
It will be seen that in the General Election of 1900 the Unionists obtained a majority of 134, but that if parties had been represented in proportion to their polling strength this majority would have been 16, whilst the majority of 356 obtained at the General Election of 1906 by the Ministerialists (in which term, for the purposes of comparison, all members of the Liberal, Labour and Nationalist parties are included) would, under similar conditions, have been a majority of 104 only. The very important change in public opinion disclosed by the polls at the second of these elections was not nearly sufficient to justify the enormous displacement that took place in the relative party strengths within the House of Commons. The extent of the possible displacement in representation may be more fully realised from a consideration of the figures for Great Britain, for the representation of Ireland, where parliamentary conditions have become stereotyped, is but little affected at any election. An increase in the Liberal vote from 2,073,116 to 3,093,978—an increase of 50 per cent.—resulted in a change in the number of representatives from 186 to 428, an increase of 130 per cent., whilst a decrease in the Conservative vote from 2,402,740 to 2,350,086—a decline of little more than 2 per cent.—resulted in a reduction in representation from 381 to 139 members, a decline of 63 per cent. The displacement was even more pronounced in London, where the number of Liberal members rose from 8 to 40, and the number of Conservative members fell from 52 to 20. The violence of these changes was attributed to a similar change on the part of the electors, but it was much more largely due to an electoral method that exaggerates any changes in public opinion beyond all reason.
If, however, the results—not of two but of the eight General Elections, 1885-1910—are considered it will be seen that the current belief, that the single-member system invariably yields a large majority, rests on a very precarious foundation. The General Election of 1892, for example, gave to the Liberals (inclusive of the Nationalists) a majority of 44 only. In England (which, excluding Wales and Monmouth, returns 461 members) the Conservatives in 1895 and 1900 had majorities of 233 and 213; in 1906 the Liberals had a majority of 207; but in the elections of January and December 1910, the Conservatives had on each occasion a majority of 17 only. If Wales and Monmouth are included, it will be found that in the 1910 elections the Liberal majorities were 13 and 11 respectively. Single-member constituencies do not therefore guarantee large majorities. It can with greater truth be said that they guarantee wrong majorities, for, as the following table shows, there is no constant relation between the size of the majority in votes and the size of the majority in seats:—
General Election. Majority in Seats. Majority in Votes.
1885 Liberal 158 Liberal 564,391 1886 Conservative 104 Liberal 54,817 1892 Liberal 44 Liberal 190,974 1895 Conservative 150 Conservative 117,473 1900 Conservative 134 Conservative 157,417 1906 Liberal 356 Liberal 901,017 1910 (Jan.) Liberal 124 Liberal 495,683 1910 (Dec.) Liberal 126 Liberal 355,945
The majority of 44 seats which the Liberals obtained in 1892 represented a majority of 190,974 votes, whereas a much smaller Conservative majority at the polls, viz., 117,473, yielded in 1895 a majority in seats of 150. The overwhelming victory of 1895 represented the very slender majority of 117,473 votes in a total of 4,841,769, whilst at the next election, 1900, when the Conservatives increased their majority at the polls, their majority in the House of Commons was reduced. The Liberal majority in votes in the election of December 1910 was smaller than in that of the preceding January, but not the majority in seats. In 1886, the Conservatives obtained the large majority of 104 without having any majority in votes, and, if England is taken alone, it will be found that in January 1910 the Liberals had a majority of 29,877 in votes, and that in December the Conservatives had a majority of 31,744, whereas on each occasion the Conservatives obtained a majority of 17 seats.
The disfranchisement of minorities.
Politicians, to whom the one great saving merit of the single-member system is that it yields an exaggerated majority to the victors, would, if pressed, find it very difficult to defend the results referred to in the preceding paragraphs, and would be even more at a loss if asked to state to what extent they considered that national opinion should be falsified. The most ardent defenders of the system would hardly deny the right of the minority to some representation, and it is worthy of note that one of the reasons advanced by Mr. Gladstone in support of his decision to adopt it was that such a system tended to secure representation for minorities.[4] Yet, as prophesied in the debates of 1885, the minorities in the South and West of Ireland have since that date been permanently disfranchised; in the eight Parliaments, 1885-1911, they have been entirely without representation. This continued injustice is in itself sufficient to show how baseless was Mr. Gladstone's assumption that the system of single member constituencies would secure representation for minorities. This example, however, does not stand alone. In the General Election of 1906 the Unionists of Wales contested 17 constituencies, and although at the polls they numbered 52,637, they failed to secure a member; their 91,620 Liberal opponents secured the whole of the representation allotted to those constituencies. In addition the Liberals obtained the thirteen seats which the Unionists did not challenge. The minority throughout Wales, numbering 36 per cent, of the electors, had no spokesman in the House of Commons. This result shows how completely a system of single-member constituencies fails to protect minorities, and an analysis of the votes cast in Scotland in 1910, both in January and December, reveals the fact that the Unionist minority only escaped by the narrowest of margins the fate which befel the Welsh Unionists in 1906. The figures speak for themselves:—
SCOTLAND (Boroughs and Counties, January 1910)
Parties. Votes. Seats Seats in
Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Liberal 352,334 59 38
Labour and Socialist 35,997 2 4
Unionist 255,589 9 28
Totals 643,920 70 70
Every Scottish Unionist member of Parliament represented on an average 28,400 voters, whilst a Liberal member represented less than 6000 voters. The figures repay still further examination. One of the Unionist seats—the Camlachie division of Glasgow—was only captured as the result of a split in the Ministerialist ranks. The other eight seats were won by majorities ranging from 41 to 874, amounting in the aggregate to 3156. If therefore in these constituencies some 1600 Unionist voters had changed sides, the Unionist party, though numbering more than a quarter of a million, or 40 per cent. of the electorate, might have failed to secure any representation at all. With the single-member system more than a quarter of a million of Scottish Unionists only obtained representation as it were by accident. In the same election the Liberals in the counties of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, numbering 134,677, found themselves without a representative.[5]
The underrepresentation of majorities.
The failure of existing electoral methods to provide representation for minorities not only unduly emphasizes racial and other differences between different parts of the same country, as in Ireland, but often leads to a complete falsification of public opinion. The results in Birmingham and Manchester in the election of 1906 may serve as a text. As a result of that election these two towns were represented in Parliament as being absolutely opposed to one another—a heightened contrast which was a pure caricature of the difference disclosed by the polls. Manchester (including Salford) returned nine Ministerialists; they were elected by the votes of 51,721 citizens, whilst the votes of their 33,907 political opponents counted for nothing. Manchester was solid for Liberalism. Birmingham (with Aston Manor) was represented by eight Unionist members elected by 51,658 citizens, but here again the polls disclosed a dissentient minority of 22,938. The total number of votes in Manchester was 85,628, and in Birmingham 74,596. Manchester (with Salford) has one more member than Birmingham (with Aston Manor), because of the larger population and electorate of the former area. The Ministerialists of Manchester and Salford were equal in number to the Unionists in Birmingham, and it is interesting to observe that the former obtained additional representation because their opponents were more numerous than were the opponents of the Unionists in Birmingham.
The combined results of these two districts disclose the crowning weakness of a system of single-member constituencies. Taken together the Unionists numbered 85,565, the Ministerialists 74,659, and if the net Unionist majority of 10,906 had been spread over the whole of the two areas it would have yielded in each constituency the very respectable majority of 640. If their voting power had been evenly diffused the Unionists might have won the whole of the seventeen seats, whereas they were, as a result of the election, in a minority of one. This possible inversion of the true opinion of the electorate may perhaps be more clearly understood from another example taken from the same election,—the results of the polls in the county divisions of Warwickshire.
WARWICKSHIRE (ELECTION, 1906)
Electoral Conservative Liberal Conservative Liberal
Division Votes. Votes. Majority. Majority.
