11689	----	Proofreading Team ARE WOMEN PEOPLE? A BOOK OF RHYMES FOR SUFFRAGE TIMES By ALICE DUER MILLER AUTHOR OF "BLUE ARCH," "THE MODERN OBSTACLE." ETC. TO V.B.W. SLAVE-DRIVER AND FRIEND Introduction Father, what is a Legislature? A representative body elected by the people of the state. Are women people? No, my son, criminals, lunatics and women are not people. Do legislators legislate for nothing? Oh, no; they are paid a salary. By whom? By the people. Are women people? Of course, my son, just as much as men are. To the New York Tribune, in whose generous columns many of these verses first appeared, the author here wishes to express her gratitude. CONTENTS TREACHEROUS TEXTS CAMPAIGN MATERIAL (For Both Sides) WOMEN'S SPHERE A MASQUE OF TEACHERS: THE IDEAL CANDIDATES THE UNCONSCIOUS SUFFRAGISTS TREACHEROUS TEXTS ARE WOMEN PEOPLE? A Consistent Anti to Her Son ("Look at the hazards, the risks, the physical dangers that ladies would be exposed to at the polls."--_Anti-suffrage speech_.) You're twenty-one to-day, Willie, And a danger lurks at the door, I've known about it always, But I never spoke before; When you were only a baby It seemed so very remote, But you're twenty-one to-day, Willie, And old enough to vote. You must not go to the polls, Willie, Never go to the polls, They're dark and dreadful places Where many lose their souls; They smirch, degrade and coarsen, Terrible things they do To quiet, elderly women-- What would they do to you! If you've a boyish fancy For any measure or man, Tell me, and I'll tell Father, He'll vote for it, if he can. He casts my vote, and Louisa's, And Sarah, and dear Aunt Clo; Wouldn't you let him vote for you? Father, who loves you so? I've guarded you always, Willie, Body and soul from harm; I'll guard your faith and honor, Your innocence and charm From the polls and their evil spirits, Politics, rum and pelf; Do you think I'd send my only son Where I would not go myself? Our Idea of Nothing at All ("I am opposed to woman suffrage, but I am not opposed to woman."--_Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Webb of North Carolina_.) O women, have you heard the news Of charity and grace? Look, look, how joy and gratitude Are beaming in my face! For Mr. Webb is not opposed To woman in her place! O Mr. Webb, how kind you are To let us live at all, To let us light the kitchen range And tidy up the hall; To tolerate the female sex In spite of Adam's fall. O girls, suppose that Mr. Webb Should alter his decree! Suppose he were opposed to us-- Opposed to you and me. What would be left for us to do-- Except to cease to be? Lines to Mr. Bowdle of Ohio ("The women of this smart capital are beautiful. Their beauty is disturbing to business; their feet are beautiful, their ankles are beautiful, but here I must pause."--_Mr. Bowdle's anti-suffrage speech in Congress, January 12, 1915_.) You, who despise the so-called fairer sex, Be brave. There really isn't any reason You should not, if you wish, oppose and vex And scold us in, and even out of season; But don't regard it as your bounden duty To open with a tribute to our beauty. Say if you like that women have no sense, No self-control, no power of concentration; Say that hysterics is our one defence Our virtue but an absence of temptation; These I can bear, but, oh, I own it rankles To hear you maundering on about our ankles. Tell those old stories, which have now and then Been from the Record thoughtfully deleted, Repeat that favorite one about the hen, Repeat the ones that cannot be repeated; But in the midst of such enjoyments, smother The impulse to extol your "sainted mother." On Not Believing All You Hear ("Women are angels, they are jewels, they are queens and princesses of our hearts."--_Anti-suffrage speech of Mr. Carter of Oklahoma_.) "Angel, or jewel, or princess, or queen, Tell me immediately, where have you been?" "I've been to ask all my slaves so devoted Why they against my enfranchisement voted." "Angel and princess, that action was wrong. Back to the kitchen, where angels belong." The Revolt of Mother ("Every true woman feels----"--_Speech of almost any Congressman_.) I am old-fashioned, and I think it right That man should know, by Nature's laws eternal, The proper way to rule, to earn, to fight, And exercise those functions called paternal; But even I a little bit rebel At finding that he knows my job as well. At least he's always ready to expound it, Especially in legislative hall, The joys, the cares, the halos that surround it, "How women feel"--he knows that best of all. In fact his thesis is that no one can Know what is womanly except a man. I am old-fashioned, and I am content When he explains the world of art and science And government--to him divinely sent-- I drink it in with ladylike compliance. But cannot listen--no, I'm only human-- While he instructs me how to be a woman. The Gallant Sex (A woman engineer has been dismissed by the Board of Education, under their new rule that women shall not attend high pressure boilers, although her work has been satisfactory and she holds a license to attend such boilers from the Police Department.) Lady, dangers lurk in boilers, Risks I could not let you face. Men were meant to be the toilers, Home, you know, is woman's place. Have no home? Well, is that so? Still, it's not my fault, you know. Charming lady, work no more; Fair you are and sweet as honey; Work might make your fingers sore, And, besides, I need the money. Prithee rest,--or starve or rob-- Only let me have your job! Representation ("My wife is against suffrage, and that settles me."--_Vice-President Marshall_.) I My wife dislikes the income tax, And so I cannot pay it; She thinks that golf all interest lacks, So now I never play it; She is opposed to tolls repeal (Though why I cannot say), But woman's duty is to feel, And man's is to obey. II I'm in a hard position for a perfect gentleman, I want to please the ladies, but I don't see how I can, My present wife's a suffragist, and counts on my support, But my mother is an anti, of a rather biting sort; One grandmother is on the fence, the other much opposed, And my sister lives in Oregon, and thinks the question's closed; Each one is counting on my vote to represent her view. Now what should you think proper for a gentleman to do? Sonnet ("Three bills known as the Thompson-Bewley cannery bills have been advanced to third reading in the Senate and Assembly at Albany. One permits the canners to work their employés seven days a week, a second allows them to work women after 9 p.m. and a third removes every restriction upon the hours of labor of women and minors."--_Zenas L. Potter, former chief cannery investigator for New York State Factory Investigating Commission_.) Let us not to an unrestricted day Impediments admit. Work is not work To our employés, but a merry play; They do not ask the law's excuse to shirk. Ah, no, the canning season is at hand, When summer scents are on the air distilled, When golden fruits are ripening in the land, And silvery tins are gaping to be filled. Now to the cannery with jocund mien Before the dawn come women, girls and boys, Whose weekly hours (a hundred and nineteen) Seem all too short for their industrious joys. If this be error and be proved, alas The Thompson-Bewley bills may fail to pass! To President Wilson ("I hold it as a fundamental principle and so do you, that every people has the right to determine its own form of government. And until recently 50 per cent, of the people of Mexico have not had a look-in in determining who should be their governors, or what their government should be."--_Speech of President Wilson_.) Wise and just man--for such I think you are-- How can you see so burningly and clear Injustices and tyrannies afar, Yet blind your eyes to one that lies so near? How can you plead so earnestly for men Who fight their own fight with a bloody hand; How hold their cause so wildly dear, and then Forget the women of your native land? With your stern ardor and your scholar's word You speak to us of human liberty; Can you believe that women are not stirred By this same human longing to be free? He who for liberty would strike a blow Need not take arms, or fly to Mexico. Home and Where It Is (An Indiana judge has recently ruled: As to the right of the husband to decide the location of the home that "home is where the husband is.") Home is where the husband is, Be it near or be it far, Office, theatre, Pullman car, Poolroom, polls, or corner bar-- All good wives remember this-- Home is where the husband is. Woman's place is home, I wis. Leave your family bacon frying, Leave your wash and dishes drying, Leave your little children crying; Join your husband, near or far, At the club or corner bar, For the court has taught us this: "Home is where the husband is." The Maiden's Vow (A speaker at the National Education Association advised girls not to study algebra. Many girls, he said, had lost their souls through this study. The idea has been taken up with enthusiasm.) I will avoid equations, And shun the naughty surd, I must beware the perfect square, Through it young girls have erred: And when men mention Rule of Three Pretend I have not heard. Through Sturm's delightful theorems Illicit joys assure, Though permutations and combinations My woman's heart allure, I'll never study algebra, But keep my spirit pure. Such Nonsense ("Where on earth did the idea come from that the ballot is a boon, a privilege and an honor? From men."--_Mrs. Prestonia Mann Martin_.) Who is it thinks the vote some use? Man. (Man is often such a goose!) Indeed it makes me laugh to see How men have struggled to be free. Poor Washington, who meant so well, And Nathan Hale and William Tell, Hampden and Bolivar and Pym, And L'Ouverture--remember him? And Garibaldi and Kossuth, And some who threw away their youth, All bitten by the stupid notion That liberty was worth emotion. They could not get it through their heads That if they stayed tucked up in beds, Avoiding politics and strife, They'd lead a pleasant, peaceful life. Let us, dear sisters, never make Such a ridiculous mistake; But teach our children o'er and o'er That liberty is just a chore. A Suggested Campaign Song ("No brass bands. No speeches. Instead a still, silent, effective influence."--_Anti-suffrage speech_.) We are waging--can you doubt it? A campaign so calm and still No one knows a thing about it, And we hope they never will. No one knows What we oppose, And we hope they never will. We are ladylike and quiet, Here a whisper--there a hint; Never speeches, bands or riot, Nothing suitable for print. No one knows What we oppose, For we never speak for print. Sometimes in profound seclusion, In some far (but homelike) spot, We will make a dark allusion: "We're opposed to you-know-what." No one knows What we oppose, For we call it "You-Know-What." The Woman of Charm ("I hate a woman who is not a mystery to herself, as well as to me."--_The Phoenix_.) If you want a receipt for that popular mystery Known to the world as a Woman of Charm, Take all the conspicuous ladies of history, Mix them all up without doing them harm. The beauty of Helen, the warmth of Cleopatra, Salome's notorious skill in the dance, The dusky allure of the belles of Sumatra, The fashion and finish of ladies from France. The youth of Susanna, beloved by an elder, The wit of a Chambers' incomparable minx, The conjugal views of the patient Griselda, The fire of Sappho, the calm of the Sphinx, The eyes of La Vallière, the voice of Cordelia, The musical gifts of the sainted Cecelia, Trilby and Carmen and Ruth and Ophelia, Madame de Staël and the matron Cornelia, Iseult, Hypatia and naughty Nell Gwynn, Una, Titania and Elinor Glyn. Take of these elements all that is fusible, Melt 'em all down in a pipkin or crucible, Set 'em to simmer and take off the scum, And a Woman of Charm is the residuum! (Slightly adapted from W.S. Gilbert.) A Modern Proposal (It has been said that the feminist movement is the true solution of the mother-in-law problem.) Sylvia, my dear, I would be yours with pleasure, All that you are seems excellent to me, Except your mother, who's much more at leisure Than mothers ought to be. Find her a fad, a job, an occupation, Eugenics, dancing, uplift, yes, or crime, Set her to work for her Emancipation-- That takes a lot of time. Or, if the suffrage doctrine fails to charm her, There are the Antis--rather in her line-- Guarding the Home from Maine to Alabama Would keep her out of mine. The Newer Lullaby ("Good heavens, when I think what the young boy of to-day is growing up to I gasp. He has too many women around him all the time. He has his mother when he is a baby."--_Bernard Fagin, Probation Officer_.) Hush-a-bye, baby, Feel no alarm, Gunmen shall guard you, Lest Mother should harm. Wake in your cradle, Hear father curse! Isn't that better Than Mother or Nurse? The Protected Sex _With apologies to James Whitcomb Riley_. ("The result of taking second place to girls at school is that the boy feels a sense of inferiority that he is never afterward able entirely to shake off."--_Editorial in London Globe against co-education_.) There, little girl, don't read, You're fond of your books, I know, But Brother might mope If he had no hope Of getting ahead of you. It's dull for a boy who cannot lead. There, little girl, don't read. Warning to Suffragists ("The Latin man believes that giving woman the vote will make her less attractive."--_Anna H. Shaw_.) They must sacrifice their beauty Who would do their civic duty, Who the polling booth would enter, Who the ballot box would use; As they drop their ballots in it Men and women in a minute, Lose their charm, the antis tell us, But--the men have less to lose. Partners ("Our laws have not yet reached the point of holding that property which is the result of the husband's earnings and the wife's savings becomes their joint property.... In this most important of all partnerships there is no partnership property."--_Recent decision of the New York Supreme Court_.) Lady, lovely lady, come and share All my care; Oh how gladly I will hurry To confide my every worry (And they're very dark and drear) In your ear. Lady, share the praise I obtain Now and again; Though I'm shy, it doesn't matter, I will tell you how they flatter: Every compliment I'll share Fair and square. Lady, I my toil will divide At your side; I outside the home, you within; You shall wash and cook and spin, I'll provide the flax and food, If you're good. Partners, lady, we shall be, You and me, Partners in the highest sense Looking for no recompense, For, the savings that we make, I shall take. What Governments Say to Women (The law compels a married woman to take the nationality of her husband.) I _In Time of War_ Help us. Your country needs you; Show that you love her, Give her your men to fight, Ay, even to fall; The fair, free land of your birth, Set nothing above her, Not husband nor son, She must come first of all. II _In Time of Peace_ What's this? You've wed an alien, Yet you ask for legislation To guard your nationality? We're shocked at your demand. A woman when she marries Takes her husband's name and nation: She should love her husband only. What's a woman's native land? "Oh, That 'Twere Possible!" _With apologies to Lord Tennyson._ ("The grant of suffrage to women is repugnant to instincts that strike their roots deep in the order of nature. It runs counter to human reason, it flouts the teachings of experience and the admonitions of common sense."--_N.Y. Times, Feb. 7, 1915_.) Oh, that 'twere possible After those words inane For me to read _The Times_ Ever again! When I was wont to read it In the early morning hours, In a mood 'twixt wrath and mirth, I exclaimed: "Alas, Ye Powers, These ideas are fainter, quainter Than anything on earth!" A paper's laid before me. Not thou, not like to thee. Dear me, if it were possible _The Times_ should ever see How very far the times have moved (Spelt with a little "t"). _The Times_ Editorials Lovely Antiques, breathing in every line The perfume of an age long passed away, Wafting us back to 1829, Museum pieces of a by-gone day, You should not languish in the public press Where modern thought might reach and do you harm, And vulgar youth insult your hoariness, Missing the flavor of your old world charm; You should be locked, where rust cannot corrode In some old rosewood cabinet, dimmed by age, With silver-lustre, tortoise shell and Spode; And all would cry, who read your yellowing page: "Yes, that's the sort of thing that men believed Before the First Reform Bill was conceived!" CAMPAIGN MATERIAL (_For Both Sides_) Our Own Twelve Anti-suffragist Reasons 1. Because no woman will leave her domestic duties to vote. 2. Because no woman who may vote will attend to her domestic duties. 3. Because it will make dissension between husband and wife. 4. Because every woman will vote as her husband tells her to. 5. Because bad women will corrupt politics. 6. Because bad politics will corrupt women. 7. Because women have no power of organization. 8. Because women will form a solid party and outvote men. 9. Because men and women are so different that they must stick to different duties. 10. Because men and women are so much alike that men, with one vote each, can represent their own views and ours too. 11. Because women cannot use force. 12. Because the militants did use force. Why We Oppose Pockets for Women 1. Because pockets are not a natural right. 2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them. 3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them. 4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets. 5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled. 6. Because it would destroy man's chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets. 7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature. 8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely. Fashion Notes: Past and Present 1880--Anti-suffrage arguments are being worn long, calm and flowing this year, with the dominant note that of woman's intellectual inferiority. 1890--Violence is very evident in this season's modes, and our more conservative thinkers are saying that woman suffrage threatens the home, the Church and the Republic. 1900--A complete change of style has taken place. Everything is being worn _a l'aristocrate_, with the repeated assertion that too many people are voting already. 1915--The best line of goods shown by the leading anti-suffrage houses this spring is the statement that woman suffrage is the same thing as free love. The effect is extremely piquant and surprising. Why We Oppose Women Travelling in Railway Trains 1. Because travelling in trains is not a natural right. 2. Because our great-grandmothers never asked to travel in trains. 3. Because woman's place is the home, not the train. 4. Because it is unnecessary; there is no point reached by a train that cannot be reached on foot. 5. Because it will double the work of conductors, engineers and brakemen who are already overburdened. 6. Because men smoke and play cards in trains. Is there any reason to believe that women will behave better? Why We Oppose Schools for Children (_By the Children's Anti-School League_.) 1. Because education is a burden, not a right. 2. Because not one-tenth of one per cent. of the children of this country have demanded education. 3. Because if we are educated we should have to behave as if we were and we don't want to. 4. Because it is essentially against the nature of a child to be educated. 5. Because we can't see that it has done so much for grown-ups, and there is no reason for thinking it will make children perfect. 6. Because the time of children is already sufficiently occupied without going to school. 7. Because it would make dissension between parent and child. Imagine the home life of a parent who turned out to be more ignorant than his (or her) child? 8. Because we believe in the indirect education of the theatre, the baseball field and the moving picture. We believe that schools would in a great measure deprive us of this. 9. Because our parents went to school. They love us, they take care of us, they tell us what to do. We are content that they should be educated for us. But Then Who Cares for Figures An argument sometimes used against paying women as highly as men for the same work is that women are only temporarily in industry. Forty-four per cent of the women teachers in the public schools of New York have been more than ten years in the service, while only twenty-six per cent of the men teachers have served as long. * * * * * The Bundesrath of Germany has decided to furnish medical and financial assistance to women at the time of childbirth, in order "to alleviate the anxiety of husbands at the front." How strange this would sound: "The Bundesrath has decided to furnish medical assistance to the wounded at the front, in order to alleviate the anxiety of wives and mothers at home." When a benefit is suggested for men, the question asked is: "Will it benefit men?" When a benefit is suggested for women, the question is: "Will it benefit men?" Why We Oppose Votes for Men 1. Because man's place is the armory. 2. Because no really manly man wants to settle any question otherwise than by fighting about it. 3. Because if men should adopt peaceable methods women will no longer look up to them. 4. Because men will lose their charm if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves in other matters than feats of arms, uniforms and drums. 5. Because men are too emotional to vote. Their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this, while their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them peculiarly unfit for the task of government. The Logic of the Law In 1875 the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in denying the petition of women to practise before it said: "It would be shocking to man's reverence for womanhood and faith in woman ... that woman should be permitted to mix professionally in all the nastiness which finds its way into courts of justice." It then names thirteen subjects as unfit for the attention of women--three of them are crimes committed against women. Consistency ("Vile insults, lewd talk and brutal conduct were used by the indicted men to frighten respectable women who went to the polls in Terre Haute at the last election, asserted District Attorney Dailey."--_Press Dispatch_.) Are the polls unfit for decent women? No, sir, they are perfectly orderly. Tut, tut! Go there at once and swear and be brutal, or what will become of our anti-suffrage argument? Sometimes We're Ivy, and Sometimes We're Oak Is it true that the English government is calling on women to do work abandoned by men? Yes, it is true. Is not woman's place the home? No, not when men need her services outside the home. Will she never be told again that her place is the home? Oh, yes, indeed. When? As soon as men want their jobs back again. Do You Know That in 1869 Miss Jex-Blake and four other women entered for a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh? That the president of the College of Physicians refused to give the women the prizes they had won? That the undergraduates insulted any professor who allowed women to compete for prizes? That the women were stoned in the streets, and finally excluded from the medical school? That in 1877 the British Medical Association declared women ineligible for membership? That in 1881 the International Medical Congress excluded women from all but its "social and ceremonial meetings"? That the Obstetrical Society refused to allow a woman's name to appear on the title page of a pamphlet which she had written with her husband? That according to a recent dispatch from London, many hospitals, since the outbreak of hostilities, have asked women to become resident physicians, and public authorities are daily endeavoring to obtain women as assistant medical officers and as school doctors? Interviews With Celebrated Anti-Suffragists "Woman's place is in my home."--Appius Claudius. "I have never felt the need of the ballot."--Cleopatra. "Magna Charta merely fashionable fad of ye Barons."--King John. "Boston Tea Party shows American colonists to be hysterical and utterly incapable of self-government."--George III. "Know of no really good slaves who desire emancipation."--President of the United Slaveholders' Protective Association. Another of Those Curious Coincidences On February 15, the House of Representatives passed a bill making it unlawful to ship in interstate commerce the products of a mill, cannery or factory which have been produced by the labor of children under fourteen years. Forty-three gentlemen voted against it. Forty-one of those forty-three had also voted against the woman suffrage bill. Not one single vote was cast against it by a representative from any state where women vote for Congressmen. The New Freedom "The Michigan commission on industrial relations has discovered," says "The Detroit Journal," "that thousands of wives support their husbands." Woman's place is the home, but under a special privilege she is sometimes allowed to send her wages as a substitute. To the Great Dining Out Majority The New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage is sending out leaflets to its members urging them to "tell every man you meet, your tailor, your postman, your grocer, as well as your _dinner partner_, that you are opposed to woman suffrage." We hope that the 90,000 sewing machine operatives, the 40,000 saleswomen, the 32,000 laundry operatives, the 20,000 knitting and silk mill girls, the 17,000 women janitors and cleaners, the 12,000 cigar-makers, to say nothing of the 700,000 other women and girls in industry in New York State, will remember when they have drawn off their long gloves and tasted their oysters to tell their dinner partners that they are opposed to woman suffrage because they fear it might take women out of the home. WOMEN'S SPHERE Many Men to Any Woman If you have beauty, charm, refinement, tact, If you can prove that should I set you free, You would not contemplate the smallest act That might annoy or interfere with me. If you can show that women will abide By the best standards of their womanhood-- (And I must be the person to decide What in a woman is the highest good); If you display efficiency supreme In philanthropic work devoid of pay; If you can show a clearly thought-out scheme For bringing the millennium in a day: Why, then, dear lady, at some time remote, I might consider giving you the vote. A Sex Difference When men in Congress come to blows at something someone said, I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red; But if two women disagree, with very little noise, It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise. Advice to Heroines I A heroine must shrink and cling When heroes are about, And thus the watching world will think: "How brave his heart and stout!" But if he chance to be away When bright-faced dangers shine, It will be best for her to play The oak-tree, not the vine. In fact the most important thing Is knowing when it's time to cling. II _With apologies to R.L.S._ A heroine must be polite And do what others say is right, And think men wise and formidable-- At least as far as she is able. Mutual Vows "My dear," he said, "observe this frightful bill, Run up, I think you'll own, against my will. If you will recollect our wedding day You vowed on that occasion to obey." "I do recall the day," said she, "and how Me with your worldly goods you did endow." "That," he replied, "is palpably absurd----" "You mean you did not mean to keep your word?" "O, yes," he answered, "in a general way." "And that," said she, "is how I meant obey." If They Meant All They Said Charm is a woman's strongest arm; My charwoman is full of charm; I chose her, not for strength of arm But for her strange elusive charm. And how tears heighten woman's powers! My typist weeps for hours and hours: I took her for her weeping powers-- They so delight my business hours. A woman lives by intuition. Though my accountant shuns addition She has the rarest intuition. (And I myself can do addition.) Timidity in girls is nice. My cook is so afraid of mice. Now you'll admit it's very nice To feel your cook's afraid of mice. Democracy Democracy is this--to hold That all who wander down the pike In cart or car, on foot or bike, Or male or female, young or old, Are much alike--are much alike. Feminism "Mother, what is a Feminist?" "A Feminist, my daughter, Is any woman now who cares To think about her own affairs As men don't think she oughter." The Warning No, it isn't home neglecting If you spend your time selecting Seven blouses and a jacket and a hat; Or to give your day to paying Needless visits, or to playing Auction bridge. What critic could object to that? But to spend two precious hours At a lecture! Oh, my powers, The home is all a woman needs to learn. And an hour, or a quarter, Spent in voting! Why, my daughter, You could not find your home on your return. Evolution Said Mr. Jones in 1910: "Women, subject yourselves to men." Nineteen-Eleven heard him quote: "They rule the world without the vote." By Nineteen-Twelve, he would submit "When all the women wanted it." By Nineteen-Thirteen, looking glum, He said that it was bound to come. This year I heard him say with pride: "No reasons on the other side!" By Nineteen-Fifteen, he'll insist He's always been a suffragist. And what is really stranger, too, He'll think that what he says is true. Intercepted "Only the worst of them vote." "Are not the suffragists frights?" "Nietzsche's the person to quote." "I prefer love to my rights." "Are not the suffragists frights?" "Sex is their only appeal." "I prefer love to my rights." "No, we don't think, but we feel." "Sex is their only appeal." "Woman belongs at the loom." "No, we don't think, but we feel." "Doesn't it rub off the bloom?" "Woman belongs at the loom." "Isn't the speaker a bore!" "Doesn't it rub off the bloom?" "Oh, it's a fad--nothing more." "Isn't the speaker a bore!" "Nietzsche's the person to quote." "Oh, it's a fad--nothing more." "Only the worst of them vote." The Universal Answer Oh, there you go again, Invading man's domain! It's Nature's laws, you know, you are defying. Don't fancy that you can Be really like a man, So what's the use of all this fuss and trying? It seems to me so clear, That women's highest sphere Is being loving wives and patient mothers. Oh, can't you be content To be as you were meant? {souls For {books belong to husbands and to brothers. {votes Candor (_By an admirer of the late H.C. Bunner_.) "I know what you're going to say," she said, And she stood up, causing him some alarm; "You're going to tell me I'll lose my charm, And what is a woman when charm has fled? And you're going to say that you greatly fear I don't understand a woman's sphere; Now aren't you honestly?" "Yes," he said. "I know what you're going to say," she said, "You're going to ask what I hope to gain By stepping down to the dusty plain, By seeking a stone when I might have bread; You're going to say: 'Can a vote replace The tender force of a woman's grace?' Now, aren't you honestly?" "Yes," he said. "I know what you're going to do," he said, "You're going to talk to me all day long Trying to make me see I'm wrong; And other men who are less misled Will pale with jealousy when they see The time you give to converting me; Now, aren't you honestly?" "Ye-es," she said. What Every Woman Must Not Say "I don't pretend I'm clever," he remarked, "or very wise," And at this she murmured, "Really," with the right polite surprise. "But women," he continued, "I must own I understand; Women are a contradiction--honorable and underhand-- Constant as the star Polaris, yet as changeable as Fate, Always flying what they long for, always seeking what they hate." "Don't you think," began the lady, but he cut her short: "I see That you take it personally--women always do," said he. "You will pardon me for saying every woman is the same, Always greedy for approval, always sensitive to blame; Sweet and passionate are women; weak in mind, though strong in soul; Even you admit, I fancy, that they have no self-control?" "No, I don't admit they haven't," said the patient lady then, "Or they could not sit and listen to the nonsense talked by men." Chivalry It's treating a woman politely As long as she isn't a fright: It's guarding the girls who act rightly, If you can be judge of what's right; It's being--not just, but so pleasant; It's tipping while wages are low; It's making a beautiful present, And failing to pay what you owe. _From Our Own Nursery Rhymes_ "Chivalry, Chivalry, where have you been?" "I've been out seeking a beautiful queen." "Chivalry, Chivalry, what did you find?" "Commonplace women, not much to my mind." Women (_With rather insincere apologies to Mr. Rudyard Kipling_.) I went to ask my government if they would set me free, They gave a pardoned crook a vote, but hadn't one for me; The men about me laughed and frowned and said: "Go home, because We really can't be bothered when we're busy making laws." Oh, it's women this, and women that and women have no sense, But it's pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense, It comes to the expense, my dears, it comes to the expense, It's pay your taxes promptly when it comes to the expense. I went into a factory to earn my daily bread: Men said: "The home is woman's sphere." "I have no home," I said. But when the men all marched to war, they cried to wife and maid, "Oh, never mind about the home, but save the export trade." For it's women this and women that, and home's the place for you, But it's patriotic angels when there's outside work to do, There's outside work to do, my dears, there's outside work to do, It's patriotic angels when there's outside work to do. We are not really senseless, and we are not angels, too, But very human beings, human just as much as you. It's hard upon occasions to be forceful and sublime When you're treated as incompetents three-quarters of the time. But it's women this and women that, and woman's like a hen, But it's do the country's work alone, when war takes off the men, And it's women this and women that and everything you please, But woman is observant, and be sure that woman sees. Beware! In the days that are gone when a statue was wanted In park or museum where statues must be, A chivalrous male would come forward undaunted And say: "If you must have one, make it of me. Bad though they be, yet I'll agree If you must make them, why make them of me." But chivalry's dead, as I always expected Since women would not let things stay as they were; So now, I suppose, when a statue's erected Men will say brutally: "Make it of her." She may prefer things as they were When they start making the statues of her. Male Philosophy Men are very brave, you know, That was settled long ago; Ask, however, if you doubt it, Any man you meet about it; He will say, I think, like me, Men are brave as they can be. Women think they're brave, you say? Do they really? Well, they may, But such biased attestation Is not worth consideration, For a legal judgment shelves What they say about themselves. From a Man's Point of View Women love self-sacrifice Suffering and good advice; If they don't love these sincerely Then they're not true women really. Oh, it shocks me so to note Women pleading for the vote! Saying publicly it would Educate and do them good. Such a selfish reason trips Oddly from a woman's lips. But it must not be supposed I am in the least opposed. If they want it let them try it. For I think we'll profit by it. Glory I went to see old Susan Gray, Whose soldier sons had marched away, And this is what she had to say: "It isn't war I hate at all-- 'Tis likely men must fight-- But, oh, these flags and uniforms, It's them that isn't right! If war must come, and come it does To take our boys from play, It isn't right to make it seem So beautiful and gay." I left old Susan with a sigh; A famous band was marching by To make men glad they had to die. Dependence (An Englishwoman whose income has stopped owing to her two sons having joined the English army, was taken care of last night at the Florence Crittenden Mission.--_Press Clipping_.) The young men said to their mother, "Hear us, O dearest and best! Time cannot cool or smother The love of you in our breast; Here is your place and no other-- Come home and rest." And the mother's heart was grateful For the love of her cherished ones, And her labor, bitter and hateful, She left at the word of her sons, Till she heard far off the fateful Voices of guns. Their love did more enslave her; They did not understand That none could guard or save her When war was on the land, But herself, and God, who gave her Heart and mind and hand. Playthings Last year the shops were crowded With soldier suits and guns-- The presents that at Christmas time We give our little sons; And many a glittering trumpet And many a sword and drum; But as they're made in Germany This year they will not come. Perhaps another season We shall not give our boys Such very warlike playthings, Such military toys; Perhaps another season We shall not think it sweet To watch their game of soldier men, Who dream not of defeat. Militants Hippolta, Penthesilea, Maria Teresa and Joan, Agustina and Boadicea And some militant girls of our own-- It would take a brave man and a dull one To say to these ladies: "Of course We adore you while meek, Timid, clinging and weak, But a woman can never use force." A Lady's Choice Her old love in tears and silence had been building her a palace Ringed by moats and flanked with towers, he had set it on a hill "Here," he said, "will come no whisper of the world's alarms and malice, In these granite walls imprisoned, I will keep you safe from ill." As he spoke along the highway there came riding by a stranger, For an instant on her features, he a fleeting glance bestowed, Then he said: "My heart is fickle and the world is full of danger," And he offered her his stirrup and he pointed down the road. The Ballad of Lost Causes (_About 465 years after Villon_.) Tell me in what spot remote Do the antis dwell to-day, Those who did not want to vote, Feared their sex's prompt decay? Where are those who used to say: "Home alone is woman's sphere; Only those should vote who slay"? Where the snows of yester-year? Where are those who used to quote Nietzsche's words in dread array? Where the ancient crones who wrote: "Women rule through Beauty's sway"? And those lovers, where are they, Who could hold no woman dear If she had the ballot? Nay! Where the snows of yester-year? Prince, inquire no more, I pray, Whither antis disappear. Suffrage won; they melt away, Like the snows of yester-year. Thoughts at an Anti Meeting There are no homes in suffrage states, There are no children, glad and good, There, men no longer seek for mates, And women lose their womanhood. This I believe without debate, And yet I ask--and ask in vain-- Why no one in a suffrage state Has moved to change things back again? A MASQUE OF TEACHERS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS SUFFRAGISTS The Ideal Candidates (A by-law of the New York Board of Education says: "No married woman shall be appointed to any teaching or supervising position in the New York public schools unless her husband is mentally or physically incapacitated to earn a living or has deserted her for a period of not less than one year.") CHARACTERS _Board of Education_. _Three Would-Be Teachers_. _Chorus by Board_: Now please don't waste Your time and ours By pleas all based On mental powers. She seems to us The proper stuff Who has a hus- Band bad enough. All other pleas appear to us Excessively superfluous. _1st Teacher_: My husband is not really bad---- _Board_: How very sad, how very sad! _1st Teacher_: He's good, but hear my one excuse---- _Board_: Oh, what's the use, oh, what's the use? _1st Teacher_: Last winter in a railroad wreck He lost an arm and broke his neck. He's doomed, but lingers day by day. _Board_: Her husband's doomed! Hurray! hurray! _2nd Teacher_: My husband's kind and healthy, too---- _Board_: Why, then, of course, you will not do. _2nd Teacher_: Just hear me out. You'll find you're wrong. It's true his body's good and strong; But, ah, his wits are all astray. _Board_: Her husband's mad. Hip, hip, hurray! _3rd Teacher_: My husband's wise and well--the creature! _Board_: Then you can never be a teacher. _3rd Teacher_: Wait. For I led him such a life He could not stand me as a wife; Last Michaelmas, he ran away. _Board_: Her husband hates her, Hip, hurray! _Chorus by Board_: Now we have found Without a doubt, By process sound And well thought out, Each candidate Is fit in truth To educate The mind of youth. No teacher need apply to us Whose married life's harmonious. (_Curtain_.) The Unconscious Suffragists "They who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes."--Benjamin Franklin. "No such phrase as virtual representation was ever known in law or constitution."--James Otis. "But these great cities, says my honorable friend, are virtually, though not directly represented. Are not the wishes of Manchester, he asks, as much consulted as those of any other town which sends members to Parliament? Now, sir, I do not understand how a power which is salutary when exercised virtually can be noxious when exercised directly. If the wishes of Manchester have as much weight with us as they would have under a system which gives representatives to Manchester, how can there be any danger in giving representatives to Manchester?"--Lord Macaulay's Speech on the Reform Bill. "Universal suffrage prolongs in the United States the effect of universal education: for it stimulates all citizens throughout their lives to reflect on problems outside the narrow circle of their private interests and occupations: to read about public questions; to discuss public characters and to hold themselves ready in some degree to give a rational account of their political faith."--Dr. Charles Eliot. "But liberty is not the chief and constant object of their (the American people) desires: equality is their idol; they make rapid and sudden efforts to obtain liberty and if they miss their aim, resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing can satisfy them without equality, and they would rather perish than lose it."--De Tocqueville: Democracy in America, 1835. "A government is for the benefit of all the people. We believe that this benefit is best accomplished by popular government because in the long run each class of individuals is apt to secure better provision for themselves through their own voice in government than through the altruistic interest of others, however intelligent or philanthropic."--William H. Taft in Special Message. "I have listened to some very honest and eloquent orators whose sentiments were noteworthy for this: that when they spoke of the people, they were not thinking of themselves, they were thinking of somebody whom they were commissioned to take care of. And I have seen them shiver when it was suggested that they arrange to have something done by the people for themselves."--The New Freedom, by Woodrow Wilson. 
