by the House of Commons; we are, indeed, so used to be so ruled, that
it does not seem to be at all strange. But of all odd forms of
government, the oddest really is government by a PUBLIC MEETING. Here
are 658 persons, collected from all parts of England, different in
nature, different in interests, different in look, and language. If we
think what an empire the English is, how various are its components,
how incessant its concerns, how immersed in history its policy; if we
think what a vast information, what a nice discretion, what a
consistent will ought to mark the rulers of that empire, we shall be
surprised when we see them. We see a changing body of miscellaneous
persons, sometimes few, sometimes many, never the same for an hour;
sometimes excited, but mostly dull and half weary--impatient of
eloquence, catching at any joke as an alleviation. These are the
persons who rule the British Empire--who rule England, who rule
Scotland, who rule Ireland, who rule a great deal of Asia, who rule a
great deal of Polynesia, who rule a great deal of America, and
scattered fragments everywhere.
Paley said many shrewd things, but he never said a better thing than
that it was much harder to make men see a difficulty than comprehend
the explanation of it. The key to the difficulties of most discussed
and unsettled questions is commonly in their undiscussed parts: they
are like the background of a picture, which looks obvious, easy, just
what any one might have painted, but which, in fact, sets the figures
in their right position, chastens them, and makes them what they are.
Nobody will understand Parliament government who fancies it an easy
thing, a natural thing, a thing not needing explanation. You have not a
perception of the first elements in this matter till you know that
government by a CLUB is a standing wonder.
There has been a capital illustration lately how helpless many English
gentlemen are when called together on a sudden. The Government, rightly
or wrongly, thought fit to entrust the quarter-sessions of each county
with the duty of combating its cattle-plague; but the scene in most
"shire halls" was unsatisfactory. There was the greatest difficulty in
getting, not only a right decision, but ANY decision, I saw one myself
which went thus. The chairman proposed a very complex resolution, in
which there was much which every one liked, and much which every one
disliked, though, of course, the favourite parts of some were the
objectionable parts to others. This resolution got, so to say, wedged
in the meeting; everybody suggested amendments; one amendment was
carried which none were satisfied with, and so the matter stood over.
It is a saying in England, "a big meeting never does anything"; and yet
we are governed by the House of Commons--by "a big meeting".
It may be said that the House of Commons does not rule, it only elects
the rulers. But there must be something special about it to enable it
to do that. Suppose the Cabinet were elected by a London club, what
confusion there would be, what writing and answering! "Will you speak
to So-and-So, and ask him to vote for my man?" would be heard on every
side. How the wife of A. and the wife of B. would plot to confound the
wife of C. Whether the club elected under the dignified shadow of a
queen, or without the shadow, would hardly matter at all; if the
substantial choice was in them, the confusion and intrigue would be
there too. I propose to begin this paper by asking, not why the House
of Commons governs well? but the fundamental--almost unasked
question--how the House of Commons comes to be able to govern at all?
The House of Commons can do work which the quarter-sessions or clubs
cannot do, because it is an organised body, while quarter-sessions and
clubs are unorganised. Two of the greatest orators in England--Lord
Brougham and Lord Bolingbroke--spent much eloquence in attacking party
government. Bolingbroke probably knew what he was doing; he was a
consistent opponent of the power of the Commons; he wished to attack
them in a vital part. But Lord Brougham does not know; he proposes to
amend Parliamentary government by striking out the very elements which
make Parliamentary government possible. At present the majority of
Parliament obey certain leaders; what those leaders propose they
support, what those leaders reject they reject. An old Secretary of the
Treasury used to say, "This is a bad case, an indefensible case. We
must apply our majority to this question." That secretary lived fifty
years ago, before the Reform Bill, when majorities were very blind, and
very "applicable". Nowadays, the power of leaders over their followers
is strictly and wisely limited: they can take their followers but a
little way, and that only in certain directions. Yet still there are
leaders and followers. On the Conservative side of the House there are
vestiges of the despotic leadership even now. A cynical politician is
said to have watched the long row of county members, so fresh and
respectable-looking, and muttered, "By Jove, they are the finest brute
votes in Europe!" But all satire apart, the principle of Parliament is
obedience to leaders. Change your leader if you will, take another if
you will, but obey No. 1 while you serve No. 1, and obey No. 2 when you
have gone over to No. 2. The penalty of not doing so, is the penalty of
impotence. It is not that you will not be able to do any good, but you
will not be able to do anything at all. If everybody does what he
thinks right, there will be 657 amendments to every motion, and none of
them will be carried or the motion either.
