the elections; and cunning, falsehood, deception, slander, fraud, and gross appeals to the appetites of the lowest and most worthless portion of the community, would take the place of sound reason and wise debate. After these have thoroughly debased and corrupted the community, and all the arts and devices of party have been exhausted, the government would vibrate between the two factions (for such will parties have become) at each successive election."

"Neither would be able to retain power beyond some fixed term; for those seeking office and patronage would become too numerous to be rewarded by the offices and patronage at the disposal of the government; and these being the sole objects of pursuit, the disappointed would, at the next succeeding election, throw their weight into the opposite scale, in the hope of better success at the next turn of the wheel."

"That the numerical majority will divide the community, let it be ever so homogeneous, into two great parties, which will be engaged in perpetual struggles to obtain the control of the government, has already been established. The great importance of the object at stake, must necessarily form strong party attachments and party antipathies; attachments on the part of the members of each to their respective parties, through whose efforts they hope to accomplish an object dear to all and antipathies to the opposite party, as presenting the only obstacle to

success.

:

"In order to have a just conception of their force, it must be taken into consideration, that the object to be won or lost appeals to the strongest passions of the human heart,―avarice, ambition, and rivalry. It is not then wonderful, that a form of government, which periodically stakes all its honors and emoluments, as prizes to be contended for, should divide the community into two great hostile parties; or that party attachment, in the progress of the strife, should become so strong among the members of each respectively, as to absorb almost every feeling of our nature, both social and individual; or that their mutual antipathies should be carried to such an excess as to destroy, almost entirely, all sympathy between them, and to substitute in its place the strongest aversion. Nor is it surprising, that under their joint influence, the community should cease to be the common center of attachment, or that each party should find that center only in itself. It is thus, that, in such governments, devotion to party becomes stronger than devotion to country :-the promotion of the interests of party more important than the promotion of the common good of the whole, and its triumph and ascendency, objects of far greater solicitude, than the safety and prosperity of the community."

"Its effects would be as great in a moral, as, I have attempted to shew, they would be in a political point of view. Indeed, public and private morals are so nearly allied, that it would be difficult for it to be otherwise. That which corrupts and debases the community, politically, must also corrupt and debase it morally. The same cause, which, in governments of the numerical majority, gives to party attachments and antipathies such force, as to place party triumph and ascendancy above the safety and prosperity of the community, will just as certainly give them sufficent force to overpower all regard for truth, justice, sincerity, and moral obligations of every description. It is accordingly, found that, in the violent strifes between parties for the high and glittering prize of governmental honors and emoluments,--falsehood, injustice, fraud, artifice, slander, and breach of faith, are freely resorted to, as legitimate weapons :-followed by all their corrupting and debasing influences. . . . Neither religion nor education can counteract the strong tendency of the numerical majority to corrupt and debase the people."

PARTY GOVERNMENT ADVERSE TO GOOD GOVERNMENT.

From Fraser's Magazine, Vol. XLIX. 1854.

The very nature of party tactics is fundamentally adverse to good government; for party tactics are essentially unpatriotic. Their object is simply to gain or hold possession of the Treasury bench. And therefore the measures selected for attack on the one hand will always be the weakest, that is, the most unpopular, not the worst; and on the other hand, the measures brought forward will be the most popular rather than the best. That popularity and unpopularity often coincide with goodness and badness is most true; that they by no means invariably coincide is assumed by us, when we delegate the functions of legislation instead of exercising them ourselves.

On the other hand, it may be said party gives us emulation and criticism. The emulation is undoubtedly worth much; it is even difficult to see how its place can be supplied. It would be inestimable, if the prize proposed was not as it is, the popularity of the hour, but the calm approval of distant years. The criticism is defective in this, that it is, and must be, indiscriminate and unjust. Many important acts and measures of government have been seen to be good by most people at the time; and by all people a few years after. But very few important measures of government have ever received the approbation of the opposite benches. Any presumably fair tribunal-such, for example, as an assembly professedly neutral and impartial-would be really a higher moral restraint upon elevated natures (such as we hope our governors may be) than the censures of an opposition which does not profess to be candid; and which, therefore, it is always allowable to baffle, evade, or in the last resort, crush, with a vote extorted under a threat of resignation. And we must remember the necessity of keeping followers together in this 'generous emulation' and the price which that necessity entails.

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Again, party government has made politics a perfect religion of hate-hate which reaches its height in those who, if they are to command our respect, ought to be more free than ourselves from vulgar passions. It is the duty of every Whig or Tory, in proportion as he is active in politics, to see the character and actions of every member of the opposite faction in the worst possible light. If accident happen to throw a man into a different political combination from that which he has been in before, though his measures and sentiments may remain essentially the same, his whole conduct and every feature of his mind undergo a complete metamorphosis in the eyes of his quondam friends. Every blunder of the opposite side is detected with delight, and exposed with exultation; even blunders which imperil the country in a struggle with a foreign foe. The Tories cripple Marlborough, and throw away the fruits of his victories; the Whigs 'pine at the triumphs of Wellington;' the Peelites embarrass Palmerston; the Derbyites embarrass Aberdeen. English manliness and generosity come in to supply correctives which have not been supplied in other countries where the party system has been tried. But the system is distinctly one of organized enmity, very fatal to patriotism, and utterly destructive to loyalty. And yet after all, considering how little political wisdom is ever likely to reach the mass of the people, loyalty towards the rulers of men's choice is a principle in politics with which we can scarcely afford to dispense.