17751	----	DIRECT LEGISLATION BY THE CITIZENSHIP THROUGH THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM BY J.W. SULLIVAN * * * * * CONTENTS: AS TO THIS BOOK i. THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM IN SWITZERLAND 5 THE PUBLIC STEWARDSHIP OF SWITZERLAND 25 THE COMMON WEALTH OF SWITZERLAND 47 DIRECT LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES 72 THE WAY OPEN TO PEACEFUL REVOLUTION 95 * * * * * [_Copyright, 1892, by J.W. Sullivan._] * * * * * NEW YORK TRUE NATIONALIST PUBLISHING COMPANY 1893 AS TO THIS BOOK. This is the second in a series of sociological works, each a small volume, I have in course of publication. The first, "A Concept of Political Justice," gave in outline the major positions which seem to me logically to accord in practical life with the political principle of equal freedom. In the present work, certain of the positions taken in the first are amplified. In each of the volumes to come, which will be issued as I find time to complete them, similar amplification in the case of other positions will be made. Naturally, the order of publication of the proposed works may be influenced by the general trend in the discussion of public questions. The small-book plan I have adopted for several reasons. One is, that the writer who embodies his thought on any large subject in a single weighty volume commonly finds difficulty in selling the work or having it read; the price alone restricts its market, and the volume, by its very size, usually repels the ordinary reader. Another, that the radical world, which I especially address, is nowadays assailed with so much printed matter that in it big books have slight show of favor. Another, that the reader of any volume in the series subsequent to the first may on reference to the first ascertain the train of connection and entire scope of the thought I would present. And, finally, that such persons as have been won to the support of the principles taught may interest themselves, and perhaps others, in spreading knowledge of these principles, as developed in the successive works. On the last-mentioned point, a word. Having during the past decade closely observed, and in some measure shared in, the discussion of advanced sociological thought, I maintain with confidence the principles of equal freedom, not only in their essential truth, but in the leading applications I have made of them. At least, I may trust that, thus far in either work, in coming to my more important conclusions, I have not fallen into error through blind devotion to an "ism" nor halted at faulty judgment because of limited investigation. I therefore hope to have others join with me, some to work quite in the lines I follow, and some to move at least in the direction of those lines. The present volume I have prepared with care. My attention being attracted about eight years ago to the direct legislation of Switzerland, I then set about collecting what notes in regard to that institution I could glean from periodicals and other publications. But at that time very little of value had been printed in English. Later, as exchange editor of a social reform weekly journal, I gathered such facts bearing on the subject as were passing about in the American newspaper world, and through the magazine indexes for the past twenty years I gained access to whatever pertaining to Switzerland had gone on record in the monthlies and quarterlies; while at the three larger libraries of New York--the Astor, the Mercantile, and the Columbia College--I found the principal descriptive and historical works on Switzerland. But from all these sources only a slender stock of information with regard to the influence of the Initiative and Referendum on the later political and economic development of Switzerland was to be obtained. So, when, three years ago, with inquiry on this point in mind, I spent some months in Switzerland, about all I had at first on which to base investigations was a collection of commonplace or beclouded fact from the newspapers, a few statistics and opinions from an English magazine or two, and some excerpts from volumes by De Laveleye and Freeman which contained chapters treating of Swiss institutions. Soon after, as a result of my observations in the country, I contributed, under the caption "Republican Switzerland," a series of articles to the New York "Times" on the Swiss government of today, and, last April, an essay to the "Chautauquan" magazine on "The Referendum in Switzerland." On the form outlined in these articles I have constructed the first three chapters of the present work. The data, however, excepting in a few cases, are corrected to 1892, and in many respects besides I have profited by the labors of other men in the same field. The past two years and a half has seen much writing on Swiss institutions. Political investigators are awakening to the fact that in politics and economics the Swiss are doing what has never before been done in the world. In neighborhood, region, and nation, the entire citizenship in each case concerned is in details operating the government. In certain cantons it is done in every detail. Doing this, the Swiss are moving rapidly in practically grappling with social problems that elsewhere are hardly more than speculative topics with scholars and theorists. In other countries, consequently, interested lookers-on, having from different points of view taken notes of democratic Switzerland, are, through newspaper, magazine, and book, describing its unprecedented progress and suggesting to their own countrymen what in Swiss governmental experience may be found of value at home. Of the more solid writing of this character, four books may especially be recommended. I mention them in the order of their publication. "The Swiss Confederation." By Sir Francis Ottiwell Adams and C.D. Cunningham. (London: Macmillan & Co.; 1889; 289 pages; $1.75.) Sir Francis Ottiwell Adams was for some years British Minister at Berne. "The Federal Government of Switzerland: An Essay on the Constitution." By Bernard Moses, Ph.D., professor of history and political economy, University of California. (Pacific Press Publishing Company: Oakland, Cal.; 1889; 256 pages; $1.25.) This work is largely a comparative study of constitutions. It is meant chiefly for the use of students of law and of legal history. It abounds, however, in facts as to Switzerland which up to the time of its publication were quite inaccessible to American readers. "State and Federal Government of Switzerland." By John Martin Vincent, Ph.D., librarian and instructor in the department of history and politics, Johns Hopkins University. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press; 1891; 247 pages; $1.50.) Professor Vincent had access, at the university, to the considerable collection of books and papers relating to Switzerland made by Professor J.C. Bluntschli, an eminent Swiss historian who died in 1881, and also to a large number of government publications presented by the Swiss Federal Council to the university library. "The Swiss Republic." By Boyd Winchester, late United States Minister at Berne. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.; 1891; 487 pages; $1.50.) Mr. Winchester was stationed four years at Berne, and hence had better opportunity than Professor Vincent or Professor Moses for obtaining a thorough acquaintance with Switzerland. Much of his book is taken up with descriptive writing, all good. Were I asked which of these four works affords the fullest information as to new Switzerland and new Swiss political methods, I should be obliged to refer the inquirer to his own needs. Professor Moses's is best for one applying himself to law and constitutional history. Professor Vincent's is richest in systematized details and statistics, especially such as relate to the Referendum and taxation; and in it also is a bibliography of Swiss politics and history. For the general reader, desiring description of the country, stirring democratic sentiment, and an all-round view of the great little republic, Mr. Winchester's is preferable. In expanding and rearranging my "Times" and "Chautauquan" articles, I have, to some extent, used these books. Throughout this work, wherever possible, conservatives, rather than myself, have been made to speak; hence quotations are frequent. The first drafts of the chapters on Switzerland have been read by Swiss radicals of different schools, and the final proofsheets have been revised by a Swiss writer of repute living in New York; therefore serious error is hardly probable. The one fault I myself have to find with the work is its baldness of statement, rendered necessary by space limits. I could, perhaps more easily, have prepared four or five hundred pages instead of the one hundred and twenty. I leave it rather to the reader to supply comparison and analysis and the eloquent comment of which, it seems to me, many of the statements of fact are worthy. J.W.S. THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM IN SWITZERLAND. _Democratic versus Representative Government._ There is a radical difference between a democracy and a representative government. In a democracy, the citizens themselves make the law and superintend its administration; in a representative government, the citizens empower legislators and executive officers to make the law and to carry it out. Under a democracy, sovereignty remains uninterruptedly with the citizens, or rather a changing majority of the citizens; under a representative government, sovereignty is surrendered by the citizens, for stated terms, to officials. In other words, democracy is direct rule by the majority, while representative government is rule by a succession of quasi-oligarchies, indirectly and remotely responsible to the majority. Observe, now, first, the influences that chiefly contribute to make government in the United States what it is:-- The county, state, and federal governments are not democracies. In form, they are quasi-oligarchies composed of representatives and executives; but in fact they are frequently complete oligarchies, composed in part of unending rings of politicians that directly control the law and the offices, and in part of the permanent plutocracy, who purchase legislation through the politicians. Observe, next, certain strong influences for the better that obtain in a pure democracy:-- An obvious influence is, in one respect, the same as that which enriches the plutocrat and prompts the politician to reach for power--self-interest. When all the members of any body of men find themselves in equal relation to a profitable end in which they solely are concerned, they will surely be inclined to assert their joint independence of other bodies in that respect, and, further, each member will claim his full share of whatever benefits arise. But, more than that; something like equality of benefits being achieved, perhaps through various agencies of force, a second influence will be brought powerfully to bear on those concerned. It is that of justice. Fair play to all the members will be generally demanded. In a pure democracy, therefore, intelligently controlled self-interest and a consequent sentiment of justice are the sources in which the highest possible social benefits may be expected to begin. The reader has now before him the political principle to be here maintained--pure democracy as distinguished from representative government. My argument, then, becomes this: To show that, by means of the one lawmaking method to which pure democracy is restricted,--that of direct legislation by the citizenship,--the political "ring," "boss," and "heeler" may be abolished, the American plutocracy destroyed, and government simplified and reduced to the limits set by the conscience of the majority as affected by social necessities. My task involves proof that direct legislation is possible with large communities. _Direct Legislation in Switzerland._ Evidence as to the practicability and the effects of direct legislation is afforded by Switzerland, especially in its history during the past twenty-five years. To this evidence I turn at once. There are in Switzerland twenty-two cantons (states), which are subdivided into 2,706 communes (townships). The commune is the political as well as territorial unit. Commonly, as nearly as consistent with cantonal and federal rights, in local affairs the commune governs itself. Its citizens regard it as their smaller state. It is jealous of interference by the greater state. It has its own property to look after. Until the interests of the canton or the Confederation manifestly replace those of the immediate locality, the commune declines to part with the administration of its lands, forests, police, roads, schools, churches, or taxes. In German Switzerland the adult male inhabitants of the commune meet at least once annually, usually in the town market place or on a mountain plain, and carry out their functions as citizens. There they debate proposed laws, name officers, and discuss affairs of a public nature. On such occasions, every citizen is a legislator, his voice and vote influencing the questions at issue. The right of initiating a measure belongs to each. Decision is ordinarily made by show of hands. In most cantons the youth becomes a voter at twenty, the legal age for acquiring a vote in federal affairs, though the range for cantonal matters is from eighteen to twenty-one. Similar democratic legislative meetings govern two cantons as cantons and two other cantons divided into demi-cantons. In the demi-canton of Outer Appenzell, 13,500 voters are qualified thus to meet and legislate, and the number actually assembled is sometimes 10,000. But this is the highest extreme for such an assemblage--a Landsgemeinde (a land-community)--the lowest for a canton or a demi-canton comprising about 3,000. One other canton (Schwyz, 50,307 inhabitants) has Landsgemeinde meetings, there being six, with an average of 2,000 voters to each. In communal political assemblages, however, there are usually but a few hundred voters. The yearly cantonal or demi-cantonal Landsgemeinde takes place on a Sunday in April or May. While the powers and duties of the body vary somewhat in different cantons, they usually cover the following subjects: Partial as well as total revision of the constitution; enactment of all laws; imposition of direct taxes; incurrence of state debts and alienation of public domains; the granting of public privileges; assumption of foreigners into state citizenship; establishment of new offices and the regulation of salaries; election of state, executive, and judicial officers.[A] [Footnote A: J.M. Vincent: "State and Federal Government in Switzerland."] The programme for the meeting is arranged by the officials and published beforehand, the law in some cantons requiring publication four weeks before the meeting, and in others but ten days. "To give opportunities for individuals and authorities to make proposals and offer bills, the official gazette announces every January that for fourteen days after a given date petitions may be presented for that purpose. These must be written, the object plainly stated and accompanied by the reasons. All such motions are considered by what is called the Triple Council, or legislature, and are classified as 'expedient' and 'inexpedient.' A proposal receiving more than ten votes must be placed on the list of expedient, accompanied by the opinion of the council. The rejected are placed under a special rubric, familiarly called by the people the _Beiwagen_. The assembly may reverse the action of the council if it chooses and take a measure out of the 'extra coach,' but consideration of it is in that case deferred until the next year. In the larger assemblies debate is excluded, the vote being simply on rejection or adoption. In the smaller states the line is not so tightly drawn.... Votes are taken by show of hands, though secret ballot may be had if demanded, elections of officers following the same rule in this matter as legislation. Nominations for office, however, need not be sent in by petition, but may be offered by any one on the spot."[B] [Footnote B: Vincent.] _The Initiative and the Referendum._ It will be observed that the basic practical principles of both the communal meeting and the Landsgemeinde are these two: (1) That every citizen shall have the right to propose a measure of law to his fellow-citizens--this principle being known as the Initiative. (2) That the majority shall actually enact the law by voting the acceptance or the rejection of the measures proposed. This principle, when applied in non-Landsgemeinde cantons, through ballotings at polling places, on measures sent from legislative bodies to the people, is known as the Referendum. The Initiative has been practiced in many of the communes and in the several Landsgemeinde cantons in one form or other from time immemorial. In the past score of years, however, it has been practiced by petition in an increasing number of the cantons not having the democratic assemblage of all the citizens. The Referendum owes its origin to two sources. One source was in the vote taken at the communal meeting and the Landsgemeinde. The principle sometimes extended to cities, Berne, for instance, in the fifty-five years from 1469 to 1524, taking sixty referendary votings. The other source was in the vote taken by the ancient cantons on any action by their delegates to the federal Diet, or congress, these delegates undertaking no affair except on condition of referring it to the cantonal councils--_ad referendum_. The principles of the Initiative and Referendum have of recent years been extended so as to apply, to a greater or lesser extent, not only to cantonal affairs in cantons far too large for the Landsgemeinde, but to certain affairs of the Swiss Confederation, comprising three million inhabitants. In other words, the Swiss nation today sees clearly, first, that the democratic system has manifold advantages over the representative; and, secondly, that no higher degree of political freedom and justice can be obtained than by granting to the least practicable minority the legal right to propose a law and to the majority the right to accept or reject it. In enlarging the field of these working principles, the Swiss have developed in the political world a factor which, so far as it is in operation, is creating a revolution to be compared only with that caused in the industrial world by the steam engine. * * * * * The cantonal Initiative exists in fourteen of the twenty-two cantons--in some of them, however, only in reference to constitutional amendments. Usually, the proposal of a measure of cantonal law by popular initiative must be made through petition by from one-twelfth to one-sixteenth of the voters of the canton. When the petition reaches the cantonal legislature, the latter body is obliged, within a brief period, specified by the constitution, to refer the proposal to a cantonal vote. If the decision of the citizens is then favorable, the measure is law, and the executive and judicial officials must proceed to carry it into effect. The cantonal Referendum is in constant practice in all the cantons except Freiburg, which is governed by a representative legislature. The extent, however, to which the Referendum is applied varies considerably. In two cantons it is applicable only to financial measures; in others it is optional with the people, who sometimes demand it, but oftener do not; in others it is obligatory in connection with the passage of every law. More explicitly: In the canton of Vaud a mere pseudo-referendary right exists, under which the Grand Council (the legislature) may, if it so decides, propose a reference to the citizens. Valais takes a popular vote only on such propositions passed by the Grand Council as involve a one and a half per cent increase in taxation or a total expenditure of 60,000 francs. With increasing confidence in the people, the cantons of Lucerne, Zug, Bâle City, Schaffhausen, St. Gall, Ticino, Neuchâtel, and Geneva refer a proposed law, after it has passed the Grand Council, to the voters when a certain proportion of the citizens, usually one-sixth to one-fourth, demand it by formal petition. This form is called the optional Referendum. Employed to its utmost in Zurich, Schwyz, Berne, Soleure, Bâle Land, Aargau, Thurgau, and the Grisons, in these cantons the Referendum permits no law to be passed or expenditure beyond a stipulated sum to be made by the legislature without a vote of the people. This is known as the obligatory Referendum. Glarus, Uri, the half cantons of Niwald and Obwald (Unterwald), and those of Outer and Inner Appenzell, as cantons, or demi-cantons, still practice the democratic assemblage--the Landsgemeinde. In the following statistics, the reader may see at a glance the progress of the Referendum to the present date, with the population of Switzerland by cantons, and the difficulties presented by differences of language in the introduction of reforms:-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | No. inhab. | | Form of Passing | Yr. of Canton. | Dec., 1888. | Language. | Laws. | Entry -------------|-------------|-----------------|-----------------|------- Zurich | 337,183 | German. | Oblig. Ref. | 1351 Berne | 536,679 |Ger. and French. | " | 1353 Lucerne | 135,360 | German. | Optional Ref. | 1332 Uri | 17,249 |Ger. and Italian.| Landsgemeinde. | 1291 Schwyz | 50,307 | German. | Oblig. Ref. | " Unterwald | | | | " Obwald | 15,041 | " | Landsgemeinde. | Niwald | 12,538 | " | " | Glarus | 33,825 | " | " | 1352 Zug | 23,029 | " | Optional Ref. | " Freiburg | 119,155 | French and Ger. | Legislature. | 1481 Soleure | 85,621 | German. | Oblig. Ref. | " Bâle | | | | 1501 City | 73,749 | " | Optional Ref. | Country | 61,941 | " | Oblig. Ref. | Schaffhausen | 37,783 | " | Optional Ref. | " Appenzell | | | | 1573 Outer | 54,109 | " | Landsgemeinde. | Inner | 12,888 | " | " | St. Gall | 228,160 | " | Optional Ref. | 1803 Grisons | 94,810 | Ger.,Ital.,Rom. | Oblig. Ref. | " Aargau | 193,580 | German. | " | " Thurgau | 104,678 | " | " | " Ticino | 126,751 | Italian. | Optional Ref. | " Vaud | 247,655 | French and Ger. | " | " Valais | 101,985 | " | Finance Ref. | 1814 Neuchâtel | 108,153 | French. | Optional Ref. | " Geneva | 105,509 | " | " | " |-------------| | | | 2,917,740 | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- In round numbers, 2,092,000 of the Swiss people speak German, 637,000 French, 156,000 Italian, and 30,000 Romansch. Of the principal cities, in 1887, Zurich, with suburbs, had 92,685 inhabitants; Bâle, 73,963; Geneva, with suburbs, 73,504; Berne, 50,220; Lausanne, 32,954; and five others from 17,000 to 25,000. Fourteen per cent of the inhabitants (410,000) live in cities of more than 15,000. The factory workers number 161,000, representing about half a million inhabitants, and the peasant proprietors nearly 260,000, representing almost two millions. The area of Switzerland is 15,892 square miles,--slightly in excess of double that of New Jersey. The population is slightly less than that of Ohio. _Switzerland--The Youngest of Republics._ It is misleading to suppose, as is often done, that the Switzerland of today is the republic which has stood for six hundred years. In truth, it is the youngest of republics. Its chief governmental features, cantonal and federal, are the work of the present generation. Its unique executive council, its democratic army organization, its republican railway management, its federal post-office, its system of taxation, its two-chambered congress, the very Confederation itself--all were originated in the constitution of 1848, the first that was anything more than a federal compact. The federal Referendum began only in 1874. The federal Initiative has been just adopted (1891.)[C] The form of cantonal Referendum now practiced was but begun (in St. Gall) in 1830, and forty years ago only five cantons had any Referendum whatever, and these in the optional form. It is of very recent years that the movement has become steady toward the general adoption of the cantonal Referendum. In 1860 but 34 per cent of the Swiss possessed it, 66 per cent delegating their sovereign rights to representatives. But in 1870 the referendariship had risen to 71 per cent, only 29 submitting to lawmaking officials; and today the proportions are more than 90 per cent to less than 10. [Footnote C: For constitutional amendments only.] The thoughtful reader will ask: Why this continual progress toward a purer democracy? Wherein lie the inducements to this persistent revolution? The answer is this: The masses of the citizens of Switzerland found it necessary to revolt against their plutocracy and the corrupt politicians who were exploiting the country through the representative system. For a peaceful revolution these masses found the means in the working principles of their communal meetings--the Initiative and Referendum,--and these principles they are applying throughout the republic as fast as circumstances admit.[D] [Footnote D: While the reports of the Secretary of State and "The History of the Referendum," by Th. Curti, will bear out many of the statements here made as to how the change from representative to direct legislation came about, the story as I give it has been written me by Herr Carl Bürkli, of Zurich, known in his canton as the "Father of the Referendum."] The great movement for democracy in Europe that culminated in the uprising of 1848 brought to the front many original men, who discussed innovations in government from every radical point of view. Among these thinkers were Martin Rittinghausen, Emile Girardin, and Louis Blanc. From September, 1850, to December, 1851, the date of the _coup d'état_ of Louis Bonaparte, these reformers discussed, in the "Democratic pacifique," a weekly newspaper of Paris, the subject of direct legislation by the citizens. Their essays created a sensation in France, and more than thirty journals actively supported the proposed institution, when the _coup d'état_ put an end to free speech. The articles were reprinted in book form in Brussels, and other works on the subject were afterward issued by Rittinghausen and his co-worker Victor Considérant. Among Considérant's works was "Solution, ou gouvernement direct du peuple," and this and companion works that fell into the hands of Carl Bürkli convinced the latter and other citizens of Zurich ("an unknown set of men," says Bürkli) of the practicability of the democratic methods advocated. The subject was widely agitated and studied in Switzerland, and the fact that the theory was already to some extent in practice there (and in ancient times had been much practiced) led to further experiments, and these, attaining success, to further, and thus the work has gone on. The cantonal Initiative was almost unknown outside the Landsgemeinde when it was established in Zurich in 1869. Soon, however, through it and the obligatory Referendum (to use Herr Bürkli's words): "The plutocratic government and the Grand Council of Zurich, which had connived with the private banks and railroads, were pulled down in one great voting swoop. The people had grown tired of being beheaded by the office-holders after every election." And politicians and the privileged classes have ever since been going down before these instruments in the hands of the people. The doctrines of the French theorists needed but to be engrafted on ancient Swiss custom, the Frenchmen in fact having drawn upon Swiss experience. _The Optional and the Obligatory Referendum._ To-day the movement in the Swiss cantons is not only toward the Referendum, but toward its obligatory form. The practice of the optional form has revealed defects in it which are inherent.[E] [Footnote E: The facts relative to the operation of these two forms of the Referendum have been given me by Monsieur P. Jamin, of Geneva.] Geneva's management of the optional cantonal Referendum is typical. The constitution provides that, certain of the laws being excepted from the Referendum, and a prerequisite of its operation being the presentation to the Grand Council of a popular petition, the people may sanction or reject not only the bulk of the laws passed by the Grand Council but also the decrees issued by the legislative and executive powers. The exceptions are (1) "measures of urgence" and (2) the items of the annual budget, save such as establish a new tax, increase one in force, or necessitate an issue of bonds. The Referendum cannot be exercised against the budget as a whole, the Grand Council indicating the sections which are to go to public vote. In case of opposition to any measure, a petition for the Referendum is put in circulation. To prevent the measure from becoming law, the petition must receive the legally attested signatures of at least 3,500 citizens--about one in six of the cantonal vote--within thirty days after the publication of the proposed measure. After this period--known as "the first delay"--the referendary vote, if the petition has been successful, must take place within forty days--"the second delay." The power of declaring measures to be "of urgence" lies with the Grand Council, the body passing the measures. Small wonder, then, that in its eyes many bills are of too much and too immediate importance to go to the people. "The habit," protested Grand Councilor M. Putet, on one occasion, "tends more and more to introduce itself here of decreeing urgence unnecessarily, thus taking away from the Referendum expenses which have nothing of urgence. This is contrary to the spirit of the constitutional law. Public necessity alone can authorize the Grand Council to take away any of its acts from the public control." Another defect in the optional Referendum is that it can be transformed into a partisan weapon--politicians being ready, in Geneva, as in San Francisco, to take advantage of the law for party purposes. For example, the representatives of a minority party, seeking a concession from a majority which has just passed a bill, will threaten, if their demands are not granted, to agitate for the Referendum on the bill; this, though the minority itself may favor the measure, some of its members, perhaps, having voted for it. As the majority may be uncertain of the outcome of a struggle at the polls, it will probably be inclined to make peace on the terms dictated by the minority. But the most serious objections to the optional form arise in connection with the petitioning. Easy though it be for a rich and strong party to bear the expense of printing, mailing, and distributing petitions and circulars, in case of opposition from the poorer classes the cost may prove an insurmountable obstacle. Especially is it difficult to get up a petition after several successive appeals coming close together, the constant agitation growing tiresome as well as financially burdensome. Hence, measures have sometimes become law simply because the people have not had time to recover from the prolonged agitation in connection with preceding propositions. Besides, each measure submitted to the optional Referendum brings with it two separate waves of popular discussion--one on the petition and one on the subsequent vote. On this point ex-President Numa Droz has said: "The agitation which takes place while collecting the necessary signatures, nearly always attended with strong feeling, diverts the mind from the object of the law, perverts in advance public opinion, and, not permitting later the calm discussion of the measure proposed, establishes an almost irresistible current toward rejection." Finally, a fact as notorious in Switzerland as vote-buying in America, a large number of citizens who are hostile to a proposed law may fear to record an adverse opinion by signing a Referendum list. Their signatures may be seen and the unveiling of their sentiments imperil their means of livelihood. Zurich furnishes the example of the cantons having the obligatory Referendum. There the law provides: 1. That all laws, decrees, and changes in the constitution must be submitted to the people. 2. That all decisions of the Grand Council on existing law must be voted on. 3. That the Grand Council may submit decisions which it itself proposes to make, and that, besides the voting on the whole law, the Council may ask a vote on a special point. The Grand Council cannot put in force provisionally any law or decree. The propositions must be sent to the voters at least thirty days before voting. The regular referendary ballotings take place twice a year, spring and autumn, but in urgent cases the Grand Council may call for a special election. The law in this canton assists the lawmakers--the voters--in their task; when a citizen is casting his own vote he may also deposit that of one or two relatives and friends, upon presenting their electoral card or a certificate of authorization. In effect, the obligatory Referendum makes of the entire citizenship a deliberative body in perpetual session--this end being accomplished in Zurich in the face of every form of opposing argument. Formerly, its adversaries made much of the fact that it was ever calling the voters to the urns; but this is now avoided by the semi-annual elections. It was once feared that party tickets would be voted without regard to the merits of the various measures submitted; but it has been proved beyond doubt that the fate of one proposition has no effect whatever on that of another decided at the same time. Zurich has pronounced on ninety-one laws in twenty-eight elections, the votes indicating surprising independence of judgment. When the obligatory form was proposed for Zurich, its supporters declared it a sure instrument, but that it might prove a costly one they were not prepared by experiment to deny. Now, however, they have the data to show that taxes--unfailing reflexes of public expenditure--are lower than ever, those for police, for example, being only about half those of optional Geneva, a less populous canton. To the prophets who foresaw endless partisan strife in case the Referendum was to be called in force on every measure, Zurich has replied by reducing partisanship to its feeblest point, the people indifferent to parties since an honest vote of the whole body of citizens must be the final issue of every question. The people of Zurich have proved that the science of politics is simple. By refusing special legislation, they evade a flood of bills. By deeming appropriations once revised as in most part necessary, they pay attention chiefly to new items. By establishing principles in law, they forbid violations. Thus there remain no profound problems of state, no abstruse questions as to authorities, no conflict as to what is the law. Word fresh from the people is law. _The Federal Referendum._ The Federal Referendum, first established by the constitution of 1874, is optional. The demand for it must be made by 30,000 citizens or by eight cantons. The petition for a vote under it must be made within ninety days after the publication of the proposed law. It is operative with respect either to a statute as passed by the Federal Assembly (congress), or a decree of the executive power. Of 149 Federal laws and decrees subject to the Referendum passed up to the close of 1891 under the constitution of 1874, twenty-seven were challenged by the necessary 30,000 petitioners, fifteen being rejected and twelve accepted. The Federal Initiative was established by a vote taken on Sunday, July 5, 1891. It requires 50,000 petitioners, whose proposal must be discussed by the Federal assembly and then sent within a prescribed delay to the whole citizenship for a vote. The Initiative is not a petition to the legislative body; it is a demand made on the entire citizenship. Where the cantonal Referendum is optional, a successful petition for it frequently secures a rejection of the law called in question. In 1862 and again in 1878, the canton of Geneva rejected proposed changes in its constitution, on the latter occasion by a majority of 6,000 in a vote of 11,000. Twice since 1847 the same canton has decided against an increase of official salaries, and lately it has declined to reduce the number of its executive councilors from seven to five. The experience of the Confederation has been similar. Between 1874 and 1880 five measures recommended by the Federal Executive and passed by the Federal Assembly were vetoed by a national vote. _Revision of Constitutions._ Revision of a constitution through the popular vote is common. Since 1814, there have been sixty revisions by the people of cantonal constitutions alone. Geneva asks its citizens every fifteen years if they wish to revise their organic law, thus twice in a generation practically determining whether they are in this respect content. The Federal constitution may be revised at any time. Fifty thousand voters petitioning for it, or the Federal Assembly (congress) demanding it, the question is submitted to the country. If the vote is in the affirmative, the Council of States (the senate) and the National Council (the house) are both dissolved. An election of these bodies takes place at once; the Assembly, fresh from the people, then makes the required revision and submits the revised constitution to the country. To stand, it must be supported by a majority of the voters and a majority of the twenty-two cantons. _Summary._ To sum up: In Switzerland, in this generation, direct legislation has in many respects been established for the federal government, while in so large a canton as Zurich, with nearly 340,000 inhabitants, it has also been made applicable to every proposed cantonal law, decree, and order,--the citizens of that canton themselves disposing by vote of all questions of taxation, public finance, executive acts, state employment, corporation grants, public works, and similar operations of government commonly, even in republican states, left to legislators and other officials. In every canton having the Initiative and the obligatory Referendum, all power has been stripped from the officials except that of a stewardship which is continually and minutely supervised and controlled by the voters. Moreover, it is possible that yet a few years and the affairs not only of every canton of Switzerland but of the Confederation itself will thus be taken in hand at every step. * * * * * Here, then, is evidence incontrovertible that pure democracy, through direct legislation by the citizenship, is practicable--more, is now practiced--in large communities. Next as to its effects, proven and probable. THE PUBLIC STEWARDSHIP OF SWITZERLAND. If it be conceived that the fundamental principles of a free society are these: That the bond uniting the citizens should be that of contract; that rights, including those in natural resources, should be equal, and that each producer should retain the full product of his toil, it must be conceded on examination that toward this ideal Switzerland has made further advances than any other country, despite notable points in exception and the imperfect form of its federal Initiative and Referendum. Before particulars are entered into, some general observations on this head may be made. _The Political Status in Switzerland._ An impressive fact in Swiss politics to-day is its peace. Especially is this true of the contents and tone of the press. In Italy and Austria, on the south and east, the newspapers are comparatively few, mostly feeble, and in general subservient to party or government; in Germany, on the north, where State Socialism is strong, the radical press is at times turbulent and the government journals reflect the despotism they uphold; in France, on the west and southwest, the public writers are ever busy over the successive unstable central administrations at Paris, which exercise a bureaucratic direction of every commune in the land. In all these countries, men rather than measures are the objects of discussion, an immediate important campaign question inevitably being whether, when once in office, candidates may make good their ante-election promises. Thus, on all sides, over the border from Switzerland, political turmoil, with its rancor, personalities, false reports, hatreds, and corruptions, is endless. But in Switzerland, debate uniformly bears not on men but on measures. The reasons are plain. Where the veto is possessed by the people, in vain may rogues go to the legislature. With few or no party spoils, attention to public business, and not to patronage or private privilege, is profitable to office holders as well as to the political press. In the number of newspapers proportionate to population, Switzerland stands with the United States at the head of the statistical list for the world. In their general character, Swiss political journals are higher than American. They are little tempted to knife reputations, to start false campaign issues, to inflame partisan feeling; for every prospective cantonal measure undergoes sober popular discussion the year round, with the certain vote of the citizenship in view in the cantons having the Landsgemeinde or the obligatory Referendum, and a possible vote in most of the other cantons, while federal measures also may be met with the federal optional Referendum. The purity and peacefulness of Swiss press and politics are due to the national development of today as expressed in appropriate institutions. Of these institutions the most effective, the fundamental, is direct legislation, accompanied as it is with general education. In education the Swiss are preëminent among nations. Illiteracy is at a lower percentage than in any other country; primary instruction is free and compulsory in all the cantons; and that the higher education is general is shown in the four universities, employing three hundred instructors. An enlightened people, employing the ballot freely, directly, and in consequence effectively--this is the true sovereign governing power in Switzerland. As to what, in general terms, have been the effects of this power on the public welfare, as to how the Swiss themselves feel toward their government, and as to what are the opinions of foreign observers on the recent changes through the Initiative and Referendum, some testimony may at this point be offered. In the present year, Mr. W.D. McCrackan has published in the "Arena" of Boston his observations of Swiss politics. He found, he says, the effects of the Referendum to be admirable. Jobbery and extravagance are unknown, and politics, as there is no money in it, has ceased to be a trade. The men elected to office are taken from the ranks of the citizens, and are chosen because of their fitness for the work. The people take an intelligent interest in every kind of local and federal legislation, and have a full sense of their political responsibility. The mass of useless or evil laws which legislatures in other countries are constantly passing with little consideration, and which have constantly to be repealed, are in Switzerland not passed at all. In a study of the direct legislation of Switzerland, the "Westminster Review," February, 1888, passed this opinion: "The bulk of the people move more slowly than their representatives, are more cautious in adopting new and trying legislative experiments, and have a tendency to reject propositions submitted to them for the first time." Further: "The issue which is presented to the sovereign people is invariably and necessarily reduced to its simplest expression, and so placed before them as to be capable of an affirmative or negative answer. In practice, therefore, the discussion of details is left to the representative assemblies, while the people express approval or disapproval of the general principle or policy embraced in the proposed measure. Public attention being confined to the issue, leaders are nothing. The collective wisdom judges of merits." A.V. Dicey, the critic of constitutions, writes in the "Nation," October 8, 1885: "The Referendum must be considered, on the whole, a conservative arrangement. It tends at once to hinder rapid change and also to get rid of that inflexibility or immutability which, in the eyes of Englishmen at least, is a defect in the constitution of the United States." A Swiss radical has written me as follows: "The development given to education during the last quarter of a century will have without doubt as a consequence an improved judgment on the part of a large number of electors. The press also has a rôle more preponderant than formerly. Everybody reads. Certainly the ruling classes profit largely by the power of the printing press, but with the electors who have received some instruction the capitalist newspapers are taken with due allowance for their sincerity. Their opinion is not accepted without inquiry. We see a rapid development of ideas, if not completely new, at least renewed and more widespread. More or less radical reviews and periodicals, in large number, are not without influence, and their appearance proves that great changes are imminent." Professor Dicey has contrasted the Referendum with the _plébiscite_: "The Referendum looks at first sight like a French _plébiscite_, but no two institutions can be marked by more essential differences. The _plébiscite_ is a revolutionary or at least abnormal proceeding. It is not preceded by debate. The form and nature of the questions to be submitted to the nation are chosen and settled by the men in power, and Frenchmen are asked whether they will or will not accept a given policy. Rarely, indeed, when it has been taken, has the voting itself been full or fair. Deliberation and discussion are the requisite conditions for rational decision. Where effective opposition is an impossibility, nominal assent is an unmeaning compliment. These essential characteristics, the lack of which deprives a French _plébiscite_, of all moral significance, are the undoubted properties of the Swiss Referendum." In the "Revue des Deux Mondes," Paris, August, 1891, Louis Wuarin, an interested observer of Swiss politics for many years, writes: "A people may indicate its will, not from a distance, but near at hand, always superintending the work of its agents, watching them, stopping them if there is reason for so doing, constraining them, in a word, to carry out the people's will in both legislative and administrative affairs. In this form of government the representative system is reduced to a minimum. The deliberative bodies resemble simple committees charged with preparing work for an elected assembly, and here the elected assembly is replaced by the people. This sovereign action in person in the transaction of public business may extend more or less widely; it may be limited to the State, or it may be extended to the province also, and even to the town. To whatever extent this supervision of the people may go, one thing may certainly be expected, which is that the supervision will become closer and closer as time goes on. It never has been known that citizens gave up willingly and deliberately rights acquired, and the natural tendency of citizens is to increase their privileges. Switzerland is an example of this type of democratic government.... There is some reason for regarding parliamentary government--at least under its classic and orthodox form of rivalry between two parties, who watch each other closely, in order to profit by the faults of their adversaries, who dispute with each other for power without the interests of the country, in the ardor of the encounter, being always considered--as a transitory form in the evolution of democracy." The spirit of the Swiss law and its relation to the liberty of the individual are shown in passages of the cantonal and federal constitutions. That of Uri declares: "Whatever the Landsgemeinde, within the limits of its competence, ordains, is law of the land, and as such shall be obeyed," but: "The guiding principle of the Landsgemeinde shall be justice and the welfare of the fatherland, not willfulness nor the power of the strongest." That of Zurich: "The people exercise the lawmaking power, with the assistance of the state legislature." That of the Confederation: "All the Swiss people are equal before the law. There are in Switzerland no subjects, nor privileges of place, birth, persons, or families." In these general notes and quotations is sketched in broad lines the political environment of the Swiss citizen of to-day. The social mind with which he stands in contact is politically developed, is bent on justice, is accustomed to look for safe results from the people's laws, is at present more than ever inclined to trust direct legislation, and, on the whole, is in a state of calmness, soberness, tolerance, and political self-discipline. The machinery of public stewardship, subject to popular guidance, may now be traced, beginning with the most simple form. _Organization of the Commune._ The common necessities of a Swiss neighborhood, such as establishing and maintaining local roads, police, and schools, and administering its common wealth, bring its citizens together in democratic assemblages. These are of different forms. One form of such assemblage, the basis of the superstructure of government, is the political communal meeting. "In it take place the elections, federal, state, and local; it is the local unit of state government and the residuary legatee of all powers not granted to other authorities. Its procedure is ample and highly democratic. It meets either at the call of an executive council of its own election, or in pursuance of adjournment, and, as a rule, on a Sunday or holiday. Its presiding officer is sometimes the _maire_, sometimes a special chairman. Care is taken that only voters shall sit in the body of the assembly, it being a rule in Zurich that the register of citizens shall lie on the desk for inspection. Tellers are appointed by vote and must be persons who do not belong to the village council, since that is the local cabinet which proposes measures for consideration. Any member of the assembly may offer motions or amendments, but usually they are brought forward by the town council, or at least referred to that body before being voted upon."