The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the House of
Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at once
perceive that party is of its essence. There never was an election
without a party. You cannot get a child into an asylum without a
combination. At such places you may see "Vote for orphan A." upon a
placard, and "Vote for orphan B. (also an idiot!!!)" upon a banner, and
the party of each is busy about its placard and banner. What is true at
such minor and momentary elections must be much more true in a great
and constant election of rulers. The House of Commons lives in a state
of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it can choose a ruler and
dismiss a ruler. And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its
bone, and breath of its breath.
Secondly, though the leaders of party no longer have the vast patronage
of the last century with which to bribe, they can coerce by a threat
far more potent than any allurement--they can dissolve. This is the
secret which keeps parties together. Mr. Cobden most justly said: "He
had never been able to discover what was the proper moment, according
to members of Parliament, for a dissolution. He had heard them say they
were ready to vote for everything else, but he had never heard them say
they were ready to vote for that." Efficiency in an assembly requires a
solid mass of steady votes; and these are COLLECTED by a deferential
attachment to particular men, or by a belief in the principles those
men represent, and they are MAINTAINED by fear of those men--by the
fear that if you vote against them, you may yourself soon not have a
vote at all.
Thirdly, it may seem odd to say so, just after inculcating that party
organisation is the vital principle of representative government, but
that organisation is permanently efficient, because it is not composed
of warm partisans. The body is eager, but the atoms are cool. If it
were otherwise, Parliamentary government would become the worst of
governments--a sectarian government. The party in power would go all
the lengths their orators proposed--all that their formulae enjoined,
as far as they had ever said they would go. But the partisans of the
English Parliament are not of such a temper. They are Whigs, or
Radicals, or Tories, but they are much else too. They are common
Englishmen, and, as Father Newman complains, "hard to be worked up to
the dogmatic level". They are not eager to press the tenets of their
party to impossible conclusions. On the contrary, the way to lead
them--the best and acknowledged way--is to affect a studied and
illogical moderation. You may hear men say, "Without committing myself
to the tenet that 3 + 2 make 5, though I am free to admit that the
honourable member for Bradford has advanced very grave arguments in
behalf of it, I think I may, with the permission of the Committee,
assume that 2 + 3 do not make 4, which will be a sufficient basis for
the important propositions which I shall venture to submit on the
present occasion." This language is very suitable to the greater part
of the House of Commons. Most men of business love a sort of twilight.
They have lived all their lives in an atmosphere of probabilities and
of doubt, where nothing is very clear, where there are some chances for
many events, where there is much to be said for several courses, where
nevertheless one course must be determinedly chosen and fixedly adhered
to. They like to hear arguments suited to this intellectual haze. So
far from caution or hesitation in the statement of the argument
striking them as an indication of imbecility, it seems to them a sign
of practicality. They got rich themselves by transactions of which they
could not have stated the argumentative ground--and all they ask for is
a distinct though moderate conclusion, that they can repeat when asked;
something which they feel NOT to be abstract argument, but abstract
argument diluted and dissolved in real life. "There seem to me," an
impatient young man once said, "to be no stay in Peel's arguments." And
that was why Sir Robert Peel was the best leader of the Commons in our
time; we like to have the rigidity taken out of an argument, and the
substance left. Nor indeed, under our system of government, are the
leaders themselves of the House of Commons, for the most part, eager to
carry party conclusions too far. They are in contact with reality. An
Opposition, on coming into power, is often like a speculative merchant
whose bills become due. Ministers have to make good their promises, and
they find a difficulty in so doing. They have said the state of things
is so and so, and if you give us the power we will do thus and thus.