To this state of enmity is of course to be attributed the immense waste of time and energy in combative oratory, and the most undue value set on that accomplishment. What will a sane posterity think of debates in which nobody aims or pretends to aim at enlightening or convincing his neighbour, but only at inflaming the passions and confirming the prejudices of his own faction? What will it think of Parliamentary reputations won, and high places in the state obtained by mere dexterity in wounding the feelings of a rival, without the utterance of a single wise thing, or the performance of a single noble act?

Again, party government, as it leads to a constant change of persons and principles in the administration, is absolutely fatal to anything like forecast or a far sighted policy, etc., etc.

We return however to the point from which we started. We have hitherto gone, practically, on the theory of party government. But party principle fails us. As some think, it fails, owing to special accidents, for a time; but as we think, it will soon fail us, if it is not already failing us, vitally and for ever. We commend the question to political philosophers as one which strongly affects the morality of public life at this moment, and which is big with the most momentous issues for the future.

CHECKS AND BALANCES.

By Earl Russell, 1854.

"Now it appears to us that many advantages would attend the enabling the minority to have a part in these returns. In the first place, there is apt to be a feeling of great soreness when a very considerable number of electors, such as I have mentioned, are completely shut out from a share in the representation of one place.

But, in the next

place, 1 think that the more you have your representation confined to large population, the more ought you to take care that there should be some kind of balance, and that the large places sending members to the House should send those who represent the community at large. But when there is a very large body excluded, it cannot be said that the community at large is fairly represented.

"HARE ON REPRESENTATIVES," 1857.

A Résumé by John Francis Waters, M.A., 1892.

The three words heading this article form the short title of an excellent work, namely, "A Treatise on the Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal," by Thomas Hare, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, published in 1859, in London, by Longmans, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts.

This work has been reviewed by many persons of distinction, and an excellent synopsis of Mr. Hare's scheme of representation has been given by Millicent Garrett Fawcett, wife of Henry Fawcett, M.P., so well known as Professor of Political Economy in the University of Cambridge. Mr. Hare has for his great object to remove the anomalies, absurdities, and tyrannies of the present method of electing members of Parliament and municipal representatives by giving to each elector a direct, equal and personal representation in Parliament. Of course this does not mean that every elector is to represent himself in Parliament, for then Parliament would be but another name for the adult male population of the realm; but it means that every elector should feel that his vote has done a real substantial good by placing in Parliament some man who shall be the honest exponent of the elector's honest views. In following in the footsteps of the distinguished persons who have written more or less exhaustively about Mr. Hare's scheme, and given compressed reports upon it, it is to be premised that in the limits at my disposal no more can be done than to give an outline of the main shape and symmetry of the plan. The writer cannot therefore enter as fully as

he would wish into the analysis of the admirable statement by which Mr. Hare justifies the assumption that our present methods of parliamentary and municipal elections are faulty, unjust, and even ridiculous. It may be asked here, "Is not the direct, equal and personal representation of every elector guaranteed by the present systen?" The best reply to this is to state very briefly the substance of Mr. Hare's words on this point :

