In some representative constitutions, the plan has been adopted of
choosing the members of the representative body by a double process,
the primary electors only choosing other electors, and these electing
the member of Parliament. This contrivance was probably intended as a
slight impediment to the full sweep of popular feeling, giving the
suffrage, and with it the complete ultimate power, to the Many, but
compelling them to exercise it through the agency of a comparatively
few, who, it was supposed, would be less moved than the Demos by the
gusts of popular passion; and as the electors, being already a select
body, might be expected to exceed in intellect and character the
common level of their constituents, the choice made by them was
thought likely to be more careful and enlightened, and would, in any
case, be made under a greater feeling of responsibility than election
by the masses themselves. This plan of filtering, as it were, the
popular suffrage through an intermediate body admits of a very
plausible defense; since it may be said, with great appearance of
reason, that less intellect and instruction are required for judging
who among our neighbors can be most safely trusted to choose a member
of Parliament than who is himself fittest to be one.
In the first place, however, if the dangers incident to popular power
may be thought to be in some degree lessened by this indirect
management, so also are its benefits; and the latter effect is much
more certain than the former. To enable the system to work as desired,
it must be carried into effect in the spirit in which it is planned;
the electors must use the suffrage in the manner supposed by the
theory, that is, each of them must not ask himself who the member of
Parliament should be, but only whom he would best like to choose one
for him. It is evident that the advantages which indirect is supposed
to have over direct election require this disposition of mind in the
voter, and will only be realized by his taking the doctrine _au
serieux_, that his sole business is to choose the choosers, not the
member himself. The supposition must be, that he will not occupy his
thoughts with political opinions and measures or political men, but
will be guided by his personal respect for some private individual, to
whom he will give a general power of attorney to act for him. Now if
the primary electors adopt this view of their position, one of the
principal uses of giving them a vote at all is defeated; the political
function to which they are called fails of developing public spirit
and political intelligence, of making public affairs an object of
interest to their feelings and of exercise to their faculties. The
supposition, moreover, involves inconsistent conditions; for if the
voter feels no interest in the final result, how or why can he be
expected to feel any in the process which leads to it? To wish to have
a particular individual for his representative in Parliament is
possible to a person of a very moderate degree of virtue and
intelligence, and to wish to choose an elector who will elect that
individual is a natural consequence; but for a person who does not
care who is elected, or feels bound to put that consideration in
abeyance, to take any interest whatever in merely naming the worthiest
person to elect another according to his own judgment, implies a zeal
for what is right in the abstract, an habitual principle of duty for
the sake of duty, which is possible only to persons of a rather high
grade of cultivation, who, by the very possession of it, show that
they may be, and deserve to be, trusted with political power in a more
direct shape. Of all public functions which it is possible to confer
on the poorer members of the community, this surely is the least
calculated to kindle their feelings, and holds out least natural
inducement to care for it, other than a virtuous determination to
discharge conscientiously whatever duty one has to perform; and if the
mass of electors cared enough about political affairs to set any value
on so limited a participation in them, they would not be likely to be
satisfied without one much more extensive.
In the next place, admitting that a person who, from his narrow range
of cultivation, can not judge well of the qualifications of a
candidate for Parliament, may be a sufficient judge of the honesty and
general capacity of somebody whom he may depute to choose a member of
Parliament for him, I may remark, that if the voter acquiesces in this
estimate of his capabilities, and really wishes to have the choice
made for him by a person in whom he places reliance, there is no need
of any constitutional provision for the purpose; he has only to ask
this confidential person privately what candidate he had better vote
for. In that case the two modes of election coincide in their result,
and every advantage of indirect election is obtained under direct. The
systems only diverge in their operation if we suppose that the voter
would prefer to use his own judgment in the choice of a
representative, and only lets another choose for him because the law
does not allow him a more direct mode of action. But if this be his
state of mind; if his will does not go along with the limitation which
the law imposes, and he desires to make a direct choice, he can do so
notwithstanding the law. He has only to choose as elector a known
partisan of the candidate he prefers, or some one who will pledge
himself to vote for that candidate. And this is so much the natural
working of election by two stages, that, except in a condition of
complete political indifference, it can scarcely be expected to act
otherwise. It is in this way that the election of the President of the
United States practically operates. Nominally, the election is
indirect; the population at large does not vote for the President; it
votes for electors who choose the President. But the electors are
always chosen under an express engagement to vote for a particular
candidate; nor does a citizen ever vote for an elector because of any
preference for the man; he votes for the Breckinridge ticket or the
Lincoln ticket. It must be remembered that the electors are not chosen
in order that they may search the country and find the fittest person
in it to be President or to be a member of Parliament. There would be
something to be said for the practice if this were so; but it is not
so, nor ever will be, until mankind in general are of opinion, with
Plato, that the proper person to be intrusted with power is the person
most unwilling to accept it. The electors are to make choice of one of
those who have offered themselves as candidates, and those who choose
the electors already know who these are. If there is any political
activity in the country, all electors who care to vote at all have
made up their minds which of these candidates they would like to have,
and will make that the sole consideration in giving their vote. The
partisans of each candidate will have their list of electors ready,
all pledged to vote for that individual; and the only question
practically asked of the primary elector will be, which of these lists
he will support.