But when they come to handle the official documents, to converse with
the permanent under-secretary--familiar with disagreeable facts, and
though in manner most respectful, yet most imperturbable in
opinion--very soon doubts intervene. Of course, something must be done;
the speculative merchant cannot forget his bills; the late Opposition
cannot, in office, forget those sentences which terrible admirers in
the country still quote. But just as the merchant asks his debtor,
"Could you not take a bill at four months?" so the new Minister says to
the permanent under-secretary, "Could you not suggest a middle course?
I am of course not bound by mere sentences used in debate; I have never
been accused of letting a false ambition of consistency warp my
conduct; but," etc., etc. And the end always is that a middle course is
devised which LOOKS as much as possible like what was suggested in
opposition, but which IS as much as possible what patent facts--facts
which seem to live in the office, so teasing and unceasing are
they--prove ought to be done. Of all modes of enforcing moderation on a
party, the best is to contrive that the members of that party shall be
intrinsically moderate, careful, and almost shrinking men; and the next
best to contrive that the leaders of the party, who have protested most
in its behalf, shall be placed in the closest contact with the actual
world. Our English system contains both contrivances; it makes party
government permanent and possible in the sole way in which it can be
so, by making it mild.
But these expedients, though they sufficiently remove the defects which
make a common club or quarter-sessions impotent, would not enable the
House of Commons to govern England. A representative public meeting is
subject to a defect over and above those of other public meetings. It
may not be independent. The constituencies may not let it alone. But if
they do not, all the checks which have been enumerated upon the evils
of a party organisation would be futile. The feeling of a constituency
is the feeling of a dominant party, and that feeling is elicited,
stimulated, sometimes even manufactured by the local political agent.
Such an opinion could not be moderate; could not be subject to
effectual discussion; could not be in close contact with pressing
facts; could not be framed under a chastening sense of near
responsibility; could not be formed as those form their opinions who
have to act upon them. Constituency government is the precise opposite
of Parliamentary government. It is the government of immoderate persons
far from the scene of action, instead of the government of moderate
persons close to the scene of action; it is the judgment of persons
judging in the last resort and without a penalty, in lieu of persons
judging in fear of a dissolution, and ever conscious that they are
subject to an appeal.
Most persons would admit these conditions of Parliamentary government
when they read them, but two at least of the most prominent ideas in
the public mind are inconsistent with them. The scheme to which the
arguments of our demagogues distinctly tend, and the scheme to which
the predilections of some most eminent philosophers cleave, are both
so. They would not only make Parliamentary government work ill, but
they would prevent its working at all; they would not render it bad,
for they would make it impossible.
The first of these is the ultra-democratic theory. This theory demands
that every man of twenty-one years of age (if not every woman too)
should have an equal vote in electing Parliament. Suppose that last
year there were twelve million adult males in England. Upon this theory
each man is to have one twelve-millionth share in electing a
Parliament; the rich and wise are not to have, by explicit law, more
votes than the poor and stupid; nor are any latent contrivances to give
them an influence equivalent to more votes. The machinery for carrying
out such a plan is very easy. At each census the country ought to be
divided into 658 electoral districts, in each of which the number of
adult males should be the same; and these districts ought to be the
only constituencies, and elect the whole Parliament. But if the above
prerequisites are needful for Parliamentary government, that Parliament
would not work.