[F] The officials of the commune chosen in the communal meeting, are one chief executive (who in French communes usually has two assistants), a communal council, which legislates on the lesser matters coming up between communal meetings, and such minor officials as are not left to the choice of the council. [Footnote F: Vincent.] A second form of neighborhood assemblage is one composed only of those citizens who have rights in the communal corporate domains and funds, these rights being either inherited or acquired (sometimes by purchase) after a term of purely political citizenship. A third form is the parish meeting, at which gather the members of the same faith in the commune, or of even a smaller church district. The Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jewish are recognized as State religions--the Protestant alone in some cantons, the Catholic in others, both in several, and both with the Jewish in others. A fourth form of local assembly is that of the school district, usually a subdivision of a commune. It elects a board of education, votes taxes to defray school expenses, supervises educational matters, and in some districts elects teachers. Dividing the commune thus into voting groups, each with its appropriate purpose, makes for justice. He who has a share in the communal public wealth (forests, pastoral and agricultural lands, and perhaps funds), is not endangered in this property through the votes of non-participant newcomers. Nor are educational affairs mixed with general politics. And, though State and religion are not yet severed, each form of belief is largely left to itself; in some cantons provision is made that a citizen's taxes shall not go toward the support of a religion to which he is opposed. _Organization of Canton and Confederation._ In no canton in Switzerland is there more than one legislative body: in none is there a senate. The cities of Switzerland have no mayor, the cantons have no governor, and, if the title be used in the American sense, the republic has no President. Instead of the usual single executive head, the Swiss employ an executive council. Hence, in every canton a deadlock in legislation is impossible, the way is open for all law demanded by a majority, and neither in canton nor Confederation is one-man power known. The cantonal legislature is the Grand Council. "In the Landsgemeinde cantons and those having the obligatory Referendum, it is little more than a supervisory committee, preparing measures for the vote of the citizens and acting as a check on the cantonal executive council. In the remaining cantons (those having the optional Referendum), the legislature has the power to spend money below a specified limit; to enact laws of specified kinds, usually not of general application; and to elect the more important officials, the amount of discretion [in the different cantons] rising gradually till the complete representative government is reached"[G] in Freiburg, which resembles one of our states. Though in several cantons the Grand Council meets every two months for a few days' session, in most of the cantons it meets twice a year. The pay of members ranges from sixty cents to $1.20 per day. The legislative bodies are large; the ratio in five cantons is one legislator to every 1,000 inhabitants; in twelve it ranges from one to 187 up to one to 800, and in the remaining five from one to 1,000 to one to 2,000. The Landsgemeinde cantons usually have fifty to sixty members; Geneva, with 20,000 voters, has a hundred. [Footnote G: Vincent.] In six of the twenty-two cantons, if a certain number of voters petition for it, the question must be submitted to the people whether or not the legislature shall be recalled and a new one elected. The formation of the Swiss Federal Assembly (congress), established in 1848, was influenced by the make-up of the American congress. The lower house is elected by districts, as in the United States, the basis of representation being one member to 20,000 inhabitants, and the number of members 147. The term for this house is three years; the pay, four dollars a day, during session, and mileage. The upper house, the Council of States (senate), the only body of the kind in Switzerland, is composed of two members from each canton. Cantonal law governing their election, the tenure of their office is not the same: in some cantons they are elected by the people, in others by the legislature; their pay varies; their term of office ranges from one to three years. Their brief terms and the fact that their more important functions, such as the election of the federal executive council, take place in joint session with the second chamber, render the members of the "upper" house of less weight in national affairs than those of the "lower." _Swiss Executives._ The executive councils of the cities, the cantons, and the Confederation are all of one form. They are committees, composed of members of equal rank. The number of members varies. Of cantonal executive councilors, there are seven in eleven of the cantons, three, five, and nine in others, and eleven in one. In addition to carrying out the law, the executive council usually assists somewhat in legislation, the members not only introducing but speaking upon measures in the legislative body with which they are associated, without, however, having a vote. In about half the cantons, the cantonal executive councils are elected by the people; in the rest by the legislative body. Types of the executive councils are those of Geneva, city and canton. The city executive council is composed of five members, elected by the people for four years. The salary of its president is $800 a year; that of the other four members, $600. The cantonal executive has seven members; the salaries are: the president, $1,200; the rest, $1,000. In both city and cantonal councils each member is the head of an administrative department. The cantonal executive council has the power to suspend the deliberations of the city executive council and those of the communal councils whenever in its judgment these bodies transcend their legal powers or refuse to conform to the law. In case of such suspension, a meeting of the cantonal Grand Council (the legislature) must be called within a week, and if it approves of the action of the cantonal executive, the council suspended is dissolved, and an election for another must be had within a month, the members of the body dissolved not being immediately eligible for re-election. The cantonal executive council may also revoke the commissions of communal executives (maires and adjoints), who then cannot immediately be re-elected. Check to the extensive powers of the cantonal executive council lies in the fact that its members are elected directly by the people and hold office for only two years. But in cantons having the obligatory Referendum, Geneva's methods, however advanced in the eyes of American republicans, are not regarded as strictly democratic. _The Federal Executive Council._ The Swiss nation has never placed one man at its head. Prior to 1848, executive as well as legislative powers were vested in the one house of the Diet. Under the constitution adopted in that year, with which the Switzerland as now organized really began, the present form of the executive was established. This executive is the Federal Council, a board of seven members, whose term is three years, and who are elected in joint session by the two houses of the Federal Assembly (congress). The presiding officer of the council, chosen as such by the Federal Assembly, is elected for one year. He cannot be his own successor. While he is nominally President of the Confederation, Swiss treatises on the subject uniformly emphasize the fact that he is actually no more than chairman of the executive council. He is but "first among his equals" (_primus inter pares_). His prerogatives--thus to describe whatever powers fall within his duties--are no greater than those pertaining to the rest of the board. Unlike the President of the United States, he has no rank in the army, no power of veto, no influence with the judiciary; he cannot appoint military commanders, or independently name any officials whatever; he cannot enforce a policy, or declare war, or make peace, or conclude a treaty. His name is not a by-word in his own country. Not a few among the intelligent Swiss would pause a moment to recall his name if suddenly asked: "Who is President this year?" The federal executive council is elected on the assembling of the Federal Assembly after the triennial election for members of the lower house. All Swiss citizens are eligible, except that no two members may be chosen from the same canton. The President's salary is $2,605, that of the other members $2,316. While in office, the councilors may not perform any other public function, engage in any kind of trade, or practice any profession. A member of the council is at the head of each department of the government, viz.: Foreign Affairs, Interior, Justice and Police, Military, Finances, Commerce and Agriculture, and Post-Office and Railroads. The constitution directs a joint transaction of the business of the council by all the seven members, with the injunction that responsibility and unity of action be not enfeebled. The council appoints employés and functionaries of the federal departments. Each member may present a nomination for any branch, but names are usually handed in by the head of the department in which the appointment is made. As a minority of the board is uniformly composed of members of the political party not, if it may be so described, "in power," purely partisan employments are difficult. Removals of federal office-holders in order to repay party workers are unheard of. The executive council may employ experts for special tasks, it has the right to introduce bills in the Federal Assembly, and each councilor has a "consultative voice" in both houses. In practice, the council is simply an executive commission expressing the will of the assembly, the latter having even ordered the revision of regulations drawn up by the council for its employés at Berne. The acts of the assembly being liable to the Referendum, connection with the will of the people is established. Thus popular sovereignty finally, and quite directly, controls. While both legislators and executives are elected for short terms, it is customary for the same men to serve in public capacities a long time. Though the people may recall their servants at brief intervals, they almost invariably ask them to continue in service. Employés keep their places at their will during good behavior. This custom extends to the higher offices filled by appointment. One minister to Paris held the position for twenty-three years; one to Rome, for sixteen. Once elected to the federal executive council, a public man may regard his office as a permanency. Of the council of 1889, one member had served since 1863, another since 1866. Up to 1879 no seat in the council had ever become vacant excepting through death or resignation. _Features of the Judiciary._ Civil and criminal courts are separate. The justice of the peace sits in a case first as arbitrator, and not until he fails in that capacity does he assume the chair of magistrate. His decision is final in cases involving sums up to a certain amount, varying in different localities. Two other grades of court are maintained in the canton, one sitting for a judicial subdivision called a district, and a higher court for the whole canton. Members of the district tribunal, consisting of five or seven members, are commonly elected by the people, their terms varying, with eight years as the longest. The judges of the cantonal courts as a rule are chosen by the Grand Council; their number seven to thirteen; their terms one to eight years. The cantonal court is the court of last resort. The Federal Tribunal, which consists of nine judges and nine alternates, elected for six years, tries cases between canton and canton or individual and canton. For this bench practically all Swiss citizens are eligible. The entire judicial system seems designed for the speedy trial of cases and the discouragement of litigation. No court in Switzerland, not even the Federal Tribunal, can reverse the decisions of the Federal Assembly (congress). This can be done only by the people. The election by the Assembly of the Federal Tribunal--as well as of the federal executive--has met with strong opposition. Before long both bodies may be elected by popular vote. Swiss jurors are elected by the people and hold office six years. In French and German Switzerland, there is one such juror for every thousand inhabitants, and in Italian Switzerland one for every five hundred. To a Swiss it would seem as odd to select jurors haphazard as to so select judges. In most of the manufacturing cantons, councils of prud'hommes are elected by the people. The various industries and professions are classified in ten groups, each of which chooses a council of prud'hommes composed of fifteen employers and fifteen employés. Each council is divided into a bureau of conciliation, a tribunal of prud'hommes, and a chamber of appeals, cases going on appeal from one board to another in the order named. These councils have jurisdiction only in the trades, their sessions relating chiefly to payment for services and contracts of apprenticeship. _A Democratic Army._ In surveying the simple political machinery of Switzerland, the inquirer, remembering the fate of so many republics, may be led to ask as to the danger of its overthrow by the Swiss army. The reply is that, here, again, so far as may be seen, the nation has wisely planned safeguards. To show how, and as the Swiss army differs widely from all others in its organization, some particulars regarding it are here pertinent. The more important features of the Swiss military system, established in 1874, are as follows: There is no Commander-in-chief in time of peace. There is no aristocracy of officers. Pensions are fixed by law. There is no substitute system. Every citizen not disabled is liable either to military duty or to duties essential in time of war, such as service in the postal department, the hospitals, or the prisons. Citizens entirely disabled and unfit for the ranks or semi-military service are taxed to a certain per centage of their property or income. No canton is allowed to maintain more than three hundred men under arms without federal authority. Though there is no standing army, every man in the country between the ages of seventeen and fifty is enrolled and subject annually either to drill or inspection. On January 1, 1891, the active army, comprising all unexempt citizens between twenty and thirty-two years, contained 126,444 officers and men; the first reserve, thirty-three to forty-four years, 80,795; the second reserve, all others, 268,715; total, 475,955. The Confederation can place in the field in less than a week more than 200,000 men, armed, uniformed, drilled, and every man in his place. On attaining his twentieth year, every Swiss youth is summoned before a board of physicians and military officers for physical and mental examination. Those adjudged unfit for service are exempted--temporarily if the infirmity may pass away, for life if it be permanent. The tax on exempted men is $1.20 plus thirty cents per year for $200 of their wealth or $20 of their income, until the age of thirty-two years, and half these sums until the age of forty-four. On being enrolled in his canton, the soldier is allowed to return home. He takes with him his arms and accoutrements, and thenceforth is responsible for them. He is ever ready for service at short call. Intrusting the soldiery with their outfit reduces the number of armories, thus cutting down public expenditures and preventing loss through capture in case of sudden invasion by an enemy. In the Swiss army are eight divisions of the active force and eight of the reserve, adjoining cantons uniting to form a division. Each summer one division is called out for the grand manoeuvres, all being brought out once in the course of eight years. In case of war a General is named by the Federal Assembly. At the head of the army in time of peace is a staff, composed of three colonels, sixteen lieutenant colonels and majors, and thirty-five captains. The cost of maintaining the army is small, on an average $3,500,000 a year. Officers and soldiers alike receive pay only while in service. If wounded or taken ill on duty, a man in the ranks may draw up to $240 a year pension while suffering disability. Lesser sums may be drawn by the family of a soldier who loses his life in the service. At Thoune, near Berne, is the federal military academy. It is open to any Swiss youth who can support himself while there. Not even the President of the Confederation may in time of peace propose any man for a commission who has not studied at the Thoune academy. A place as commissioned officer is not sought for as a fat office nor as a ready stepping-stone to social position. As a rule only such youths study at Thoune as are inclined to the profession of arms. Promotion is according to both merit and seniority. Officers up to the rank of major are commissioned by the cantons, the higher grades by the Confederation. * * * * * In Switzerland, then, the military leader appears only when needed, in war; he cannot for years afterward be rewarded by the presidency; pensions cannot be made perquisites of party; the army, _i.e._ the whole effective force of the nation, will support, and not attempt to subvert, the republic. _The True Social Contract._ The individual enters into social life in Switzerland with the constitutional guarantee that he shall be independent in all things excepting wherein he has inextricable common interests with his fellows. Each neighborhood aims, as far as possible, to govern itself, so subdividing its functions that even in these no interference with the individual shall occur that may be avoided. Adjoining neighborhoods next form a district and as such control certain common interests. Then a greater group, of several districts, unite in the canton. Finally takes place the federation of all the cantons. At each of these necessary steps in organizing society, the avowed intention of the masses concerned is that the primary rights of the individual shall be preserved. Says the "Westminster Review": "The essential characteristic of the federal government is that each of the states which combine to form a union retains in its own hands, in its individual capacity, the management of its own affairs, while authority over matters common to all is exercised by the states in their collective and corporate capacity." And what is thus true of Confederation with respect to the independence of the canton is equally true of canton with respect to the commune, and of the commune with respect to the individual. No departure from home rule, no privileged individuals or corporations, no special legislation, no courts with powers above the people's will, no legal discriminations whatever--such their aim, and in general their successful aim, the Swiss lead all other nations in leaving to the individual his original sovereignty. Wherever this is not the fact, wherever purpose fails fulfillment, the cause lies in long-standing complications which as yet have not yielded to the newer democratic methods. On the side of official organization, one historical abuse after another has been attacked, resulting in the simple, smooth-running, necessary local and national stewardships described. On the side of economic social organization, a concomitant of the political system, the progress in Switzerland has been remarkable. As is to be seen in the following chapter, in the management of natural monopolies the democratic Swiss, beyond any other people, have attained justice, and consequently have distributed much of their increasing wealth with an approach to equity; while in the system of communal lands practiced in the Landsgemeinde cantons is found an example to land reformers throughout the world. THE COMMON WEALTH OF SWITZERLAND. Unless producers may exercise equal right of access to land, the first material for all production, they stand unequal before the law; and if one man, through legal privilege given to another, is deprived of any part of the product of his labor, justice does not reign. The economic question, then, under any government, relates to legal privilege--to monopoly, either of the land or its products. With the non-existence of the exclusive enjoyment of monopolies by some men--monopolies in the land, in money-issuing, in common public works--each producer would retain his entire product excepting his taxes. This end secured, there would remain no politico-economic problem excepting that of taxation. Of recent years the Swiss have had notable success in preventing from falling into private hands certain monopolies that in other countries take from the many to enrich a few. Continuing to act on the principles observed, they must in time establish not only equal rights in the land but the full economic as well as political sovereignty of the individual. _Land and Climate._ Glance at the theatre of the labor of this people. Switzerland, with about 16,000 square miles, equals in area one-third of New York. Of its territory, 30 per cent--waterbeds, glaciers, and sterile mountains--is unproductive. Forests cover 18 per cent. Thus but half the country is good for crops or pasture. The various altitudes, in which the climate ranges from that of Virginia to that of Labrador, are divided by agriculturists into three zones. The lower zone, including all lands below a level of 2,500 feet above the sea, touches, at Lake Maggiore, in the Italian canton of Ticino, its lowest point, 643 feet above the sea. In this zone are cultivated wheat, barley, and other grains, large crops of fruit, and the vine, the latter an abundant source of profit. The second zone, within which lies the larger part of the country, includes the lower mountain ranges. Its altitudes are from 2,500 to 5,000 feet, its chief growth great forests of beech, larch, and pine. Above this rises the Alpine zone, upon the steep slopes of which are rich pastures, the highest touching 10,000 feet, though they commonly reach but 8,000, where vegetation becomes sparse and snow and glaciers begin. In these mountains, a million and a half cattle, horses, sheep, and goats are fed annually. In all, Switzerland is not fertile, but rocky, mountainous, and much of it the greater part of the year snow-covered. Whatever the individual qualities of the Swiss, their political arrangements have had a large influence in promoting the national well-being. This becomes evident with investigation. Observe how they have placed under public control monopolies that in other countries breed millionaires:-- _Railroads._ One bureau of the Post-Office department exercises federal supervision over the railroads, a second manages the mail and express services, and a third those of the telegraph and telephone. Of railroads, there are nearly 2,000 miles. Their construction and operation have been left to private enterprise, but from the first the Confederation has asserted a control over them that has stopped short only of management. Hence there are no duplicated lines, no discriminations in rates, no cities at the mercy of railroad corporations, no industries favored by railroad managers and none destroyed. The government prescribes the location of a proposed line, the time within which it must be built, the maximum tariffs for freight and passengers, the minimum number of trains to be run, and the conditions of purchase in case the State at any time should decide to assume possession. Provision is made that when railway earnings exceed a certain ratio to capital invested, the surplus shall be subjected to a proportionately increased tax. Engineers of the Post-Office department superintend the construction and repair of the railroads, and post-office inspectors examine and pass upon the time-tables, tariffs, agreements, and methods of the companies. Hence falsification of reports is prevented, stock watering and exchange gambling are hampered, and "wrecking," as practiced in the United States, is unknown. Owing to tunnels, cuts, and bridges, the construction of the Swiss railway system has been costly; Mulhall's statistics give Switzerland a higher ratio of railway capital to population than any other country in Europe. Yet the service is cheap, passenger tariffs being considerably less than in France and Great Britain, and, about the same as in Germany, within a shade as low as the lowest in Europe. Differing from the narrow compartment railway carriages of other European countries, the passenger cars of Switzerland are generally built on the American plan, so that the traveler is enabled to view the scenery ahead, behind, and on both sides. For circular tours, the companies make a reduction of 25 per cent on the regular fare. At the larger stations are interpreters who speak English. Unlike the service in other Continental countries, third class cars are attached to all trains, even the fastest. On the whole, despite the highest railroad investment per head in Europe, Switzerland has the best of railway service at the lowest of rates, the result of centralized State control coupled with free industry under the limitations of that control. In the ripest judgment of the nation up to the present, this system yields better results than any other: by a referendary vote taken in December, 1891, the people refused to change it for State ownership of railroads. _Mails, the Telegraph, the Telephone, and Highways._ The Swiss postal service is a model in completeness, cheapness, and dispatch. Switzerland has 800 post-offices and 2,000 dépôts where stamps are sold and letters and packages received. Postal cards cost 1 cent; to foreign countries, 2 cents, and with return flap, 4. For half-ounce letters, within a circuit of six miles, the cost is 1 cent; for letters for all Switzerland, up to half a pound, 2 cents; for printed matter, one ounce, two-fifths of a cent; to half a pound, 1 cent; one pound, 2 cents; for samples of goods, to half a pound, 1 cent; one pound, 2 cents. There are 1,350 telegraph offices open to the public. A dispatch for any point in Switzerland costs 6 cents for the stamp and 1 cent for every two words. The Swiss Post-Office department has many surprises in store for the American tourist. Mail delivery everywhere free, even in a rural commune remote from the railroad he may see a postman on his rounds two or three times a day. When money is sent him by postal order, the letter-carrier puts the cash in his hands. If he wishes to send a package by express, the carrier takes the order, which soon brings to him the postal express wagon. A package sent him is delivered in his room. At any post-office he may subscribe for any Swiss publication or for any of a list of several thousand of the world's leading periodicals. When roving in the higher Alps, in regions where the roads are but bridle paths, the tourist may find in the most unpretending hotel a telegraph office. If he follows the wagon roads, he may send his hand baggage ahead by the stage coach and at the end of his day's walk find it at his destination. There are three hundred stage routes in Switzerland, all operated under the Post-Office department, private posting on regular routes being prohibited. The department owns the coaches; contractors own the horses and other material. From most of the termini, at least two coaches arrive and depart daily. Passengers, first and second class, are assigned to seats in the order of purchasing tickets. Every passenger in waiting at a stage office on the departure of a coach must by law be provided with conveyance, several supplementary vehicles often being thus called into employ. A postal coach may be ordered at an hour's notice, even on the mountain routes. Coach fare is 6 cents a mile; in the Alps, 8. Each passenger is allowed thirty-three pounds of baggage; in the Alps, twenty-two. Return tickets are sold at a reduction of 10 per cent. The cantonal wagon roads of Switzerland are unequaled by any of the highways in America. They are built by engineers, are solidly made, are macadamized, and are kept in excellent repair. The Alpine post roads are mostly cut in or built out upon the steep mountain sides. Not infrequently, they are tunneled through the massive rocky ribs of great peaks. Yet their gradient is so easy that the average tourist walks twenty-five miles over them in a short day. The engineering feats on these roads are in many cases notable. On the Simplon route a wide mountain stream rushes down over a post-road tunnel, and from within the traveler may see through the gallery-like windows the cataract pouring close beside him down into the valley. On the route that passes the great Rhone glacier, the road ascends a high mountain in a zigzag that, as viewed in front from the valley below, looks like a colossal corkscrew. This road is as well kept as the better turnpikes of New York, teams moving at a fast walk in ascending and at a trot in descending, though the region is barren and uninhabitable, and wintry nine months in the year. These two examples, however, give but a faint idea of the vast number of similar works. The federal treasury appropriates to several of the Alpine cantons, in addition to the sums so expended by the local administrations, from $16,000 to $40,000 a year for the maintenance of their post roads. With lower postage than any other country, the net earnings of the Swiss postal system for 1889 were $560,000. This, however, is but a fraction of the real gain to the nation from this source. Without their roads, railroads, stage lines, and mail facilities, their hotels, numbering more than one thousand and as a rule excellently managed, could not be maintained for the summer rush of foreign tourists, worth to the country many million dollars a year. The finest Alpine scenery is by no means confined to Swiss boundaries, but within these lines the comforts of travel far surpass those in the neighboring mountainous countries. In Savoy, Lombardy, and the Austrian Tyrol, the traveler must be prepared to put up with comparatively antiquated methods and primitive accommodations. Yet, previous to 1849, each Swiss canton had its own postal arrangements, some cantons farming out their systems either to other cantons or to individuals. In each canton the service, managed irrespective of federal needs, was costly, and Swiss postal systems, as compared with those of France and Germany, were notoriously behindhand. _Banking._ While the Confederation coins the metallic money current in the country, it is forbidden by the constitution to monopolize the issue of notes or guarantee the circulation of any bank. For the past ten years, however, it has controlled the circulation of the banks, the amount of their reserve fund, and the publication of their reports.[H] The latter may be called for at the discretion of the executive council, in fact even daily. [Footnote H: A vote, October 18, 1891, made note-issuing a federal monopoly.] There are thirty-five banks of issue doing business under cantonal law. Of these, eighteen, known as cantonal banks, either are managed or have their notes guaranteed by the respective cantons. Thus, while banking and money-issuing are free, the cantonal banks insure a requisite note circulation, minimizing the rate of interest and reducing its fluctuations. The setting up of cantonal banks, in order to withdraw privileges from licensed banks, was one of the public questions agitated by social reformers and decided in several of the cantons by direct legislation. _Taxes._ The framework of this little volume does not admit so much as an outline of the various methods of taxation practiced in Switzerland. As in all countries, they are complex. But certain significant results of direct legislation are to be pointed out. In all the cantons there is a strong tendency to raise revenue from direct, as opposed to indirect, taxes, and from progressive taxation according to fortune. The following, from an editorial in the "Christian Union," February 12, 1891, so justly and briefly puts the facts that I prefer printing it rather than words of my own, which might lie under suspicion of being tinged with the views of a radical: "With the democratic revolution of 1830 the people demanded that direct taxation should be introduced, and since the greater revolution of 1848 they have been steadily replacing the indirect taxes upon necessities by direct taxes upon wealth. In Zurich, for example--where in the first part of this century there were no direct taxes--in 1832 indirect taxation supplied four-fifths of the local revenue; to-day it supplies but one-seventeenth. The canton raises thirty-two francs per capita by direct taxation where it raises but two by indirect taxation. This change has accompanied the transformation of Switzerland from a nominal to a real democracy. By the use of direct taxation, where every man knows just how much he pays, and by the use of the Referendum, where the sense of justice of the entire public is expressed as to how tax burdens should be distributed, Switzerland has developed a system by which the division of society into the harmfully rich and wretchedly poor has been checked, if not prevented. In the most advanced cantons, as has been brought out by Professor Cohn in the 'Political Science Quarterly,' the taxes, both on incomes and on property, are progressive. In each case a certain minimum is exempted. In the case of incomes, the progression is such that the largest incomes pay a rate five times as heavy as the very moderate ones; while in the case of property, the largest fortunes pay twice as much as the smallest. The tax upon inheritances has been most strongly developed. In the last thirty years it has been increased sixfold. The larger the amount of property, and the more distant the relative to whom it has been bequeathed, the heavier the rate is made. It is sometimes as high as 20 per cent. Speaking upon this point, the New York 'Evening Post' correspondent says: 'Evidently there are few countries that do so much to discourage the accumulation of vast fortunes; and, in fact, Switzerland has few paupers and few millionaires.'" Until 1848, each canton imposed cantonal tariff duties on imported goods, and, as is yet the case in most continental countries, until a few years ago the larger cities imposed local import duties (_octrois_). But the _octroi_ is now a thing of the past, and save in one respect the cantons have abolished cantonal tariffs. The mining of salt being under federal control, and the retail price regulated by each canton for itself, supervision of imports of salt into each canton becomes necessary. The "Statesmen's Year Book" (1891) gives the debts of all the cantons of Switzerland as inconsiderable, while the federal debt, in 1890 but eleven million dollars, is less than half the federal assets in stocks and lands. In summing up at the close of his chapter on "State and Local Finance," Prof. Vincent says: "On the whole, the expenditures of Switzerland are much less than those of neighboring states. This may be ascribed in part to the lighter military burden, in part to the fact that no monarchs and courts must be supported, and further, to the inclinations of the Swiss people for practical rather than ornamental matters." And he might pertinently have added, "and to the fact that the citizens themselves hold the public purse-strings." _Limitations to Swiss Freedom._ Certain stumbling blocks stand in the way of sweeping claims as to the freedom enjoyed in Switzerland. One is asked: What as to the suppression of the Jesuits and the Salvation Army? As to the salt and alcohol monopolies of the State? As to the federal protective tariff? What as to the political war two years ago in Ticino? Two mutually supporting forms of reply are to be made to these queries. One relates to the immediate circumstances under which each of the departures from freedom cited have taken place; the other to historical conditions affecting the development of the Swiss democracy of to-day. As to the first of these forms of reply: In the decade previous to 1848 occurred the religious disturbances that ended in the war of the Sonderbund (secession), when several Catholic cantons endeavored to dissolve the loose federal pact under which Switzerland then existed. On the defeat of the secessionists, the movement for a closer federation--for a Confederation--received an impetus, which resulted in the present union. By an article of the constitution then substituted for the pact, convents were abolished and the order of the Jesuits forbidden on Swiss soil. Both had endangered the State. Mild, indeed, is this proscription when compared with the effects of the religious hatreds fostered for centuries between territories now Swiss cantons. In the judgment of the majority this restriction of the freedom of a part is essential to that enjoyed by the nation as a whole. The exercises of the Salvation Army fell under the laws of the municipalities against nuisances. The final judicial decision in this case was in effect that while persons of every religious belief are free to worship in Switzerland, none in doing so are free seriously to annoy their neighbors. The present federal protective tariff was imposed just after the federal Referendum (optional) had been called into operation on several other propositions, and, the public mind weary of political agitation, demand for the popular vote on the question was not made. The Geneva correspondent of the Paris "Temps" wrote of the tariff when it was adopted in 1884: "This tariff has sacrificed the interest of the whole of the consumers to temporary coalitions of private interests. It would have been shattered like a card house had it been submitted to the vote of the people." In imposing the tariff, the Federal Assembly in self-defense followed the action of other Continental governments. Many raw materials necessary to manufactures were, however, exempted and the burden of the duties placed on luxuries. As it is, Switzerland, without being able to obtain a pound of cotton except by transit through regions of hostile tariffs, maintains a cotton manufacturing industry holding a place among the foremost of the Continent, while her total trade per head is greater than that of any other country in Europe. The days of the federal salt monopoly are numbered. The criticisms it has of late evoked portend its end. A popular vote may finish it at any time. The State monopoly of alcohol, begun in 1887, is as yet an experiment. Financially, it has thus far been moderately successful, though smuggling and other evasions of the law go on on a large scale. The nation, yet in doubt, is awaiting developments. With a reaction, confidently predicted by many, against high tariffs and State interference with trade, the monopoly may be abolished. The little war in Ticino was the expiring spasm of the ultramontanes, desperately struggling against the advance of the Liberals armed with the Referendum. The reactionaries were suppressed, and the people's law made to prevail. The story, now to be read in the annual reference books, is a chronicle that cannot fail to win approval for democracy as an agency of peace and justice. * * * * * The explanations conveyed in these facts imply yet a deeper cause for the lapses from freedom in question. This cause is that Switzerland, in many cantons for centuries undemocratic, is not yet entirely democratic. Law cannot rise higher than its source. The last step in democracy places all lawmaking power directly and fully in the hands of the majority, but if by the majority justice is dimly seen, justice will be imperfectly done. No more may be asserted for democracy than this: (1) That under the domination of force, at present the common state of mankind, escape from majority rule in some form is impossible. (2) That hence justice as seen by the majority, exercising its will in conditions of equality for all, marks the highest justice obtainable. In their social organization and practice, the Swiss have advanced the line of justice to where it registers their political,--their mental and moral,--development. Above that, manifestly, it cannot be carried. Despite a widespread impression to the contrary, the traditions for ages of nearly all that now constitutes Swiss territory have been of tyranny and not of liberty. In most of that territory, in turn, bishop, king, noble, oligarch, and politician governed, but until the past half century, or less, never the masses. Half the area of Switzerland, at present containing 40 per cent of the inhabitants, was brought into the federation only in the present century. Of this recent accession, Geneva, for a brief term part of France, had previously long been a pure oligarchy, and more remotely a dictatorship; Neuchâtel had been a dependency of the crown of Prussia, never, in fact, fully released until 1857; Valais and the Grisons, so-called independent confederacies, had been under ecclesiastical rule; Ticino had for three centuries been governed as conquered territory, the privilege of ruling over it purchased by bailiffs from its conquerors, the ancient Swiss League--"a harsh government," declares the Encyclopædia Britannica, "one of the darkest passages of Swiss history." Of the older Switzerland, Bâle, Berne, and Zurich were oligarchical cities, each holding in feudality extensive neighboring regions. Not until 1833 were the peasants of Bâle placed on an equal footing with the townspeople, and then only after serious disturbances. And the inequalities between lord and serf, victor and vanquished, voter and disfranchised, existed in all the older states save those now known as the Landsgemeinde cantons. Says Vincent: "Almost the only thread that held the Swiss federation together was the possession of subject lands. In these they were interested as partners in a business corporation. Here were revenues and offices to watch and profits to divide, and matters came to such a pass that almost the only questions upon which the Diet could act in concert were the inspection of accounts and other affairs connected with the subject territories. The common properties were all that prevented complete rupture on several critical occasions. Another marked feature in the condition of government was the supremacy gained by the patrician class. Municipalities gained the upper hand over rural districts, and within the municipalities the old families assumed more and more privileges in government, in society, and in trade. The civil service in some instances became the monopoly of a limited number of families, who were careful to perpetuate all their privileges. Even in the rural democracies there was more or less of this family supremacy visible. Sporadic attempts at reform were rigorously suppressed in the cities, and government became more and more petrified into aristocracy. A study of this period of Swiss history explains many of the provisions found in the constitutions of today, which seem like over-precaution against family influence. The effect of privilege was especially grievous, and the fear of it survived when the modern constitutions were made." Here, plainly, are the final explanations of any shortcomings in Swiss liberty. In those parts of Switzerland where these shortcomings are serious, modern ideas of equality in freedom have not yet gained ascendency over the ages-honored institution of inequality. Progress is evident, but the goal of possible freedom is yet distant. How, indeed, could it be otherwise when in several cantons it was only in 1848, with the Confederation, that manhood suffrage was established? But how, it may be inquired, did the name of Swiss ever become the synonym of liberty? This land whose soldiery hired out as mercenaries to foreign princes, this League of oppressors, this hotbed of religious conflicts and persecutions,--how came it to be regarded as the home of a free people! The truth is that the traditional reputation of the whole country is based on the ancient character of a part. The Landsgemeinde cantons alone bear the test of democratic principles. Within them, indeed, for a thousand years the two primary essentials of democracy have prevailed. They are: (1) That the entire citizenship vote the law. (2) That land is not property, and its sole just tenure is occupancy