He shows what must be apparent to any one who gives the matter five minutes' consideration, that a system like ours which permits the nation to be practically governed by a handful, to the total ostracism of the wishes and representation of practically half the community, cannot be other than radically wrong. Thus, to make matters plainer by an illustration at home, let us look at the result in Canada of our system of parliamentary elections. Successive contests have shewn that the Liberals in Canada form not far from half the population. But what share have they in the government of the country as long as the Conservatives, by a slight plurality, have entire control of the Treasury Benches? Therefore, every elector who cast a vote for a Liberal candidate practically wasted it, and really has no representation in Parliament, since the Liberals in Parliament, with things as they are, have no voice effective in moulding the destinies of the nation. Again, there are thousands of persons interested in special subjects of legislation apart from the more or less well-defined issues separating Grit and Tory; but those persons are perfectly well aware that, as things are, a vote given for any other than the regular party candidate is utterly wasted, since nobody refusing to ally himself with one or the other great political party has any chance of gaining a seat in the House of Commons. The votes, then, of a certain number of Liberal electors are not wasted in one sense since, according to the majority system which prevails, they do succeed in returning a certain number of members to serve in the Commons; but their votes are really wasted in this sense, that these members, being in the minority in the Commons, have no power whatever to give effect to the wishes of their constituents One of the absurdities of the present system is perhaps best illustrated by an example. Let us suppose that ten candidates seek the suffrages of a constituency or pocket borough which has fifty voters; every candidate except one would receive five votes, let us suppose, but one would receive six votes; he would, therefore, be elected to represent the borough, that is to say, he represents really six voters, while forty-four are left out in the cold wholly unrepresented. This, of course, is an extreme case, but it shows as well as any other the state of affairs existing under our present system in which there is hardly any provision for the representation of minorities. Even the feeble attempt made by Mr. Mowat for minority representation in Toronto has been the subject of unending ridicule and unjust accusation. But really the Premier of Ontario, by preventing voters from marking a ballot for more than two of the three candidates for the Local Legislature has done no more than secure representation for the large Reform minority in the City of Toronto, which otherwise would be left without a voice in the conduct of public affairs. Mr. Hare's scheme is emphatic in providing that every elector shall have no more votes than one, because Parliament could not become what he wishes it to become, "the mirror of the nation," unless the voting power of every elector were equal. Under the present régime a man may vote in every constituency in which he has a property qualification. A radical difference between Mr. Hare's plan of voting and that in vogue is that, by an elaborate system which he claims, however, to be quite workable, a voter should have permission, if the candidates in his own constituency did not suit him, to vote for candidates according to his choice in another constituency. Candidates, therefore, of a kind to poll votes from constituencies in different parts of the realm, and who could not be correctly described as candidates for any particular constituency, might be classed as "all England" candidates. It is well-known that under our present system a candidate often receives an enormous plurality over an opponent less distinguished. Mr. Hare's idea is that a quota of votes necessary to secure the election of a member should be established, and that no candidate should receive more than the required number. It would be objected at once to this that the voter, not having the omniscience of Providence, cannot know whether the candidate of his choice will or will not receive the quota, but Mr. Hare meets this objection

by providing a form of conditional ballot by which the voter records first his preference for his candidate and then directs that "in the event of such candidate being already elected, or not obtaining the quota," the vote should go to a second or third or fourth candidate of his choice in that constituency or in "all England," as the case may be. It is obvious, then, that if the proposed system were worked out to its logical conclusion every member of Farliament would represent an equal number of voters, and that no votes would have been thrown away, since, in the case of candidates either elected or who have failed to receive the required quota, the elector's ballot would be placed to the credit of another eligible candidate. It is claimed by those who favour this plan of representation that the House of Commons would then really be a representative assembly and an assembly of peers in the sense that every constituent member would represent an equal voting power. Of course, the enemies of Mr. Hare's idea claim that the House of Commons, by the adoption of this system of electing its members, would become little better than an assembly of men for ventilating eccentric and crotchety notions, an objection met, in a sort of way, by the counter-statement that the people who have no crotchety notions have it in their power to secure representation as well as the eccentric voters have. It is claimed by the advocates of the system that more public interest would be felt in the constituencies if it were possible to elect parliamentary and municipal representatives on the basis proposed; that voters would study by degrees questions of political economy and statecraft; that they would eagerly scan the list of candidates; and that bribery and corruption would gradually, but withal speedily, become unknown, because the temptation to bribe and to be bribed would be removed. It is provided that with the exception of a registration fee all expenses of election should be borne by the State, and since no candidate couid receive more than the quota of votes, bribers would not be anxious to spend money in getting ballots marked in all likelihood for men other than the one in whose supposed interest the bribery was perpetrated. Mr. Hare's plan provides for territorial designations as at present, if that be preferred, so that an "all England" candidate receiving votes from every part of the kingdom would be designated as a member for that place in which he would have received a majority of his votes; this would obviate the difficulty of filling vacancies caused by death or resignation, and would seem to render the retaining of territorial designations necessary; for otherwise, if members were elected to the House of Commons without territorial designation, how would it be possible to issue a writ for an unnamed constituency! One writer says naïvely enough, "perhaps rather an Irish way of getting over the difficulty connected with filling up those accidental vacancies which occur between general elections, is not to fill them up at all; and in order to avoid constituencies remaining long unrepresented, to have triennial, or even annual Parliaments." A further objection to Mr. Hare's scheme is that the "all England" character of the representation would tend to destroy local representation and would prevent members of Parliament from taking that interest in forwarding and expediting the process of private bills dealing with local works, which now members of the different constituencies so zealously evince. The counter-statement is that these services could just as well be performed by members under Mr. Hare's scheme as at present, and that the great centres of shipping and commercial activity would for their own interests combine to send a sufficient number of local members to conserve local interests. Other objectors find great fault with Mr. Hare's plan on the ground that the working of it would be incompatible with voting by ballot. The objection is not well founded. But it should be said here that Mr. Hare himself did not favour voting by ballot, which in one part of his book he speaks of as a degradation." Further, he maintains that it is a fruitful source of bribery. People will say, "How can the ballot encourage bribery when the person to be bribed votes in secret, so that the briber cannot know whether or not the bribed voter stuck to his bargain?" One answer is not far to seek, namely, that payment of bribes could be, and often has been, conditional upon the success of the candidate in whose interest the bribery is committed. The bribed voter would then have a guilty interest in sticking to his bargain, since he would not get the bribe unless his candidate were elected; and, on the other hand, the briber, if he were not elected, would at least have the satisfaction of saving his money.

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