Tamworth 7,561 4,842 2,719 —
Nuneaton 5,849 7,677 — 1,828
Rugby 4,907 5,181 — 274
Stratford-on-Avon 4,173 4,321 — 148
—————————————————————-
22,490 22,021 469
The Conservatives, who were in a majority of 469, obtained one-fourth of the representation allotted to the county. Similar examples can be given from nearly every election. Thus the figures for the five divisions of Sheffield in the election of December 1910 were as follows:—
SHEFFIELD (ELECTION, DECEMBER 1910)
Electoral Ministerial Unionist Ministerial Unionist
Division Votes. Votes. Majority. Majority.
Attercliffe 6,532 5,354 1,178 —
Brightside 5,766 3,902 1,864 —
Central 3,271 3,455 — 184
Eccleshall 5,849 6,039 — 190
Hallam 5,593 5,788 — 195
—————————————————————-
27,011 24,538 2,473
It will be seen that the Ministerial majority in each of the Attercliffe and Brightside divisions was larger than the aggregate of the Unionist majorities in the other three divisions; yet the Unionists obtained three seats out of five.
In the same election the result of the contested seats in London (including Croydon and West Ham) was as follows:—
Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained.
Unionist . . . . . . 268,127 29
Ministerialist . . . . 243,722 31
The Unionists were in a majority of 24,405, but only obtained a minority of the seats. Had their majority been uniformly distributed throughout London there would have been an average majority for the Unionists of 400 in every constituency, and in that case the press would have said that London was solidly Unionist.
It may be contended that the foregoing are isolated cases, but innumerable examples can be culled from electoral statistics showing how a system of single-member constituencies may fail to secure for majorities the influence and power which are rightly theirs. In the General Election of 1895 the contested elections yielded the following results:—
GENERAL ELECTION, 1895 (Contested Constituencies)
Parties. Votes. Seats.
Unionists . . . . . . 1,785,372 282
Home Rulers . . . . 1,823,809 202
These figures show that in a contest extending over no less than 484 constituencies the Unionists, who were in a minority of 38,437, obtained a majority of 80 seats. In this election, if an allowance is made for uncontested constituencies, it will be found that the Unionists were in a majority, but in the General Election of 1886 the figures for the whole of the United Kingdom (including an allowance for uncontested seats made on the same basis[6]) were as follows:—
GENERAL ELECTION, 1886 (All Constituencies)
Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained.
Home Rulers . . . . 2,103,954 283
Unionists . . . . . . 2,049,137 387
This election was regarded as a crushing defeat for Mr. Gladstone. He found himself in the House of Commons in a minority of 104, but his supporters in the country were in a majority. The results of the General Election of 1874—although the system of single-member constituencies had not then been made general—are equally instructive. The figures are as follows:—
GENERAL ELECTION, 1874
Parties. Votes Seats Seats in
Obtained. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Conservative . . . . . . 1,222,000 356 300
Liberal and Home Rulers . 1,436,000 296 352
From this it appears that in 1874, while the Liberals in the United Kingdom, in the aggregate, had a majority of 214,000 votes, the Conservatives had a majority of 60 in the members elected, whereas with a rational system of representation the Liberals should have had a majority of 52.[7]
Such anomalous results are not confined to this country; they are but examples of that inversion of national opinion which marks at all stages the history of elections based on the majority system. Speaking of the United States, Professor Commons says that "as a result of the district system the national House of Representatives is scarcely a representative body. In the fifty-first Congress, which enacted the McKinley Tariff Law, the majority of the representatives were elected by a minority of the voters." In the fifty-third Congress, elected in 1892, the Democrats, with 47.2 per cent, of the vote, obtained 59.8 per cent, of the representatives.
The stupendous Republican victory of 1894 was equally unjustified; the Republican majority of 134 should have been a minority of 7, as against all other parties.[8] Similarly in New South Wales the supporters of Mr. Reid's government, who secured a majority of the seats at the election of 1898, were in a minority of 15,000. The figures of the New York Aldermanic election of 1906 show an equally striking contrast between the actual results of the election and the probable results under a proportional system:—
A "game of dice."
Parties. Seats Seats in
Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Republican 41 18
Democrat 26 27
Municipal Ownership
Candidates 6 25
Socialist — 2
It is unnecessary to proceed with the recital of the anomalous results of existing electoral methods. It has been abundantly shown that a General Election often issues in a gross exaggeration of prevailing opinion; that such exaggeration may at one time involve a complete suppression of the minority, whilst at another time a majority may fail to obtain its fair share of representation. M. Poincaré may well liken an election to a game of dice (he speaks of les coups de dé du système majoritaire,) for no one who has followed the course of elections could have failed to have observed how largely the final results have depended upon chance. This, indeed, was the most striking characteristic of the General Elections of 1910. In the January election there were 144 constituencies in which the successful member was returned by a majority of less than 500. Of these constituencies 69 seats were held by the Ministerialists and 75 by the Unionists. The majorities were in some cases as low as 8, 10, and 14. The aggregate of the majorities in the Ministerialist constituencies amounted to 16,931, and had some 8500 Liberals in these constituencies changed sides, the Ministerialist majority of 124 might have been annihilated. On the other hand, the Unionists held 75 seats by an aggregate majority of 17,389, and had fortune favoured the Ministeralists in these constituencies their majority would have been no less than 274. Such is the stability of the foundation on which the House of Commons rests; such the method to which we trust when it is necessary to consult the nation on grave national issues.
The importance of boundaries.
All these anomalies can be traced to the same cause—that with a single-member system the whole of the representation of a constituency must necessarily be to the majority of the electors, whether that majority be large or small. It directly follows that the results of elections often depend not so much upon the actual strength of political parties, as upon the manner in which that strength is distributed over the country. If that strength is evenly distributed, then the minority may be crushed in every constituency; if unevenly distributed any result is possible. In the latter case the result may be considerably influenced by the manner in which the constituencies are arranged. A slight change in the line of the boundaries of a constituency might easily make a difference of 50 votes, whilst "to carry the dividing line from North to South, instead of from East to West, would, in many localities, completely alter the character of the representation." [9] An example will make this statement clear. Take a town with 13,000 Liberal and 12,000 Conservative electors and divide it into five districts of 5000 electors each. If there is a section of the town in which the Liberals largely preponderate—and it often happens that the strength of one or other of the parties is concentrated in a particular area—the net result of the election in five districts will depend upon the way in which the boundary lines are drawn. The possible results of two different distributions may be shown in an extreme form thus:—
Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 4,000 1,000 Lib. victory. 2nd. 2,400 2,600 Cons. " 3rd. 2,300 2,700 " " 4th. 2,200 2,800 " " 5th. 2,100 2,900 " " ——— ——— 13,000 12,000
Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. victory. 2st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 3st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 4th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 5th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " ——— ——— 13,000 12,000
The gerrymander.
With one set of boundaries the area in which the Liberals largely preponderate might be enclosed in one constituency. The Liberals might obtain a majority of 3000 in this constituency but lose the other four seats. If, however, the boundary lines were so arranged that each constituency included a portion of this excessively Liberal area, the Liberals might obtain the whole of the five seats. In both cases the result of the election would fail to give a true presentation of the real opinions of the town. The influence of boundaries in determining the results of an election has been clearly realized in the United States for more than a century. Professor Commons states that whenever the periodical rearrangement of constituencies takes place the boundaries are "gerrymandered." "Every apportionment Act," says he, "that has been passed in this or any other country has involved inequality; and it would be absurd to ask a political party to pass such an Act, and give the advantage of the inequality to the opposite party. Consequently, every apportionment Act involves more or less of the gerrymander. The gerrymander is simply such a thoughtful construction of districts as will economize the votes of the party in power by giving it small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a small number of districts…. Many of the worst gerrymanders have been so well designed that they come close within all constitutional requirements." [10] Although the National Congress has stated that the district for congressional elections must be a compact and contiguous territory, the law is everywhere disregarded.