and use. The first-named essential is yet in these cantons fully realized; largely, also, is the second. _The Communal Lands of Switzerland._ As to the tenure of the land held in Switzerland as private property, Hon. Boyd Winchester, for four years American minister at Berne, in his recent work, "The Swiss Republic," says: "There is no country in Europe where land possesses the great independence, and where there is so wide a distribution of land ownership as in Switzerland. The 5,378,122 acres devoted to agriculture are divided among 258,637 proprietors, the average size of the farms throughout the whole country being not more than twenty-one acres. The facilities for the acquisition of land have produced small holders, with security of tenure, representing two-thirds the entire population. There are no primogeniture, copyhold, customary tenure, and manorial rights, or other artificial obstacles to discourage land transfer and dispersion." "There is no belief in Switzerland that land was made to administer to the perpetual elevation of a privileged class; but a widespread and positive sentiment, as Turgot puts it, that 'the earth belongs to the living and not to the dead,' nor, it may be added, to the unborn." Turgot's dictum, however, obtains no more than to this extent: (1) The cantonal testamentary laws almost invariably prescribe division of property among all the children--as in the code Napoleon, which prevails in French Switzerland, and which permits the testator to dispose of only a third of his property, the rest being divided among all the heirs. (2) Highways, including the railways, are under immediate government control. (3) The greater part of the forests are managed, much of them owned, by the Confederation. (4) In nearly all the communes, some lands, often considerable in area, are under communal administration. (5) In the Landsgemeinde cantons largely, and in other cantons in a measure, inheritance and participation, jointly and severally, in the communal lands are had by the members of the communal corporation--that is, by those citizens who have acquired rights in the public property of the commune. Nearly every commune in Switzerland has public lands. In many communes, where they are mostly wooded, they are entirely in charge of the local government; in others, they are in part leased to individuals; in others, much of them is worked in common by the citizens having the right; but in the Landsgemeinde cantons it is customary to divide them periodically among the members of the corporation. Of the Landsgemeinde cantons, one or two yet have nearly as great an area of public land as of private. The canton of Uri has nearly 1,000 acres of cultivated lands, the distribution of which gives about a quarter of an acre to each family entitled to a share. Uri has also forest lands worth between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 francs, representing a capital of nearly 1,500 francs to each family. The commune of Obwald, in Unterwald, with 13,000 inhabitants, has lands and forests valued at 11,350,000 francs. Inner Rhodes, in Appenzell, with 12,000 inhabitants, has land valued at 3,000,000 francs. Glarus, because of its manufactures, is one of the richest cantons in public domain. In the non-Landsgemeinde German cantons, there is much common land. One-third of all the lands of the canton of Schaffhausen is held by the communes. The town of Soleure has forests, pastures, and cultivated lands worth about 6,000,000 francs. To the same value amounts the common property of the town of St. Gall. In the canton of St. Gall the communal Alpine pasturages comprise one-half such lands. Schwyz has a stretch of common land (an _allmend_) thirty miles in length and ten to fifteen in breadth. The city of Zurich has a well-kept forest of twelve to fifteen square miles, worth millions of francs. Winterthur, the second town in Zurich, has so many forests and vineyards that for a long period its citizens not only had no taxes to pay, but every autumn each received gratis several cords of wood and many gallons of wine. Numerous small towns and villages in German Switzerland collect no local taxes, and give each citizen an abundance of fuel. In addition to free fuel, cultivable lands are not infrequently allotted. At Stanz, in Unterwald, every member of the corporation is given more than an acre. At Buchs, in St. Gall, each member receives more than an acre, with firewood and grazing ground for several head of cattle. Upward of two hundred French communes possess common lands. In the canton of Vaud, a number of the communes have large revenues in wood and butter from the forests and pastures of the Jura mountains. Geneva has great forests; Valais many vineyards. In the canton of Valais, communal vineyards and grain fields are cultivated in common. Every member of the corporation who would share in the produce of the land contributes a certain share of work in field or vineyard. Part of the revenue thus obtained is expended in the purchase of cheese. The rest of the yield provides banquets in which all the members take part. Excepting in the case of forests, the trend is away from working the lands in common. Examples of the later methods are to be seen in the cantons of Ticino and Glarus, as follows:-- Several communes in Ticino, notably Airolo, have much public wealth. Airolo has seventeen mountain pastures, each of which feeds forty to eighty head of cattle. Each member of the corporation has the right to send up to these pastures five head for the summer. Those sending more, pay for the privilege; those sending less, receive a rental. On a specified day at the beginning of the season and on another at the close, the milk of each cow is weighed; from these amounts her average yield is estimated, and her total produce computed. The cheese and butter from the herds are sold, most of it in Milan, the hire of the herders paid, and the net revenue divided among the members according to the yield of their cows. In Glarus, the produce of the greater part of the communal lands, instead of being directly divided among the inhabitants, is substituted for taxation. The commonable alps are let by auction for a term of years, and, in opposition to ancient principles, strangers may bid for them. Some of the Glarus communes sell the right to cut timber in the forest under the superintendence of the guardians. The mountain hotels, in not a few instances the property of the communes, are let year by year. Land is frequently rented from the communes by manufacturing establishments. A citizen not using his share of the communal land may lease it to the commune, which in turn will let it to a tenant. The communes of Glarus are watchful that enough arable land is preserved for distribution among the members. If a plot is sold to manufacturers, or for private building purposes, a piece of equal or greater extent is bought elsewhere. Glarus has relatively as many people engaged in industries aside from farming as any other spot in Europe. It has 34,000 inhabitants, of whom nearly 15,000 live directly by manufactures, while of the rest many indirectly receive something from the same source. Distributive coöperative societies on the English plan exist in most of the industrial communes. The members of the communal corporations in Glarus, though not rich, are as free and independent as any other wage-workers in the world: they inherit the common lands; their local taxes are little or nothing; they are assured work, if not in the manufactories then on the land. Of the poverty that fears pauperism in old age, that dreads enforced idleness in recurrent industrial crises, that undermines health, that sinks human beings in ignorance, that deprives men of their manhood, the Swiss who enjoy the common lands of the Landsgemeinde cantons know little or nothing. They have enough. They have nothing to waste, nothing to spare; their fare is simple. But they are free. It is to the like freedom and equality of their ancestors that historians have pointed. It would be well nigh meaningless to refer to any freedom and equality among other ancient Swiss. The right of asylum from religious oppression is the sole feature of liberty at all general of old. The present is the first generation in which all the Swiss have been free. The chief elements of their political freedom--the Initiative and Referendum--came from the Landsgemeinde cantons. From the same source, in good time, so also may come to all Switzerland the prime element of economic freedom--free access to land. * * * * * Poverty is a relative condition. Men may be poor of mind--ignorant; and of body--ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-sheltered; and of rights--dependent. And from the state of hopeless deprivation involving all these forms upward are minute gradations. Where stand the Swiss in the scale? This the reply: Their system of education gives free opportunity to all to partake of the mental heritage of the ages. Their method of distribution, through the inheritance laws, of private and common lands, has made roughly two-thirds of the heads of families agricultural land holders. There being in other regards government control of all monopolies, the consequence is a widespread distribution of the annual product. Hence, no pauperism to be compared with that of England; no plutocracy such as we have in America. Certain other facts broadly outline the general comfort and independence. As one effect of the subdivision of the land, the soil, so far as nature permits, is highly cultivated, its appearance fertile, finished, beautiful, and in striking contrast with the dominating vast, bare mountain rocks and snowbeds. The many towns and cities bear abundant signs of a general prosperity, their roads, bridges, stores, residences, and public buildings betokening in the inhabitants industry and energy, and freedom to employ these qualities. Emigration is at low percentage, and of those citizens who do leave for the New World not a few are educated persons with some means seeking short cuts to fortune. Much of the rough work of Switzerland is done by Savoyards, as houseworkers, and by Italians, as farm hands, laborers, and stone masons: showing that as a body even the poorest of the propertyless Swiss have some choice of the better paid occupations. Every spring sees Italians, by scores of thousands, pouring over the Alps for a summer's work in Switzerland. Indeed, Swiss wage-workers might command better terms were it not for competing Italians, French, and Germans. In other words, through just social arrangements, enough has been done in Switzerland to raise the economic level of the entire nation; but the overflow of laborers from other lands depresses the condition of home labor. Nevertheless, where, it may be asked, is the people higher in the scale of civilization, in all the word implies, than the Swiss? * * * * * To recount what the Swiss have done by direct legislation: They have made it easy at any time to alter their cantonal and federal constitutions,--that is, to change, even radically, the organization of society, the social contract, and thus to permit a peaceful revolution at the will of the majority. They have as well cleared from the way of majority rule every obstacle,--privilege of ruler, fetter of ancient law, power of legislator. They have simplified the structure of government, held their officials as servants, rendered bureaucracy impossible, converted their representatives to simple committeemen, and shown the parliamentary system not essential to lawmaking. They have written their laws in language so plain that a layman may be judge in the highest court. They have forestalled monopolies, improved and reduced taxation, avoided incurring heavy public debts, and made a better distribution of their land than any other European country. They have practically given home rule in local affairs to every community. They have calmed disturbing political elements;--the press is purified, the politician disarmed, the civil service well regulated. Hurtful partisanship is passing away. Since the people as a whole will never willingly surrender their sovereignty, reactionary movement is possible only in case the nation should go backward. But the way is open forward. Social ideals may be realized in act and institution. Even now the liberty-loving Swiss citizen can discern in the future a freedom in which every individual,--independent, possessed of rights in nature's resources and in command of the fruits of his toil,--may, at his will, on the sole condition that he respect the like aim of other men, pursue his happiness. DIRECT LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES. "But these are foreign methods. How are they to be engrafted on our American system?" More than once have I been asked this question when describing the Initiative and Referendum of Switzerland. The reply is: Direct legislation is not foreign to this country. Since the settlement of New England its practice has been customary in the town meeting, an institution now gradually spreading throughout the western states--of recent years with increased rapidity. The Referendum has appeared, likewise, with respect to state laws, in several forms in every part of the Union. In the field of labor organization, also, especially in several of the more carefully managed national unions, direct legislation is freely practiced. The institution does not need to be engrafted on this republic; it is here; it has but to develop naturally. _The Town Meeting._ The town meeting of New England is the counter-part of the Swiss communal political meeting. Both assemblies are the primary form of the politico-social organization. Both are the foundation of the structure of the State. The essential objects of both are the same: to enact local regulations, to elect local officers, to fix local taxation, and to make appropriations for local purposes. At both, any citizen may propose measures, and these the majority may accept or reject--_i.e._, the working principles of town and commune alike are the Initiative and the Referendum. A fair idea of the proceedings at all town meetings may be gained through description of one. For several reasons, a detailed account here of what actually happened recently at a town meeting is, it seems to me, justified. At such a gathering is seen, in plain operation, in the primary political assembly, the principles of direct legislation. The departure from those principles in a representative gathering is then the more clearly seen. In many parts of the country, too, the methods of the town meeting are little known. By observing the transactions in particular, the reader will learn the variety in the play of democratic principle and draw from it instructive inference. The town of Rockland, Plymouth county, in the east of Massachusetts, has 5,200 inhabitants; assesses for taxation 5,787 acres of land; contains 1,078 dwelling houses, 800 of which are occupied by owners, and numbers 1,591 poll tax payers, who are therefore voters. At 9 a.m., on Monday, March 2, 1891, 819 voters of Rockland assembled in the opera house for the annual town meeting, the "warrant" for which, in accordance with the law, had been publicly posted seven days before and published once in each of the two town newspapers. A presiding officer for the day, called a moderator, was elected by show of hands, after which an election by ballot for town officers for the ensuing year was begun. The supervisors of the voting were the town clerk and the three selectmen (the executive officers of the town), who were seated on a platform at one end of the hall. To cast his ballot, a voter mounted the platform, his name was called aloud by the clerk, his ballot was deposited, a check bell striking as it was thrown in the ballot-box, and the voter stepped on and down. The ballot was a printed one, its size, color, and type regulated by state law. When the voters had cast their ballots, five tellers, who had been chosen by show of hands, counted the vote. In this balloting for town officers, there was no division into Republicans and Democrats, although considerable grouping together through party association could be traced. The officers elected were a town clerk and treasurer; a board of three, to serve as selectmen, assessors, overseers of the poor, and fence viewers; three school committeemen; a water commissioner; a board of health of three members; two library trustees; three auditors, and seven constables. A vote was also taken by ballot--"Yes" or "No"--on the question: "Shall licenses be granted for the sale of intoxicating liquors in this town?" The yeas were 317; nays, 347. The form of ballot used in this case was precisely that invariably employed in the Referendum in Switzerland. After a recess of an hour at midday, the business laid out in the "warrant" was resumed. There were present 700 to 800 voters, with, as on-lookers on the same floor, a large number of women, the principal and pupils of the high school, and the teachers and children of the grammar schools. The "warrant" (the schedule for the meeting) consisted of forty-four "articles," each representing a matter to be debated and voted on--that is to say, a subject for legislation. These articles had been placed in the warrant by the selectmen, either on their own motion or on request of citizens. The election of moderator had taken place under article 1; that of town officers under article 2; the license vote under article 3. The voting on the rest of the articles now took place by show of hands. Article 4 related to the annual reports of the town officers, printed copies of which were to be had by each citizen. These were read and discussed. Article 5 related to the general appropriations for town expenses for the ensuing year. The following were decided on, each item being voted on separately: For highway repairs $3,800 For military aid $500 For removing snow 300 For guideboards 50 For fire department 1,200 For abatement of taxes and For police service 500 collector's fee 500 For night watch 600 For support of poor 5,500 For town officers 2,200 For library, etc 1,000 For town committees, and For schools, proper 11,300 Abingdon records 50 For school-incidentals 1,000 For miscellaneous expenses 1,200 For school books 1,000 For interest 1,000 For hydrants 2,300 For memorial day 100 For water bonds, etc 2,500 Article 6, which was agreed to, authorized the town treasurer to borrow money in anticipation of the collection of taxes; article 7 related to the method of collecting the town taxes. It was decided these should be farmed out to the lowest bidder, and, on the spot, a citizen secured the contract at sixty-eight cents on the hundred. Article 8 related to the powers of the tax collector; 9, to a list of jurors reported by the selectmen, which was accepted; 10, to methods of repairing highways and sidewalks; 11, to appropriating money for memorial day. Articles 10 and 11 were passed over, having been covered in the general appropriations, and the selectmen were instructed to enforce in highway work the nine-hour law. Article 12, which was adopted, provided for a night watch; 13, relating to copying the records of Abingdon, had been passed upon in the general appropriations; 14, providing for widening and straightening a street, was passed, and $350 appropriated for the purpose; 15, providing for concrete sidewalks, excited much debate, and $300 was appropriated in addition to material on hand. Articles 16, appropriating $350 for draining a street, and 17, requesting the selectmen to lay out a water course on another street, were adopted. Article 18, which was carried by a large majority, appropriated, in five items, discussed and voted on separately, $7,250 for the fire department. Article 19 appropriated $100 for a town road, 20 $200 for another, and these were adopted, but 21, by which $325 was asked for another road, was laid on the table. Articles 22 and 23, appropriating $75 and $25 for bridges, were passed. Article 24, proposing the graveling of a sidewalk, was referred to the selectmen. Articles 25, 26, 27, and 28, proposing the laying of sidewalks, were adopted, with appropriations of $150, $125, $150, and $150; but 29, also proposing a new sidewalk, was laid on the table. Article 30, proposing a new sidewalk, was adopted, with an appropriation of $300, but 31, proposing another, was laid on the table. Articles 32, proposing to change the grading of two streets, with an appropriation of $500; 33, appropriating $300 for a highway roller; 34, providing for a public drinking fountain, and appropriating $200; 35, providing for a new bridge, and appropriating $75, were all adopted. Articles 36, 37, and 38, providing for extensions to the water mains, were laid on the table. Article 39, appropriating $300 for relocation of a telephone line, was adopted; but articles 40, providing for a memorial building, 41, providing for a town hall, and 42, providing for a soldiers' memorial, were laid on the table. Lastly, articles 43 and 44, providing for changes in street names, were accepted as reported by the selectmen. After finishing the "warrant," the meeting appropriated $10 to pay the moderator, fixed $3 a day as the rate for the selectmen, and directed the latter not to employ as constable any man who had been rejected by a vote of the town. It was 10.45 p.m. when the assemblage broke up, a recess having been taken from 5.30 to 7.30. The proceedings at this meeting were characterized by democratic methods. When the town officers handed in their reports, they were questioned and criticised by one citizen and another. A motion to refer the general appropriation list to a committee of twenty-five met with overwhelming defeat in the face of the expressed sentiment that about all left of primitive democracy was the old-fashioned town meeting. One of the speakers on the town library appropriation was a lady, and her point was carried. On the question of buying new fire extinguishing apparatus, there were sides and leaders, with prolonged debate. As to roads and bridges, each matter was dealt with on its own merits and separately from other similar propositions. In the election for officers, women voted for school committeemen. The only officials of Rockland under annual salary are the treasurer and town physician. Selectmen receive a sum per diem; constables, fees; school committeemen make out their own bills. The others serve for nothing. Rockland, politically, is a typical New England town. What is to be said of its manner of town meeting may, with little modification, be said of all. Each citizen present at such a meeting may join in the debate. From the printed copy of the officers' reports he may learn what his town government has done in the year past; from the printed warrant he may see what is proposed to be done in the year coming. He who knows the better way in any of the business is sure to receive a hearing. The pockets of all being concerned, whatever is best and cheapest is insured. Bribery, successful only in the dark, has little or no field in the town meeting. Provision usually exists by which a town may dispose of any urgent matters springing up for legislation in the course of the year: as a rule a special town meeting may be called on petition of a small number of citizens, commonly seven to eleven. In a study of the town meeting system of today, in "Harper's Monthly," June, 1891, Henry Loomis Nelson brought out many convincing facts as to its superiority over government by a town board. Where the cost for public lighting in a New England town had been but $2,000, in a New York town of the same size it had amounted to $11,000. The cities of Worcester, Mass., and Syracuse, New York, each of about 80,000 inhabitants, were compared, with the New England city in every respect by far the more economically governed. Towns in New England are uniformly superior to others in other parts of the country with regard to the extent of sewers and paved streets. The aggregate of town debts in New England is vastly less than the aggregate for a similar population in the Middle States. The state constitutions of New England commonly relate to fundamental principles, since each district may protect itself by the town meeting; but outside New England, to assert the rights of localities, state constitutions usually perforce embody particulars. In their fire and police departments, and public school and water supply systems, New England towns lead the rest of the country. "The influence," says Mr. Nelson, "of the town meeting government upon the physical character of the country, upon the highways and bridges, and upon the appearance of the villages, is familiar to all who have traveled through New England. The excellent roads, the stanch bridges, the trim tree-shaded streets, the universal signs of thrift and of the people's pride in the outward aspects of their villages, are too well known to be dwelt upon." In every New England community many of the men are qualified by experience to take charge of a public meeting and conduct its proceedings with some regard to the forms observed in parliamentary bodies. But elsewhere in the Union few of the citizens have any knowledge of such forms and observances. "In New England there is not a voter who may not, and very few voters who do not, actively participate in the work of government. In the other parts of the country hardly any one takes part in public affairs except the office-holder." John Fiske, in "Civil Government in the United States," (1890), says that "the general tendency toward the spread of township government in the more recently settled parts of the United States is unmistakable." The first western state to adopt the town meeting system was Michigan; but it now prevails in four-fifths of the counties of Illinois; in one-sixth of Missouri, where it was begun in 1879; and in one-third of the counties of Nebraska, which adopted it in 1883; while it has gone much further in Minnesota and Dakota, in which states it has been law since 1878 and 1883, respectively. "Within its proper sphere," says Fiske, "government by town meeting is the form of government most effectively under watch and control. Everything is done in the full daylight of publicity. The specific objects for which public money is to be appropriated are discussed in the presence of everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to declare his opinions." "The inhabitant of a New England town is perpetually reminded that 'our government' is 'the people.' Although he may think loosely about the government of his state or the still more remote government at Washington, he is kept pretty close to the facts where local affairs are concerned, and in this there is a political training of no small value." The same writer notes in the New England towns a tendency to retain good men in office, such as we have seen is the case in Switzerland. "The annual election affords an easy means of dropping an unsatisfactory officer. But in practice nothing has been more common than for the same persons to be re-elected as selectmen or constables or town-clerks for year after year, as long as they are willing or able to serve. The notion that there is anything peculiarly American or democratic in what is known as 'rotation in office' is therefore not sustained by the practice of the New England town, which is the most complete democracy in the world." In another feature is there resemblance to Swiss custom: some of the town officials serve without pay and none receive exorbitant salaries. _The Referendum in States, Cities, Counties, Etc._ Few are aware of the advances which direct legislation has made in state government in the United States. Many facts on this subject, collected by Mr. Ellis P. Oberholtzer, were published in the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," November, 1891. Condensed, this writer's statement is as follows: Constitutional amendments now go to the people for a vote in every state except Delaware. The significance of this fact, and the resemblance of this vote to the Swiss Referendum, are seen when one considers the subject matter of a state constitution. Nowadays, such a constitution usually limits a legislature to a short biennial session and defines in detail what laws the legislature may and may not pass. In fact, then, in adopting a constitution once in ten or twenty years, the voters of a state decide upon admissible legislation. Thus they themselves are the real legislators. Among the matters once left entirely to legislatures, but now commonly dealt with in constitutions, are the following: Prohibiting or regulating the liquor traffic; prohibiting or chartering lotteries; determining tax rates; founding and locating state schools and other state institutions; establishing a legal rate of interest; fixing the salaries of public officials; drawing up railroad and other corporation regulations; and defining the relations of husbands and wives, and of debtors and creditors. In line with all this is a tendency to easy amendment. In nearly all the new states and in those older ones which have recently revised their constitutions, the time in which amendments may be effected is as a rule but half of that formerly required. Where once the approval of two successive legislatures was exacted, now the consent of one is considered sufficient. In fifteen states, until submitted to a popular vote, no law changing the location of the capital is valid; in seven, no laws establishing banking corporations; in eleven, no laws for the incurrence of debts excepting such as are specified in the constitution, and no excess of "casual deficits" beyond a stipulated sum; in several, no rate of assessment exceeding a figure proportionate to the aggregate valuation of the taxable property. Without the Referendum, Illinois cannot sell its state canal; Minnesota cannot pay interest or principal of the Minnesota railroad; North Carolina cannot extend the state credit to aid any person or corporation, excepting to help certain railroads unfinished in 1876. With the Referendum, Colorado may adopt woman suffrage and create a debt for public buildings; Texas may fix a location for a college for colored youth; Wyoming may decide on the sites for its state university, insane asylum and penitentiary. Numerous important examples of the Referendum in local matters in the United States, especially in the West, were found by Mr. Oberholtzer. There are many county, city, township, and school district referendums. Nineteen state constitutions guarantee to counties the right to fix by vote of the citizens the location of the county seats. So also usually of county lines, divisions of counties, and like matters. Several western states leave it to a vote of the counties as to when they shall adopt a township organization, with town meetings; several states permit their cities to decide when they shall also be counties. As in the state, there are debt and tax matters that may be passed on only by the people of cities, boroughs, counties, or school districts. Without the Referendum, no municipality in Pennsylvania may contract an aggregate debt beyond 2 per cent of the assessed valuation of its taxable property; no municipalities in certain other states may incur in any year an indebtedness beyond their revenues; no local governments in the new states of the West may raise any loans whatever; none in other states may exceed certain limits in tax rates. With the Referendum, certain Southern communities may make harbor improvements, and other communities may extend the local credit to railroad, water transportation, and similar corporations. The prohibition of the liquor business in a city or county is often left to a popular vote; indeed, "local option" is the commonest form of Referendum. In California any city with more than 10,000 inhabitants may frame a charter for its own government, which, however, must be approved by the legislature. Under this law Stockton, San José, Los Angeles, and Oakland have acquired new charters. In the state of Washington, cities of 20,000 may make their own charters without the legislature having any power of veto. Largely, then, such cities make their own laws. In fact, the vast United States seems to have seen as much of the Referendum as little Switzerland. But the effect of the practice has been largely lost in the great size of this country and in the loose and unsystematized character of the institution as known here. * * * * * In the "American Commonwealth" of James Bryce, a member of Parliament, there is a chapter entitled "Direct Legislation by the People." After reciting many facts similar in character to those given by Mr. Oberholtzer, Mr. Bryce inquires into the practical workings of direct legislation. He finds what are to his mind some "obvious demerits." Of these demerits, such as apply to details he develops in the course of his statements of several cases of Referendum. In summing up, he further points out what seem to him two objections to the principle. One is that direct legislation "tends to lower the authority and sense of responsibility of the legislature." But this is precisely the aim of pure democracy, and from its point of view a merit of the first order. The other objection is, "it refers matters needing much elucidation by debate to the determination of those who cannot, on account of their numbers, meet together for discussion, and many of whom may have never thought about the matter." But why meet together for discussion? Mr. Bryce here overlooks that this is the age of newspaper and telegraph, and that through these sources the facts and much debate on any matter of public interest may be forthcoming on demand. Mr. Bryce, however, sees more advantages than demerits in direct legislation. Of the advantages he remarks: "The improvement of the legislatures is just what the Americans despair of, or, as they would prefer to say, have not time to attend to. Hence they fall back on the Referendum as the best course available under the circumstances of the case and in such a world as the present. They do not claim that it has any great educative effect on the people. But they remark with truth that the mass of the people are equal in intelligence and character to the average state legislator, and are exposed to fewer temptations. The legislator can be 'got at,' the people cannot. The personal interest of the individual legislator in passing a measure for chartering banks or spending the internal improvement fund may be greater than his interest as one of the community in preventing bad laws. It will be otherwise with the bulk of the citizens. The legislator may be subjected by the advocates of women's suffrage or liquor prohibition to a pressure irresistible by ordinary mortals; but the citizens are too numerous to be all wheedled or threatened. Hence they can and do reject proposals which the legislature has assented to. Nor should it be forgotten that in a country where law depends for its force on the consent of the governed, it is eminently desirable that law should not outrun popular sentiment, but have the whole weight of the people's deliverance behind it." _The Initiative and Referendum in Labor Organizations._ The Referendum is well known to the Knights of Labor. For nine years past expressions of opinion have been asked of the local assemblies by the general executive board. The recent decision of the order to enter upon independent political action was made by a vote in response to a circular issued by the General Master Workman. The latter, at the annual convention at Toledo, in November, 1891, recommended that the Referendum form a part of the government machinery throughout the United States. The Knights being in some respects a secret organization, data as to referendary votings are not always made public. For the past decade or longer several of the national and international trades-unions of America have had the Initiative and Referendum in operation. Within the past five years the institution in various forms has been taken up by other unions, and at present it is in more or less practice in the following bodies, all associated with the American Federation of Labor: No. of No. of Members, National or International Union. Local Unions. December, 1891. Journeymen Bakers 81 17,500 Brewery Workmen 61 9,500 United Broth'h'd of Carpenters and Joiners 740 65,000 Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners 40 2,800 Cigar-Makers 310 27,000 Carriage and Wagon Makers 11 2,000 Garment Workers 24 4,000 Granite Cutters 75 20,000 Tailors 170 17,000 Typographical Union 290 28,000 ------- Total 192,800 Direct legislation has long been familiar to the members of the International Cigar-Makers' Union. Today, amendments to its constitution, the acts of its executives, and even the resolutions passed at delegate conventions, are submitted to a vote by ballot in the local unions. The nineteenth annual convention, held at Indianapolis, September, 1891, provisionally adopted 114 amendments to the constitution and 33 resolutions on various matters. Though some of the latter were plainly perfunctory in character, all of these 147 propositions were printed in full in the "Official Journal" for October, and voted on in the 310 unions throughout America in November. The Initiative is introduced in this international union through local unions. When twenty of the latter have passed favorably on a measure, it must be submitted to the entire body. An idea of the financial transactions of the Cigar-Makers' International Union may be gathered from its total expenditures in the past twelve years and a half. In all, it has disbursed in that time $1,426,208. Strikes took $469,158; sick benefits, $439,010; death benefits, $109,608; traveling benefits, $372,455, and out of work benefits, $35,795. The advance of the Referendum in this great union has been very gradual. It began in 1877 with voting on constitutional amendments. The most recent, and perhaps last possible, step was to transfer the election of the general executive board from the annual convention to the entire body. The United Garment Workers of America practice direct legislation under Article 24 of their constitution, which is printed under the caption, "Referendum and Initiative." It prescribes two methods of Initiative. One is that three or more local unions, if of different states, may instruct the general secretary to call for a referendary vote in the unions of the national organization. The other is that the general executive board must so submit all questions of general importance. The general secretary issues the call within two weeks after the petition for a vote reaches him, and the vote is taken within six months afterward. Eighteen propositions passed by the annual convention of this union at Boston, in November, 1891, were submitted to a vote of the local unions in December. In 1890, the local unions of the International Typographical Union, then numbering nearly 290, voted on twenty-five propositions submitted from the annual convention. In 1891, fourteen propositions were submitted. Of the latter, one authorized the formation of unions of editors and reporters; another directed the payments to the President to be a salary of $1,400, actual railroad fares by the shortest possible routes, and $3 a day for hotel expenses; another rescinded a six months' exemption from a per capita tax for newly formed unions; another provided for a funeral benefit of $50 on the death of a member; by another an assessment of ten cents a month was levied for the home for superannuated and disabled union printers. All fourteen were adopted, the majorities, however, varying from 558 to 8,758. _Is Complete Direct Legislation in Government Practicable?