Such a Parliament could not be composed of moderate men. The electoral
districts would be, some of them, in purely agricultural places, and in
these the parson and the squire would have almost unlimited power. They
would be able to drive or send to the poll an entire labouring
population. These districts would return an unmixed squirearchy. The
scattered small towns which now send so many members to Parliament,
would be lost in the clownish mass; their votes would send to
Parliament no distinct members. The agricultural part of England would
choose its representatives from quarter-sessions exclusively. On the
other hand a large part of the constituencies would be town districts,
and these would send up persons representing the beliefs or unbeliefs
of the lowest classes in their towns. They would, perhaps, be divided
between the genuine representatives of the artisans--not possibly of
the best of the artisans, who are a select and intellectual class, but
of the common order of workpeople--and the merely pretended members for
that class whom I may call the members for the public-houses. In all
big towns in which there is electioneering these houses are the centres
of illicit corruption and illicit management. There are pretty good
records of what that corruption and management are, but there is no
need to describe them here. Everybody will understand what sort of
things I mean, and the kind of unprincipled members that are returned
by them. Our new Parliament, therefore, would be made up of two sorts
of representatives from the town lowest class, and one sort of
representatives from the agricultural lowest class. The genuine
representatives of the country would be men of one marked sort, and the
genuine representatives for the county men of another marked sort, but
very opposite: one would have the prejudices of town artisans, and the
other the prejudices of county magistrates. Each class would speak a
language of its own; each would be unintelligible to the other; and the
only thriving class would be the immoral representatives, who were
chosen by corrupt machination, and who would probably get a good profit
on the capital they laid out in that corruption. If it be true that a
Parliamentary government is possible only when the overwhelming
majority of the representatives are men essentially moderate, of no
marked varieties, free from class prejudices, this ultra-democratic
Parliament could not maintain that government, for its members would be
remarkable for two sorts of moral violence and one sort of immoral.
I do not for a moment rank the scheme of Mr. Hare with the scheme of
the ultra-democrats. One can hardly help having a feeling of romance
about it. The world seems growing young when grave old lawyers and
mature philosophers propose a scheme promising so much. It is from
these classes that young men suffer commonly the chilling demonstration
that their fine plans are opposed to rooted obstacles, that they are
repetitions of other plans which failed long ago, and that we must be
content with the very moderate results of tried machinery. But Mr. Hare
and Mr. Mill offer as the effect of their new scheme results as large
and improvements as interesting as a young enthusiast ever promised to
himself in his happiest mood.
I do not give any weight to the supposed impracticability of Mr. Hare's
scheme because it is new. Of course it cannot be put in practice till
it is old. A great change of this sort happily cannot be sudden; a free
people cannot be confused by new institutions which they do not
understand, for they will not adopt them till they understand them. But
if Mr. Hare's plan would accomplish what its friends say, or half what
they say, it would be worth working for, if it were not adopted till
the year 1966. We ought incessantly to popularise the principle by
writing; and, what is better than writing, small preliminary bits of
experiment. There is so much that is wearisome and detestable in all
other election machineries, that I well understand, and wish I could
share, the sense of relief with which the believers in this scheme
throw aside all their trammels, and look to an almost ideal future when
this captivating plan is carried.
Mr. Hare's scheme cannot be satisfactorily discussed in the elaborate
form in which he presents it. No common person readily apprehends all
the details in which, with loving care, he has embodied it. He was so
anxious to prove what could be done, that he has confused most people
as to what it is. I have heard a man say, "He never could remember it
two days running". But the difficulty which I feel is fundamental, and
wholly independent of detail.
There are two modes in which constituencies may be made. First, the law
may make them, as in England and almost everywhere: the law may say
such and such qualifications shall give a vote for constituency X;
those who have that qualification shall BE constituency X. These are
what we may call compulsory constituencies, and we know all about them.
Or, secondly, the law may leave the electors themselves to make them.
