Parliamentary representation adapted, by the removal of disabilities of creed and rank and income, to meet the demands of the nation, has been proved by experience a clumsy but useful weapon for checking oppression. Nowadays, we are using it less for defence against oppression, or as an instrument for removing political grievances, and are testing its worth for the provision of positive social reform. More and more it is required of Parliament that means be found for getting rid of the ills around us, for preventing disease and destitution, for promoting health and decency.
And just because legislation is, at the prompting of a social conscience, invading our homes and workshops, penetrating into prisons, workhouses, and hospitals, touching the lives of all of us from the cradle to the grave, the more imperative is it that our legislators should be chosen freely by the widest electorate of men and women. We fall back on the old maxim: "That which touches all shall be approved by all," and can perceive no other way of obtaining that general approbation for the laws than by the popular election of our representatives.
Demagogues may exploit the popular will, the cunning and unscrupulous in power may have us at their mercy, in our folly and indifference the nation may be brought to grave losses; but still there is always the means of recovery for the well-disposed while the vote remains in their hands.
So it is that, in spite of obvious failings and shortcomings, democracy by representative government remains for nations throughout the world that have not yet tried it the goal of their political striving. We are alive to the imperfections of democracy. It is no automatic machine for conferring benefits in return for taxes. It is the creation of mankind, not a revelation from heaven; and it needs, like all good human things, constant attention and can bear many improvements. It has to be adjusted from time to time to suit the growing capacities of mankind—as the popular assembly gave way to the representative assembly—and only on the failure to make the adjustment does it get rusty and out of order. It has to meet the requirements of vast empires and mighty confederations of states, and to fulfil the wants of small republics and parish councils.
What but democracy can answer to the call for political liberty that sounds from so many lands and in so many varying tongues? Did any other form of government devised by the wit of man make such universal appeal?
And when all is said and done—what does this democracy, this government by popular representatives, mean, but government by the consent of the governed—the only form of government tolerable to civilised mankind in the twentieth century?
Given a fairly good standard of common honesty in the ordinary dealings of life, and the honesty of our public life, whether in Parliament or in the Civil Service, in executive or administration, will serve. If the private and commercial life is corroded with dishonesty, then democracy will be bitten by knaves and rascals. For our chosen rulers have a way of faithfully reflecting the morality of their electors, and are not free to indulge their fancies, as kings of old were.
Politics are not, and never will be, or ought to be, the chief interest and concern of the mass of people in a healthy community where slavery is extinct. And democracy makes no demand that would involve such interest and concern. The choice of honest representatives, persons of goodwill, and reasonable intelligence, is no tremendous task in a community where honesty, goodwill, and intelligence prevail. And if these things do not prevail, if honesty is contemned in business, and goodwill between man and man despised, and intelligence frowned upon, then it is of small importance what the government of such a nation is, for that nation is doomed, and it is well for the world that it should be doomed.
But, on the whole, it seems indisputable that the common people of the great nations do cleave to honesty and goodwill, and that the desire for intelligence is being widely fostered. As long, then, as we can count on honesty, goodwill, and intelligence in our streets and market-places, as we can to-day, mankind does well to elect its representatives to council and Parliament and proclaim democracy—"Government of the people, by the people, for the people"—as the proper government for mankind.