_ The conservative citizen, contented with the existing state of things, is wont to brush aside proposed innovations in government. To do so he avails himself of a familiar stock of objections. But have they not all their answer in the facts thus far brought forth in these chapters? Will he entertain no "crazy theories"? Here is offered practice, proven in varied and innumerable tests to be thoroughly feasible. He is opposed to foreign institutions? Here is a time-honored American institution. He holds that men cannot be made better by law? Here are facts to show that with change of law justice has been promoted. He deems democracy feebleness? Here has been shown its stalwart strength. He is sure workingmen are incapable of managing large affairs? Let him look to the cigar-makers--their capacity for organization, their self-restraint as an industrial army, the soundness of their financial system, the mastery of their employers in the eight-hour question. He believes the intricacies of taxation and estimates of appropriation beyond the average mind? He may see a New England town meeting in a single day dispose of scores of items and, with each settled to a nicety, vote away fifty thousand dollars. He fears state legislation, by reason of its complexity, would prove a puzzle to the ordinary voter? Why, then, are the more vexatious subjects so often shifted by the legislators to the people? The conservative objector is, first, apt to object before fully examining what he dissents from, and, secondly, prone to have in mind ideal conditions with which to compare the new methods commended to him. In the matter of legislation, he dreams of a body of high-minded lawgivers, just, wise, unselfish, and not of legislators as they commonly are. He forgets that Congress and the legislatures have each a permanent lobby, buying privileges for corporations, and otherwise influencing and corrupting members. He forgets the party caucus, at which the individual member is swamped in the majority; the "strikers," members employing their powers in blackmail; the Black Horse Cavalry, a combination of members in state legislatures formed to enrich themselves by plunder through passing or killing bills. He forgets the scandalous jobs put through to reward political workers; the long lists of doubtful or vicious bills reviewed in the press after each session of every legislative body; the pamphlets issued by reform bodies in which perhaps three-fourths of a legislature is named as untrustworthy, and the price of many of the members given. The City Reform Club of New York published in 1887: "As with the city's representatives of 1886, the chief objects of most of the New York members were to make money in the 'legislative business,' to advance their own political fortunes, and to promote the interests of their factions." And where is the state legislature of which much the same things cannot be said? The conservative objector may not know how the most important bills are often passed in Congress. He may not know that until toward the close of a session the business of Congress is political in the party sense rather than in the governing sense; that on the floor the play is usually conducted for effect on the public; that in committees, measures into which politics enter are made up either on compromise or for partisan purposes; that, finally, in the last days of a session, the work of legislation is a scramble. The second day before the adjournment of the last Congress was thus described in a New York daily paper: "Congress has been working like a gigantic threshing machine all day long, and at this hour there is every prospect of an all-night session of both houses. Helter-skelter, pell-mell, the 'unfinished business' has been poured into the big hopper, and in less time than it takes to tell it, it has come out at the other end completed legislation, lacking only the President's signature to fit it for the statute books. Public bills providing for the necessary expenses of the government, private bills galore having as their beneficiaries favored individuals, jobbery in the way of unnecessary public buildings, railroad charters, and bridge construction--all have been rushed through at lightning speed, and the end is not yet. A majority of the House members, desperate because their power and influence terminate with the end of this brief session, and a partisan Speaker, whose autocratic rule will prevail but thirty-six short hours longer, have left nothing unattempted whereby party friends and protégés might be benefited. It is safe to say that aside from a half dozen measures of real importance and genuine merit the country would be no worse off should every other bill not yet acted upon fail of passage. Certain it is that large sums of money would be saved to the Government." And what observer does not know that scenes not unlike this are repeated in almost every legislature in its closing hours? As between such manner of even national legislation on the one hand, and on the other the entire citizenship voting (as soon would be the fact under direct legislation) on but what properly should be law--and on principles, on policies, and on aggregates in appropriations--would there be reason for the country to hesitate in choosing? Among the plainest signs of the times in America is the popular distrust of legislators. The citizens are gradually and surely resuming the lawmaking and money-spending power unwisely delegated in the past to bodies whose custom it is to abuse the trust. "Government" has come to mean a body of representatives with interests as often as not opposed to those of the great mass of electors. Were legislation direct, the circle of its functions would speedily be narrowed; certainly they would never pass legitimate bounds at the urgency of a class interested in enlarging its own powers and in increasing the volume of public outlay. Were legislation direct, the sphere of every citizen would be enlarged; each would consequently acquire education in his rôle, and develop a lively interest in the public affairs in part under his own management. And what so-called public business can be right in principle, or expedient in policy, on which the American voter may not pass in person? To reject his authority in politics is to compel him to abdicate his sovereignty. That done, the door is open to pillage of the treasury, to bribery of the representative, and to endless interference with the liberties of the individual. THE WAY OPEN TO PEACEFUL REVOLUTION. What I set out in the first chapter to do seems to me done. I essayed to show how the political "machine," its "ring," "boss," and "heeler," might be abolished, and how, consequently, the American plutocracy might be destroyed, and government simplified and contracted to the field of its natural operations. These ends achieved, a social revolution would be accomplished--a revolution without loss of a single life or destruction of a dollar's worth of property. Whoever has read the foregoing chapters has seen these facts established: (1) That much in proportion as the whole body of citizens take upon themselves the direction of public affairs, the possibilities for political and social parasitism disappear. The "machine" becomes without effective uses, the trade of the politician is rendered undesirable, and the privileges of the monopolist are withdrawn. (2) That through the fundamental principles of democracy in practice--the Initiative and the Referendum--great bodies of people, with the agency of central committees, may formulate all necessary law and direct its execution. (3) That the difference between a representative government and a democracy is radical. The difference lies in the location of the sovereignty of society. The citizens who assign the lawmaking power to officials surrender in a body their collective sovereignty. That sovereignty is then habitually employed by the lawgivers to their own advantage and to that of a twin governing class, the rich, and to the detriment of the citizenship in general and especially the poor. But when the sovereignty rests permanently with the citizenship, there evolves a government differing essentially from representative government. It is that of mere stewardship and the regulation indispensable to society. _The Social Forces Ready for Our Methods._ Now that our theory of social reform is fully substantiated by fact, our methods shown to be in harmony with popular sentiment, our idea of democratic government clearly defined, and our final aim political justice, there remains some consideration of early possible practical steps in line with these principles and of the probable trend of events afterward. Having practical work in view, we may first take some account of the principal social forces which may be rallied in support of our methods:-- To begin with: Sincere men who have abandoned hope of legislative reform may be called to renewed effort. Many such men have come to regard politics as inseparable from corruption. They have witnessed the tediousness and unprofitableness of seeking relief through legislators, and time and again have they seen the very officials elected to bring about reforms go over to the powers that exploit the masses. They have seen in the course of time the tricks of partisan legislators almost invariably win as against the wishes of the masses. They know that in politics there is little study of the public needs, but merely a practice of the ignoble arts of the professional politician. Here, however, the proposed social reorganization depends, not on representatives, but on the citizens themselves; and the means by which the citizens may fully carry out their purposes have been developed. A fact, too, of prime importance: Where heretofore in many localities the people have temporarily overthrown politician and plutocrat, only to be themselves defeated in the end, every point gained by the masses in direct legislation may be held permanently. Further: Repeatedly, of late years, new parties have risen to demand justice in government and improvement in the economic situation. One such movement defeated but makes way for another. Proof, this, that the spirit of true reform is virile and the heart of the nation pure. The progress made, in numbers and organization, before the seeds of decay were sown in the United Labor party, the Union Labor party, the Greenback-Labor party, the People's party of 1884, and various third-party movements, testify to the readiness of earnest thousands to respond, even on the slightest promise of victory, to the call for radical reform. That in such movements the masses are incorruptible is shown in the fact that in every instance one of the chief causes of failure has been doubt in the integrity of leaders given to machine methods. But in direct legislation, machine leaders profit nothing for themselves, hold no reins of party, can sell no votes, and can command no rewards for workers. Again: The vast organizations of the Knights of Labor and the trades-unions in the American Federation of Labor are evidence of the willingness and ability of wage-earners to cope practically with national problems. And at this point is to be observed a fact of capital significance to advocates of pure democracy. Whereas, in independent political movements, sooner or later a footing has been obtained by a machine, resulting in disintegration, in the trades organization, while political methods may occasionally corrupt leaders, the politician labor leader uniformly finds his fellow workmen turning their backs on him. The organized workers not only distrust the politician but detest political chicanery. Such would equally be the case did the wage-workers carry into the political field the direct power they exert in their unions. And in politics this never-failing, incorruptible power of the whole mass of organized wage-workers may be exerted by direct legislation. Therewith may be had politics without politicians. As direct legislation advances, the machine must retire. Here, then, with immediate results in prospect from political action, lies encouragement of the highest degree--alike to the organized workers, to the men grown hopeless of political reform, and to the men in active rebellion against the two great machine ridden parties. Encouragement founded on reason is an inestimable practical result. Here, not only may rational hope for true reform be inspired; a lively certainty, based on ascertained fact, may be felt. All men of experience who have read these pages will have seen confirmed something of their own observations in direct legislation, and will have accepted as plainly logical sequences the developments of the institution in Switzerland. The New Englander will have learned how the purifying principles of his town meeting have been made capable of extension. The member of a labor organization will have observed how the simple democracy of his union or assembly may be transferred to the State. The "local optionist" will have recognized, working in broader and more varied fields, a well tried and satisfactory instrument. The college man will have recalled the fact that wherever has gone the Greek letter fraternity, there, in each society as a whole, and in each chapter with respect to every special act, have gone the Initiative and the Referendum. And every member of any body of equal associates must perceive that the first, natural circumstance to the continued existence of that body in its integrity must be that each individual may propose a measure and that the majority may accept or reject it; and this is the simple principle of direct legislation. Moreover, any mature man, east or west, in any locality, may recall how within his experience a community's vote has satisfactorily put vexatious questions at rest. With the recognition of every such fact, hope will rise and faith in the proposed methods be made more firm. _Abolition of the Lawmaking Monopoly._ To radical reformers further encouragement must come with continued reflection on the importance to them of direct legislation. In general, such reformers have failed to recognize that, before any project of social reconstruction can be followed out to the end, there stands a question antecedent to every other. It is the abolition of the lawmaking monopoly. Until that monopoly is ended, no law favorable to the masses can be secure. Direct legislation would destroy this parent of monopolies. It gone, then would follow the chiefer evils of governmental mechanism--class rule, ring rule, extravagance, jobbery, nepotism, the spoils system, every jot of the professional trading politician's influence. To effect these ends, all schools of political reformers might unite. For immediate purposes, help might come even from that host of conservatives who believe all will be well if officials are honest. Direct majority rule attained, inviting opportunities for radical work would soon lie open. How, may readily be seen. The New England town collects its own taxes; it manages its local schools, roads, bridges, police, public lighting and water supply. In similar affairs the Swiss commune is autonomous. On the Pacific coast a tendency is to accord to places of 10,000 or 20,000 inhabitants their own charters. Throughout the country, in many instances, towns and counties settle for themselves questions of prohibition, license, and assessments; questions of help to corporations and of local public improvement. Thus in measure as the Referendum comes into play does the circumscription practicing it become a complete community. In other words, with direct legislation rises local self-government. _The Principles of Local Self-Government._ From even the conservative point of view, local self-government has many advantages. In this country, the glaring evils of the State, especially those forming obstacles to political improvement and social progress, come down from sources above the people. Under the existing centralization whole communities may protest against governmental abuses, be practically a unit in opposition to them, and yet be hopelessly subject to them. Such centralization is despotism. It forms as well the opportunity for the demagogue of to-day--for him who as suppliant for votes is a wheedler and as politician and lawgiver a trickster. Centralization confuses the voter, baffles the honest newspaper, foments partisanship, and cheats the masses of their will. On the other hand, to the extent that local independence is acquired, a democratic community minimizes every such evil. In naturally guarding itself against external interference, it seeks in its connection with other communities the least common political bonds. It is watchful of the home rule principle. Under its local self-government, government plainly becomes no more than the management of what are wholly public interests. The justice of lopping off from government all matters not the common affairs of the citizens then becomes apparent. The character of every man in the community being known, public duties are intrusted with men who truly represent the citizens. The mere demagogue is soon well known. Bribery becomes treachery to one's neighbor. The folly of partisanship is seen. Public issues, usually relating to but local matters, are for the most part plain questions. The press, no longer absorbed in vague, far-off politics, aids, not the politicians, but the citizens. Reasons, every one of these, for even the conservative to aid in establishing local self-government. But the radical, looking further than the conservative, will see far greater opportunities. In local self-government with direct legislation, every possibility for his success that hope can suggest may be perceived. If not in one locality, then in another, whatever political projects are attainable within such limits by his school of philosophy may be converted by him and his co-workers from theory to fact. Thence on, if his philosophy is practicable, the field should naturally widen. The political philosophy I would urge on my fellow-citizens is summed up in the neglected fundamental principle of this republic: Freedom and equal rights. The true point of view from which to see the need of the application of this principle is from the position of the unemployed, propertyless wage-worker. How local self-government and direct legislation might promptly invest this slave of society with his primary rights, and pave the way for further rights, may, step by step, be traced. _The Relation of Wages to Political Conditions._ The wages scale pivots on the strike. The employer's order for a reduction is his strike; to be effective, a reserve of the unemployed must be at his command. The wage-worker's demand for an increase is his strike; to be effective it must be backed up by the indispensableness of his services to the employer. Accordingly as the worker forces up the scale of wages, he is the more free, independent, and gainer of his product. To show the most direct way to the conditions in which workers may command steady work and raise their wages, this book is written. For the wages question equitably settled, the foundation for every remaining social reform is laid. To-day, in the United States, in scores, nay, hundreds, of industrial communities the wage-working class is in the majority. The wage-workers commonly believe, what is true, that they are the victims of injustice. As yet, however, no project for restoring their rights has been successful. All the radical means suggested have been beyond their reach. But in so far as a single community may exercise equal rights and self-government, through these means it may approximate to just social arrangements. Any American city of 50,000 inhabitants may be taken as illustrative of all American industrial communities. In such a city, the economical and political conditions are typical. The immediate commercial interests of the buyers of labor, the employers, are opposed to those of the sellers of labor, the employed. To control the price of labor, each of these parties in the labor market resorts to whatever measures it finds within command. The employers in many branches of industry actually, and employers in general tacitly, combine against the labor organizations. On the wage-workers' side, these organizations are the sole means, except a few well-nigh futile laws, yet developed to raise wages and shorten the work day. In case of a strike, the employers, to assist the police in intimidating the strikers, may engage a force of armed so-called detectives. Simply, perhaps, for inviting non-unionists to cease work, the strikers are subject to imprisonment. Trial for conspiracy may follow arrest, the judges allied by class interests with the employers. The newspapers, careful not to offend advertisers, and looking to the well-to-do for the mass of their readers, may be inclined to exert an influence against the strikers. The solidarity of the wage-workers incomplete, even many of these may regard the fate of the strikers with indifference. In such situation, a strike of the wage-workers may be made to appear to all except those closely concerned as an assault on the bulwarks of society. But what are the bulwarks of society directly arrayed against striking wage-workers? They are a ring of employers, a ring of officials enforcing class law made by compliant representatives at the bidding of shrewd employers, and a ring of public sentiment makers--largely professional men whose hopes lie with wealthy patrons. Behind these outer barriers, and seldom affected by even widespread strikes, lies the citadel in which dwell the monopolists. Such, in outline, are the intermingled political and economic conditions common to all American industrial centres. But above every other fact, one salient fact appears: On the wage-workers falls the burthen of class law. On what, then, depends the wiping out of such law? Certainly on nothing else so much as on the force of the wage-workers themselves. To deprive their opponents of unjust legal advantages, and to invest themselves with just rights of which they have been deprived, is a task, outside their labor organizations, to be accomplished mainly by the wage-workers. It is their task as citizens--their political task. With direct legislation and local self-government, it is, in considerable degree, a feasible, even an easy, task. The labor organizations might supply the framework for a political party, as was done in New York city in 1886. Then, as was the case in that campaign, when the labor party polled 68,000 votes, even non-unionists might throw in the reinforcement of their otherwise hurtful strength. Success once in sight, the organized wage-workers would surely find citizens of other classes helping to swell their vote. And in the straightforward politics of direct legislation, the labor leaders who command the respect of their fellows might, without danger to their character and influence, go boldly to the front. _The Wage-Workers as a Political Majority._ Suppose that as far as possible our industrial city of 50,000 inhabitants should exercise self-government with direct legislation. Various classes seeking to reform common abuses, certain general reforms would immediately ensue. If the city should do what the Swiss have done, it would speedily rid its administration of unnecessary office-holders, reduce the salaries of its higher officials, and rescind outstanding franchise privileges. If the municipality should have power to determine its own methods of taxation, as is now in some respects the case in Massachusetts towns, and toward which end a movement has begun in New York, it would probably imitate the Swiss in progressively taxing the higher-priced real estate, inheritances, and incomes. If the wage-workers, a majority in a direct vote, should demand in all public work the short hour day, they would get it, perhaps, as in the Rockland town meeting, without question. Further, the wage-workers might vote anti-Pinkerton ordinances, compel during strikes the neutrality of the police, and place judges from their own ranks in at least the local courts. These tasks partly under way, a change in prevailing social ideas would pass over the community. The press, echo, not of the widest spread sentiments, but of controlling public opinion, would open its columns to the wage-working class come to power. And, as is ever so when the wage-workers are aggressive and probably may be dominant, the social question would burn. _The Entire Span of Equal Rights._ The social question uppermost, the wage-workers--now in political ascendency, and bent on getting the full product of their labor--would seek further to improve their vantage ground. Sooner or later they would inevitably make issue of the most urgent, the most persistent, economic evil, local as well as general, the inequality of rights in the land. They would affirm that, were the land of the community in use suitable to the general needs, the unemployed would find work and the total of production be largely increased. They would point to the vacant lots in and about the city, held on speculation, commonly in American cities covering a greater area than the land improved, and denounce so unjust a system of land tenure. They could demonstrate that the price of the land represented for the most part but the power of the owners to wring from the producers of the city, merely for space on which to live and work, a considerable portion of their product. They could with reason declare that the withholding from use of the vacant land of the locality was the main cause of local poverty. And they would demand that legal advantages in the local vacant lands should forthwith cease. In bringing to an end the local land monopoly, however, justice could be done the landholders. Unquestionably the fairest measure to them, and at the same time the most direct method of giving to city producers, if not free access to land, the next practicable thing to it, would be for the municipality to convert a part of the local vacant land into public property, and to open it in suitable plots to such citizens as should become occupiers. Sufficient land for this purpose might be acquired through eminent domain. The purchase money could be forthcoming from several sources--from progressive taxation in the direct forms already mentioned, from the city's income from franchises, and from the savings over the wastes of administration under present methods. From the standpoint of equal rights there need be no difficulty in meeting the arguments certain to be brought against this proposed course--such sophistical arguments as that it is not the business of a government to take property from some citizens to give to others. If the unemployed, propertyless wage-worker has a right to live, he has the right to sustain life. To sustain life independently of other men's permission, access to natural resources is essential. This primary right being denied the wage-workers as a class, any or all of whom, if unemployed, might soon be propertyless, they might in justice proceed to enforce it. To enforce it by means involving so little friction as those here proposed ought to win, not opposition, but approval. Equal rights once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted. Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it has withstood every form of assault. If it has not been acted on in the Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general deprived of the right to vote, have been helpless; and if not in the New, because, first, until within recent years the free western lands, attracting the unemployed and helping to maintain wages, in a measure gave labor access to nature, and, secondly, since the practical exhaustion of the free public domain the industrial wage-workers have not perceived how, through politics, to carry out their convictions on the land question. Our reasoning is further strengthened by law and custom in state and nation. In nearly every state, the constitution declares that the original and ultimate ownership of the land lies with all its people; and hence the method of administering the land is at all times an open public question. As to the nation at large, its settled policy and long-continued custom support the principle that all citizens have inalienable rights in the land. Instead of selling the national domain in quantities to suit purchasers, the government has held it open free to agricultural laborers, literally millions of men being thus given access to the soil. Moreover, in thirty-seven of the forty-four states, execution for debt cannot entirely deprive a man of his homestead, the value exempt in many of the states being thousands of dollars. Thus the general welfare has dictated the building up and the securing of a home for every laboring citizen. In line, then, with established American principles is the proposition for municipal lands. And if municipalities have extended to capitalists privileges of many kinds, even granting them gratis sites for manufactories, and for terms of years exempting such real estate from taxation, why not accord to the wage-workers at least their primary natural rights? If any property be exempted from taxation, why not the homesite below a certain fixed value? And if, for the public benefit, municipalities provide parks, museums, and libraries, why not give each producer a homesite--a footing on the earth? He who has not this is deprived of the first right to do that by which he must live, namely, labor. _Effects of Municipal Land._ A city public domain, open to citizen occupiers under just stipulations, would in several directions have far-reaching results. Should this domain be occupied by, say, one thousand families of a population of 50,000, an immediate result, affecting the whole city, would be a fall in rents. In fact, the mere existence of the public domain, with a probability that his tenants would remove to it, might cause a landlord to reduce his rents. Besides, the value of all land, in the city and about it, held on speculation, would fall. Save in instances of particular advantage, the price of unimproved residence lots would gravitate toward the cost, all things considered, of residence lots in the public domain. This, for these reasons: The corner in land would be broken. Home builders would pay a private owner no more for a lot than the cost of a similar one in the public area. As houses went up on the public domain, the chances of landholders to sell to builders would be diminished. Sellers of land, besides competing with the public land, would then compete with increased activity with one another. Finally, just taxation of their land, valueless as a speculation, would oblige landowners to sell it or to put it to good use. Even should the growth of the city be rapid, the value of land in private hands could in general advance but little, if at all. With the actual demands of an increased population, the public domain might from time to time be enlarged; but not, it may reasonably be assumed, at a rate that would give rise to an upward tendency of prices in the face of the above-mentioned factors contributing to a downward tendency. At this point it may be well to remember that, conditions of land purchase by the city being subject to the Referendum, the buying could hardly be accompanied by corrupt bargaining. When the effect of the public land in depressing land values, in other words in enabling producers to retain the more of their product, was seen, private as well as public agencies might aid in enlarging the scope of that effect. The philanthropic might transfer land to the municipality, preferring to help restore just social conditions rather than to aid in charities that leave the world with more poor than ever; the city might provide for a gradual conversion, in the course of time, of all the land within its limits to public control, first selecting, with the end in view, tracts of little market value, which, open to occupiers, would assist in keeping down the value of lands held privately. But the more striking results of city public land would lie in another direction. The spontaneous efforts of each individual to increase and to secure the product of his labor would turn the current of production away from the monopolists and toward the producers. With a lot in the public domain, a wage-worker might soon live in his own cottage. As the settler often did in the West, to acquire a home he might first build two or four rooms as the rear, and, living in it, with later savings put up the front. A house and a vegetable garden, with the increased consequent thrift rarely in such situation lacking, would add a large fraction to his year's earnings. Pasture for a cow in suburban city land would add yet more. Then would this wage-earner, now his own landlord and in part a direct producer from the soil, withdraw his children from the labor market, where they compete for work perhaps with himself, and send them on to school. What would now happen should the wage-workers of the city demand higher wages? It is hardly to be supposed that any industrial centre could reach the stage of radical reform contemplated at this point much in advance of others. When the labor organizations throughout the country take hold of direct legislation, and taste of its successes, they will nowhere halt. They will no more hesitate than does a conquering army. Learning what has been done in Switzerland, they will go the lengths of the Swiss radicals and, with more elbow room, further. Hence, when in one industrial centre the governing workers should seek better terms, similar demands from fellow laborers, as able to enforce them, would be heard elsewhere. The employer of our typical city, even now often unable to find outside the unions the unemployed labor he must have, would then, should he attempt it, to a certainty fail. The thrifty wage-working householder, today a tenant fearful of loss of work, could then strike and stay out. The situation would resemble that in the West twenty years ago, when open land made the laborer his own master and wages double what they are now. Wages, then, would perforce be moved upward, and hours be shortened, and a long step be made toward that state of things in which two employers offer work to one employé. And, legal and social forces no longer irresistibly opposed to the wage-workers, thenceforth wages would advance. At every stage they would tend to the maximum possible under the improved conditions. In the end, under fully equal conditions, everywhere, for all classes, the producer would gather to himself the full product of his labor. The average business man, too, of the city of our illustration, himself a producer--that is, a help to the consumer--would under the better conditions reap new opportunities. Far less than now would he fear failure through bad debts and hard times; through the wage-workers' larger earnings, he would obtain a larger volume of trade; he would otherwise naturally share in the generally increased production; and he would participate in the common benefits from the better local government. But the disappearance of the local monopolist would be predestined. The owner of local franchises would already have gone. The local land monopolist would have seen his land values diminished. In every such case, the monopolist's loss would be the producer's gain. The aggregate annual earnings of all the city's producers (the wage-workers, the land-workers, and the men in productive business) would rise toward their natural just aggregate--all production. As between the various classes within the city, a condition approximating to justice in political and economic arrangements would now prevail. What would thus be likely to happen in our typical city of 50,000 inhabitants would also, in greater or less degree, be possible in all industrial towns and cities. In every such place, self-government and direct legislation could solve the more pressing immediate phases of the labor question and create the local conditions favorable to remodeling, and as far as possible abolishing, the superstructure of government. _Wider Applications of These Principles and Methods._ The political and economic arrangements extending beyond the control of the municipalities would now, if they had not done so before, challenge attention. In taking up with reform in this wider field, the industrial wage-workers would come in contact with those farmers who are demanding radical reforms in state and nation. As the sure instrument for the citizenship of a state, direct legislation could again with confidence be employed. No serious opposition, in fact or reason, could be brought against it. That the mass of voters might prove too unwieldy for the method would be an assertion to be instantly refuted by Swiss statistics. In Zurich, the most radically democratic canton of Switzerland, the people number 339,000; the voters, 80,000. In Berne, which has the obligatory Referendum, the population is 539,000. And it must not be overlooked that the entire Swiss Confederation, with 600,000 voters, now has both Initiative and Referendum. Hence, in any state of the Union, direct legislation on general affairs may be regarded as immediately practicable, while in many of the smaller states the obligatory Referendum may be applied to particulars. And even in the most populous states, when special legislation should be cast aside, and local legislation left to the localities affected, complete direct legislation need be no more unmanageable than in the smallest. United farmers, wage-workers, and other classes of citizens, in the light of these facts, might naturally demand direct legislation. Foreseeing that in time such union will be inevitable, what more natural for the producing classes in revolt than to unite today in voting, if not for other propositions, at least for direct legislation and home rule? These forces combined in any state, it seems improbable that certain political and economic measures now supported by farmer and wage-worker alike could long fail to become law. Already, under the principle that "rights should be equal to all and special privileges be had by none," farmers' and wage-workers' parties are making the following demands: That taxation be not used to build up one interest or class at the expense of another; that the public revenues be no more than necessary for government expenditures; that the agencies of transportation and communication be operated at the lowest cost of service; that no privileges in banking be permitted; that woman have the vote wherever justice gives it to man; that no force of police, marshals, or militiamen not commissioned by their home authorities be permitted anywhere to be employed; that monopoly in every form be abolished and the personal rights of every individual respected. These demands are all in agreement with the spirit of freedom. Along the lines they mark out, the future successes of the radical social reformers will most probably come. But if, in response to a call nowadays frequently heard, the many incipient parties should decide to unite on one or a few things, is it not clear that in natural order the first reforms needed are direct legislation and local self-government? To a party logically following the principle of equal rights, the progress in Switzerland under direct legislation would form an invaluable guide. The Swiss methods of controlling the railroads and banks of issue, and of operating the telegraph and telephone services, deserve study and, to the extent that our institutions admit, imitation. The organization of the Swiss State and its subdivisions is simple and natural. The success of their executive councils may in this country assist in raising up the power of the people as against one man power. The fact that the cantons have no senates and that a second chamber is an obstacle to direct legislation may here hasten the abolition of these nurseries of aristocracy. With the advance of progress under direct legislation, attention would doubtless be attracted in the United States, as it has been in Switzerland, to the nicer shades of justice to minorities and to the broader fields of internal improvement. As in the cantons of Ticino and Neuchâtel, our legislative bodies might be opened to minority representatives. As in the Swiss Confederation, the great forests might be declared forever the inheritance of the nation. What public lands yet remain in each state might be withheld from private ownership except on occupancy and use, and the area might be so increased as to enable every producer desiring it to exercise the natural right of free access to the soil. Then the right to labor, now being demanded through the Initiative by the Swiss workingmen's party, might here be made an admitted fact. And as is now also being done in Switzerland, the public control might be extended to water powers and similar resources of nature. Thus in state and nation might practicable radical reforms make their way. From the beginning, as has been seen, benefits would be widespread. It might not be long before the most crying social evils were at an end. Progressive taxation and abolition of monopoly privileges would cause the great private fortunes of the country to melt away, to add to the producers' earnings. On a part of the soil being made free of access, the land-hungry would withdraw from the cities, relieving the overstocked labor markets. Poverty of the able-bodied willing to work might soon be even more rare than in this country half a century ago, since methods of production at that time were comparatively primitive and the free land only in the West. If Switzerland, small in area, naturally a poor country, and with a dense population, has gone far toward banishing pauperism and plutocracy, what wealth for all might not be reckoned in America, so fertile, so broad, so sparsely populated! And thus the stages are before us in the course of which the coming just society may gradually be established--that society in which the individual shall attain his highest liberty and development, and consequently his greatest happiness. As lovers of freedom even now foresee, in that perfect society each man will be master of himself; each will act on his own initiative and control the full product of his toil. In that society, the producer's product will not, as now, be diminished by interest, unearned profits, or monopoly rent of natural resources. Interest will tend to disappear because the products of labor in the hands of every producer will be abundant--so abundant that, instead of a borrower paying interest for a loan, a lender may at times pay, as for an accommodation, for having his products preserved. Unearned profits will tend to disappear because, no monopolies being in private hands, and free industry promoting voluntary coöperation, few opportunities will exist for such profits. Monopoly rent will disappear because, the natural right to labor on the resources of nature made a legal right, no man will be able to exact from another a toll for leave to labor. Whatever rent may arise from differences in the qualities of natural resources will be made a community fund, perhaps to be substituted for taxes or to be divided among the producers. The natural political bond in such a society is plain. Wherein he interferes with no other man, every individual possessing faculty will be regarded as his own supreme sovereign. Free, because land is free, when he joins a community he will enter into social relations with its citizens by contract. He will legislate (form contracts) with the rest of his immediate community in person. Every community, in all that relates peculiarly to itself, will be self-governing. Where one community shall have natural political bonds with another, or in any respect form with several others a greater community, the circumscription affected will legislate through central committees and a direct vote of the citizenship. Executives and other officials will be but stewards. In a society so constituted, communities that reject the elements of political success will languish; free men will leave them. The communities that accept the elements of success, becoming examples through their prosperity, will be imitated; and thus the momentum of progress will be increased. Communities free, state boundaries as now known will be wiped out; and in the true light of rights in voting--the rights of associates in a contract to express their choice--few questions will affect wide territories. Rarely will any question be, in the sense the word is now used, national; the ballot-box may never unite the citizens of the Atlantic coast with those of the Pacific. Yet, in this decomposition of the State into its natural units--in this resolving of society into its constituent elements--may be laid the sole true, natural, lasting basis of the universal republic, the primary principle of which can be no other thing than freedom. INDEX. =A= Aargau, 12, 13 Abolition of the lawmaking monopoly, 100 "A Concept of Political Justice", i Adams, Sir Francis Ottiwell ("The Swiss Confederation"), iii Alcohol, State monopoly, Switzerland, 59 Appenzell, 8, 13, 65 Area of Switzerland, 14, 48 "Arena", 27 Army, a democratic, 41, 42 Assembly, Federal, Switzerland, 22, 35 =B= Bâle, 12, 13, 61 Banking, Switzerland, 54 Berne, 10, 12, 13, 61, 115 Bryce, James, "American Commonwealth", 85 Bürkli, Carl, 16 =C= Canton, organization of the, 34 Cantons (states), names of the twenty-two, 13 Cigar-Makers' Union, 87, 88 Climate, Switzerland, 48 Communal lands, 63, 70 Communal meeting, the, 7, 32, 33 subjects covered at, 8 organization, 32 Communes (townships) 2,706 in number, 7 Congress (Federal Assembly), Switzerland, 22, 35 Congress, United States, at work, 92 Considérant, Victor, 16 Constitutions, revision of Swiss, 23 spirit of Swiss, 31 =D= Dates--First Swiss Constitution, 14 Federal Referendum began, 14 Federal Initiative adopted, 14 cantonal Referendum began, 14 progress of cantonal Referendum, 15 French theorists' discussion of Referendum, 14 cantonal Referendum established in Zurich, 16 New England town meeting, 80 Debts, public, Switzerland, 57 Democracy vs. representative government, 5 Dicey, A.V., 28 Diet, 10, 37 Droz, Numa, 19 =E= Elections, semi-annual, 20 Environment of the Swiss citizen, 31 Equal rights, 107 Executive councils, Swiss, 36, 37, 40 =F= Facts established by this book, 95 Fiske, John, on town meeting, 80 Freedom in Switzerland, 57 Freiburg, 12 =G= Garment Workers, United, 88 Geneva, 12, 13, 61 Glarus, 12, 13, 65, 66, 67 Grand Council, 18, 20, 34 Grisons, 12, 13, 61 =H= Highways, Switzerland, 50 =I= Illiteracy in Switzerland, 27 Immigration into Switzerland, 70 Initiative and Referendum in labor organizations, 87 Initiative, cantonal, 11 Federal, 22 not a simple petition, 22 what it is, 10 Instruction in Switzerland, 27 =J= Jamin, P, 17 Jesuits expelled from Switzerland, 58 Judiciary, Swiss, 40 Jurors, Swiss, elected, 40 =L= Land and climate, Switzerland, 47 Land, tenure and distribution of, Switzerland, 63, 70 Public, 64, 65 Landsgemeinde, 8, 63 Languages in Switzerland, 13 Legislation by representatives, 92 Legislators, pay of Swiss, 35 Legislatures in Switzerland, 34 Local self-government, 101 Lucerne, 12, 13 =M= Machines kill third parties, 98 McCrackan, W.D., 27 Military system, Swiss, 42, 43 Moses, Prof. Bernard ("The Federal Government of Switzerland"), iii Municipal land, 110 =N= Nelson, Henry Loomis, on the town meeting, 79 Neuchâtel, 12, 13, 61 New England town meeting, 72 =O= Oberholtzer, Ellis P., on Referendum in the United States, 82 Objections to the optional Referendum, 18 Obligatory and optional Referendum, 13, 17 Obligatory Referendum in Zurich, 20 One-man power unknown in Switzerland, 34 =P= Parliamentary government abolished, 30 Political status in Switzerland, 25 Population, Switzerland, cantons, cities, 13, 14 Post-office, Switzerland, 49 Poverty in Switzerland, 68 President of the Confederation, 38 Press, the Swiss, 26 Principles of a free society, 25 Proportional representation, 117 =R= Railroads, Switzerland, 49 Referendum, Federal, Switzerland, 21, 22 in labor organizations, 87 instrument of the minority, 22 in the United States, 72 in various states, cities, etc., 82 not the plébiscite, 29 obligatory, 13, 17, 20 optional, 13, 17, 18 what it is, 10 Rittinghausen, 16 Rockland, Mass., town meeting, 73 Rotation in office a partisan idea, 39, 83 =S= Salaries of Swiss officials, 35, 36, 38 Salvation Army, Switzerland, 58 Schaffhausen, 12, 13 Schwyz, 8, 12, 13, 65 Senates, no cantonal, 34 Soleure, 12, 13 Stage routes, Switzerland, 52 State religions, Switzerland, 33 St. Gall, 12, 13, 65, 66 Statistics as to Switzerland, 13, 14 Summary of results of direct legislation in Switzerland, 70 Sunday, votings and communal meetings on, 8 Switzerland long undemocratic, 60 =T= Table--Population, languages, form of passing laws, year of entering Switzerland, 13 Tariff, protective, Switzerland, 58 Taxes, Switzerland, 52 Telegraph and telephone, Switzerland, 50 Thurgau, 12, 13 Ticino, 12, 13, 59, 66, 67 Typographical Union, 89 =U= Unterwald, 12, 13, 65, 66 Urgence, 17 Uri, 12, 13, 65 =V= Valais, 12, 13, 61, 66 Vaud, 12, 13, 66 Vincent, Prof. John Martin ("State and Federal Government of Switzerland"), iii references to, 8, 32, 34, 61 Vote-buying, 20 =W= Wage-workers in the majority, 106 Wages and political conditions, 103 "Westminster Review", 28, 45 Winchester, Boyd ("The Swiss Republic"), iv reference to, 63 Wuarin, Louis, 30 =Z= Zurich, 13, 16, 20, 21, 61, 65, 115 Zug, 12, 13 =Liberty= NOT THE DAUGHTER BUT THE MOTHER OF ORDER PROUDHON PUBLISHED WEEKLY. 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51578	----	Conservative and Unionist Women's Franchise Association. The Progress of the Women's Suffrage Movement by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick Presidential Address to the Cambridge Branch of the C. & U. W. F. A. at the Annual Meeting on May 23rd, 1913. CAMBRIDGE BOWES & BOWES 1913 +PRICE TWOPENCE NET.