THE DECLINE OF PARLIAMENTS

HEN the war is over and the nations are able to draw breath and take stock of their internal affairs, the vast import of the terrible upheaval through which the world has passed will by degrees reveal itself to all. In political, social, economic, and industrial matters, many of the old landmarks and standards will have disappeared or been discarded, and in all these matters reconstruction will have to be undertaken. In none of these spheres of national life will the gulf between past and present be more strongly marked than in the political. The political change-Revolution or Evolution, whichever it may be termed-will not be confined to the nations which have been actually at war; it will influence the neutrals also. But it will be more especially felt in those nations belligerent or neutral, called Progressive-Great Britain, France, and the United States-and it may be that one of the most far-reaching consequences will be the downfall of the parliamentary system of representative government, as it exists at present.

This statement, so far as it concerns Great Britain, will perhaps appear surprising, possibly absurd, to the great majority, though it is believed that there are not a few to whom the discrediting of the system will come rather as an inevitable than an astounding event. Institutions originally established with the honest intention of benefiting a community, and which have, on the whole, carried out this intention for many generations, are apt to gather around them an atmosphere of reverence, even of sanctity, that forbids men to contemplate their abolition as within the sphere of the possible, and prevents them perceiving that time and changed conditions have insensibly but surely undermined their usefulness and therefore their value. But one of the effects of a world-wide upheaval is to test institutions, and to remove from the minds of men the trammels of custom, prejudice, and traditional points of view, forcing them to investigate, with vision thus cleared, in what manner their long-cherished institutions

have borne the strain. This investigation, though it may begin with, will not long be confined to the war period. The weaknesses and failures, which at first may have appeared due to the sudden, tremendous catastrophe of a universal war, will be found to have been in existence long before.

Parliamentary representative government is not a law of nature but a means to an end. That end may be stated broadly to be the freedom and prosperity of a people. At a period when the mass of the nation was ignorant and inarticulate, and when communications were slow and difficult, it was convenient to give to each section of the community the right to choose representatives in whom it had confidence to state its grievances and advance its interests, and it was a fair assumption, that if these representatives were assembled together they would, after debate, determine what was for the general good. It is, however, beginning to be perceived by some that the advance of a nation in well-being is brought about by Evolution and not by Election, and that an Act of Parliament crystallising the state of feeling at the moment, at the best smoothes the path of Evolution, and at the worst temporarily obstructs it. As this conviction becomes more widely extended, it will lead to the conclusion that a nation sufficiently advanced in intelligence and knowledge does not need legislators. All it requires is government; it will legislate for itself. By which is meant that the general needs of the country as a whole (not one particular class or section of it) will be perceived and determined by the people collectively, by the formation and organisation of public opinion through public meetings and the press. All that would be needful would be a governing body, whose function it would be to put into final shape the nation's will and carry it into execution.

This idea may seem at first sight wild and impracticable. But is it? Let us clear our minds of prejudice and look at one great fact. That fact is that public opinion is the most potent force in the country to-day. In matters of moment, would Parliament dare to set itself against any unmistakable expression of public opinion? Is it not the most telling indictment that can be laid against Parliament that it ceases to reflect the feeling of the country? But at the present time the parliamentary system is in itself an obstacle to the due expression of public opinion. Never perhaps has that been

more strongly shown than during the long and bitter struggle over Home Rule. How often and how truly was it answered, when a general election was advocated as a means of finding out the real wish of the people, that it would be impossible to fight the election on that sole issue! Class interests, local conditions, even the personal element, would lead to the return of many members whose election had turned much more on one of these factors than on the question on which the country was asked to speak authoritatively.

But perhaps the greatest evil of the parliamentary system in its relation to current affairs is the party system. No one having the well-being of the Empire and of the world at heart can contemplate without sorrow the baneful influence of the party system on our preparations for war. To satisfy the exigencies of a powerful section of their party, the late Liberal Government, though knowing the secret aspirations of Germany and the danger of unpreparedness, devoted their time and energy to the development of huge schemes of social reform, on which such enormous sums were spent that it was necessary to retrench as much as possible on the defensive forces of the nation. In stating this no charge of bad faith against the Government is intended. When men, who have devoted the previous years of their public life to the advocacy of changes in the beneficial effect of which they are absolute believers, find themselves in a position to carry out their ideals, it is not unnatural that the realisation of these ideals should engross their minds to the detriment of other things. The continuance of the late Liberal Government in power depended upon the support of men so steeped in schemes of social reform that they were blind to what was going on abroad and deaf to the warnings of those who did see. It was therefore not perhaps surprising that the maintenance of this majority intact by exclusive devotion to the matters in which it took most interest should have appeared to the late Liberal Government to be its most imperative duty.