The word "gerrymander" has found its way into English journalism. It was used by Liberals in their criticism of Mr. Balfour's abortive redistribution scheme of 1905, and has been equally used by Unionists in 1909 in their criticism of Mr. Harcourt's London Elections Bill. On neither occasion was the word used in its original meaning, and, although its history is to be found in most works on electoral methods, the story may, perhaps, be repeated with advantage:—
"The term Gerrymander dates from the year 1811, when Elbridge Gerry was Governor of Massachusetts, and the Democratic, or, as it was then termed, the Republican party, obtained a temporary ascendency in the State. In order to secure themselves in the possession of the Government, the party in power passed the famous law of 11 February 1812, providing for a new division of the State into senatorial districts, so contrived that in as many districts as possible the Federalists should be outnumbered by their opponents. To effect this all natural and customary lines were disregarded, and some parts of the State, particularly the counties of Worcester and Essex, presented similar examples of political geography. It is said that Gilbert Stuart, seeing in the office of the Columbian Centinel an outline of the Essex outer district, nearly encircling the rest of the country, added with his pencil a beak to Salisbury, and claws to Salem and Marblehead, exclaiming, 'There, that will do for a salamander!' 'Salamander!' said Mr. Russell, the editor: 'I call it a Gerrymander!' The mot obtained vogue, and a rude cut of the figure published in the Centinel and in the Salem Gazette, with the natural history of the monster duly set forth, served to fix the word in the political vocabulary of the country. So efficient was the law that at the elections of 1812, 50,164 Democratic voters elected twenty-nine senators against eleven elected by 51,766 Federalists; and Essex county, which, when voting as a single district had sent five Federalists to the Senate, was now represented in that body by three Democrats and two Federalists." [11]
Mr. Balfour's scheme did not involve a political rearrangement of boundaries, and the word "gerrymandering" was thus incorrectly employed in relation to it, but so long as we retain a system of single-member constituencies a Redistribution Bill will always invite suspicion because of the possibilities of influencing the arrangement of constituencies which such a measure affords. Instructions are usually given to boundary commissioners to attach due consideration "to community or diversity of interests, means of communication, physical features, existing electoral boundaries, sparsity or density of population;" [12] but although such instructions are at once reasonable and just, they would not prevent, and indeed might be used to facilitate, a gerrymander in the American sense of the term were such a proceeding determined upon. It is quite conceivable that a mining district in which one party had a very large majority might be surrounded by an area in which the political conditions were more balanced, but in which the opposite party had a small majority. If that mining area was, in accordance with the wording of these instructions, treated as one constituency because of its community of interests and the surrounding area divided into three or more districts, the minority would in all probability obtain a majority of seats.
The modern gerrymander
The new constituencies required by the South Africa Act of 1909 have been arranged with the utmost care,[13] but had the delegates to the South African National Convention adhered to their original proposal to abandon single-member constituencies, they would have secured for South Africa, among other invaluable benefits, complete security from the gerrymander, any possibility of which begets suspicion and reacts in a disastrous way upon political warfare. The gerrymander is nothing more or less than a fraudulent practice. But the United States is not the only country in which such practices take place. Their counter-part in Canada was described by Sir John Macdonald as "hiving the grits," and even in England, without any change of boundaries, practices have arisen within the last few years which have had their birth in the same motives that produced the American gerrymander. In boroughs which are divided into more than one constituency there is a considerable number of voters who have qualifications in more than one division. A man may vote in any division in which he has a qualification, but in not more than one. He may make his choice. In Edinburgh for many years, on both sides of politics, there has been a constant transfer of voters from one register to another in the hopes of strengthening the party's position in one or other division. It was even alleged that the precise moment of a vacancy in West Edinburgh (May 1909) was determined by the desire to ascertain the strength of the Unionist party in that division, to discover how many Unionist votes should be transferred for the purpose of improving Unionist prospects or of defeating the designs of their opponents. This allegation may be wholly unfounded, but the single-member system encourages such a proceeding, and the statement at least indicates how the voting power of a division may be manipulated. The mere possibility of such an action arouses the suspicion that it has taken place. Similar practices have, it is stated, been pursued in Bristol. Votes have been transferred from one division, where one of the parties was in a hopeless minority, for the purpose of strengthening its position in other divisions. An examination of the figures of the election in Birmingham in 1906 shows that in one division, Birmingham East, the Unionists narrowly escaped defeat. They won by a majority of 585 only. In the other divisions the Unionists won by very large majorities. Must not the possibility of transferring surplus votes in strong constituencies to strengthen the position in weak constituencies prove an irresistible temptation to the agents responsible for the success of the party? They are entitled to make use of all the advantages at their disposal. In this way a new and more subtle form of the "gerrymander" has arisen in England, and if we are to redeem English political warfare from proceedings which approximate very closely to sharp practices, we must so amend our electoral system as to give due weight to the votes not only of the majority but of the minority as well.
The Block Vote
The analysis of the results of majority systems would not be complete without some reference to the use of the "block" vote in the London County Council, the London Borough Council, and other elections. In the London County Council elections each constituency returns two members, and each elector can give one vote to each of two candidates. The Metropolitan boroughs are divided into wards returning from three to nine members, each elector giving one vote apiece to candidates up to the number to be returned. [14] Both in the London County and London Borough elections the majority, as in a single-member constituency, can obtain the whole of the representation. All the defects which arise from parliamentary elections again appear, and often in a more accentuated form. The figures of the two London County elections, 1904, 1907, disclose a catastrophic change in representation similar to that which characterized the General Election of 1906:—
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION, 1904
Seats in
Parties. Votes. Seats proportion
Obtained. to Votes.
Progressive and Labour 357,557 83 64
Moderate 287,079 34 52
Independent 12,940 1 2
Progressive majority over
Moderates 70,478 49 12
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION, 1907
Seats in
Parties. Votes. Seats proportion
Obtained. to Votes.
Moderate 526,700 79 67
Progressive and Labour 395,749 38 50
Independent 6,189 1 1
Moderate majority over
Progressive and Labour 130,951 41 17
The London County Council elections.
A swing of the pendulum which, measured in votes, would have transferred a majority of twelve into a minority of seventeen, had the effect of changing a majority of 49 into a minority of 41. This alternate exaggeration of the prevailing tendencies in municipal politics gives rise to a false impression of the real opinions of the elector. The citizens of London are not so unstable as the composition of their Council, but it is the more violent displacement which forms the basis of comment in the press and of municipal action. These elections, too, like the Parliamentary elections, showed with what ease the minority throughout large areas may be deprived of representation. Six adjoining suburban boroughs—Brixton, Norwood, Dulwich, Lewisham, Greenwich, Woolwich—were, before the election of 1907, represented by twelve Progressives. At that election they returned twelve Moderates; indeed on that occasion the outer western and southern boroughs, in one continuous line from Hampstead to Fulham, from Wandsworth to Woolwich, returned Moderates and Moderates only.
The election of aldermen of the L.C.C.
The London County Council elections of 1910 gave the Municipal Reform party a majority of two councillors over the Progressive and Labour parties. The transfer of a single vote in Central Finsbury would have been sufficient to have produced an exact balance. It was the duty of the new Council to elect the aldermen, the block vote being used. The majority of two was sufficient to enable the Municipal Reformers to carry the election of every one of the ten candidates nominated by them, thus depriving the minority of any voice in the election of aldermen. The object for which aldermen were instituted was entirely set at naught, and this the method of election alone made possible. The privilege of selecting aldermen was used by the party in power, not for the purpose of strengthening the Council by the addition of representative men, but for the purpose of strengthening the party position.[15] The privilege has been abused in a similar way by the English provincial boroughs. In these boroughs, prior to the Election of Aldermen Act, 1910, aldermen as well as councillors took part in the election of aldermen. In some cases a party having once obtained a predominant position has, by making full use of its power to elect aldermen in sympathy with itself, succeeded in perpetuating its predominance, although defeated at the polls. The minority of the councillors, with the assistance of the non-retiring aldermen, has not only elected further aldermen from members of the same party, but has controlled the policy of the Council. The Act referred to merely prevents aldermen in municipal councils from voting in the election of other aldermen, but does not go to the root of the evil. An alteration in the method of election is required.
[Sidenote 1: The election of Representative Peers of Scotland.]