+ THE PROGRESS OF THE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT. _An address to the Cambridge Branch of the Conservative and Unionist Women's Suffrage Association at their Annual Meeting on May 23, 1913. By Mrs. Henry Sidgwick._ It seems to me sometimes that we do not cheer ourselves as much as we might by thinking of the immense strides our movement has made in the last fifty years; so I propose to say a few words about it this afternoon, although there is not of course anything very new to say. For we need cheering because, notwithstanding the general progress of our cause, we are just now suffering from a serious set-back due to the action of the militant societies. They are clearly and visibly setting people against us. And it appears that not only in this country are they raising up enemies against us, but that _our_ militants are hindering the movement in other countries. Moreover, what is much worse than injury to the special cause which our society exists to promote, the militants are injuring our country and the cause of civilization and progress. The very existence and usefulness of society depends on the maintenance of law and order. The protection of the weak, the possibility of development in well being generally, all that society stands for, depends on its members being law abiding--on their respecting law and life and property. And here we have women, while urging that their admission to a formal share in the government of the country would be for its advantage, at the same time teaching by the most powerful method they can use,--namely, example--doctrines subversive of all social order; teaching that persons who cannot get the majority to agree with their view of what is advisable in the interest of the whole should injure and annoy the community in every way they conveniently can--proceeding even to incendiarism, and apparently threatening manslaughter. It is heartbreaking that such things should be done in a good cause--and it is especially hard for women to bear because it hurts their pride in their own sex. They have to see not only their country injured, and the cause of women's suffrage, in whose name these things are done, retarded, but they have to see the reputation of their sex for good sense and sober judgment draggled in the mud. This is the most serious--indeed, I think the only serious set-back our movement has had. It has on the whole been sufficiently wisely conducted to secure almost uniformly steady progress from its small beginnings to its present great proportions. In all--or almost all--big social movements ultimate success depends on the gradual conversion to benevolence of a large neutral majority. The movement in its beginning--and this was eminently true of our movement--is championed by a small body of pioneers. They make converts, and when they begin to be taken seriously a body of active opponents is probably stirred up, but so long as the active opposition is not too strong it does little harm--it may even do good by helping to interest people in the question. But for a long time the great mass of people remain neutral. Either they have never heard of the movement, or they do not think it serious and only laugh at it, or they think the question unimportant and do not much mind which way it is decided, or they think immediate decision is not called for, and that they may as well wait and see. In fact, for one reason or another they do not think very much about it, and are not actively interested on either side. Of course if such people are led to declare themselves prematurely, the natural caution and conservatism of human nature will usually make them vote against change. It is largely for this reason that good judgment--a sound political instinct as to what it is wise to press at any given moment--is required in the leaders of a movement. And though it is no doubt very important to draw active converts from the large neutral class, it is still more important to prevent the enemy doing so. For it is not necessary to convert the great majority into active supporters. Success is finally achieved when a sufficient proportion of the originally indifferent have arrived at a more or less benevolent neutrality almost without knowing it--so that the old indifferents come to believe that they always thought there was a great deal to be said for the proposed change, and the young indifferents grow up with a feeling that it has to come. This change of feeling does not for the most part come from the _direct_ influence of active propaganda. It is part of the general change in the social atmosphere, and comes from the pressure of circumstances of various kinds, from the unconscious influence of those who have made up their minds, and from all the innumerable and indescribable things which go to constitute the spirit of the age. The arguments and deliberate influence of the active supporters help, but a large part of their effect is indirect and unperceived at the time. It is in their influence on the neutral body that the militants are doing most harm to the cause. They are exasperating the large undecided mass, and driving many of them into more or less hardened opinion on the wrong side. And once a man (or woman) has made up his mind, especially perhaps if he has made it up emotionally, it is much harder to move him. Of course the militants are also reducing some active supporters of the movement to lukewarmness, at least about the advisability of immediate advance, and thus losing the influence of such supporters. But I think the harm they are doing with the hitherto more or less neutral is more serious. However, do not let us talk of the militant policy any more. I, at least, have enough belief in our cause to trust that it can live down that set-back. Feeling on our side is rising, I believe, like a tide, so that a little ditch cut across it will only retard it for a moment. When I first became aware of the movement--in the late sixties or early seventies--it was in the stage of being met by ridicule. People who were not in favour of it did not generally argue--they laughed. This no doubt kept the timid away, but as a matter of fact very few were interested. An old friend here was reminding me the other day of a meeting of the Cambridge Suffrage Society held she believes in the early eighties. I do not think I attended it myself, though I am not sure. It was an open meeting, and a lady from London was to address it. The committee did not venture to take any room larger than the Alderman's parlour at the Guildhall. But that was too large. The committee sat at the table near the speaker, and six or eight other ladies came in and were asked to sit close to the committee at the table, so as to look less scattered--and that was all the audience the visitor had to address. And that, according to my friend's general recollection, and my own too, was the usual type of the early meetings organised by the Cambridge Society. But gradually all this changed--and the degree of change may be measured by comparing with these early meetings those which have taken place at Cambridge in recent years. No one laughs now, or very few. The question is taken seriously even by opponents, and the number of people sufficiently interested to wish to hear about it is very large. There is another measure of the progress made of which we old people, who have been suffragists for a long time, are conscious. We can see among our own friends and acquaintances people who have been doubtful but have now pronounced themselves in favour of giving women the parliamentary vote. I remember, for instance, a conversation many years ago with a lady who is now an ardent suffragist, but who surprised me then by her doubtful attitude. I see others who 20 or 30 years ago I should have expected to find opposed, now taking a leading part on our side in their own neighbourhoods. I remember another conversation in which a man who was or had been a Member of Parliament--I forget which--was taking part and was expressing great doubts about the advisability or the advantage to themselves of giving votes to women. Some one present said that the increasing tendency to regulate by legislation industrial matters affecting certain classes of women specially, or affecting them differently from men, was an important reason why women should vote. He admitted at once that women ought to have the vote if such legislation were increasing, but he doubted the fact at the moment. That man is a supporter now. What impresses me is the number of people one knows who are now supporters, and even active supporters, and have become so without one's being able to point to any particular moment when what I may call their conversion took place. What causes besides active propaganda have contributed to this progress? I think we can point to some. Among them an important place is, I think, to be assigned to the increase of legislative interference in arrangements connected with work and wages of which I have just spoken--to the disappearance for good or ill of the old _laisser faire_. When Parliament tries to legislate about such matters, it becomes very obvious that in certain ways the interests of women and of men are not the same, and are even occasionally opposed--not on the whole, of course, but in certain particulars. And if so it seems also obvious that women should have a voice in the legislation, for it is so clear that within limits we all know better what suits ourselves than others can know for us. This last consideration is an important principle at the base of democratic government--at least, so long as this does not degenerate into a mere tyranny of the majority--and the extension of the franchise in 1867 and 1884 has, I think, had a very important effect in bringing home to people that the arguments for extending the suffrage in the case of men apply equally to women with the same qualifications. I think we should find that many speeches used in favour of widening the suffrage in 1884 would serve as speeches at a women's suffrage meeting. I used to be impressed with the fact at the time, I remember. Probably we have noticed that the propriety of widows and other women householders having votes when the professed basis of the franchise is household suffrage, occurs of itself to the man in the street--or rather, perhaps, I should say to the man in the country village. I travelled the other day in a railway carriage filled with a party of women travelling from somewhere beyond Cambridge--I do not know what they were--widows and daughters of rather small tradesmen perhaps. Among other things they talked of among themselves was the suffrage--and very angry they were with the militants. "But mind you," said one, "I am not altogether against women having votes. I think it only fair that widows with houses should have it." I thought she and her companions belonged clearly to that neutral body of which I spoke just now; some day, when sound suffrage views are put before them, they will come down on the right side of the fence if not previously too much exasperated. Then, again, as regards educated people at least, I think the large and increasing number of educated women engaged in work useful to the community outside their own homes has had a great effect on the views both of men and women about the vote. These are three very important influences affecting the general atmosphere in which views are formed--the increased tendency to legislation affecting employments, the spread in all classes and parties of democratic views, the work done by women. And then, last but not least, is the steady work carried on in public and in private by the societies for promoting women's suffrage and their members from the commencement of the movement onwards. Our own society is a young one, but the pioneer societies now merged in the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies have worked hard in times of hope and in times of discouragement for half a century, and their labours have not been in vain. A movement grows like a snowball--the larger the number of its supporters the more rapidly it increases. Progress therefore of late years has been more rapid and more obvious than it used to be, but none the less the possibility of the present progress is largely due to the early efforts of the pioneers. I think some of my hearers may demur to the view I expressed that the set-back due to militancy is the only serious one from which we have suffered. They may say that, for instance, the repeated attempts and repeated failures to get a bill through Parliament--failures which we cannot of course entirely attribute to the militants--are set-backs. But I do not think failures of this sort are set-backs at all. They are only waves on a rising tide. If in a rising tide we watch to see when a sand castle will be overwhelmed, we shall see one little wave after another approaching and receding without apparently affecting anything. One wave perhaps will get very near, and yet fail, and perhaps many succeeding waves will get even less near. But the failure of these waves does not set back the tide. That rises steadily all the time and ultimately and inevitably a wave does at length reach and overwhelm the castle. The analogy fails in one point. These waves that roll up the sandy shore have no real effect on the tide--they are mere ripples on its surface. But wisely conducted assaults on the suffrage citadel--such as attempts to pass bills or resolutions in Parliament--are more than this. They _do_ help the tide to rise. The effort is _not_ wasted even if it fails at the moment. The tide rises the faster for it. Of course such partial failures are very disappointing at the moment, especially to those who have worked hard to secure success. It is impossible for those who have thrown their whole energies into producing a wave which really will, they think, reach the castle at last, to see it roll back like its predecessors, without a sinking of heart, without a momentary feeling of hopelessness. It is depressing to have to begin again and roll up another wave, all the more because the energy needed to overcome what seems the stupidity of those who disagree with us might, we think, if set free by success be more profitably employed for the good of the world. It is difficult sometimes to keep up courage--for the young especially, for age brings more patience. But it is just because these partial failures are trying that we must restore our sense of proportion by contemplating from time to time the great progress that has been made on the whole, and so get courage for fresh effort. 
11634	----	HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS BY GRAHAM WALLAS PREFACE I offer my thanks to several friends who have been kind enough to read the proofs of this book, and to send me corrections and suggestions; among whom I will mention Professors John Adams and J.H. Muirhead, Dr. A. Wolf, and Messrs. W.H. Winch, Sidney Webb, L. Pearsall Smith, and A.E. Zimmern. It is, for their sake, rather more necessary than usual for me to add that some statements still remain in the text which one or more of them would have desired to see omitted or differently expressed. I have attempted in the footnotes to indicate those writers whose books I have used. But I should like to record here my special obligation to Professor William James's _Principles of Psychology_, which gave me, a good many years ago, the conscious desire to think psychologically about my work as politician and teacher. I have been sometimes asked to recommend a list of books on the psychology of politics. I believe that at the present stage of the science, a politician will gain more from reading, in the light of his own experience, those treatises on psychology which have been written without special reference to politics, than by beginning with the literature of applied political psychology. But readers who are not politicians will find particular points dealt with in the works of the late Monsieur G. Tarde, especially _L'Opinion et la Foule_ and _Les Lois de l'Imitation_ and in the books quoted in the course of an interesting article on 'Herd Instinct,' by Mr. W. Trotter in the _Sociological Review_ for July 1908. The political psychology of the poorer inhabitants of a great city is considered from an individual and fascinating point of view by Miss Jane Addams (of Chicago) in her _Democracy and Social Ethics_. GRAHAM WALLAS. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION I have made hardly any changes in the book as it first appeared, beyond the correction of a few verbal slips. The important political developments which have occurred during the last eighteen months in the English Parliament, in Turkey, Persia, and India, and in Germany, have not altered my conclusions as to the psychological problems raised by modern forms of government; and it would involve an impossible and undesirable amount of rewriting to substitute 'up-to-date' illustrations for those which I drew from the current events of 1907 and 1908. I should desire to add to the books recommended above Mr. W. M'Dougall's _Social Psychology_, with special reference to his analysis of Instinct. G.W. LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, CLARE MARKET, LONDON, W.C., _30th December 1909._ PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (1920) This edition is, like the second edition (1910), a reprint, with a few verbal corrections, of the first edition (1908). I tried in 1908 to make two main points clear. My first point was the danger, for all human activities, but especially for the working of democracy, of the 'intellectualist' assumption, 'that every human action is the result of an intellectual process, by which a man first thinks of some end which he desires, and then calculates the means by which that end can be attained' (p. 21). My second point was the need of substituting for that assumption a conscious and systematic effort of thought. 'The whole progress,' I argued, 'of human civilisation beyond its earliest stages, has been made possible by the invention of methods of thought which enable us to interpret and forecast the working of nature more successfully than we could, if we merely followed the line of least resistance in the use of our minds' (p. 114). In 1920 insistence on my first point is not so necessary as it was in 1908. The assumption that men are automatically guided by 'enlightened self-interest' has been discredited by the facts of the war and the peace, the success of an anti-parliamentary and anti-intellectualist revolution in Russia, the British election of 1918, the French election of 1919, the confusion of politics in America, the breakdown of political machinery in Central Europe, and the general unhappiness which has resulted from four years of the most intense and heroic effort that the human race has ever made. One only needs to compare the disillusioned realism of our present war and post-war pictures and poems with the nineteenth-century war pictures at Versailles and Berlin, and the war poems of Campbell, and Berenger, and Tennyson, to realise how far we now are from exaggerating human rationality. It is my second point, which, in the world as the war has left it, is most important. There is no longer much danger that we shall assume that man always and automatically thinks of ends and calculates means. The danger is that we may be too tired or too hopeless to undertake the conscious effort by which alone we can think of ends and calculate means. The great mechanical inventions of the nineteenth century have given us an opportunity of choosing for ourselves our way of living such as men have never had before. Up to our own time the vast majority of mankind have had enough to do to keep themselves alive, and to satisfy the blind instinct which impels them to hand on life to another generation. An effective choice has only been given to a tiny class of hereditary property owners, or a few organisers of other men's labour. Even when, as in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia, nature offered whole populations three hundred free days in the year if they would devote two months to ploughing and harvest, all but a fraction still spent themselves in unwilling toil, building tombs or palaces, or equipping armies, for a native monarch or a foreign conqueror. The monarch could choose his life, but his choice was poor enough. 'There is,' says Aristotle, 'a way of living so brutish that it is only worth notice because many of those who can live any life they like make no better choice than did Sardanapalus.' The Greek thinkers started modern civilisation, because they insisted that the trading populations of their walled cities should force themselves to think out an answer to the question, what kind of life is good. 'The origin of the city-state,' says Aristotle, 'is that it enables us to live; its justification is that it enables us to live well.' Before the war, there were in London and New York, and Berlin, thousands of rich men and women as free to choose their way of life as was Sardanapalus, and as dissatisfied with their own choice. Many of the sons and daughters of the owners of railways and coal mines and rubber plantations were 'fed up' with motoring or bridge, or even with the hunting and fishing which meant a frank resumption of palaeolithic life without the spur of palaeolithic hunger. But my own work brought me into contact with an unprivileged class, whose degree of freedom was the special product of modern industrial civilisation, and on whose use of their freedom the future of civilisation may depend. A clever young mechanic, at the age when the Wanderjahre of the medieval craftsman used to begin, would come home after tending a 'speeded up' machine from 8 A.M., with an hour's interval, till 5 P.M. At 6 P.M. he had finished his tea in the crowded living-room of his mother's house, and was 'free' to do what he liked. That evening, perhaps, his whole being tingled with half-conscious desires for love, and adventure, and knowledge, and achievement. On another day he might have gone to a billiard match at his club, or have hung round the corner for a girl who smiled at him as he left the factory, or might have sat on his bed and ground at a chapter of Marx or Hobson. But this evening he saw his life as a whole. The way of living that had been implied in the religious lessons at school seemed strangely irrelevant; but still he felt humble, and kind, and anxious for guidance. Should he aim at marriage, and if so should he have children at once or at all? If he did not marry, could he avoid self-contempt and disease? Should he face the life of a socialist organiser, with its strain and uncertainty, and the continual possibility of disillusionment? Should he fill up every evening with technical classes, and postpone his ideals until he had become rich? And if he became rich what should he do with his money? Meanwhile, there was the urgent impulse to walk and think; but where should he walk to, and with whom? The young schoolmistress, in her bed-sitting-room a few streets off, was in no better case. She and a friend sat late last night, agreeing that the life they were living was no real life at all; but what was the alternative? Had the 'home duties' to which her High Church sister devoted herself with devastating self-sacrifice any more meaning? Ought she, with her eyes open, and without much hope of spontaneous love, to enter into the childless 'modern' marriage which alone seemed possible for her? Ought she to spend herself in a reckless campaign for the suffrage? Meanwhile, she had had her tea, her eyes were too tired to read, and what on earth should she do till bedtime? Such moments of clear self-questioning were of course rare, but the nerve-fretting problems always existed. Industrial civilisation had given the growing and working generation a certain amount of leisure, and education enough to conceive of a choice in the use of that leisure; but had offered them no guidance in making their choice. We are faced, as I write, with the hideous danger that fighting may blaze up again throughout the whole Eurasian continent, and that the young men and girls of Europe may have no more choice in the way they spend their time than they had from 1914 to 1918 or the serfs of Pharaoh had in ancient Egypt. But if that immediate danger is avoided, I dream that in Europe and in America a conscious and systematic discussion by the young thinkers of our time of the conditions of a good life for an unprivileged population may be one of the results of the new vision of human nature and human possibilities which modern science and modern industry have forced upon us. Within each nation, industrial organisation may cease to be a confused and wasteful struggle of interests, if it is consciously related to a chosen way of life for which it offers to every worker the material means. International relations may cease to consist of a constant plotting of evil by each nation for its neighbours, if ever the youth of all nations know that French, and British, and Germans, and Russians, and Chinese, and Americans, are taking a conscious part in the great adventure of discovering ways of living open to all, and which all can believe to be good. GRAHAM WALLAS. _August_ 1920. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PART I _THE CONDITIONS OF THE PROBLEM_ CHAPTER I IMPULSE AND INSTINCT IN POLITICS CHAPTER II POLITICAL ENTITIES CHAPTER III NON-RATIONAL INFERENCE IN POLITICS CHAPTER IV THE MATERIAL OF POLITICAL REASONING CHAPTER V THE METHOD OF POLITICAL REASONING PART II _POSSIBILITIES OF PROGRESS_ CHAPTER I POLITICAL MORALITY CHAPTER II REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT CHAPTER III OFFICIAL THOUGHT CHAPTER IV NATIONALITY AND HUMANITY SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS _(Introduction, page 1)_ The study of politics is now in an unsatisfactory position. Throughout Europe and America, representative democracy is generally accepted as the best form of government; but those who have had most experience of its actual working are often disappointed and apprehensive. Democracy has not been extended to non-European races, and during the last few years many democratic movements have failed. This dissatisfaction has led to much study of political institutions; but little attention has been recently given in works on politics to the facts of human nature. Political science in the past was mainly based, on conceptions of human nature, but the discredit of the dogmatic political writers of the early nineteenth century has made modern students of politics over-anxious to avoid anything which recalls their methods. That advance therefore of psychology which has transformed pedagogy and criminology has left politics largely unchanged. The neglect of the study of human nature is likely, however, to prove only a temporary phase of political thought, and there are already signs that it, is coming to an end. _(PART I.--Chapter I.--Impulse and Instinct in Politics, page 21)_ Any examination of human nature in politics must begin with an attempt to overcome that 'intellectualism' which results both from the traditions of political science and from the mental habits of ordinary men. Political impulses are not mere intellectual inferences from calculations of means and ends; but tendencies prior to, though modified by, the thought and experience of individual human beings. This may be seen if we watch the action in politics of such impulses as personal affection, fear, ridicule, the desire of property, etc. All our impulses and instincts are greatly increased in their immediate effectiveness if they are 'pure,' and in their more permanent results if they are 'first hand' and are connected with the earlier stages of our evolution. In modern politics the emotional stimulus which reaches us through the newspapers is generally 'pure,' but 'second hand,' and therefore is both facile and transient. The frequent repetition of an emotion or impulse is often distressing. Politicians, like advertisers, must allow for this fact, which again is connected with that combination of the need of privacy with intolerance of solitude to which we have to adjust our social arrangements. Political emotions are sometimes pathologically intensified when experienced simultaneously by large numbers of human beings in physical association, but the conditions of political life in England do not often produce this phenomenon. The future of international politics largely depends on the question whether we have a specific instinct of hatred for human beings of a different racial type from ourselves. The point is not yet settled, but many facts which are often explained as the result of such an instinct seem to be due to other and more general instincts modified by association. _(Chapter II.--Political Entities, page: 59)_ Political acts and impulses are the result of the contact between human nature and its environment. During the period studied by the politician, human nature has changed very little, but political environment has changed with ever-increasing rapidity. Those facts of our environment which stimulate impulse and action reach us through our senses, and are selected from the mass of our sensations and memories by our instinctive or acquired knowledge of their significance. In politics the things recognised are, for the most part, made by man himself, and our knowledge of their significance is not instinctive but acquired. Recognition tends to attach itself to symbols, which take the place of more complex sensations and memories. Some of the most difficult problems in politics result from the relation between the conscious use in reasoning of the symbols called words, and their more or less automatic and unconscious effect in stimulating emotion and action. A political symbol whose significance has once been established by association, may go through a psychological development of its own, apart from the history of the facts which were originally symbolised by it. This may be seen in the case of the names and emblems of nations and parties; and still more clearly in the history of those commercial entities--'teas' or 'soaps'--which are already made current by advertisement before any objects to be symbolised by them have been made or chosen. Ethical difficulties are often created by the relation between the quickly changing opinions of any individual politician and such slowly changing entities as his reputation, his party name, or the traditional personality of a newspaper which he may control. _(Chapter III.--Non-Rational Inference in Politics, page 98)_ Intellectualist political thinkers often assume, not only that political action is necessarily the result of inferences as to means and ends, but that all inferences are of the same 'rational' type. It is difficult to distinguish sharply between rational and non-rational inferences in the stream of mental experience, but it is clear that many of the half-conscious processes by which men form their political opinions are non-rational. We can generally trust non-rational inferences in ordinary life because they do not give rise to conscious opinions until they have been strengthened by a large number of undesigned coincidences. But conjurers and others who study our non-rational mental processes can so play upon them as to make us form absurd beliefs. The empirical art of politics consists largely in the creation of opinion by the deliberate exploitation of subconscious non-rational inference. The process of inference may go on beyond the point desired by the politician who started it, and is as likely to take place in the mind of a passive newspaper-reader as among the members of the most excited crowd. _(Chapter IV.--The Material of Political Reasoning, page 114)_ But men can and do reason, though reasoning is only one of their mental processes. The rules for valid reasoning laid down by the Greeks were intended primarily for use in politics, but in politics reasoning has in fact proved to be more difficult and less successful than in the physical sciences. The chief cause of this is to be found in the character of its material. We have to select or create entities to reason about, just as we select or create entities to stimulate our impulses and non-rational inferences. In the physical sciences these selected entities are of two types, either concrete things made exactly alike, or abstracted qualities in respect of which things otherwise unlike can be exactly compared. In politics, entities of the first type cannot be created, and political philosophers have constantly sought for some simple entity of the second type, some fact or quality, which may serve as an exact 'standard' for political calculation. This search has hitherto been unsuccessful, and the analogy of the biological sciences suggests that politicians are most likely to acquire the power of valid reasoning when they, like doctors, avoid the over-simplification of their material, and aim at using in their reasoning as many facts as possible about the human type, its individual variations, and its environment. Biologists have shown that large numbers of facts as to individual variations within any type can be remembered if they are arranged as continuous curves rather than as uniform rules or arbitrary exceptions. On the other hand, any attempt to arrange the facts of environment with the same approach to continuity as is possible with the facts of human nature is likely to result in error. The study of history cannot be assimilated to that of biology. _(Chapter V.--The Method of Political Reasoning, page 138)_ The method of political reasoning has shared the traditional over-simplification of its subject-matter. In Economics, where both method and subject-matter were originally still more completely simplified, 'quantitative' methods have since Jevons's time tended to take the place of 'qualitative'. How far is a similar change possible in politics? Some political questions can obviously be argued quantitatively. Others are less obviously quantitative. But even on the most complex political issues experienced and responsible statesmen do in fact think quantitatively, although the methods by which they reach their results are often unconscious. When, however, all politicians start with intellectualist assumptions, though some half-consciously acquire quantitative habits of thought, many desert politics altogether from disillusionment and disgust. What is wanted in the training of a statesman is the fully conscious formulation and acceptance of those methods which will not have to be unlearned. Such a conscious change is already taking place in the work of Royal Commissions, International Congresses, and other bodies and persons who have to arrange and draw conclusions from large masses of specially collected evidence. Their methods and vocabulary, even when not numerical, are nowadays in large part quantitative. In parliamentary oratory, however, the old tradition of over-simplification is apt to persist. _(PART II.--Chapter I.--Political Morality, page 167)_ But in what ways can such changes in political science affect the actual trend of political forces? In the first place, the abandonment by political thinkers and writers of the intellectualist conception of politics will sooner or later influence the moral judgments of the working politician. A young candidate will begin with a new conception of his moral relation to those whose will and opinions he is attempting to influence. He will start, in that respect, from a position hitherto confined to statesmen who have been made cynical by experience. If that were the only result of our new knowledge, political morality might be changed for the worse. But the change will go deeper. When men become conscious of psychological processes of which they have been unconscious or half-conscious, not only are they put on their guard against the exploitation of those processes in themselves by others, but they become better able to control them from within. If, however, a conscious moral purpose is to be strong enough to overcome, as a political force, the advancing art of political exploitation, the conception of control from within must be formed into an ideal entity which, like 'Science,' can appeal to popular imagination, and be spread by an organised system of education. The difficulties in this are great (owing in part to our ignorance of the varied reactions of self-consciousness on instinct), but a wide extension of the idea of causation is not inconsistent with an increased intensity of moral passion. _(Chapter II.--Representative Government, page 199)_ The changes now going on in our conception of the psychological basis of politics will also re-open the discussion of representative democracy. Some of the old arguments in that discussion will no longer be accepted as valid, and it is probable that many political thinkers (especially among those who have been educated in the natural sciences) will return to Plato's proposal of a despotic government carried on by a selected and trained class, who live apart from the 'ostensible world'; though English experience in India indicates that even the most carefully selected official must still live in the 'ostensible world,' and that the argument that good government requires the consent of the governed does not depend for its validity upon its original intellectualist associations. Our new way of thinking about politics will, however, certainly change the form, not only of the argument for consent, but also of the institutions by which consent is expressed. An election (like a jury-trial) will be, and is already beginning to be, looked upon rather as a process by which right decisions are formed under right conditions, than as a mechanical expedient by which decisions already formed are ascertained. Proposals for electoral reform which seem to continue the old intellectualist tradition are still brought forward, and new difficulties in the working of representative government will arise from the wider extension of political power. But that conception of representation may spread which desires both to increase the knowledge and public spirit of the voter and to provide that no strain is put upon him greater than he can bear. _(Chapter III.--Official Thought, page 241)_ A quantitative examination of the political force created by popular election shows the importance of the work of non-elected officials in any effective scheme of democracy. What should be the relation between these officials and the elected representatives? On this point English opinion already shows a marked reaction from the intellectualist conception of representative government. We accept the fact that most state officials are appointed by a system uncontrolled either by individual members of parliament or by parliament as a whole, that they hold office during good behaviour, and that they are our main source of information as to some of the most difficult points on which we form political judgments. It is largely an accident that the same system has not been introduced into our local government. But such a half-conscious acceptance of a partially independent Civil Service as an existing fact is not enough. We must set ourselves to realise clearly what we intend our officials to do, and to consider how far our present modes of appointment, and especially our present methods of organising official work, provide the most effective means for carrying out that intention. _(Chapter IV.--Nationality and Humanity, page 269)_ What influence will the new tendencies in political thought have on the emotional and intellectual conditions of political solidarity? In the old city-states, where the area of government corresponded to the actual range of human vision and memory, a kind of local emotion could be developed which is now impossible in a 'delocalised' population. The solidarity of a modern state must therefore depend on facts not of observation but of imagination. The makers of the existing European national states, Mazzini and Bismarck, held that the possible extent of a state depended on national homogeneity, _i.e._ on the possibility that every individual member of a state should believe that all the others were like himself. Bismarck thought that the degree of actual homogeneity which was a necessary basis for this belief could be made by 'blood and iron'; Mazzini thought that mankind was already divided into homogeneous groups whose limits should be followed in the reconstruction of Europe. Both were convinced that the emotion of political solidarity was impossible between individuals of consciously different national types. During the last quarter of a century this conception of the world as composed of a mosaic of homogeneous nations has been made more difficult (a) by the continued existence and even growth of separate national feelings within modern states, and (b) by the fact that the European and non-European races have entered into closer political relationships. The attempt, therefore, to transfer the traditions of national homogeneity and solidarity either to the inhabitants of a modern world-empire as a whole, or to the members of the dominant race in it, disguises the real facts and adds to the danger of war. Can we, however, acquire a political emotion based, not upon a belief in the likeness of individual human beings, but upon the recognition of their unlikeness? Darwin's proof of the relation between individual and racial variation might have produced such an emotion if it had not been accompanied by the conception of the 'struggle for life' as a moral duty. As it is, inter-racial and even inter-imperial wars can be represented as necessary stages in the progress of the species. But present-day biologists tell us that the improvement of any one race will come most effectively from the conscious co-operation, and not from the blind conflict of individuals; and it may be found that the improvement of the whole species will also come rather from a conscious world-purpose based upon a recognition of the value of racial as well as individual variety, than from mere fighting. HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS INTRODUCTION The study of politics is just now (1908) in a curiously unsatisfactory position. At first sight the main controversy as to the best form of government appears to have been finally settled in favour of representative democracy. Forty years ago it could still be argued that to base the sovereignty of a great modern nation upon a widely extended popular vote was, in Europe at least, an experiment which had never been successfully tried. England, indeed, by the 'leap in the dark' of 1867, became for the moment the only large European State whose government was democratic and representative. But to-day a parliamentary republic based upon universal suffrage exists in France without serious opposition or protest. Italy enjoys an apparently stable constitutional monarchy. Universal suffrage has just been enacted in Austria. Even the German Emperor after the election of 1907 spoke of himself rather as the successful leader of a popular electoral campaign than as the inheritor of a divine right. The vast majority of the Russian nation passionately desires a sovereign parliament, and a reactionary Duma finds itself steadily pushed by circumstances towards that position. The most ultramontane Roman Catholics demand temporal power for the Pope, no longer as an ideal system of world government, but as an expedient for securing in a few square miles of Italian territory liberty of action for the directors of a church almost all of whose members will remain voting citizens of constitutional States. None of the proposals for a non-representative democracy which were associated with the communist and anarchist movements of the nineteenth century have been at all widely accepted, or have presented themselves as a definite constructive scheme; and almost all those who now hope for a social change by which the results of modern scientific industry shall be more evenly distributed put their trust in the electoral activity of the working classes. And yet, in the very nations which have most whole-heartedly accepted representative democracy, politicians and political students seem puzzled and disappointed by their experience of it. The United States of America have made in this respect by far the longest and most continuous experiment. Their constitution has lasted for a century and a quarter, and, in spite of controversy and even war arising from opposing interpretations of its details, its principles have been, and still are, practically unchallenged. But, as far as an English visitor can judge, no American thinks with satisfaction of the electoral 'machine' whose power alike in Federal, State, and Municipal politics is still increasing. In England not only has our experience of representative democracy been much shorter than that of America, but our political traditions have tended to delay the full acceptance of the democratic idea even in the working of democratic institutions. Yet, allowing for differences of degree and circumstance, one finds in England among the most loyal democrats, if they have been brought into close contact with the details of electoral organisation, something of the same disappointment which has become more articulate in America. I have helped to fight a good many parliamentary contests, and have myself been a candidate in a series of five London municipal elections. In my last election I noticed that two of my canvassers, when talking over the day's work, used independently the phrase, 'It is a queer business.' I have heard much the same words used in England by those professional political agents whose efficiency depends on their seeing electoral facts without illusion. I have no first-hand knowledge of German or Italian electioneering, but when a year ago I talked with my hosts of the Paris Municipal Council, I seemed to detect in some of them indications of good-humoured disillusionment with regard to the working of a democratic electoral system. In England and America one has, further, the feeling that it is the growing, and not the decaying, forces of society which create the most disquieting problems. In America the 'machine' takes its worst form in those great new cities whose population and wealth and energy represent the goal towards which the rest of American civilisation is apparently tending. In England, to any one who looks forward, the rampant bribery of the old fishing-ports, or the traditional and respectable corruption of the cathedral cities, seem comparatively small and manageable evils. The more serious grounds for apprehension come from the newest inventions of wealth and enterprise, the up-to-date newspapers, the power and skill of the men who direct huge aggregations of industrial capital, the organised political passions of working men who have passed through the standards of the elementary schools, and who live in hundreds of square miles of new, healthy, indistinguishable suburban streets. Every few years some invention in political method is made, and if it succeeds both parties adopt it. In politics, as in football, the tactics which prevail are not those which the makers of the rules intended, but those by which the players find that they can win, and men feel vaguely that the expedients by which their party is most likely to win may turn out not to be those by which a State is best governed. More significant still is the fear, often expressed as new questions force themselves into politics, that the existing electoral system will not bear the strain of an intensified social conflict. Many of the arguments used in the discussion of the tariff question in England, or of the concentration of capital in America, or of social--democracy in Germany, imply this. Popular election, it is said, may work fairly well as long as those questions are not raised which cause the holders of wealth and industrial power to make full use of their opportunities. But