Proportional Representation: A Study in Methods of Election

by John H. Humphreys

Party . . . . . Constitutionalist Progressive Conservative Radical

Party questions . 63 167 68 —
Free questions. . 119 15 114 182

"It should be noted," says Mr. Hayashida, "that the Radicals had no party questions, but made all questions free. On the other hand, the Constitutionalists, who supported the Government, made party questions of practically all laws submitted. On the average, apart from the Radicals, the three other parties treated 23 per cent. of the laws, and 37 per cent. of the petitions in the twenty-sixth session of the Imperial Japanese Diet as free questions."

The formation of groups.

Such evidence as we possess does not then warrant the assumption that a proportional system leads to an increase in the number of political parties. It makes them more elastic. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that a system of single-member constituencies has completely failed to maintain the two-party system. In England the Labour Party forms within the House of Commons a distinct camp by itself, the Nationalist Party still more jealously guards its independence, and at the election of January, 1910, a smaller group of Independent Nationalists was formed. The rise of the Labour Party in Australia was not prevented by a system of single-member constituencies. In Germany and France single-member constituencies have not arrested the development of groups with national, religious, or sectional programmes. When, therefore, it is contended that proportional representation will lead to the formation of groups, the obvious answer is that it is the present system which is producing groups; and should the representation obtained by these groups, as in France and Germany and in Australia, give no clear indication of public opinion, then the instability which has been a characteristic of French and for a time of Australian parliamentary conditions may become characteristic of the House of Commons.

Nor do those advocates of proportional representation, who desire to maintain the two-party system by artificial means, offer any machinery adequate for the purpose. In an article written before the first elections for the Commonwealth parliament, Mr. Deakin wrote as follows:—

"By the very circumstances of the case the tariff issue cannot but dominate the first election, and determine the fate of the first ministry of the Commonwealth. There will be no time for second thoughts or for suspension of judgment. The first choice of the people will be final on this head. The first parliament must be either protectionist or anti-protectionist, and its first great work an Australian tariff. That is the clear-cut issue. The risk is that a proportion of the representatives may be returned upon other grounds, as the electors as a whole may not realise all that is at stake or make the necessary sacrifices or opinion and preferences to express themselves emphatically on this point."

In commenting upon this declaration the supporters of so-called two-party proportional representation[11] said:

"The only way to avoid the risk indicated is to take this one definite issue as the basis of proportional representation. Each State should be divided on it, and should elect its proportional number of Free-trade and Protectionist representatives." But how are all the electors to be constrained into accepting the dictates of party leaders as to the lines upon which elections shall be fought? The Labour Party in Australia apparently considered the special principles for which they stood of more importance than either Free Trade or Protection. The English Labour Party would doubtless adopt the same point of view, whilst the Nationalists regard the Tariff question as of little importance as compared with Home Rule. "The rude and crude division," said Mr. Asquith, "which used to correspond more or less accurately with the facts of a representative assembly of two parties, had perhaps become everywhere more or less a thing of the past."[12] There are no means available for restoring the earlier conditions, and certainly the existing electoral system of single-member constituencies affords no guarantee that in the future any one party will obtain a permanent majority strong enough to get its own way. The maintenance in form of the two-party system during the parliament of 1906-10 was merely due to the accident of the phenomenal election of 1906, when the Liberal Party was returned in such numbers as to exceed the combined forces of all other groups. At the General Election of January, 1910, five parties entered the field, and as a result of this election no party obtained an absolute majority. In the important parliamentary debates which arose immediately after the election each of these groups took part, as such, for the purpose of emphasizing their independence, and when, consequent upon the death of King Edward, a conference on the constitutional question was arranged between the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, in commenting upon the conference, made this statement: "He regretted that there was going to be any conference at all, but if there was going to be one he, as a member of the Labour Party, denied the right of the two front benches to settle it. They no longer represented the House of Commons or the opinion of the country. There were other benches."[13] Obviously, if other benches are to be taken into consideration in the solution of constitutional questions, it is a matter of importance to know the true strength that lies behind those occupying them. The difference—an extremely important difference—that a proportional system would produce in the composition of the House of Commons is that the representation obtained by these groups would give a much more accurate clue to public opinion and, as in the long-run the strength of an executive depends upon its capacity to interpret the will of the people, the position of the executive would be rendered much more stable. This is the justification of Mr. Asquith's statement: "Let them have a House of Commons which fully reflected every strain of opinion; that was what made democratic government in the long-run not only safer and more free, but more stable."

But does parliamentary government, as the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems suggests, really depend for its working upon the maintenance of a system of election which admittedly distorts the real wishes of the people? This argument had been anticipated and effectively dealt with by M. Ostrogorski in his Democracy and Political Parties. "There arises," says he, "the old question of the Duke of Wellington, frightened by the prospect of the abolition of the rotten boroughs: How will the King's government be carried out? How will parliamentary government work? In reality the catastrophe will not be more than that which so alarmed the hero of Waterloo; now, as then, it will be nothing more nor less than the destruction of something rotten."[14] The King's government has been improved by the abolition of the rotten boroughs, and will be still further improved if opinion within the House of Commons is brought into more direct relation with opinion outside. The view taken by the Commission was not shared by one of its members, Lord Lochee, who in a note appended to the Report says: "I am not concerned to dispute that the introduction of proportional representation might involve important changes in parliamentary government. That, in my view, is not a question for the Commission. I shall, therefore, only say that I do not believe that the cause of good government is bound up with the maintenance of a distorted representation, or that British statesmanship would be unable to cope with the problems which a better system might bring in its train."