A further example of the use of the block vote may be taken from the election of Scottish Representative Peers. At the commencement of each Parliament the Scottish Peers meet in Holyrood Palace for the purpose of electing sixteen of their number to represent the peerage of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Unionist Peers are in a majority, and the block vote enables them to choose sixteen Unionist Peers. At the election of January 1910 Lord Torphichen, a Unionist Peer, who had voted against his party on the Finance Bill of the previous year, failed to secure re-election. Lord Torphichen was elected in the following December, but the incident shows how complete is the power conferred upon the majority by this method of election; not only political opponents but dissenting members of the same party can be excluded from representation.
The Australian Senate.
The block vote is used also in the election of members of the Australian Senate. Each State elects six senators, half of whom retire every three years. Each State is polled as a separate constituency, and each elector has three votes. At the election of 1910 the Labour Party polled the highest number of votes in each of the States, and thus succeeded in returning eighteen senators, all other parties obtaining none. The figures here given for the elections in Victoria and New South Wales show that in Victoria the successful candidates were not even supported by a majority of electors, and that in both States the excess of the successful over their leading opponents was so small that a slight turn over would have completely altered the result of the elections:—
ELECTION of AUSTRALIAN SENATORS, 1910
Victoria.
Successful. Unsuccessful.
Findley (Lab.)….217,673 Best (Fusionist) ……. 213,976
Barker (Lab.)…..216,199 Trenwith (Fusionist)…. 211,058
Blakey (Lab.)…..215,117 M'Cay (Fusionist) …… 195,477
Goldstein (Independent) 53,583
Ronald (Independent) … 18,380
648,889 692,474
New South Wales.
Successful. Unsuccessful.
A.M'Dougall(Lab.) …, 249,212 J.P. Gray (Fusionist)… 220,569
A. Gardiner (Lab.) … 247,047 E. Pulsford (Fusionist). 214,889
A. Rae (Lab.)……….239,307 J. C. Neild (Fusionist). 212,150
J. Norton (Independ.)… 50,893
R. Mackenzie (Independ.) 13,608
J.O. Maroney (Independ.) 9,660
T. Hoare (Independ.)…. 8,432
735,566 730,201
London Borough Councils
The London Borough Council elections yield results equally unsatisfactory. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords which, in 1907, examined the Municipal Representation Bill introduced by Lord Courtney of Penwith, sums up these results in the following paragraphs:—
"If the different wards are similar in character, the majority, even if little more than one-half, may secure all the seats. For instance, in one borough the Progressives, with 19,430 votes, obtained all the 30 seats, and the Municipal Reformers, though they polled 11,416 votes, did not obtain even one; while, on the contrary, in four other boroughs the Progressives did not secure any representation. "On the other hand, the system does not in all cases secure power to the majority. If the wards are dissimilar and the majority too much condensed in certain districts, the minority may secure a majority of seats, as in the case of one borough where 46,000 votes secured 30 seats, while 54,000 votes only obtained 24.
"The system leads to violent fluctuations. If the two great parties are nearly evenly divided, it is obvious that a comparatively small change may create a revolution in the representation. In Lewisham, at the 1903 election, the Progressives had 34 seats and the Moderates only 6; in 1905, on the other hand, the Municipal Reformers obtained all the 42 seats, and the Progressives failed to secure even one."[16]
One example will suffice to illustrate the findings of this Committee.
Here are the results of two wards in the Borough of Battersea:—
BATTERSEA BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTION, 1906
Ward Votes Obtained.
Municipal Reform Progressive
Candidates. Candidates.
Shaftesbury 786 905 }
(six seats) 777 902 }
769 899 }all
753 895 }successful.
753 891 }
741 852 }
——- ——-
Totals 4,579 5,344
St. John's 747 } 217
(three seats) 691 }all 197
686 }successful. 191
——- ——-
Totals 2,124 605
Totals for both wards 6,703 5,949
These tables disclose some curious anomalies. Each elector in the Shaftesbury ward has six votes—the ward being entitled to six Councillors—whereas each elector in the St. John's ward, which is only entitled to three Councillors, has but three votes. The additional representation is allotted to the Shaftesbury ward because of its larger electorate, but the only electors to reap any advantage from this fact are the Progressives. The presence in the ward of a large number of citizens who are Municipal Reformers has merely had the effect of increasing the amount of representation obtained by their opponents. Further, the number of Municipal Reformers in the Shaftesbury ward exceeded the number of Municipal Reformers in the St. John's ward; in the former they obtained no representation, in the latter they obtained three seats. The two wards taken together showed a net majority in votes of 754 for the Municipal Reformers who, however, only secured three seats out of nine. Taking the Borough as a whole the Municipal Reformers obtained 24 representatives with 53,910 votes, whereas the Progressives obtained 30 representatives with 46,274 votes.
Provincial Municipal Councils.
Nor are the results of the Provincial Borough elections more satisfactory. These boroughs are usually divided into wards returning three or six members each. One-third of the councillors retire each year, and each ward is called upon to elect one or two councillors, as the case may be. The figures for the Municipal elections held in November 1908, at Manchester, Bradford, and Leeds disclose a similar discrepancy between the votes polled and the seats obtained. [See table below.]
BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTIONS, 1908
Parties Votes Seats Seats in
Polled. Obtained. proportion
to Votes.
Manchester.
Conservative 25,724 14 10
Independent 11,107 3 4
Liberal 14,474 7 6
Labour and Socialist 15,963 2 6
Bradford.
Conservative 12,809 10 6
Liberal 12,106 6 5
Socialist-Labour 11,388 0 5
Independent 1,709 1 1
Leeds.
Conservative 18,145 8 5
Liberal 19,507 3 5
Socialist-Labour 9,615 1 2
Independent 3,046 1 1
Summary.
The examples given in this chapter may be briefly summarised. The same defects are disclosed in Parliamentary, County Council and Municipal (both metropolitan and provincial) elections. These defects may be classified under three heads: (1) often a gross exaggeration of the strength of the victorious party; (2) sometimes a complete disfranchisement of the minority; and (3) at other times a failure of a majority of citizens to obtain their due share of representation. In addition, running through all the results, there is an element of instability due to the fact that a slight change in public opinion may produce an altogether disproportionate effect, the violence of the swing of the pendulum arising more from the electoral method than from the fickleness of the electorate. These defects all spring from the same root cause—that the representation of any constituency is awarded to the majority of the electors in that constituency irrespective of the size of the majority; that the votes of the minority count for nothing. The result of a General Election is thus often dependent not upon the relative strengths of political forces, but upon the chance way in which those forces are distributed, and in a considerable measure may be influenced by the way in which the boundaries of constituencies are drawn. Such a system invites and encourages gerrymandering, both in its original and modern forms, but this detestable practice can be made of no avail and the results of elections rendered trustworthy if we so reform present methods as to give due weight to the strength of each political party irrespective of the way in which that strength may be distributed.
[Footnote 1: Reply to Deputation, House of Commons, 10 November 1908.]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Corbett's analyses were accepted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as "representing the truth as nearly as circumstances will permit."—Report, p. 31.]
[Footnote 3: There is a marked difference between the electoral conditions of Great Britain and Ireland, but as the Government of the day depends for support upon a majority of the representatives of all parts of the kingdom, the figures here given are those for the United Kingdom.]
[Footnote 4: Mr. Gladstone, in introducing the Redistribution of Seats Bill, 1 December 1884, said: "The recommendations of this system (one-member districts) I think are these—that it is very economical, it is very simple, and it goes a very long way towards that which many gentlemen have much at heart, viz., what is roughly termed representation of minorities."—Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 294, p. 379.]
[Footnote 5: Other examples are given in Appendix V. The representation of minorities varies very considerably in amount, and, as shown in the Appendix, depends not upon their size but upon the way in which they are distributed over the electoral area.]
[Footnote 6: The basis of calculation, as explained by Mr. Rooke Corbett, is as follows: "It seems to me reasonable to suppose that those changes of public opinion which affected the contested constituencies affected the uncontested constituencies also, and therefore, in estimating the number of voters in an uncontested constituency, I have assumed that the strength of each party varied from one election to another in the same ratio as in the contested constituencies in the same county."—P. R. Pamphlet, No. 14. Recent Electoral Statistics, p. 5.]