The law may say all the adult males of a country shall vote, or those
males who can read and write, or those who have 50 pounds a year, or
any persons any way defined, and then leave those voters to group
themselves as they like. Suppose there were 658,000 voters to elect the
House of Commons; it is possible for the legislature to say, "We do not
care how you combine. On a given day let each set of persons give
notice in what group they mean to vote; if every voter gives notice,
and every one looks to make the most of his vote, each group will have
just 1000. But the law shall not make this necessary--it shall take the
658 most numerous groups, no matter whether they have 2000, or 1000, or
900, or 800 votes--the most numerous groups, whatever their number may
be; and these shall be the constituencies of the nation." These are
voluntary constituencies, if I may so call them; the simplest kind of
voluntary constituencies. Mr. Hare proposes a far more complex kind;
but to show the merits and demerits of the voluntary principle the
simplest form is much the best.
The temptation to that principle is very plain. Under the compulsory
form of constituency the votes of the minorities are thrown away. In
the city of London, now, there are many Tories, but all the members are
Whigs; every London Tory, therefore, is by law and principle
misrepresented: his city sends to Parliament not the member whom he
wished to have, but the member he wished not to have. But upon the
voluntary system the London Tories, who are far more than 1000 in
number, may combine; they may make a constituency, and return a member.
In many existing constituencies the disfranchisement of minorities is
hopeless and chronic. I have myself had a vote for an agricultural
county for twenty years, and I am a Liberal; but two Tories have always
been returned, and all my life will be returned. As matters now stand,
my vote is of no use. But if I could combine with 1000 other Liberals
in that and other Conservative counties, we might choose a Liberal
member.
Again, this plan gets rid of all our difficulties as to the size of
constituencies. It is said to be unreasonable that Liverpool should
return only the same number of members as King's Lynn or Lyme Regis;
but upon the voluntary plan, Liverpool could come down to King's Lynn.
The Liberal minority in King's Lynn could communicate with the Liberal
minority in Liverpool, and make up 1000; and so everywhere. The numbers
of popular places would gain what is called their legitimate advantage;
they would, when constituencies are voluntarily made, be able to make,
and be willing to make the greatest number of constituencies.
Again, the admirers of a great man could make a worthy constituency for
him. As it is, Mr. Mill was returned by the electors of Westminster;
and they have never, since they had members, done themselves so great
an honour. But what did the electors of Westminster know of Mr. Mill?
What fraction of his mind could be imagined by any percentage of their
minds? A great deal of his genius most of them would not like. They
meant to do homage to mental ability, but it was the worship of an
unknown God--if ever there was such a thing in this world. But upon the
voluntary plan, one thousand out of the many thousand students of Mr.
Mill's book could have made an appreciating constituency for him.
I could reckon other advantages, but I have to object to the scheme,
not to recommend it. What are the counterweights which overpower these
merits? I reply that the voluntary composition of constituencies
appears to me inconsistent with the necessary prerequisites of
Parliamentary government as they have been just laid down.
Under the voluntary system, the crisis of politics is not the election
of the member, but the making the constituency. President-making is
already a trade in America, and constituency-making would, under the
voluntary plan, be a trade here. Every party would have a numerical
problem to solve. The leaders would say, "We have 350,000 votes, we
must take care to have 350 members"; and the only way to obtain them is
to organise. A man who wanted to compose part of a Liberal constituency
must not himself hunt for 1000 other Liberals; if he did, after writing
10000 letters, he would probably find he was making part of a
constituency of 100, all whose votes would be thrown away, the
constituency being too small to be reckoned. Such a Liberal must write
to the great Registration Association in Parliament Street; he must
communicate with its able managers, and they would soon use his vote
for him. They would say, "Sir, you are late; Mr. Gladstone, sir, is
full. He got his 1000 last year. Most of the gentlemen you read of in
the papers are full. As soon as a gentleman makes a nice speech, we get
a heap of letters to say, 'Make us into that gentleman's constituency'.
But we cannot do that. Here is our list. If you do not want to throw
your vote away, you must be guided by us: here are three very
satisfactory gentlemen (and one is an Honourable): you may vote for
either of these, and we will write your name down; but if you go voting
wildly, you'll be thrown out altogether."