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REPRÉSENTATION.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

SIR G. C. LEWIS, in his work "On the Best Form of Government," tells us that neither his profound study of ancient history, nor his great experience in national affairs, had enabled him to arrive at a decided opinion on this important question.

"The controversy," he says, " is one consisting of a debtor and creditor account; the difficulty lies in striking the balance fairly. The weights in one scale may be less heavy than the weights in the other scale, but they are nevertheless weights. . . . The difficulty is to determine which of two sets of valid arguments preponderates."

The remarkable saying of the late Prince Consort that Representative Institutions are on their trial has been so often quoted, that I almost hesitate to do so again.

Yet it might well have seemed that government "ot the people, for the people, and by the people," was so obviously wise and just, that it must almost of necessity

work well in any intelligent community. This, however, has certainly not been the general experience.

Why, then, has Democracy so often failed in the past? Why have we seen that in State after State power has oscillated from one extreme to the other-from the Tyrant to the Demagogue, and back again from the Demagogue to the Tyrant? The true reason, I believe, is to be found, not in any fault of the principle, but because the principle has not been correctly applied-because, in fact, no country has ever yet adopted a true system of Representation.

This has been well pointed out by a distinguished American statesman, Mr. Calhoun.

"The effect," he says, "of the ordinary systems of representation, is to place the control of the parties in the hands of their respective majorities; and the Government itself, virtually, under the control of the majority of the dominant party, for the time, instead of the majority of the whole community ;—where the theory of this form of government vests it. Thus, in the very first stage of the process, the government becomes the government of a minority instead of a majority-a minority, usually, and under the most favourable circumstances, of not much more than onefourth of the whole community."

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John Stuart Mill has stated the case still more forcibly.

"In a representative body," he says, "actually deliberating, the minority must of course be overruled; and in an equal democracy (since the opinions of the constituents, when they insist on them, determine those of the representative body) the majority of the people, through their representatives, will outvote and prevail over the minority and their representatives.

"A Disquisition on Government," p. 41. See also Buckalew, "On Proportional Representation," p. 168,

"But does it follow that the minority should have no representatives at all? Because the majority ought to prevail over the minority, must the majority have all the votes, the minority none? Is it necessary that the minority should not even be heard? Nothing but habit and old association can reconcile any reasonable being to the needless injustice.

"In a really equal democracy every or any 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 the electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest; there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation." I

And again

"The majority," he says, "would indeed outnumber the others,

as much as the one class of electors outnumbers the other in the country. They would always outvote them, but they would speak and vote in their presence, and subject to their criticism. When any difference arose, they would have to meet the arguments of the instructed few by reasons at least apparently as cogent; and since they could not, as those do who are speaking to persons already unanimous, simply assume that they are in the right, it would occasionally happen to them to become convinced that they were in the wrong.

"Now, nothing is more certain than that the virtual blotting-out of the minority is no necessary or natural consequence of freedom; that, far from having any connection with democracy, it is diametrically opposed to the first principle of democracy-representation in proportion to numbers. It is an essential part of democracy that minorities should be adequately represented. No real democracy, nothing but a false show of democracy, is possible without it." 2

J. Stuart Mill, "Personal Representation," p. 4.

2 Ibid. p. II.

This evil is remedied by the system of Proportional, or, as it is sometimes called, "Minority" representation. The latter name is, however, misleading.

The supporters of proportional representation have no desire to give the minority a larger share of political power than that to which their numbers justly entitle them. On the contrary, as Lord Sherbrooke said during the debate of 1867 in the House of Commons, he did not "argue for any protection to the minority. . . but that between the members of the constituency there should be absolute equality; the majority should have nothing given to it because it was a majority."

Mr. Fawcett, again, in his last speech to his constituents at Hackney, truly pointed out that

"Far from those who advocate proportional representation wishing to give to the minority the power which properly belongs to the majority, I think I shall have no difficulty in showing that one of the chief dangers which the advocates of proportional representation desire to guard against, is the minority obtaining a preponderance of representation which ought to belong to the majority."

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Nay, so far from this, a true system of proportional representation is in the words of Mill-"not only the most complete application of the democratic principle that has yet been made, but its greatest safeguard."

In fact, although it may seem a paradox, it is nevertheless true that the systems of representation hitherto adopted, not merely through inequalities of area or re

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strictions on the right of voting, but as a consequence necessarily ensuing from the system of voting hitherto adopted, have had the effect of placing power in the hands, not of the majority, but of a minority.

Let us first take a theoretical case. Suppose a country in which there are 1,200,000 Liberal voters and 1,000,000 Conservative. Now if the two parties are evenly distributed over the whole country, it is clear that, under the ordinary systems of Representation, the weaker party will be utterly swamped. To use a familiar illustration, wherever you drop a bucket into the sea you will bring up salt water. In such a case, therefore, the 1,000,000 will be practically unrepresented. But we must carry the matter a little further. In the House so elected, let the majority bring forward some Bill of an advanced character, and carry it by two to one-that is to say, by the votes of members representing 800,000 electors, and against those representing 400,000. It is clear that in such a case the minority in the House would have with them also the 1,000,000 in the country who were left unrepresented; so that in fact the measure would represent the wishes of only 800,000 electors, and would be opposed to those of 1,400,000. Thus the result of what we are told is a just system, and of "government by majorities," is, on the contrary, to enable a minority of 800,000 to override a majority of 1,400,000.

This is, I believe, the main reason why so-called representative institutions have often worked so badly.

We have a practical illustration of this in Switzerland.

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