[Footnote 7: These figures are taken from an article by Robert B.
Hayward in The Nineteenth Century, February 1884, p. 295.]
[Footnote 8: Proportional Representation, by Professor Commons, p. 52 et seq. For further examples in the United States the reader should consult Chapter III. of Professor Commons' book.]
[Footnote 9: Preferential Voting, by the Right Hon. J. Parker Smith. p. 8.]
[Footnote 10: Proportional Representation, p. 50.]
[Footnote 11: The Machinery of Politics, W. R. Warn, 1872.]
[Footnote 12: Such instructions are contained in Clause 40 of the South
African Act, signed by the South African National Convention at
Bloemfontein, 11 May 1909.]
[Footnote 13: See Report of Delimitation Commission.]
[Footnote 14: This electoral method is known by various names. In Australia it is called the block vote, in the United States the general ticket, on the Continent the scrutin de liste.]
[Footnote 15: The action was defended on the ground that the Municipal
Reform party had obtained a majority of 39,653 votes at the polls.]
[Footnote 16: Report on Municipal Representation Bill (H.L.), 1907 (132), p. vi.]
CHAPTER III
THE INDIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS
"Nous attachons un intêrét vital, presque aussi grand, à la forme dans laquello on consulte la nation qu'au principe lui-mème du suffrage universel."—GAMBETTA
False impressions of public opinion.
The first and immediate consequence arising from present electoral methods is the growth of false impressions of the true tendencies of public opinion, impressions that are still further distorted by the exaggerations of the press. The winning of a seat is always a "brilliant victory," and a "crushing defeat" for the other side. The German General Election of 1907 affords an excellent illustration of these false impressions. The Social Democrats lost nearly 50 per cent. of their previous representation, and an outburst of delight arose in certain journals over their "crushing defeat." But the Socialists' poll showed an increase of a quarter of a million, and although their total poll had not increased in quite the same proportion as that of other parties, the figures showed that the Social Democrats were still by far the largest party in Germany. The number of seats won were no true index to the movements in political forces. Not only the press, however, but some of the most careful writers on modern tendencies in politics are also misled by these false impressions. The General Election of 1895, in which there was a majority of 117,473 for the Unionists in a total of 4,841,769 votes, is a case in point. This election has often been chosen as marking the commencement of a period of strong reaction in political thought. Writers have been misled by the overwhelming majority in seats obtained by the Unionists at that election. They have entirely ignored the figures of the polls, and these, the only safe guide to the opinions of the electors, show that the reaction was far less strong than is usually supposed.
False impressions become the basis of legislative action.
False impressions of public opinion, however, lead to an indirect effect of much greater importance. The false impression becomes the basis of action, and an apparent triumph for reaction makes a "reactionary" policy much more easy of achievement. Similarly an apparent triumph for a "progressive" policy facilitates its adoption. For the House of Commons is still the most powerful factor in determining our political destinies, and hence these false results have a very material effect in the shaping of history. If the opinion of the people had been truly represented in the Parliaments elected in 1895 and 1900, is it not almost a certainty that the legislation of those two Parliaments would have been considerably modified? Or, to go further back to the election of 1886, the result of which was universally interpreted as a crushing defeat of Mr. Gladstone's proposals in favour of Home Rule, would not a true result on that occasion have influenced subsequent developments? Over-representation, which results in the temporary triumph of a party and of partisan measures, involves the nation in a serious loss, for the time and energy of a Parliament may be largely consumed in revising and correcting, if not in reversing the partisan legislation of its predecessor. Thus, a considerable portion of the time of the Parliament of 1906-1909 was spent in attempting to reverse the policies embodied in the Education and Licensing Acts of the preceding Parliament.
Loss of prestige by the House of Commons.
Apart, however, from speculation as to the effect of false electoral methods on the development of public affairs, the serious divergences between representation and polling strength, to which attention has been directed in the previous chapter, must tend to the weakening of the authority and prestige of the House of Commons. Should a Government, misled by the composition of the "representative" House, make use of its majority in that House for the passage of measures not really desired by the country, and should the House of Lords, reformed or not, guess rightly that the decisions of the Commons were contrary to the popular will, then inevitably the position of the House of Lords would be strengthened as compared with that of the Commons. "A House of Commons which does not represent," said a leading Liberal journal, "may stand for less in the country than the House of Lords, or the Crown, and its influence will infallibly decline in proportion. One has only to take up an old volume of Bagehot to confirm one's suspicions that the imperfections of electoral machinery, combined with the changes in the character of the electorate, are already threatening to undermine the real sources of the nation's power."[1] Sir Frederick Pollock has declared that our defective electoral system may "yield a House of Commons so unrepresentative in character as to cease to command the respect and obedience of citizens."[2]
Unstable representation.
False impressions of public opinion, unstable legislation based upon such false impressions, the weakening of the foundations on which the authority of the House of Commons rests, these are results which in themselves constitute a sufficiently serious condemnation of present methods. But those upheavals in representation, those violent swings of the pendulum which have often been so pronounced a feature of elections, give an instability to the composition of our supreme legislative chamber that must still further undermine its authority. Many, indeed, imagining that this dangerous instability is the reflection of an equally unstable electorate, begin to question whether a popular franchise is in any circumstances a satisfactory basis for government. The violence of the change in representation is attributed to the character of the electors instead of to the evil effects of a defective electoral method. On the other hand, the large majorities which accompany such changes are regarded by other politicians as blessings in disguise—as being essential to the formation of a strong Government. But a Government based on a false majority will, in the long-run, find that this exaggeration of its support in the country is a source of weakness rather than of strength. Like the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the feet of such a Government are part of clay. For the extreme swing of the pendulum which brought the Government into power is usually followed by an equally violent swing in the opposite direction. When the high-water mark of success is attained at a General Election it becomes practically impossible for the party in power to gain additional seats at bye-elections, whilst an unbroken series of losses makes it difficult to prevent a feeling arising that the ministry has lost the confidence of the electors, although the actual change in public opinion may have been of the slightest. The prestige of the Government is gone, and prestige is as necessary to a Government as a majority. In brief, a large majority strengthens a Government only in so far as that majority corresponds to public opinion.
Weakened personnel.
Moreover, the extreme changes which take place at a General Election often result in a considerable weakening of the personnel of the House of Commons. In such a débâcle as that which took place in 1906, there was no process of selection by which the Unionists might have retained the services in Parliament of their ablest members. Although there were 33,907 Unionists in Manchester and Salford, Mr. Balfour, the leader of the party, experienced the mortification of being rejected by one of the divisions. This failure was paralleled by the defeat of Sir William Harcourt at Derby in 1895, whilst Mr. Gladstone, in contesting Greenwich in 1874, only succeeded in obtaining the second place, the first seat being won by a Conservative. A way is usually found by which party leaders return without delay to the House of Commons, but there are members of the highest distinction and capacity who, especially if these qualities are associated with a spirit of independence, find, it increasingly difficult to re-enter political life. Victory at the polls depends not so much upon the services which a statesman, however eminent, may have rendered to his country, as upon the ability of the party to maintain its majority in the particular constituency for which he stands. Indeed, in this matter a leader of opinion is placed at a disadvantage as compared with an ordinary member of the party; his very pre-eminence, his very activities bring him into conflict with certain sections of the electorate which, insignificant in themselves, may yet be sufficiently numerous to influence the result of an election. Statesmen, moreover, have often lost their seats merely because they have endeavoured to give electors of their very best. When Mr. John Morley (now Lord Morley of Blackburn), during the election of 1906, received a deputation of Socialists, he, with characteristic courage, explained very frankly the ground on which he could not support their principles.[3] A similar candour on his part in 1895 cost him his seat at Newcastle. Can we wonder then that there arise complaints that our statesmen are deficient both in courage and in ideas? Single-member constituencies are, as Gambetta pointed out more than twenty years ago, inimical to political thinking, and recent General Elections have afforded numerous examples in support of this statement. The courageous and forcible presentment of ideas has time after time been rewarded by exclusion from the House of Commons.