In addition to being mischievous, party feeling is, in our day, illogical. However natural it might have been in earlier times, when issues were fewer and so much less complex that men could take sides unhesitatingly, to-day the wide range of governmental activities must necessarily lead to the inclusion in the Ministerial programme of measures which are disliked

by many of its supporters. The larger the majority the more opportunity there is for differences of opinion, until we have the spectacle of a Government, after several years of power, sustained by a majority that has but one common bond, that of keeping the Cabinet in office. This common purpose, though possibly not conducive to the highest good of the nation, does not merit all the indignation that is poured out upon it. For it has its origin in that spirit of compromise which is the sanest and most wholesome element of English public life, and also perhaps the most potent factor in furthering the silent march of evolution, which permits the old to be sloughed by natural process, instead of being uprooted by revolutionary fury, and prepares the way for the new to fit itself into place with scarcely perceptible disturbance. A supporter of a Government is not too much to blame if he sacrifice his convictions in one direction on a matter on which there may be much to be said on both sides, because he believes that by so doing he may assist in the attainment of other measures in the utility of which he has faith.

Among the causes which are contributing to the rapid decline of British parliamentary life is the recent innovation of payment of members. The present writer may claim to speak on this point with some little knowledge, for he has passed many years in France and the United States, and has been able to observe from the outside something of the working of paid Parliaments. The result of his observations is that the payment of members contains in itself, irrespective of any other causes, the germ of the decay of parliamentary representative government. It changes and debases the whole idea on which the system, if it is to retain the respect of the people, rests. Why should a man be paid for the voluntary performance of the most honourable duty to which a citizen can aspire? The argument that good men may be prevented by lack of means from seeking this honour is not worth notice, for there is nothing objectionable in a constituency voluntarily subscribing to the support of one whom it desires to have as its representative. Men so chosen would be likely to be worthy of the choice. A great deal of the passion and indignation roused by the parliamentary proceedings of the last few years is due, at bottom, to the feeling that, to put it coarsely, many members are hanging on to their four hundred a year.'

(Some time ago, when it was proposed that the House of Commons should rise for six weeks, it was openly remarked that the members' were getting their eight pounds a week for nothing.') What a change for the worse in public estimation! Many accusations have been brought against Parliament, but never one so degrading as this!

In the United States, whose enormous resources are as yet undeveloped, the incentive to material success and prosperity is afforded in such countless directions by the employment of personal energy in private enterprises, that it is not to be wondered at that the best men in the country devote themselves to such objects rather than to the public service. Anyone who has been brought into close contact with the youth of America must be struck by the optimism they feel as to their future. Born in an atmosphere of boundless opportunity, the certain but very limited field offered by a Civil Service career is wholly without attraction to them, and indeed such a career is generally regarded as a refuge for the lazy, the timid, or the incompetent. With such ideas, it is clear that a political life does not enter into the calculations of the majority of Americans, and their disregard of it is strengthened, probably unconsciously, by the conviction rooted in every American heart that the country is working out its own path to salvation by the natural evolution of time and circumstance, and that its progress will not be interfered with by any political or parliamentary system. In short, the Americans, though perhaps they do not fully recognise it, are penetrated with the belief in the doctrine above laid down, that a nation progresses to better conditions, irrespective of its political systems.

The people of the United States, however, though much less averse from change than the people of Great Britain, still retain enough of their inherited English instincts in political and legal matters to adhere to tradition, and therefore the shell of the parliamentary system remains with them in apparent vigour. But though the machinery is still in existence, its working interests the people very little. The members of the Legislatures are largely professional politicians, and are known as such. Politics is a game played by the rival political parties. The local organisers of this great game are men whose knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, and whose natural coarseness of fibre fit them for the life of intrigue and subterranean