We hope to have left on the reader's mind by this time no doubt as to the intimate connection between the machinery of election and the resulting character of the legislature. Now it is a most extraordinary fact that this connection is hardly noticed by the leading constitutional authorities. It is true they often recognize that suggested changes like the Hare system would debase our legislatures, but it never seems to occur to them that present evils might be cured by a change in the electoral machinery. They point out the evils indeed, but only to indulge in gloomy forebodings at the onward march of democracy, or as warnings of the necessity for placing checks on the people.
Take Bagehot's study of the House of Commons in his standard work on "The English Constitution," where he classifies the functions exercised by the House. He insists that the most important of these is the elective function—its power to elect and dismiss the ministry. In addition, it exercises an expressive function, a teaching function, an informing function, and, lastly, the function of legislation. But not a word is said of the relation of these functions to representation, or to the method of election. It is asserted that the reason the House of Commons is able to exercise these functions is because England is a deferential nation, and the people leave government in the hands of their betters, the higher classes. On one point he is emphatic, and that is the absolute necessity of party. He writes:—
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. 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.
As to the present trend of affairs, the opinion of a foreign observer, Gneist—"History of the English Constitution"—may be quoted:—
England, too, will experience the fact that the transition to the new order of industrial society is brought about through a process of dissolution of the old cohesions, upon which the constitution of Parliament is based. The unrepresented social mass, which is now flooding the substructure of the English Constitution, will only stay its course at a universal suffrage, and a thorough and arithmetical equalization of the constituencies, and will thus attempt, and in a great measure achieve, a further dissolution of the elective bodies. To meet the coming storm a certain fusion of the old parties seems to be immediately requisite, though the propertied classes, in defending their possessions, will certainly not at first display their best qualities. As, further, a regular formation in two parties cannot be kept up, a splitting up into fractions, as in the parliaments of the Continent, will ensue, and the changing of the ministry will modify itself accordingly, so that the Crown will no longer be able to commit the helm of the state in simple alternation to the leader of the one or the other majority. And then a time will recur in which the King in Council may have to undertake the actual leadership. (Vol. ii., pp. 452, 453.)
In other words, that an industrial society is incapable of self-government! Note the reason for this remarkable conclusion—a splitting up into fractions, i.e., imperfect organization.
Take now the evidence of the distinguished historian and publicist, Mr. W.E.H. Leeky, M.P., as given in his recent work on "Democracy and Liberty":—
After all due weight has been given to the possible remedies that have been considered, it still seems to me that the parliamentary system, when it rests on manhood suffrage, or something closely approaching to manhood suffrage, is extremely unlikely to be permanent. This was evidently the opinion of Tocqueville, who was strongly persuaded that the natural result of democracy was a highly concentrated, enervating, but mild despotism. It is the opinion of many of the most eminent contemporary thinkers in France and Germany, and it is, I think, steadily growing in England. This does not mean that parliaments will cease, or that a wide suffrage will be abolished. It means that parliaments, if constructed on this type, cannot permanently remain the supreme power among the nations of the world. Sooner or later they will sink by their own vices and inefficiencies into a lower plane. They will lose the power of making and unmaking ministries, and it will be found absolutely necessary to establish some strong executive independently of their fluctuations. Very probably this executive may be established, as in America and under the French Empire, upon a broad basis of an independent suffrage. Very possibly upper chambers, constituted upon some sagacious plan, will again play a great restraining and directing part in the government of the world. Few persons who have watched the changes that have passed over our own House of Commons within the last few years will either believe or wish that in fifty years' time it can exercise the power it now does. It is only too probable that some great catastrophe or the stress of a great war may accelerate the change. (Vol. i., pp. 300, 301.)
And the reason assigned for this very unsatisfactory state of affairs is precisely as before:
All the signs of the times point to the probability in England as elsewhere of many ministries resting on precarious majorities formed out of independent or heterogeneous groups. There are few conditions less favourable to the healthy working of parliamentary institutions or in which the danger of an uncontrolled House of Commons is more evident. One consequence of this disintegration of Parliament is a greatly increasing probability that policies which the nation does not really wish for may be carried into effect. The process which the Americans call "log-rolling" becomes very easy. One minority will agree to support the objects of another minority on condition of receiving in return a similar assistance, and a number of small minorities aiming at different objects, no one of which is really desired by the majority of the nation, may attain their several ends by forming themselves into a political syndicate and mutually co-operating. (Vol. i., pp. 152, 153.)