Degradation of party strife.
There is a further and equally serious charge that can be laid against the existing electoral system—it is in no small measure responsible for that increasing degradation in the methods of warfare which has characterised recent political and municipal contests. This debasement of elections cannot fail to contribute to that undermining of the authority of the House of Commons, upon which stress has already been laid. Indeed, there is abundant evidence to show that in conjunction with the imaginary instability of the electorate, the debasement of elections is weakening the faith of many in representative institutions. An efficient bureaucracy is now being advocated by a writer so distinguished as Mr. Graham Wallas, as the best safeguard against the excesses of an unstable and ignorant democracy. There is no need to undervalue the importance of competent officials, but all experience has shown the equal necessity of an adequate check upon the bureaucracy, however efficient, and such check must be found in the strengthening of representative bodies. Mr. Graham Wallas declares that "the empirical art of politics consists largely in the creation of opinion by the deliberate exploitation of subconscious non-rational inferences,"[4] and cites in support of this statement the atrocious posters and mendacious appeals of an emotional kind addressed to the electors in recent contests. It does not appear from electoral statistics that so large a proportion of voters are influenced by such appeals as Mr. Wallas thinks; his conclusions, like those of others, are based upon the false impressions arising from false results. It is, however, sufficient for the purpose of the political organizer to know that a number of the electors will succumb to such influences. The votes of this small section of the electorate can turn the scale at an election, and so long as we adhere to a system under which the whole of the representation allotted to any given constituency is awarded to the party which can secure a bare majority of votes, we must expect to see a progressive degradation of electoral contests. The successful organizer of victory has already learnt that he must not be too squeamish in the methods by which the victory is obtained, and if "the exploitation of subconscious non-rational inferences" is necessary to this end he will undoubtedly exploit them to the best of his powers.
The final rally.
Mr. Wallas gives from his personal experience an admirable illustration of the way in which elections are often lost and won. His vivid description of the close of a poll in a County Council election in a very poor district is in itself an emphatic condemnation of our electoral system. "The voters," says he, "who came in were the results of the 'final rally' of the canvassers on both sides. They entered the room in rapid but irregular succession, as if they were jerked forward by a hurried and inefficient machine. About half of them were women with broken straw hats, pallid faces, and untidy hair. All were dazed and bewildered, having been snatched away in carriages or motors from the making of match-boxes, or button-holes, or cheap furniture, or from the public-house, or, since it was Saturday evening, from bed. Most of them seemed to be trying in the unfamiliar surroundings to be sure of the name for which, as they had been reminded at the door, they were to vote. A few were drunk, and one man, who was apparently a supporter of my own, clung to my neck while he tried to tell me of some vaguely tremendous fact which just eluded his power of speech. I was very anxious to win, and inclined to think that I had won, but my chief feeling was an intense conviction that this could not be accepted as even a decently satisfactory method of creating a Government for a city of five million inhabitants, and that nothing short of a conscious and resolute facing of the whole problem of the formation of political opinion would enable us to improve it." The political "boss" has no such qualms; victory may turn upon the votes recorded at this final rally, and every effort must be made to ensure that the party's poll exceeds that of the enemy. Mr. Wallas does not propose any remedy; he merely suggests that something must be done to abolish the more sordid details of English electioneering. Why not go to the root of the evil and amend the electoral system which places so great a premium upon the success of such practices? It is indeed evident that this cannot be accepted as "a decently satisfactory method of creating a Government." But we are not compelled to continue the use of such a method. What possible justification is there for making the representation of all the other electors of a constituency depend upon the result of a final rally?
Bribery and "nursing"
Evidence was tendered before the Worcester Election Commission[5] to the effect that there were 500 voters in the city who were amenable to the influence of a small bribe, and that the party which secured the votes of these electors won the election. Again, is there no alternative to an electoral system which makes the representation of a town depend upon the action of the least worthy of its citizens? Direct bribery has been rendered more difficult by the Corrupt Practices Act, but bribery in a much more subtle form—"nursing" the constituency—would appear to be on the increase. Mr. Ellis T. Powell, who has had a considerable electioneering experience, gives an admirable statement[6] of the expenses attending a successful candidature. "If the candidate's means," says he, "permit of a favourable response to these invitations (appeals for money), he is said to be engaged in 'nursing' the constituency in which the gifts are distributed. A great proportion of these appeals relate to funds which are for public, or quasi-public purposes, such as those of hospitals; and there is no suggestion that any direct political influence is exercised in consequence of donations or contributions made to these institutions. But what is certain is that a section of the electorate-diminishing, but still potent, section—is favourably influenced by the fact that Mr. A. has given £100 to the funds of the hospital, whereas Mr. B. has given £5, 5_s_., or nothing at all. Candidates and their agents are perfectly well aware of this, and are even known to delay the announcement of their contributions in order to ascertain their respective amounts, and so to guard themselves against giving less than others have done. Mr. A. is inclined to give £20, but waits to see if Mr. B. gives £25, in which case he will raise his intended £20 to £30. These tactics are adopted, not because either of the candidates desires to be lavish or ostentatious in his gifts, and still less from any vulgar desire for notoriety in itself. They are simply an element, almost vital under existing conditions, of a successful appeal to the electorate. They may be said to be of the psychological rather than the political order, introducing into the electoral arena forces which have no business to be there, and whose activity is wholly vicious; but forces which nevertheless no politician can ignore, unless he wishes to postpone his realisation of their exact potency until the declaration of the poll places it before his, own eyes in large and unmistakable characters…. The writer was once consulted by a gentleman who, from motives which were truly laudable, desired to represent a London constituency. The path was clear to his selection as a candidate; the only question was that of expense. The writer, after noting the number of electors, informed him of the maximum sum which he might expend at a contest, but at the same time warned him that unless he were prepared to spend from £1500 to £2000 a year from that time until the General Election (of which there was no immediate prospect) he might regard his ambition as a hopeless one. The constituency was one where money must be spent. The other candidate would spend it, and his opponent must do at least as much, while his chance at the poll would be increased if he did a little more. When his opponent gave 10s. to a local cricket club, he could give no less. If he gave a guinea it might make a difference in his poll. The advice was not given in regard to electoral conditions as they ought to be, but as they are. The writer gave it with regret, and felt that he was playing almost a cynical part when he uttered the words. Yet it was in complete accord with the necessities of the existing system." Some of the practices associated with constituency-nursing can perhaps be reached by further legislation, but, if so, bribery in all probability will only take a form still more subtle. Again, why not strike at the root cause which makes these practices so highly profitable? Why continue to make the representation of all electors depend upon the votes of those who are influenced by the attentions of a rich patron?
The organization of victory.
The cumulative effect of these demoralising elements in party warfare is shown in the separation of the work of the party organizer from that of the party leader—separation which is becoming more and more complete. The work of covering hoardings with posters of a repulsive type, the task of preparing election "literature," must be carried out by men of a different character from those who are responsible for the public direction of the party; and as party agents often obtain their appointments because of their previous success in winning elections, the mere force of competition is compelling agents, sometimes against their own wishes, to resort to these questionable practices. The success of the Municipal Reform campaign in the London County Council election of 1907 was followed by a demand from many Progressives that the tactics of their opponents should be copied, that gramophone should be answered by gramophone, poster by poster. It is, however, certain that the more victory depends upon the work of the party organizer the more must his power increase, and this fact explains the unique position of the political "boss" in the United States, where ordinary electoral methods have been carried to their logical conclusion.[7] The political "boss" has become all-powerful because he has made himself the indispensable factor in successful political organization. At the London County Council elections in 1907, the leaders of the Municipal Reform Party dissociated themselves from the more extreme accusations made against the administration of the Progressives, but the conduct of the elections was apparently outside their powers of control. It may never become possible in England for a political organization such as "Tammany Hall" to succeed in planting on the register of voters a large number of fraudulent names, nor is it necessary yet for the press to issue a notice such as that which appeared in the New York Evening Post: "There are a thousand 'colonizers' waiting to vote for the Tammany ticket. Vote early, so that no one can vote ahead of you in your name."[8] In New York the Citizens' Unions have at each election to spend several weeks in succession in thwarting attempts at this offence on a large scale, and though our more perfect organization of elections renders such frauds impossible, still if we are to arrest the Americanization of our electoral contests we must cease to allow the results of a "final rally," the votes of the least worthy citizens, assiduous "nursing," or suggestive posters to decide the representation of a constituency.