The case in which election by two stages answers well in practice is
when the electors are not chosen solely as electors, but have other
important functions to discharge, which precludes their being selected
solely as delegates to give a particular vote. This combination of
circumstances exemplifies itself in another American institution, the
Senate of the United States. That assembly, the Upper House, as it
were, of Congress, is considered to represent not the people directly,
but the States as such, and to be the guardian of that portion of
their sovereign rights which they have not alienated. As the internal
sovereignty of each state is, by the nature of an equal federation,
equally sacred whatever be the size or importance of the state, each
returns to the Senate the same number of members (two), whether it be
little Delaware or the "Empire State" of New York. These members are
not chosen by the population, but by the State Legislatures,
themselves elected by the people of each state; but as the whole
ordinary business of a legislative assembly, internal legislation and
the control of the executive, devolves upon these bodies, they are
elected with a view to those objects more than to the other; and in
naming two persons to represent the state in the federal Senate they
for the most part exercise their own judgment, with only that general
reference to public opinion necessary in all acts of the government of
a democracy. The elections thus made have proved eminently successful,
and are conspicuously the best of all the elections in the United
States, the Senate invariably consisting of the most distinguished men
among those who have made themselves sufficiently known in public
life. After such an example, it can not be said that indirect popular
election is never advantageous. Under certain conditions it is the
very best system that can be adopted. But those conditions are hardly
to be obtained in practice except in a federal government like that of
the United States, where the election can be intrusted to local bodies
whose other functions extend to the most important concerns of the
nation. The only bodies in any analogous position which exist, or are
likely to exist, in this country, are the municipalities, or any other
boards which have been or may be created for similar local purposes.
Few persons, however, would think it any improvement in our
Parliamentary constitution if the members for the City of London were
chosen by the aldermen and Common Council, and those for the borough
of Marylebone avowedly, as they already are virtually, by the vestries
of the component parishes. Even if those bodies, considered merely as
local boards, were far less objectionable than they are, the qualities
that would fit them for the limited and peculiar duties of municipal
or parochial ædileship are no guaranty of any special fitness to judge
of the comparative qualifications of candidates for a seat in
Parliament. They probably would not fulfill this duty any better than
it is fulfilled by the inhabitants voting directly; while, on the
other hand, if fitness for electing members of Parliament had to be
taken into consideration in selecting persons for the office of
vestrymen or town councillors, many of those who are fittest for that
more limited duty would inevitably be excluded from it, if only by the
necessity there would be of choosing persons whose sentiments in
general politics agreed with those of the voters who elected them. The
mere indirect political influence of town-councils has already led to
a considerable perversion of municipal elections from their intended
purpose, by making them a matter of party politics. If it were part of
the duty of a man's book-keeper or steward to choose his physician, he
would not be likely to have a better medical attendant than if he
chose one for himself, while he would be restricted in his choice of a
steward or book-keeper to such as might, without too great danger to
his health, be intrusted with the other office.
It appears, therefore, that every benefit of indirect election which
is attainable at all is attainable under direct; that such of the
benefits expected from it as would not be obtained under direct
election will just as much fail to be obtained under indirect; while
the latter has considerable disadvantages peculiar to itself. The mere
fact that it is an additional and superfluous wheel in the machinery
is no trifling objection. Its decided inferiority as a means of
cultivating public spirit and political intelligence has already been
dwelt upon; and if it had any effective operation at all--that is, if
the primary electors did to any extent leave to their nominees the
selection of their Parliamentary representative, the voter would be
prevented from identifying himself with his member of Parliament, and
the member would feel a much less active sense of responsibility to
his constituents. In addition to all this, the comparatively small
number of persons in whose hands, at last, the election of a member of
Parliament would reside, could not but afford great additional
facilities to intrigue, and to every form of corruption compatible
with the station in life of the electors. The constituencies would
universally be reduced, in point of conveniences for bribery, to the
condition of the small boroughs at present. It would be sufficient to
gain over a small number of persons to be certain of being returned.
If it be said that the electors would be responsible to those who
elected them, the answer is obvious, that, holding no permanent office
or position in the public eye, they would risk nothing by a corrupt
vote except what they would care little for, not to be appointed
electors again: and the main reliance must still be on the penalties
for bribery, the insufficiency of which reliance, in small
constituencies, experience has made notorious to all the world. The
evil would be exactly proportional to the amount of discretion left to
the chosen electors. The only case in which they would probably be
afraid to employ their vote for the promotion of their personal
interest would be when they were elected under an express pledge, as
mere delegates, to carry, as it were, the votes of their constituents
to the hustings. The moment the double stage of election began to have
any effect, it would begin to have a bad effect. And this we shall
find true of the principle of indirect election however applied,
except in circumstances similar to those of the election of senators
in the United States.
It is unnecessary, as far as England is concerned, to say more in
opposition to a scheme which has no foundation in any of the national
traditions. An apology may even be expected for saying so much against
a political expedient which perhaps could not, in this country, muster
a single adherent. But a conception so plausible at the first glance,
and for which there are so many precedents in history, might perhaps,
in the general chaos of political opinions, rise again to the surface,
and be brought forward on occasions when it might be seductive to some
minds; and it could not, therefore, even if English readers were alone
to be considered, be passed altogether in silence.