if the rich people in any modern state thought it worth their while, in order to secure a tariff, or legalise a trust, or oppose a confiscatory tax, to subscribe a third of their income to a political fund, no Corrupt Practices Act yet invented would prevent them from spending it. If they did so, there is so much skill to be bought, and the art of using skill for the production of emotion and opinion has so advanced, that the whole condition of political contests would be changed for the future. No existing party, unless it enormously increased its own fund or discovered some other new source of political strength, would have any chance of permanent success. The appeal, however, in the name of electoral purity, to protectionists, trust-promoters, and socialists that they should drop their various movements and so confine politics to less exciting questions, falls, naturally enough, on deaf ears. The proposal, again, to extend the franchise to women is met by that sort of hesitation and evasion which is characteristic of politicians who are not sure of their intellectual ground. A candidate who has just been speaking on the principles of democracy finds it, when he is heckled, very difficult to frame an answer which would justify the continued exclusion of women from the franchise. Accordingly a large majority of the successful candidates from both the main parties at the general election of 1906 pledged themselves to support female suffrage. But, as I write, many, perhaps the majority, of those who gave that pledge seem to be trying to avoid the necessity of carrying it out. There is no reason to suppose that they are men of exceptionally dishonest character, and their fear of the possible effect of a final decision is apparently genuine. They are aware that certain differences exist between men and women, though they do not know what those differences are, nor in what way they are relevant to the question of the franchise. But they are even less steadfast in their doubts than in their pledges, and the question will, in the comparatively near future, probably be settled by importunity on the one side and mere drifting on the other. This half conscious feeling of unsettlement on matters which in our explicit political arguments we treat as settled, is increased by the growing urgency of the problem of race. The fight for democracy in Europe and America during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was carried on by men who were thinking only of the European races. But, during the extension of democracy after 1870, almost all the Great Powers were engaged in acquiring tropical dependencies, and improvements in the means of communication were bringing all the races of the world into close contact. The ordinary man now finds that the sovereign vote has (with exceptions numerically insignificant) been in fact confined to nations of European origin. But there is nothing in the form or history of the representative principle which seems to justify this, or to suggest any alternative for the vote as a basis of government. Nor can he draw any intelligible and consistent conclusion from the practice of democratic States in giving or refusing the vote to their non-European subjects. The United States, for instance, have silently and almost unanimously dropped the experiment of negro suffrage. In that case, owing to the wide intellectual gulf between the West African negro and the white man from North-West Europe, the problem was comparatively simple; but no serious attempt has yet been made at a new solution of it, and the Americans have been obviously puzzled in dealing with the more subtle racial questions created by the immigration of Chinese and Japanese and Slavs, or by the government of the mixed populations in the Philippines. England and her colonies show a like uncertainty in the presence of the political questions raised both by the migration of non-white races and by the acquisition of tropical dependencies. Even when we discuss the political future of independent Asiatic States we are not clear whether the principle, for instance, of 'no taxation without representation' should be treated as applicable to them. Our own position as an Asiatic power depends very largely on the development of China and Persia, which are inhabited by races who may claim, in some respects, to be our intellectual superiors. When they adopt our systems of engineering, mechanics, or armament we have no doubt that they are doing a good thing for themselves, even though we may fear their commercial or military rivalry. But no follower of Bentham is now eager to export for general Asiatic use our latest inventions in political machinery. We hear that the Persians have established a parliament, and watch the development of their experiment with a complete suspension of judgment as to its probable result. We have helped the Japanese to preserve their independence as a constitutional nation, and most Englishmen vaguely sympathise with the desire of the Chinese progressives both for national independence and internal reform. Few of us, however, would be willing to give any definite advice to an individual Chinaman who asked whether he ought to throw himself into a movement for a representative parliament on European lines. Within our own Empire this uncertainty as to the limitations of our political principles may at any moment produce actual disaster. In Africa, for instance, the political relationship between the European inhabitants of our territories and the non-European majority of Kaffirs, Negroes, Hindoos, Copts, or Arabs is regulated on entirely different lines in Natal, Basutoland, Egypt, or East Africa. In each case the constitutional difference is due not so much to the character of the local problem as to historical accident, and trouble may break out anywhere and at any time, either from the aggression of the Europeans upon the rights reserved by the Home Government to the non-Europeans, or from a revolt of the non-Europeans themselves. Blacks and whites are equally irritated by the knowledge that there is one law in Nairobi and another in Durban. This position is, of course, most dangerous in the case of India. For two or three generations the ordinary English Liberal postponed any decision on Indian politics, because he believed that we were educating the inhabitants for self-government, and that in due time they would all have a vote for an Indian parliament. Now he is becoming aware that there are many races in India, and that some of the most important differences between those races among themselves, and between any of them and ourselves, are not such as can be obliterated by education. He is told by men whom he respects that this fact makes it certain that the representative system which is suitable for England will never be suitable for India, and therefore he remains uneasily responsible for the permanent autocratic government of three hundred million people, remembering from time to time that some of those people or their neighbours may have much more definite political ideas than his own, and that he ultimately may have to fight for a power which he hardly desires to retain. Meanwhile, the existence of the Indian problem loosens half-consciously his grip upon democratic principle in matters nearer home. Newspapers and magazines and steamships are constantly making India more real to him, and the conviction of a Liberal that Polish immigrants or London 'latch-key' lodgers ought to have a vote is less decided than it would have been if he had not acquiesced in the decision that Rajputs, and Bengalis, and Parsees should be refused it. Practical politicians cannot, it is true, be expected to stop in the middle of a campaign merely because they have an uncomfortable feeling that the rules of the game require re-stating and possibly re-casting. But the winning or losing of elections does not exhaust the whole political duty of a nation, and perhaps there never has been a time in which the disinterested examination of political principles has been more urgently required. Hitherto the main stimulus to political speculation has been provided by wars and revolutions, by the fight of the Greek States against the Persians, and their disastrous struggle for supremacy among themselves, or by the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the American and French Revolutions in the eighteenth century. The outstanding social events in Europe in our own time have, however, been so far the failures rather than the successes of great movements; the apparent wasting of devotion and courage in Russia, owing to the deep-seated intellectual divisions among the reformers, and the military advantage which modern weapons and means of communication give to any government however tyrannous and corrupt; the baffling of the German social-democrats by the forces of religion and patriotism and by the infertility of their own creed; the weakness of the successive waves of American Democracy when faced by the political power of capital. But failure and bewilderment may present as stern a demand for thought as the most successful revolution, and, in many respects, that demand is now being well answered. Political experience is recorded and examined with a thoroughness hitherto unknown. The history of political action in the past, instead of being left to isolated scholars, has become the subject of organised and minutely subdivided labour. The new political developments of the present, Australian Federation, the Referendum in Switzerland, German Public Finance, the Party system in England and America, and innumerable others, are constantly recorded, discussed and compared in the monographs and technical magazines which circulate through all the universities of the globe. The only form of study which a political thinker of one or two hundred years ago would now note as missing is any attempt to deal with politics in its relation to the nature of man. The thinkers of the past, from Plato to Bentham and Mill, had each his own view of human nature, and they made those views the basis of their speculations on government. But no modern treatise on political science, whether dealing with institutions or finance, now begins with anything corresponding to the opening words of Bentham's _Principles of Morals and Legislation_--'Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure'; or to the 'first general proposition' of Nassau Senior's _Political Economy,_ 'Every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as little sacrifice as possible.'[1] In most cases one cannot even discover whether the writer is conscious of possessing any conception of human nature at all. [1] _Political, Economy_ (in the _Encyclopedia Metropolitana_), 2nd edition (1850), p. 26. It is easy to understand how this has come about. Political science is just beginning to regain some measure of authority after the acknowledged failure of its confident professions during the first half of the nineteenth century. Bentham's Utilitarianism, after superseding both Natural Right and the blind tradition of the lawyers, and serving as the basis of innumerable legal and constitutional reforms throughout Europe, was killed by the unanswerable refusal of the plain man to believe that ideas of pleasure and pain are the only sources of human motive. The 'classical' political economy of the universities and the newspapers, the political economy of MacCulloch and Senior and Archbishop Whately, was even more unfortunate in its attempt to deduce a whole industrial polity from a 'few simple principles' of human nature. It became identified with the shallow dogmatism by which well-to-do people in the first half of Queen Victoria's reign tried to convince working men that any change in the distribution of the good things of life was 'scientifically impossible.' Marx and Buskin and Carlyle were masters of sarcasm, and the process is not yet forgotten by which they slowly compelled even the newspapers to abandon the 'laws of political economy' which from 1815 to 1870 stood, like gigantic stuffed policemen, on guard over rent and profits. When the struggle against 'Political Economy' was at its height, Darwin's _Origin of Species_ revealed a universe in which the 'few simple principles' seemed a little absurd, and nothing has hitherto taken their place. Mr. Herbert Spencer, indeed, attempted to turn a single hasty generalisation from the history of biological evolution into a complete social philosophy of his own, and preached a 'beneficent private war'[2] which he conceived as exactly equivalent to that degree of trade competition which prevailed among English provincial shopkeepers about the year 1884. Mr. Spencer failed to secure even the whole-hearted support of the newspapers; but in so far as his system gained currency it helped further to discredit any attempt to connect political science with the study of human nature. [2] _Man versus the State_, p. 69. 'The beneficent private war which makes one man strive to climb over the shoulders of another man.' For the moment, therefore, nearly all students of politics analyse institutions and avoid the analysis of man. The study of human nature by the psychologists has, it is true, advanced enormously since the discovery of human evolution, but it has advanced without affecting or being affected by the study of politics. Modern text-books of psychology are illustrated with innumerable facts from the home, the school, the hospital, and the psychological laboratory; but in them politics are hardly ever mentioned. The professors of the new science of sociology are beginning, it is true, to deal with human nature in its relation not only to the family and to religion and industry, but also to certain political institutions. Sociology, however, has had, as yet, little influence on political science. I believe myself that this tendency to separate the study of politics from that of human nature will prove to be only a momentary phase of thought, that while it lasts its effects, both on the science and the conduct of politics, are likely to be harmful, and that there are already signs that it is coming to an end. It is sometimes pleaded that, if thorough work is to be done, there must, in the moral as in the physical sciences, be division of labour. But this particular division cannot, in fact, be kept up. The student of politics must, consciously or unconsciously, form a conception of human nature, and the less conscious he is of his conception the more likely he is to be dominated by it. If he has had wide personal experience of political life his unconscious assumptions may be helpful; if he has not they are certain to be misleading. Mr. Roosevelt's little book of essays on _American Ideals_ is, for instance, useful, because when he thinks about mankind in politics, he thinks about the politicians whom he has known. After reading it one feels that many of the more systematic books on politics by American university professors are useless, just because the writers dealt with abstract men, formed on assumptions of which they were unaware and which they had never tested either by experience or by study. In the other sciences which deal with human actions, this division between the study of the thing done and the study of the being who does it is not found. In criminology Beccaria and Bentham long ago showed how dangerous that jurisprudence was which separated the classification of crimes from the study of the criminal. The conceptions of human nature which they held have been superseded by evolutionary psychology, but modern thinkers like Lombroso have brought the new psychology into the service of a new and fruitful criminology. In pedagogy also, Locke, and Rousseau, and Herbart, and the many-sided Bentham, based their theories of education upon their conceptions of human nature. Those conceptions were the same as those which underlay their political theories, and have been affected in the same way by modern knowledge. For a short time it even looked, as if the lecturers in the English training colleges would make the same separation between the study of human institutions and human nature as has been made in politics. Lectures on School Method were distinguished during this period from those on the Theory of Education. The first became mere descriptions and comparisons of the organisation and teaching in the best schools. The second consisted of expositions, with occasional comment and criticism of such classical writers as Comenius, or Locke, or Rousseau; and were curiously like those informal talks on Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, which, under the name of the Theory of Politics, formed in my time such a pleasant interlude in the Oxford course of Humaner Letters. But while the Oxford lecture-courses still, I believe, survive almost unchanged, the Training College lectures on the Theory of Education are beginning to show signs of a change as great as that which took place in the training of medical students, when the lecturers on anatomy, instead of expounding the classical authorities, began to give, on their own responsibility, the best account of the facts of human structure of which they were capable. The reason for this difference is, apparently, the fact that while Oxford lecturers on the Theory of Politics are not often politicians, the Training College lecturers on the Theory of Teaching have always been teachers, to whom the question whether any new knowledge could be made useful in their art was one of living and urgent importance. One finds accordingly that under the leadership of men like Professors William James, Lloyd Morgan, and Stanley Hall, a progressive science of teaching is being developed, which combines the study of types of school organisation and method with a determined attempt to learn from special experiments, from introspection, and from other sciences, what manner of thing a child is. Modern pedagogy, based on modern psychology, is already influencing the schools whose teachers are trained for their profession. Its body of facts is being yearly added to; it has already caused the abandonment of much dreary waste of time; has given many thousands of teachers a new outlook on their work, and has increased the learning and happiness of many tens of thousands of children. This essay of mine is offered as a plea that a corresponding change in the conditions of political science is possible. In the great University whose constituent colleges are the universities of the world, there is a steadily growing body of professors and students of politics who give the whole day to their work. I cannot but think that as years go on, more of them will call to their aid that study of mankind which is the ancient ally of the moral sciences. Within every great city there are groups of men and women who are brought together in the evenings by the desire to find something more satisfying than current political controversy. They have their own unofficial leaders and teachers, and among these one can already detect an impatience with the alternative offered, either of working by the bare comparison of existing institutions, or of discussing the fitness of socialism or individualism, of democracy or aristocracy for human beings whose nature is taken for granted. If my book is read by any of those official or unofficial thinkers, I would urge that the study of human nature in politics, if ever it comes to be undertaken by the united and organised efforts of hundreds of learned men, may not only deepen and widen our knowledge of political institutions, but open an unworked mine of political invention. PART I _The Conditions of the Problem_ CHAPTER I IMPULSE AND INSTINCT IN POLITICS Whoever sets himself to base his political thinking on a re-examination of the working of human nature, must begin by trying to overcome his own tendency to exaggerate the intellectuality of mankind. We are apt to assume that every human action is the result of an intellectual process, by which a man first thinks of some end which he desires, and then calculates the means by which that end can be attained. An investor, for instance, desires good security combined with five per cent interest. He spends an hour in studying with an open mind the price-list of stocks, and finally infers that the purchase of Brewery Debentures will enable him most completely to realise his desire. Given the original desire for good security, his act in purchasing the Debentures appears to be the inevitable result of his inference. The desire for good security itself may further appear to be merely an intellectual inference as to the means of satisfying some more general desire, shared by all mankind, for 'happiness,' our own 'interest,' or the like. The satisfaction of this general desire can then be treated as the supreme 'end' of life, from which all our acts and impulses, great and small, are derived by the same intellectual process as that by which the conclusion is derived from the premises of an argument. This way of thinking is sometimes called 'common sense.' A good example of its application to politics may be found in a sentence from Macaulay's celebrated attack on the Utilitarian followers of Bentham in the _Edinburgh Review_ of March 1829. This extreme instance of the foundation of politics upon dogmatic psychology is, curiously enough, part of an argument intended to show that 'it is utterly impossible to deduce the science of government from the principles of human nature.' 'What proposition,' Macaulay asks, 'is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one: and that is not only true, but identical; that men always act from self-interest.... _When we see the actions of a man, we know with certainty what he thinks his interest to be_.'[3] Macaulay believes himself to be opposing Benthamism root and branch, but is unconsciously adopting and exaggerating the assumption which Bentham shared with most of the other eighteenth and early nineteenth century philosophers--that all motives result from the idea of some preconceived end. [3] _Edinburgh Review_, March 1829, p. 185. (The italics are mine.) If he had been pressed, Macaulay would probably have admitted that there are cases in which human acts and impulses to act occur independently of any idea of an end to be gained by them. If I have a piece of grit in my eye and ask some one to take it out with the corner of his handkerchief, I generally close the eye as soon as the handkerchief comes near, and always feel a strong impulse to do so. Nobody supposes that I close my eye because, after due consideration, I think it my interest to do so. Nor do most men choose to run away in battle, to fall in love, or to talk about the weather in order to satisfy their desire for a preconceived end. If, indeed, a man were followed through one ordinary day, without his knowing it, by a cinematographic camera and a phonograph, and if all his acts and sayings were reproduced before him next day, he would be astonished to find how few of them were the result of a deliberate search for the means of attaining ends. He would, of course, see that much of his activity consisted in the half-conscious repetition, under the influence of habit, of movements which were originally more fully conscious. But even if all cases of habit were excluded he would find that only a small proportion of the residue could be explained as being directly produced by an intellectual calculation. If a record were also kept of those of his impulses and emotions which did not result in action, it would be seen that they were of the same kind as those which did, and that very few of them were preceded by that process which Macaulay takes for granted. If Macaulay had been pressed still further, he would probably have admitted that even when an act is preceded by a calculation of ends and means, it is not the inevitable result of that calculation. Even when we know what a man thinks it his interest to do, we do not know for certain what he will do. The man who studies the Stock Exchange list does not buy his Debentures, unless, apart from his intellectual inference on the subject, he has an impulse to write to his stockbroker sufficiently strong to overcome another impulse to put the whole thing off till the next day. Macaulay might even further have admitted that the mental act of calculation itself results from, or is accompanied by, an impulse to calculate, which impulse may have nothing to do with any anterior consideration of means and ends, and may vary from the half-conscious yielding to a train of reverie up to the obstinate driving of a tired brain onto the difficult task of exact thought. The text-books of psychology now warn every student against the 'intellectualist' fallacy which is illustrated by my quotation from Macaulay. Impulse, it is now agreed, has an evolutionary history of its own earlier than the history of those intellectual processes by which it is often directed and modified. Our inherited organisation inclines us to re-act in certain ways to certain stimuli because such reactions have been useful in the past in preserving our species. Some of the reactions are what we call specifically 'instincts,' that is to say, impulses towards definite acts or series of acts, independent of any conscious anticipation of their probable effects.[4] Those instincts are sometimes unconscious and involuntary; and sometimes, in the case of ourselves and apparently of other higher animals, they are conscious and voluntary. But the connection between means and ends which they exhibit is the result not of any contrivance by the actor, but of the survival, in the past, of the 'fittest' of many varying tendencies to act. Indeed the instinct persists when it is obviously useless, as in the case of a dog who turns round to flatten the grass before lying down on a carpet; and even when it is known to be dangerous, as when a man recovering from typhoid hungers for solid food. [4] 'Instinct is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain ends without foresight of the ends and without previous education in the performance.'--W. James, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 383. The fact that impulse is not always the result of conscious foresight is most clearly seen in the case of children. The first impulses of a baby to suck, or to grasp, are obviously 'instinctive.' But even when the unconscious or unremembered condition of infancy has been succeeded by the connected consciousness of childhood, the child will fly to his mother and hide his face in her skirts when he sees a harmless stranger. Later on he will torture small beasts and run away from big beasts, or steal fruit, or climb trees, though no one has suggested such actions to him, and though he may expect disagreeable results from them. We generally think of 'instinct' as consisting of a number of such separate tendencies, each towards some distinct act or series of acts. But there is no reason to suppose that the whole body of inherited impulse even among non-human animals has ever been divisible in that way. The evolutionary history of impulse must have been very complicated. An impulse which survived because it produced one result may have persisted with modifications because it produced another result; and side by side with impulses towards specific acts we can detect in all animals vague and generalised tendencies, often overlapping and contradictory, like curiosity and shyness, sympathy and cruelty, imitation and restless activity. It is possible, therefore, to avoid the ingenious dilemma by which Mr. Balfour argues that we must either demonstrate that the desire, _e.g._ for scientific truth, is lineally descended from some one of the specific instincts which teach us 'to fight, to eat, and to bring up children,' or must admit the supernatural authority of the Shorter Catechism.[5] [5] _Reflections suggested by the New Theory of Matter_, 1904, p. 21. 'So far as natural science can tell us, every quality of sense or intellect which does _not_ help us to fight, to eat, and to bring up children, is but a by-product of the qualities which do.' The pre-rational character of many of our impulses is, however, disguised by the fact that during the lifetime of each individual they are increasingly modified by memory and habit and thought. Even the non-human animals are able to adapt and modify their inherited impulses either by imitation or by habits founded on individual experience. When telegraph wires, for instance, were first put up many birds flew against them and were killed. But although the number of those that were killed was obviously insufficient to produce a change in the biological inheritance of the species, very few birds fly against the wires now. The young birds must have imitated their elders, who had learnt to avoid the wires; just as the young of many hunting animals are said to learn devices and precautions which are the result of their parents' experience, and later to make and hand down by imitation inventions of their own. Many of the directly inherited impulses, again, appear both in man and other animals at a certain point in the growth of the individual, and then, if they are checked, die away, or, if they are unchecked, form habits; and impulses, which were originally strong and useful, may no longer help in preserving life, and may, like the whale's legs or our teeth and hair, be weakened by biological degeneration. Such temporary or weakened impulses are especially liable to be transferred to new objects, or to be modified by experience and thought. With all these complicated facts the schoolmaster has to deal. In Macaulay's time he used to be guided by his 'common-sense,' and to intellectualise the whole process. The unfortunate boys who acted upon an ancient impulse to fidget, to play truant, to chase cats, or to mimic their teacher, were asked, with repeated threats of punishment,'why' they had done so. They, being ignorant of their own evolutionary history, were forced to invent some far-fetched lie, and were punished for that as well. The trained schoolmaster of to-day takes the existence of such impulses as a normal fact; and decides how far, in each case, he shall check them by relying on that half-conscious imitation which makes the greater part of class-room discipline, and how far by stimulating a conscious recognition of the connection, ethical or penal, between acts and their consequences. In any case his power of controlling instinctive impulse is due to his recognition of its non-intellectual origin. He may even be able to extend this recognition to his own impulses, and to overcome the conviction that his irritability during afternoon school in July is the result of an intellectual conclusion as to the need of special severity in dealing with a set of unprecedentedly wicked boys. The politician, however, is still apt to intellectualise impulse as completely as the schoolmaster did fifty years ago. He has two excuses, that he deals entirely with adults, whose impulses are more deeply modified by experience and thought than those of children, and that it is very difficult for any one who thinks about politics not to confine his consideration to those political actions and impulses which are accompanied by the greatest amount of conscious thought, and which therefore come first into his mind. But the politician thinks about men in large communities, and it is in the forecasting of the action of large communities that the intellectualist fallacy is most misleading. The results of experience and thought are often confined to individuals or small groups, and when they differ may cancel each other as political forces. The original human impulses are, with personal variations, common to the whole race, and increase in their importance with an increase in the number of those influenced by them. It may be worth while, therefore, to attempt a description of some of the more obvious or more important political impulses, remembering always that in politics we are dealing not with such clear-cut separate instincts as we may find in children and animals, but with tendencies often weakened by the course of human evolution, still more often transferred to new uses, and acting not simply but in combination or counteraction. Aristotle, for instance, says that it is 'affection' (or 'friendship,' for the meaning of [Greek: philía] stands half way between the two words) which 'makes political union possible,' and 'which law-givers consider more important than justice.' It is, he says, a hereditary instinct among animals of the same race, and particularly among men.[6] If we look for this political affection in its simplest form, we see it in our impulse to feel 'kindly' towards any other human being of whose existence and personality we become vividly aware. This impulse can be checked and overlaid by others, but any one can test its existence and its prerationality in his own case by going, for instance, to the British Museum and watching the effect on his feelings of the discovery that a little Egyptian girl baby who died four thousand years ago rubbed the toes of her shoes by crawling upon the floor. [6] _Ethics_, Bk. viii. chap. I. [Greek: phýsei t' enypárchein éoike ... ou pónon en anthrôpois allà kaì en órnisi kaì tois pleístois tôn zôôn, kaì tois homoethnési pròs állêla, kaì málista tois anthrôpois ... éoike dè kaì tàs póleis synéchein hê philía, kaì hoi nomothétai mallon perì autên spoudázein ê tên dikaiosýnên]. The tactics of an election consist largely of contrivances by which this immediate emotion of personal affection may be set up. The candidate is advised to 'show himself continually, to give away prizes, to 'say a few words' at the end of other people's speeches--all under circumstances which offer little or no opportunity for the formation of a reasoned opinion of his merits, but many opportunities for the rise of a purely instinctive affection among those present. His portrait is periodically distributed, and is more effective if it is a good, that is to say, a distinctive, than if it is a flattering likeness. Best of all is a photograph which brings his ordinary existence sharply forward by representing him in his garden smoking a pipe or reading a newspaper. A simple-minded supporter whose affection has been so worked up will probably try to give an intellectual explanation of it. He will say that the man, of whom he may know really nothing except that he was photographed in a Panama hat with a fox-terrier, is 'the kind of man we want,' and that therefore he has decided to support him; just as a child will say that he loves his mother because she is the best mother in the world,[7] or a man in love will give an elaborate explanation of his perfectly normal feelings, which he describes as an intellectual inference from alleged abnormal excellences in his beloved. The candidate naturally intellectualises in the same way. One of the most perfectly modest men I know once told me that he was 'going round' a good deal among his future constituents 'to let them see what a good fellow I am.' Unless, indeed, the process can be intellectualised, it is for many men unintelligible. [7] A rather unusually reflective little girl of my acquaintance, felt, one day, while looking at her mother, a strong impulse of affection. She first gave the usual intellectual explanation of her feeling, 'Mummy, I do think you are the most beautiful Mummy in the whole world,' and then, after a moment's thought, corrected herself by saying, 'But there, they do say love is blind.' A monarch is a life-long candidate, and there exists a singularly elaborate traditional art of producing personal affection for him. It is more important that he should be seen than that he should speak or act. His portrait appears on every coin and stamp, and apart from any question of personal beauty, produces most effect when it is a good likeness. Any one, for instance, who can clearly recall his own emotions during the later years of Queen Victoria's reign, will remember a measurable increase of his affection for her, when, in 1897, a thoroughly life-like portrait took the place on the coins of the conventional head of 1837-1887, and the awkward compromise of the first Jubilee year. In the case of monarchy one can also watch the intellectualisation of the whole process by the newspapers, the official biographers, the courtiers, and possibly the monarch himself. The daily bulletin of details as to his walks and drives is, in reality, the more likely to create a vivid impression of his personality, and therefore to produce this particular kind of emotion, the more ordinary the events described are in themselves. But since an emotion arising out of ordinary events is difficult to explain on a purely intellectual basis, these events are written about as revealing a life of extraordinary regularity and industry. When the affection is formed it is even sometimes described as an inevitable reasoned conclusion arising from reflection upon a reign during which there have been an unusual number of good harvests or great inventions. Sometimes the impulse of affection is excited to a point at which its non-rational character becomes obvious. George the Third was beloved by the English people because they realised intensely that, like themselves, he had been born in England, and because the published facts of his daily life came home to them. Fanny Burney describes, therefore, how when, during an attack of madness, he was to be taken in a coach to Kew, the doctors who were to accompany him were seriously afraid that the inhabitants of any village who saw that the King was under restraint would attack them.[8] The kindred emotion of personal and dynastic loyalty (whose origin is possibly to be found in the fact that the loosely organised companies of our prehuman ancestors could not defend themselves from their carnivorous enemies until the general instinct of affection was specialised into a vehement impulse to follow and protect their leader), has again and again produced destructive and utterly useless civil wars. [8] _Diary of Madame D'Arblay_, ed. 1905, vol. iv. p. 184, 'If they even attempted force, they had not a doubt but his smallest resistance would call up the whole country to his fancied rescue.' Fear often accompanies and, in politics, is confused with affection. A man, whose life's dream it has been to get sight and speech of his King, is accidentally brought face to face with him. He is 'rooted to the spot,' becomes pale, and is unable to speak, because a movement might have betrayed his ancestors to a lion or a bear, or earlier still, to a hungry cuttlefish. It would be an interesting experiment if some professor of experimental psychology would arrange his class in the laboratory with sphygmographs on their wrists ready to record those pulse movements which accompany the sensation of 'thrill,' and would then introduce into the room without notice, and in chance order, a bishop, a well-known general, the greatest living man of letters, and a minor member of the royal family. The resulting records of immediate pulse disturbances would be of real scientific importance, and it might even be possible to continue the record in each case say, for a quarter of a minute, and to trace the secondary effects of variations in political opinions, education, or the sense of humour among the students. At present almost the only really scientific observation on the subject from its political side is contained in Lord Palmerston's protest against a purely intellectual account of aristocracy: 'there is no damned nonsense about merit,' he said, 'in the case of the Garter.' Makers of new aristocracies are still, however, apt to intellectualise. The French government, for instance, have created an order, 'Pour le Mérite Agricole,' which ought, on the basis of mere logic, to be very successful; but one is told that the green ribbon of that order produces in France no thrill whatever. The impulse to laugh is comparatively unimportant in politics, but it affords a good instance of the way in which a practical politician has to allow for pre-rational impulse. It is apparently an immediate effect of the recognition of the incongruous, just as trembling is of the recognition of danger. It may have been evolved because an animal which suffered a slight spasm in the presence of the unexpected was more likely to be on its guard against enemies, or it may have been the merely accidental result of some fact in our nervous organisation which was otherwise useful. Incongruity is, however, so much a matter of habit and association and individual variation, that it is extraordinarily difficult to forecast whether any particular act will seem ridiculous to any particular class, or how long the sense of incongruity will in any case persist. Acts, for instance, which aim at producing exalted emotional effect among ordinary slow-witted people--Burke's dagger, Louis Napoleon's tame eagle, the German Kaiser's telegrams about Huns and mailed fists--may do so, and therefore be in the end politically successful, although they produce spontaneous laughter in men whose conception of good political manners is based upon the idea of self-restraint. Again, almost the whole of the economic question between socialism and individualism turns on the nature and limitations of the desire for property. There seem to be good grounds for supposing that this is a true specific instinct, and not merely the result of habit or of the intellectual choice of means for satisfying the desire of power. Children, for instance, quarrel furiously at a very early age over apparently worthless things, and collect and hide them long before they can have any clear notion of the advantages to be derived from individual possession. Those children who in certain charity schools are brought up entirely without personal property, even in their clothes or pocket-handkerchiefs, show every sign of the bad effect on health and character which results from complete inability to satisfy a strong inherited instinct. The evolutionary origin of the desire for property is indicated also by many of the habits of dogs or squirrels or magpies. Some economist ought therefore to give us a treatise in which this property instinct is carefully and quantitatively examined. Is it, like the hunting instinct, an impulse which dies away if it is not indulged? How far can it be eliminated or modified by education? Is it satisfied by a leasehold or a life-interest, or by such an arrangement of corporate property as is offered by a collegiate foundation, or by the provision of a public park? Does it require for its satisfaction material and visible things such as land or houses, or is the holding, say, of colonial railway shares sufficient? Is the absence of unlimited proprietary rights felt more strongly in the case of personal chattels (such as furniture and ornaments) than in the case of land or machinery? Does the degree and direction of the instinct markedly differ among different individuals or races, or between the two sexes? Pending such an inquiry my own provisional opinion is that, like a good many instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by an avowed pretence; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can be kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his instinct of combat and adventure at golf. If this is so, and if it is considered for other reasons undesirable to satisfy the property instinct by the possession, say, of slaves or of freehold land, one supposes that a good deal of the feeling of property may in the future be enjoyed even by persons in whom the instinct is abnormally strong, through the collection of shells or of picture postcards. The property instinct is, it happens, one of two instances in which the classical economists deserted their usual habit of treating all desires as the result of a calculation of the means of obtaining 'utility' or 'wealth.' The satisfaction of the instinct of absolute property by peasant proprietorship turned, they said, 'sand to gold,' although it required a larger expenditure of labour for every unit of income than was the case in salaried employment. The other instance was the instinct of family affection. This also still needs a special treatise on its stimulus, variation, and limitations. But the classical economists treated it as absolute and unvarying. The 'economic man,' who had no more concern than a lone wolf with the rest of the human species, was treated as possessing a perfect and permanent solidarity of feeling with his 'family.' The family was apparently assumed as consisting of those persons for whose support a man in Western Europe is legally responsible, and no attempt was made to estimate whether the instinct extended in any degree to cousins or great uncles. A treatise on political impulses which aimed at completeness would further include at least the fighting instinct (with the part which it plays, together with affection and loyalty, in the formation of parties), and the instincts of suspicion, curiosity, and the desire to excel. All these primary impulses are greatly increased in immediate effectiveness when they are 'pure,' that is to say, unaccompanied by competing or opposing impulses; and this is the main reason why art, which aims at producing one emotion at a time, acts on most men so much more easily than does the more varied appeal of real life. I once sat in a suburban theatre among a number of colonial troopers who had come over from South Africa for the King's Coronation. The play was 'Our Boys,' and between the acts my next neighbour gave me, without any sign of emotion, a hideous account of the scene at Tweefontein after De Wet had rushed the British camp on the Christmas morning of 1901--the militiamen slaughtered while drunk, and the Kaffir drivers tied to the blazing waggons. The curtain rose again, and, five minutes later, I saw that he was weeping in sympathy