Party exclusiveness.
The preceding criticism of recent developments in electoral warfare must not be read as a condemnation of party organization as such. Party organization there must be, and unquestionably the success of a party is intimately bound up with the efficiency of its organization. But our defective electoral system confers upon party organization a weapon which is not an adjunct to efficiency in the true sense of the word, but a weapon which has been and can be made a serious menace to the political independence and sincerity both of electors and of Members of Parliament. During the memorable three-cornered fight in Greenwich in 1906, Lord Hugh Cecil made this statement: "The opposition to me is not to put a Tariff Reformer in, but to keep me out. … We are face to face with an innovation in English politics, and it is a question of how far it is desirable to introduce methods which may be handled with a view to creating a party mechanism so rigid, so powerful, and so capable of being directed by a particular mind towards a single object, that it may become a formidable engine for carrying out a dangerous proposal. We do not want a system of political assassination under which any one who is in the way may be put out of the way." To realize the dangerous weapon which our present system places in the hands of party organizations, it is not necessary to give complete assent to the statement of Lord Hugh Cecil as to the character of the opposition brought against him. The power undoubtedly exists. Prior to the election of January 1910, the secret organization known as "confederates" was reported to have marked down all Unionist candidates who would not accept a course of policy approved of by this body. The action was defended on the ground that it was essential to secure Tariff Reform immediately and at all costs, but it nevertheless constituted a serious attack upon the representative character of the House of Commons. By such methods that historic House will be deprived of its rightful place in the constitution of this country. Political power will no longer be centred in the House of Commons; it will be vested in organizations outside Parliament, which will only meet to carry out their bidding. At the General Election of 1906 the mere threat of a three-cornered fight was sufficient to induce many Free Trade Unionists to retire from the contest; the purging was completed at the election of January 1910, and it would seem that in the future only those politicians who can with alacrity adopt the newest fashions or change their party allegiance can hope to take a permanent part in the political life of their country. Many of those who were so eager for Tariff Reform at all costs—the "confederates" themselves—would probably have protested most vigorously had the same policy of excluding competent men from Parliament been adopted for the attainment of political objects of which they did not approve, and the comment of The Times on this exclusive policy reflects the opinion of those who value the representative character of the House of Commons more highly than an immediate party triumph:—
"Parliament ought to represent the opinion of the country as a whole, and each of the great parties ought to represent the diversities of opinion which incline to one side or the other of a dividing line which, however practically convenient, does not itself represent any hard and immutable frontier. Now the variety and elasticity of representation, which are the secret of the permanence of our institutions, are directly injured by any attempt to narrow the basis of a party. If such attempts were to succeed upon any considerable scale we should have a couple of machine-made parties confronting one another in Parliament, with no golden bridges between their irreconcilable programmes. There is some danger at the present day of an approximation to a state of things in every way to be deprecated, and it is surely not for the Unionist party to promote any movement tending in that direction."[9]
This process of excluding valuable elements from our representative chamber is equally at work within the Liberal party. At the General Election of 1906 Sir William Butler, a Liberal of very high attainments, was compelled to withdraw his candidature for East Leeds on the ground that he could not fully support the Education policy of the Government. Mr. Harold Cox, during the Parliament of 1906, criticised the work of the Liberal Government from the point of view of a Liberal of the Manchester school, and the Preston Liberal Council withdrew its support. Nor does the Labour Party escape the same charge. Originally each member was required to accept in writing the constitution of the party, and this condition was rigorously enforced. In January 1911 it was decided at the Party Conference held at Leicester to dispense with the written pledge, but it would appear that a cast-iron conformity to party decisions is still insisted upon. On 10 February 1911 the party moved an amendment to the Address in favour of the Right to Work Bill, a measure as to the practicability of which there is a difference of opinion within the party. Mr. Johnson, the member for Nuneaton, voted against the amendment, and commenting on the incident the Labour Leader said: "Is Mr. Johnson to be allowed to defy the Party's mandate? We invite the Labour stalwarts of Nuneaton to give their earnest consideration to this question. And there can be no doubt as to what the verdict will be."
Mechanical debates.
These repeated attempts to make members of a party conform in all respects to a specified pattern, this constant insistence that members must give up the right of criticism and support on all occasions the party to which they belong, must and does react on the composition of the House of Commons. The duty of a Member of Parliament will tend more and more to be restricted to registering his approval or disapproval of the decisions of the Government, and, as the central organization of each party is in close touch with the party whips, the free and independent electors will be more and more confined, in the election of their representatives, to a choice between the nominees of machine-made parties. Moreover, in a House of Commons so composed discussion necessarily loses its vitalizing character. The debates on Free Trade in the House of Commons in 1905 towards the close of Mr. Balfour's administration were very real and full of life, because argument could and did affect the votes of members, but if the process continues of excluding all elements save those of the machine-controlled, debates will become more and more formal. They will lose their value. As Lord Hugh Cecil has said[10]: "The present system unquestionably weakens the House of Commons by denuding it of moderate politicians not entirely in sympathy with either political party, and consequently rendering obsolete all the arts of persuasion and deliberation, and reducing parliamentary discussion to a struggle between obstruction on the one side and closure on the other. The disproportion, moreover, between the majority in the House and that in the country, which it is supposed to represent, deprives the decisions of the House of much of their moral authority. The rigid partisanship, and the essentially unrepresentative character of the House of Commons as now constituted, leave it only the credit which belongs to the instrument of a party, and deprive it of that higher authority which should be the portion of the representatives of the whole people. "Similarly Mr. Birrell, in speaking[11] of the debate on the Women's Franchise Bill (12 July 1910), stated that he rejoiced in the immunity on that occasion from the tyranny of Government programmes and the obligation to all to think alike. "To think in programmes," said he, "is Egyptian bondage, and works the sterilization of the political intellect." And the nation suffers.
The disfranchisement of minorities in bi-racial countries
The extreme partizan who believes that political action is possible only through a well-controlled organization may be affected but little by the preceding arguments, and is, moreover, nearly always inclined to postpone the consideration of any reform which might possibly deprive his party of the advantages which he imagines it may obtain at the next General Election. Yet cases have occurred when parties have sacrificed their own advantage to the higher interests of the nation as a whole, and national interests demand a change in electoral methods. For the disfranchisement of minorities often gives rise to serious difficulties. The elections which took place in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony,[12] after the grant of self-government in 1906, show how racial divisions are unduly emphasized by such disfranchisement. Only one—Barberton—of the twenty-six country constituencies of the Transvaal returned a member who did not owe allegiance to Het Volk, although the figures of the polls showed that the minority numbered more than 25 per cent, of the electors. In Pretoria the Progressives gained but one seat, and that as the chance result of a three-cornered contest. The disfranchisement of minorities heightened the natural difference which existed between Johannesburg and the rest of the Transvaal—a difference which would have been still more pronounced had not Het Volk succeeded in obtaining six and the Nationalists five out of the total of thirty-four seats allotted to Johannesburg and the Rand. The first elections in the Orange River Colony resulted in a similar exaggerated contrast between Bloemfontein and the rest of the country. Five seats were allotted to Bloemfontein, four of which were won by members of the Constitutional party, whilst the fifth was only lost to them by the extremely narrow majority of two. Before the election The Friend, the organ of the Orangia Unie, stated that "if Bloemfontein ventures to vote for the Constitutionalists it will be setting itself in opposition to the whole country, and will be manifesting a spirit of distrust of the country population for which it will have to suffer afterwards." On the morrow of the election the same paper declared that "the election results of Bloemfontein will be read with deep disappointment throughout the colony, where the feeling will be that the capital has now shown itself politically an alien city." But would Bloemfontein have "shown itself politically an alien city" if the electoral method had been such that the minorities, both in Bloemfontein and in the country districts, had been able to secure representation in proportion to their strength?
Had the Constitution of South Africa provided for the representation of minorities in the House of Assembly, as proposed in the original draft signed at Cape Town, the process of race unification, both in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, would have been facilitated, and the conflicting interests of the constituent States and of town and country would not by their exaggerated expression in the United Parliament have impeded the consolidation and unification of South Africa. The problem presented by racial differences is not confined to South Africa. The United Kingdom itself presents a conspicuous example of a nation in which the process of unification is still far from complete, and the process has been retarded, and is at the present time being retarded, by the electoral method in force. Not only does Ireland still continue to chafe against the Union, but the racial divisions within Ireland itself are encouraged and fostered by the failure of our representative system to do justice to minorities. The South and West of Ireland is represented in the House of Commons by Nationalists, and Nationalists alone, and, ranged in opposition to them, the North-East is represented by a smaller but equally determined body of Unionists, while those forces in Ireland which would endeavour, and in the past have endeavoured, to bridge over the differences between the North and South are entirely unrepresented. Had the minorities in the North and South of Ireland been represented within the House, there would probably have still remained a notable contrast between the two areas, but that contrast would not have appeared in its present heightened form, and, in addition, with a true electoral system there would have come from Ireland representatives whose sole aim and purpose was to achieve its unification. The picture which Ireland would have presented within the House would have been of a different character to that presented to-day, and the perennial Irish problem would have been infinitely less difficult, because the forces which made for union would have had full play. Even the unification of England and Wales may, in some respects, be described as incomplete; but such differences as exist largely arise from the electoral system which sometimes deprives the minority in Wales of all representation in the House of Commons. When in 1906 the fortunes of the Welsh Conservatives reached their lowest ebb, the latter numbered 36 per cent. of the voters, whilst in former elections the minority sometimes exceeded 40 per cent. Had Welsh Conservatives, during the last two decades, been adequately represented in the House of Commons, would not our conception of Wales from the political point of view have been considerably modified, would not the process of political unification have been made more complete?
The non-representation of minorities in Belgium accentuated the racial religious and language differences between Flanders and Wallony. Flanders was represented by Catholics only; the French-speaking districts by Liberals and Socialists. With proportional representation members of all three parties are returned in both areas, and this result has brought in its train a great national advantage, the political consolidation of Belgium. Another example of the disintegrating effects of the disfranchisement of minorities is to be seen in the American Civil War. A committee of the United States Senate unanimously reported in 1869 that this war might have been averted had the minorities in the North and South been duly represented in Congress. In the words of the report the absence of minority representation "in the States of the South when rebellion was plotted, and when open steps were taken to break the Union was unfortunate, for it would have held the Union men of those States together and have given them voice in the electoral colleges…. Dispersed, unorganized, unrepresented, without due voice and power, they could interpose no effectual resistance to secession and to civil war."
Defective representation in municipal bodies.]
False impressions of public opinion, unstable legislation, the weakening of the House of Commons, both in authority and in personnel, the degradation of party warfare, the undue exaltation of party machinery, the heightening of racial differences and of sectional interests, these are the fruits of that rough and ready system of Parliamentary elections with which hitherto we have been content. The electoral methods in force both in County Council and in Municipal elections are based on the same false principle, and in these spheres of corporate activity results almost equally disastrous are produced. The London County Council elections of 1907 presented most of the features which characterized the Parliamentary elections of 1906. Such catastrophic changes in the personnel of the County Council as took place in 1907 involves serious consequences to London ratepayers. In this election two ex-chairmen of the Council, the vice-chairman and several chairmen of committees, lost their seats. These were men who had been chosen by their colleagues because of their special fitness for their positions, and this wholesale dismissal as a result of a temporary wave of public feeling may make it more difficult to secure as candidates those who are prepared to devote the necessary time to the study of London's problems, for it is generally admitted that the position of a London County Councillor is no sinecure. The effective discharge of his duties demands unremitting attention to details. The new Council was remarkable for the number of members who had yet to win their spurs in public work, and London was the poorer for the loss of those able administrators whom thousands of voters desired as their representatives. A true electoral system would not only secure the adequate representation of all parties, but the presence in the Council of the most competent exponents of different policies.
Wasteful municipal finance.
Not only does the electoral system involve undue changes in the personnel of the Council, but it leads to an extremely wasteful expenditure of public money. Whether the London County Council was or was not justified in establishing a steamboat service, nothing can be more wasteful than that one Council should establish such a service at great cost, and that its successor should immediately reverse that policy. The steady development of a works department by one Council and its abandonment by a succeeding Council similarly involves useless expenditure. A fully representative Council would not display such violent alterations of policy, and it is of the utmost importance that the objects on which it is decided to spend public moneys should be the deliberate and considered choice of a Council on which all interests are fairly represented.
No continuity in administration.]
The Metropolitan Borough Council elections tell a similar tale. The Lewisham Borough Council consisted in 1900 of 35 Moderates and 7 Progressives; in 1903 of 34 Progressives and 8 Moderates and Independents; in 1906 of 42 Moderates, no representatives of the Progressive or Labour parties being elected. In three successive elections there was a complete change in the composition of the Council. Lewisham's experience is typical of that of several other London boroughs. Many councillors of the widest experience in municipal affairs lose their seats at the same time, and there is in consequence no security of continuity in the administration of the business of the Metropolitan boroughs. Dr. Gilbert Slater, in giving evidence before a select committee of the House of Lords, said: "I found, of course, when I came on to the Council without any previous municipal experience except by observation, that I and other members equally inexperienced had to take great responsibilities upon ourselves. For instance, I was vice-chairman of the Finance Committee, and my Chairman also had had no previous municipal experience; the Finance Committee was felt to be one of the most important of the Committees of the Council, and the fact that its Chairman and Vice-chairman were two new members itself was a weakness."[13] Dr. Slater added that it took three years' hard work before a councillor could really master the affairs of a London borough, and that being so, is it surprising that it is becoming increasingly difficult to secure the services of competent men for the work of our local bodies? There undoubtedly are, on both aides, men of marked ability and of whole-hearted devotion to public affairs, but if our electoral system is such that, in the presence of an undiscriminating swing of the pendulum, their ability and devotion count for nothing, such men tend, albeit unwillingly, to withdraw from public life. The influence of the permanent official increases; the authority of the representative assembly declines.
The root of the evil.
In parliamentary, in county, and in borough council elections alike we trace the evils of defective electoral methods. These evils constitute a complete answer to Lord Morley's criticism of Mill, that the latter laid undue stress upon the efficiency of electoral machinery. Erected on a false basis, those democratic institutions, on which so many hopes have been built and on which our future still depends, are found full of shortcomings due not only to the imperfections of human nature but to the ill-working of a defective electoral system. The evils arising from the latter cause can at least be remedied, and in remedying them we may make it possible for the electors to put more intelligence and conscience into their votes. Since Mill was, as Lord Morley says, concerned with the important task of moulding and elevating popular character, he was rightly anxious that the electoral machinery should be such as to give due weight to those who desired to take an intelligent interest in the affairs of their country.
[Footnote 1: The Manchester Guardian, 12 February 1909.]
[Footnote 2: Annual Meeting, Proportional Representation Society, 9 May 1906.]
[Footnote 3: The Times, 8 January 1906.]
[Footnote 4: Human Nature in Politics, pp. 241 et seq.]
[Footnote 5: The Times, 22 August 1906.]
[Footnote 6: The Essentials of Self-Government, pp. 102 et seq.]
[Footnote 7: It is a matter for congratulation that in so many States there is now (1911) a movement of revolt against the domination of the "boss.">[
[Footnote 8: The Manchester Guardian, 21 April 1908.]