with the stage misfortunes of two able-bodied young men who had to eat 'inferior Dorset' butter. My sympathy with the militiamen and the Kaffirs was 'pure,' whereas his was overlaid with remembered race-hatred, battle-fury, and contempt for British incompetence. His sympathy, on the other hand, with the stage characters was not accompanied, as mine was, by critical feelings about theatrical conventions, indifferent acting, and middle-Victorian sentiment. It is this greater immediate effect of pure and artificial as compared with mixed and concrete emotion which explains the traditional maxim of political agents that it is better that a candidate should not live in his constituency. It is an advantage that he should be able to represent himself as a 'local candidate,' but his local character should be _ad hoc_, and should consist in the hiring of a large house each year in which he lives a life of carefully dramatised hospitality. Things in no way blameworthy in themselves--his choice of tradesmen, his childrens' hats and measles, his difficulties with his relations--will be, if he is a permanent resident, 'out of the picture,' and may confuse the impression which he produces. If one could, by the help of a time-machine, see for a moment in the flesh the little Egyptian girl who wore out her shoes, one might find her behaving so charmingly that one's pity for her death would be increased. But it is more probable that, even if she was, in fact, a very nice little girl, one would not. This greater immediate facility of the emotions set up by artistic presentment, as compared with those resulting from concrete observation has, however, to be studied in its relation to another fact--that impulses vary, in their driving force and in the depth of the nervous disturbance which they cause, in proportion, not to their importance in our present life, but to the point at which they appeared in our evolutionary past. We are quite unable to resist the impulse of mere vascular and nervous reaction, the watering of the mouth, the jerk of the limb, the closing of the eye which we share with some of the simplest vertebrates. We can only with difficulty resist the instincts of sex and food, of anger and fear, which we share with the higher animals. It is, on the other hand, difficult for us to obey consistently the impulses which attend on the mental images formed by inference and association. A man may be convinced by a long train of cogent reasoning that he will go to hell if he visits a certain house; and yet he will do so in satisfaction of a half conscious craving, whose existence he is ashamed to recognise. It may be that when a preacher makes hell real to him by physical images of fire and torment his conviction will acquire coercive force. But that force may soon die away as his memory fades, and even the most vivid description has little effect as compared with a touch of actual pain. At the theatre, because pure emotion is facile, three-quarters of the audience may cry, but because second-hand emotion is shallow, very few of them will be unable to sleep when they get home, or will even lose their appetite for a late supper. My South African trooper probably recovered from his tears over 'Our Boys' as soon as they were shed. The transient and pleasurable quality of the tragic emotions produced by novel reading is well known. A man may weep over a novel which he will forget in two or three hours, although the same man may be made insane, or may have his character changed for life, by actual experiences which are far less terrible than those of which he reads, experiences which at the moment may produce neither tears nor any other obvious nervous effect. Both those facts are of first-rate political importance in those great modern communities in which all the events which stimulate political action reach the voters through newspapers. The emotional appeal of journalism, even more than that of the stage, is facile because it is pure, and transitory because it is second-hand. Battles and famines, murders and the evidence of inquiries into destitution, all are presented by the journalist in literary form, with a careful selection of 'telling' detail. Their effect is therefore produced at once, in the half-hour that follows the middle-class breakfast, or in the longer interval on the Sunday morning when the workman reads his weekly paper. But when the paper has been read the emotional effect fades rapidly away. Any candidate at an election feels for this reason the strangeness of the conditions under which what Professor James calls the 'pungent sense of effective reality,'[9] reaches or fails to reach, mankind, in a civilisation based upon newspapers. I was walking along the street during my last election, thinking of the actual issues involved, and comparing them with the vague fog of journalistic phrases, the half-conscious impulses of old habit and new suspicion which make up the atmosphere of electioneering. I came round a street corner upon a boy of about fifteen returning from work, whose whole face lit up with genuine and lively interest as soon as he saw me. I stopped, and he said: 'I know you, Mr. Wallas, you put the medals on me.' All that day political principles and arguments had refused to become real to my constituents, but the emotion excited by the bodily fact that I had at a school ceremony pinned a medal for good attendance on a boy's coat, had all the pungency of a first-hand experience. [9] 'The moral tragedy of human life comes almost wholly from the fact that the link is ruptured which normally should hold between vision of the truth and action, and that this pungent sense of effective reality will not attach to certain ideas.' W. James, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 547. Throughout the contest the candidate is made aware, at every point, of the enormously greater solidity for most men of the work-a-day world which they see for themselves, as compared with the world of inference and secondary ideas which they see through the newspapers. A London County Councillor, for instance, as his election comes near, and he begins to withdraw from the daily business of administrative committees into the cloud of the electoral campaign, finds that the officials whom he leaves behind, with their daily stint of work, and their hopes and fears about their salaries, seem to him much more real than himself. The old woman at her door in a mean street who refuses to believe that he is not being paid for canvassing, the prosperous and good-natured tradesman who says quite simply,' I expect you find politics rather an expensive amusement,' all seem to stand with their feet upon the ground. However often he assures himself that the great realities are on his side, and that the busy people round him are concerned only with fleeting appearances, yet the feeling constantly recurs to him that it is he himself who is living in a world of shadows. This feeling is increased by the fact that a candidate has constantly to repeat the same arguments, and to stimulate in himself the same emotions, and that mere repetition produces a distressing sense of unreality. The preachers who have to repeat every Sunday the same gospel, find also that 'dry times' alternate with times of exaltation. Even among the voters the repetition of the same political thoughts is apt to produce weariness. The main cause of the recurring swing of the electoral pendulum seems to be that opinions which have been held with enthusiasm become after a year or two stale and flat, and that the new opinions seem fresh and vivid. A treatise is indeed required from some trained psychologist on the conditions under which our nervous system shows itself intolerant of repeated sensations and emotions. The fact is obviously connected with the purely physiological causes which produce giddiness, tickling, sea-sickness, etc. But many things that are 'natural,' that is to say, which we have constantly experienced during any considerable part of the ages during which our nervous organisation was being developed, apparently do not so affect us. Our heartbeats, the taste of water, the rising and setting of the sun, or, in the case of a child, milk, or the presence of its mother, or of its brothers, do not seem to become, in sound health, distressingly monotonous. But 'artificial' things, however pleasant at first--a tune on the piano, the pattern of a garment, the greeting of an acquaintance--are likely to become unbearable if often exactly repeated. A newspaper is an artificial thing in this sense, and one of the arts of the newspaper-writer consists in presenting his views with that kind of repetition which, like the phrases of a fugue, constantly approaches, but never oversteps the limit of monotony. Advertisers again are now discovering that it pays to vary the monotony with which a poster appeals to the eye by printing in different colours those copies which are to hang near each other, or still better, by representing varied incidents in the career of 'Sunny Jim' or 'Sunlight Sue.' A candidate is also an artificial thing. If he lives and works in his constituency, the daily vision of an otherwise admirable business man seated in a first-class carriage on the 8.47 A.M. train in the same attitude and reading the same newspaper may produce a slight and unrecognised feeling of discomfort among his constituents, although it would cause no such feeling in the wife whose relation to him is 'natural.' For the same reason when his election comes on, although he may declare himself to be the 'old member standing on the old platform,' he should be careful to avoid monotony by slightly varying his portrait, the form of his address, and the details of his declaration of political faith. Another fact, closely connected with our intolerance of repeated emotional adjustment, is the desire for privacy, sufficiently marked to approach the character of a specific instinct, and balanced by a corresponding and opposing dread of loneliness. Our ancestors in the ages during which our present nervous system became fixed, lived, apparently, in loosely organised family groups, associated for certain occasional purposes, into larger, but still more loosely organised, tribal groups. No one slept alone, for the more or less monogamic family assembled nightly in a cave or 'lean-to' shelter. The hunt for food which filled the day was carried on, one supposes, neither in complete solitude nor in constant intercourse. Even if the female were left at home with the young, the male exchanged some dozen times a day rough greetings with acquaintances, or joined in a common task. Occasionally, even before the full development of language, excited palavers attended by some hundreds would take place, or opposing tribes would gather for a fight. It is still extremely difficult for the normal man to endure either much less or much more than this amount of intercourse with his fellows. However safe they may know themselves to be, most men find it difficult to sleep in an empty house, and would be distressed by anything beyond three days of absolute solitude. Even habit cannot do much in this respect. A man required to submit to gradually increasing periods of solitary confinement would probably go mad as soon as he had been kept for a year without a break. A settler, though he may be the son of a settler, and may have known no other way of living, can hardly endure existence unless his daily intercourse with his family is supplemented by a weekly chat with a neighbour or a stranger; and he will go long and dangerous journeys in order once a year to enjoy the noise and bustle of a crowd. But, on the other hand, the nervous system of most men will not tolerate the frequent repetition of that adjustment of the mind and sympathies to new acquaintanceship, a certain amount of which is so refreshing and so necessary. One can therefore watch in great modern cities men half consciously striving to preserve the same proportion between privacy and intercourse which prevailed among their ancestors in the woods, and one can watch also the constant appearance of proposals or experiments which altogether ignore the primary facts of human nature in this respect. The habitual intellectualism of the writers of political Utopias prevents them from seeing any 'reason' why men should not find happiness as well as economy in a sort of huge extension of family life. The writer himself at his moments of greatest imaginative exaltation does not perhaps realise the need of privacy at all. His affections are in a state of expansion which, without fancifulness, one may refer back to the emotional atmosphere prevalent in the screaming assemblies of his prehuman ancestors; and he is ready, so long as this condition lasts, to take the whole world almost literally to his bosom. What he does not realise is that neither he nor any one else can keep himself permanently at this level. In William Morris's _News from Nowhere_ the customs of family life extend to the streets, and the tired student from the British Museum talks with easy intimacy to the thirsty dustman. I remember reading an article written about 1850 by one of the early Christian Socialists. He said that he had just been riding down Oxford Street in an omnibus, and that he had noticed that when the omnibus passed over a section of the street in which macadam had been substituted for paving, all the passengers turned and spoke to each other. 'Some day,' he said, 'all Oxford Street will be macadamised, and then, because men will be able to hear each other's voices, the omnibus will become a delightful informal club.' Now nearly all London is paved with wood, and people as they sit in chairs on the top of omnibuses can hear each other whispering; but no event short of a fatal accident is held to justify a passenger who speaks to his neighbour. Clubs were established in London, not so much for the sake of the cheapness and convenience of common sitting-rooms and kitchens, as to bring together bodies of men, each of whom should meet all the rest on terms of unrestrained social intercourse. One can see in Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_, and in the stories of Thackeray's own club quarrels, the difficulties produced by this plan. Nowadays clubs are successful exactly because it is an unwritten law in almost every one of them that no member must speak to any other who is not one of his own personal acquaintances. The innumerable communistic experiments of Fourier, Robert Owen, and others, all broke up essentially because of the want of privacy. The associates got on each other's nerves. In those confused pages of the _Politics_, in which Aristotle criticises from the point of view of experience the communism of Plato, the same point stands out: 'It is difficult to live together in community,' communistic colonists have always 'disputed with each other about the most ordinary matters'; 'we most often disagree with those slaves who are brought into daily contact with us.'[10] [10] _Politics_, Book II. ch. V. The Charity Schools of 1700 to 1850 were experiments in the result of a complete refusal of scope, not only for the instinct of property, but for the entirely distinct instinct of privacy, and part of their disastrous nervous and moral effect must be put down to that. The boys in the contemporary public boarding-schools secured a little privacy by the adoption of strange and sometimes cruel social customs, and more has been done since then by systems of 'studies' and 'houses.' Experience seems, however, to show that during childhood a day school with its alternation of home, class-room, and playing field, is better suited than a boarding-school to the facts of normal human nature. This instinctive need of privacy is again a subject which would repay special and detailed study. It varies very greatly among different races, and one supposes that the much greater desire for privacy which is found among Northern, as compared to Southern Europeans, may be due to the fact that races who had to spend much or little of the year under cover, adjusted themselves biologically to a different standard in this respect. It is clear, also, that it is our emotional nature, and not the intellectual or muscular organs of talking, which is most easily fatigued. Light chatter, even among strangers, in which neither party 'gives himself away,' is very much less fatiguing than an intimacy which makes some call upon the emotions. An actor who accepts the second alternative of Diderot's paradox, and _feels_ his part, is much more likely to break down from overstrain, than one who only simulates feeling and keeps his own emotional life to himself. It is in democratic politics, however, that privacy is most neglected, most difficult, and most necessary. In America all observers are agreed as to the danger which results from looking on a politician as an abstract personification of the will of the people, to whom all citizens have an equal and inalienable right of access, and from whom every one ought to receive an equally warm and sincere welcome. In England our comparatively aristocratic tradition as to the relation between a representative and his constituents has done something to preserve customs corresponding more closely to the actual nature of man. A tired English statesman at a big reception is still allowed to spend his time rather in chaffing with a few friends in a distant corner of the room than in shaking hands and exchanging effusive commonplaces with innumerable unknown guests. But there is a real danger lest this tradition of privacy may be abolished in English democracy, simply because of its connection with aristocratic manners. A young labour politician is expected to live in more than American conditions of intimate publicity. Having, perhaps, just left the working bench, and having to adjust his nerves and his bodily health to the difficult requirements of mental work, he is expected to receive every caller at any hour of the day or night with the same hearty good will, and to be always ready to share or excite the enthusiasm of his followers. After a year or two, in the case of a man of sensitive nervous organisation, the task is found to be impossible. The signs of nervous fatigue are at first accepted by him and his friends as proofs of his sincerity. He begins to suffer from the curate's disease, the bright-eyed, hysterical condition in which a man talks all day long to a succession of sympathetic hearers about his own overwork, and drifts into actual ill-health, though he is not making an hour's continuous exertion in the day. I knew a young agitator in that state who thought that he could not make a propagandist speech unless the deeply admiring pitman, in whose cottage he was staying, played the Marseillaise on a harmonium before he started. Often such a man takes to drink. In any case he is liable, as the East End clergymen who try to live the same life are liable, to the most pitiable forms of moral collapse. Such men, however, are those who being unfit for a life without privacy, do not survive. Greater political danger comes perhaps from those who are comparatively fit. Any one who has been in America, who has stood among the crowd in a Philadelphian law-court during the trial of a political case, or has seen the thousands of cartoons in a contest in which Tammany is concerned, will find that he has a picture in his mind of one type at least of those who do survive. Powerfully built, with the big jaw and loose mouth of the dominant talker, practised by years of sitting behind saloon bars, they have learnt the way of 'selling cheap that which should be most dear.' But even they generally look as if they drank, and as if they would not live to old age. Other and less dreadful types of politicians without privacy come into one's mind, the orator who night after night repeats the theatrical success of his own personality, and, like the actor, keeps his recurring fits of weary disgust to himself; the busy organising talkative man to whom it is a mere delight to take the chair at four smoking concerts a week. But there is no one of them who would not be the better, both in health and working power, if he were compelled to retire for six months from the public view, and to produce something with his own hand and brain, or even to sit alone in his own house and think. These facts, in so far as they represent the nervous disturbance produced by certain conditions of life in political communities, are again closely connected with the one point in the special psychology of politics which has as yet received any extensive consideration--the so-called 'Psychology of the Crowd,' on which the late M. Tarde, M. Le Bon, and others have written. In the case of human beings, as in the case of many other social and semi-social animals, the simpler impulses--especially those of fear and anger--when they are consciously shared by many physically associated individuals, may become enormously exalted, and may give rise to violent nervous disturbances. One may suppose that this fact, like the existence of laughter, was originally an accidental and undesirable result of the mechanism of nervous reaction, and that it persisted because when a common danger was realised (a forest fire, for instance, or an attack by beasts of prey), a general stampede, although it might be fatal to the weaker members of the herd, was the best chance of safety for the majority. My own observation of English politics suggests that in a modern national state, this panic effect of the combination of nervous excitement with physical contact is not of great importance. London in the twentieth century is very unlike Paris in the eighteenth century, or Florence in the fourteenth, if only because it is very difficult for any considerable proportion of the citizens to be gathered under circumstances likely to produce the special 'Psychology of the Crowd.' I have watched two hundred thousand men assembled in Hyde Park for a Labour Demonstration. The scattered platforms, the fresh air, the wide grassy space, seemed to be an unsuitable environment for the production of purely instinctive excitement, and the attitude of such an assembly in London is good-tempered and lethargic. A crowd in a narrow street is more likely to get 'out of hand,' and one may see a few thousand men in a large hall reach a state approaching genuine pathological exaltation on an exciting occasion, and when they are in the hands of a practised speaker. But as they go out of the hall they drop into the cool ocean of London, and their mood is dissipated in a moment. The mob that took the Bastille would not seem or feel an overwhelming force in one of the business streets of Manchester. Yet such facts vary greatly among different races, and the exaggeration which one seems to notice when reading the French sociologists on this point may be due to their observations having been made among a Latin and not a Northern race. So far I have dealt with the impulses illustrated by the internal politics of a modern State. But perhaps the most important section in the whole psychology of political impulse is that which is concerned not with the emotional effect of the citizens of any state upon each other, but with those racial feelings which reveal themselves in international politics. The future peace of the world largely turns on the question whether we have, as is sometimes said and often assumed, an instinctive affection for those human beings whose features and colour are like our own, combined with an instinctive hatred for those who are unlike us. On this point, pending a careful examination of the evidence by the psychologists, it is difficult to dogmatise. But I am inclined to think that those strong and apparently simple cases of racial hatred and affection which can certainly be found, are not instances of a specific and universal instinct but the result of several distinct and comparatively weak instincts combined and heightened by habit and association. I have already argued that the instinct of political affection is stimulated by the vivid realisation of its object. Since therefore it is easier, at least for uneducated men, to realise the existence of beings like than of beings unlike themselves, affection for one's like would appear to have a natural basis, but one likely to be modified as our powers of realisation are stimulated by education. Again, since most men live, especially in childhood, among persons belonging to the same race as themselves, any markedly unusual face or dress may excite the instinct of fear of that which is unknown. A child's fear, however, of a strangely shaped or coloured face is more easily obliterated by familiarity than it would be if it were the result of a specific instinct of race-hatred. White or Chinese children show, one is told, no permanent aversion for Chinese or white or Hindoo or negro nurses and attendants. Sex love, again, even when opposed by social tradition, springs up freely between very different human types; and widely separated races have been thereby amalgamated. Between some of the non-human species (horses and camels, for instance) instinctive mutual hatred, as distinguished from fear, does seem to exist, but nowhere, as far as I know, is it found between varieties so nearly related to each other and so readily interbreeding as the various human races. Anglo-Indian officials sometimes explain, as a case of specific instinct, the fact that a man who goes out with an enthusiastic interest in the native races often finds himself, after a few years, unwillingly yielding to a hatred of the Hindoo racial type. But the account which they give of their sensations seems to me more like the nervous disgust which I described as arising from a constantly repeated mental and emotional adjustment to inharmonious surroundings. At the age when an English official reaches India most of his emotional habits are already set, and he makes, as a rule, no systematic attempt to modify them. Therefore, just as the unfamiliarity of French cookery or German beds, which at the beginning of a continental visit is a delightful change, may become after a month or two an intolerable _gêne,_ so the servility and untruthfulness, and even the patience and cleverness of those natives with whom he is brought into official contact, get after a few years on the nerves of an Anglo-Indian. Intimate and uninterrupted contact during a long period, after his social habits have been formed, with people of his own race but of a different social tradition would produce the same effect. Perhaps, however, intellectual association is a larger factor than instinct in the causation of racial affection and hatred. An American working man associates, for instance, the Far Eastern physical type with that lowering of the standard wage which overshadows as a dreadful possibility every trade in the industrial world. Fifty years ago the middle class readers to whom _Punch_ appeals associated the same type with stories of tortured missionaries and envoys. After the battle of the Sea of Japan they associated it with that kind of heroism which, owing to our geographical position, we most admire; and drawings of the unmistakably Asiatic features of Admiral Togo, which would have excited genuine and apparently instinctive disgust in 1859, produced a thrill of affection in 1906. But at this point we approach that discussion of the objects, sensible or imaginary, of political impulse (as distinguished from the impulses themselves), which must be reserved for my next chapter. CHAPTER II POLITICAL ENTITIES Man's impulses and thoughts and acts result from the relation between his nature and the environment into which he is born. The last chapter approached that relation (in so far as it affects politics) from the side of man's nature. This chapter will approach the same relation from the side of man's political environment. The two lines of approach have this important difference, that the nature with which man is born is looked on by the politician as fixed, while the environment into which man is born is rapidly and indefinitely changing. It is not to changes in our nature, but to changes in our environment only--using the word to include the traditions and expedients which we acquire after birth as well as our material surroundings--that all our political development from the tribal organisation of the Stone Ages to the modern nation has apparently been due. The biologist looks on human nature itself as changing, but to him the period of a few thousands or tens of thousands of years which constitute the past of politics is quite insignificant. Important changes in biological types may perhaps have occurred in the history of the world during comparatively short periods, but they must have resulted either from a sudden biological 'sport' or from a process of selection fiercer and more discriminating than we believe to have taken place in the immediate past of our own species. The present descendants of those races which are pictured in early Egyptian tombs show no perceptible change in their bodily appearance, and there is no reason to believe that the mental faculties and tendencies with which they are born have changed to any greater degree. The numerical proportions of different races in the world have, indeed, altered during that period, as one race proved weaker in war or less able to resist disease than another; and races have been mingled by marriage following upon conquest. But if a baby could now be exchanged at birth with one born of the same breeding-stock even a hundred thousand years ago, one may suppose that neither the ancient nor the modern mother would notice any startling difference. The child from the Stone Age would perhaps suffer more seriously than our children if he caught measles, or might show somewhat keener instincts in quarrelling and hunting, or as he grew up be rather more conscious than his fellows of the 'will to live' and 'the joy of life.' Conversely, a transplanted twentieth-century child would resist infectious disease better than the other children in the Stone Age, and might, as he grew up, be found to have a rather exceptionally colourless and adaptable character. But there apparently the difference would end. In essentials the type of each human stock may be supposed to have remained unchanged throughout the whole period. In the politics of the distant future that science of eugenics, which aims at rapidly improving our type by consciously directed selective breeding, may become a dominant factor, but it has had little influence on the politics of the present or the past. Those new facts in our environment which have produced the enormous political changes which separate us from our ancestors have been partly new habits of thought and feeling, and partly new entities about which we can think and feel. It is of these new political entities that this chapter will treat. They must have first reached us through our senses, and in this case almost entirely through the senses of seeing and hearing. But man, like other animals, lives in an unending stream of sense impressions, of innumerable sights and sounds and feelings, and is only stirred to deed or thought by those which he recognises as significant to him. How then did the new impressions separate themselves from the rest and become sufficiently significant to produce political results? The first requisite in anything which is to stimulate us toward impulse or action is that it should be recognisable--that it should be like itself when we met it before, or like something else which we have met before. If the world consisted of things which constantly and arbitrarily varied their appearance, if nothing was ever like anything else, or like itself for more than a moment at a time, living beings as at present constituted would not act at all. They would drift like seaweed among the waves. The new-born chicken cowers beneath the shadow of the hawk, because one hawk is like another. Animals wake at sunrise, because one sunrise is like another; and find nuts or grass for food, because each nut and blade of grass is like the rest. But the recognition of likeness is not in itself a sufficient stimulus to action. The thing recognised must also be _significant_, must be felt in some way to matter to us. The stars reappear nightly in the heavens, but, as far as we can tell, no animals but men are stimulated to action by recognising them. The moth is not stimulated by recognising a tortoise, nor the cow by a cobweb. Sometimes this significance is automatically indicated to us by nature. The growl of a wild beast, the sight of blood, the cry of a child in distress, stand out, without need of experience or teaching, from the stream of human sensations, just as, to a hungry fox-cub, the movement or glimpse of a rabbit among the undergrowth separates itself at once from the sounds of the wind and the colours of the leaves and flowers. Sometimes the significance of a sensation has to be learned by the individual animal during its own life, as when a dog, who recognises the significance of a rat by instinct, learns to recognise that of a whip (provided it looks like the whip which he saw and felt before) by experience and association. In politics man has to make like things as well as to learn their significance. Political tactics would indeed be a much simpler matter if ballot-papers were a natural product, and if on beholding a ballot-paper at about the age of twenty-one a youth who had never heard of one before were invariably seized with a desire to vote. The whole ritual of social and political organisation among savages, therefore, illustrates the process of creating artificial and easily recognisable political likenesses. If the chief is to be recognised as a chief he must, like the ghost of Patroclus, 'be exceedingly like unto himself.' He must live in the same house, wear the same clothes, and do the same things year by year; and his successor must imitate him. If a marriage or an act of sale is to be recognised as a contract, it must be carried out in the customary place and with the customary gestures. In some few cases the thing thus artificially brought into existence and made recognisable still produces its impulsive effect by acting on those biologically inherited associations which enable man and other animals to interpret sensations without experience. The scarlet paint and wolfskin headdress of a warrior, or the dragon-mask of a medicine man, appeal, like the smile of a modern candidate, directly to our instinctive nature. But even in very early societies the recognition of artificial political entities must generally have owed its power of stimulating impulse to associations acquired during life. A child who had been beaten by the herald's rod, or had seen his father bow down before the king, or a sacred stone, learned to fear the rod, or the king, or the stone by association. Recognition often attaches itself to certain special points (whether naturally developed or artificially made) in the thing recognised. Such points then become symbols of the thing as a whole. The evolutionary facts of mimicry in the lower animals show that to some flesh-eating insects a putrid smell is a sufficiently convincing symbol of carrion to induce them to lay their eggs in a flower, and that the black and yellow bands of the wasp if imitated by a fly are a sufficient symbol to keep off birds.[11] In early political society most recognition is guided by such symbols. One cannot make a new king, who may be a boy, in all respects like his predecessor, who may have been an old man. But one can tattoo both of them with the same pattern. It is even more easy and less painful to attach a symbol to a king which is not a part of the man himself, a royal staff for instance, which may be decorated and enlarged until it is useless as a staff, but unmistakable as a symbol. The king is then recognised as king because he is the 'staff-bearer' ([Greek: skêptouchos basileús]). Such a staff is very like a name, and there may, perhaps, have been an early Mexican system of sign-writing in which a model of a staff stood for a king. [11] Cf. William James, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 392:--'The whole story of our dealings with the lower wild animals is the history of our taking advantage of the ways in which they judge of everything by its mere label, as it were, so as to ensnare or kill them.' At this point it is already difficult not to intellectualise the whole process. Our own 'common-sense' and the systematised common-sense of the eighteenth-century philosophers would alike explain the fear of tribal man for a royal staff by saying that he was reminded thereby of the original social contract between ruler and ruled, or of the pleasure and pain which experience had shown to be derived from royal leadership and royal punishments, and that he therefore decided by a process of reasoning on seeing the staff to fear the king. When the symbol by which our impulse is stimulated is actual language, it is still more difficult not to confuse acquired emotional association with the full process of logical inference. Because one of the effects of those sounds and signs which we call language is to stimulate in us a process of deliberate logical thought we tend to ignore all their other effects. Nothing is easier than to make a description of the logical use of language, the breaking up by abstraction of a bundle of sensations--one's memory, for instance, of a royal person; the selection of a single quality--kingship, for instance--shared by other such bundles of sensations, the giving to that quality the name king, and the use of the name to enable us to repeat the process of abstraction. When we are consciously trying to reason correctly by the use of language all this does occur, just as it would occur if we had not evolved the use of voice-language at all, and were attempting to construct a valid logic of colours and models and pictures. But any text-book of psychology will explain why it errs, both by excess and defect, if taken as a description of that which actually happens when language is used for the purpose of stimulating us to action. Indeed the 'brass-instrument psychologists,' who do such admirable work in their laboratories, have invented an experiment on the effect of significant words which every one may try for himself. Let him get a friend to write in large letters on cards a series of common political terms, nations, parties, principles, and so on. Let him then sit before a watch recording tenths of seconds, turn up the cards, and practise observation of the associations which successively enter his consciousness. The first associations revealed will be automatic and obviously 'illogical.' If the word be 'England' the white and black marks on the paper will, if the experimenter is a 'visualiser,' produce at once a picture of some kind accompanied by a vague and half conscious emotional reaction of affection, perhaps, or anxiety, or the remembrance of puzzled thought. If the experimenter is 'audile,' the marks will first call up a vivid sound image with which a like emotional reaction may be associated. I am a 'visualiser,' and the picture in my case was a blurred triangular outline. Other 'visualisers' have described to me the picture of a red flag, or of a green field (seen from a railway carriage), as automatically called up by the word England. After the automatic picture or sound image and its purely automatic emotional accompaniment comes the 'meaning' of the word, the things one knows about England, which are presented to the memory by a process semi-automatic at first, but requiring before it is exhausted a severe effort. The question as to what images and feelings shall appear at each stage is, of course, settled by all the thoughts and events of our past life, but they appear, in the earlier moments at least of the experiment, before we have time consciously to reflect or choose. A corresponding process may be set up by other symbols besides language. If in the experiment the hats belonging to members of a family be substituted for the written cards, the rest of the process will go on--the automatic 'image,' automatically accompanied by emotional association, being succeeded in the course of a second or so by the voluntary realisation of 'meaning,' and finally by a deliberate effort of recollection and thought. Tennyson, partly because he was a born poet and partly perhaps because his excessive use of tobacco put his brain occasionally a little out of focus, was extraordinarily accurate in his account of those separate mental states which for most men are merged into one by memory. A song, for instance, in the 'Princess,' describes the succession which I have been discussing:-- 'Thy voice is heard through rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands. Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands: A moment, while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee.' 'Thine and thee' at the end seem to me to express precisely the change from the automatic images of 'voice' and 'face' to the reflective mood in which the full meaning of that for which he fights is realised. But it is the 'face' that 'gives the battle to his hands.' Here again, as we saw when comparing impulses themselves, it is the evolutionarily earlier more automatic, fact that has the greater, and the later intellectual fact which has the less impulsive power. Even as one sits in one's chair one can feel that that is so. Still more clearly can one feel it if one thinks of the phenomena of religion. The only religion of any importance which has ever been consciously constructed by a psychologist is the Positivism of Auguste Comte. In order to produce a sufficiently powerful stimulus to ensure moral action among the distractions and temptations of daily life, he required each of his disciples to make for himself a visual image of Humanity. The disciple was to practice mental contemplation for a definite period each morning of the remembered figure of some known and loved woman--his mother, or wife, or sister. He was to keep the figure always in the same attitude and dress, so that it should always present itself automatically as a definite mental image in immediate association with the word Humanité.[12] With that would be automatically associated the original impulse of affection for the person imaged. As soon as possible after that would come the meaning of the word, and the fuller but less cogent emotional associations connected with that meaning. This invention was partly borrowed from certain forms of mental discipline in the Roman Catholic Church and partly suggested by Comte's own experiences of the effect on him of the image of Madame de Vaux. One of the reasons that it has not come into greater use may have been that men in general are not quite such good 'visualisers' as Comte found himself to be. [12] _The Catechism of Positive Religion_ (Tr. by Congreve), First Part, 'Explanation of the Worship,' e.g. p. 65: 'The Positivist shuts his eyes during his private prayers, the better to see the internal image.' Cardinal Newman, in an illuminating passage of his _Apologia_, explains how he made for himself images of personified nations, and hints that behind his belief in the real existence of such images was his sense of the convenience of creating them. He says that he identified the 'character and instinct' of 'states' and of those 'governments of religious communities,' from which he suffered so much, with spirits 'partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might he.... My preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of the "Prince of Persia" in the prophet Daniel: and I think I considered that it was of such intermediate beings that the Apocalypse spoke, when it introduced "the angels of the seven churches."'[13] In 1837 ... I said ... 'Take England with many high virtues and yet a low Catholicism. It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of Heaven nor Hell.' [13] Newman, _Apologia_ (1864), pp. 91, 92. Harnack, in the same way, when describing the causes of the expansion of Christianity, lays stress on the use of the word 'church' and the 'possibilities of personification which it offered.'[14] This use may have owed its origin to a deliberate intellectual effort of abstraction applied by some Christian philosopher to the common qualities of all Christian congregations, though it more likely resulted from a half conscious process of adaptation in the employment of a current term. But when it was established the word owed its tremendous power over most men to the emotions automatically stimulated by the personification, and not to those which would follow on a full analysis of the meaning. Religious history affords innumerable such instances. The 'truth embodied in a tale' has more emotional power than the unembodied truth, and the visual realisation of the central figure of the tale more power than the tale itself. The sound-image of a sacred name at which 'every knee shall bow,' or even of one which may be formed in the mind but may not be uttered by the lips, has more power at the moment of intensest feeling than the realisation of its meaning. Things of the senses--the sacred food which one can taste, the Virgin of Kevlaar whom one can see and touch, are apt to be more real than their heavenly anti-types. [14] Harnack, _Expansion of Christianity_ (Tr.), vol. ii. p. 11. If we turn to politics for instances of the same fact, we again discover how much harder it is there than in religion, or morals, or education, to resist the habit of giving intellectual explanations of emotional experiences. For most men the central political entity is their country. When a man dies for his country, what does he die for? The reader in his chair thinks of the size and climate, the history and population, of some region in the atlas, and explains the action of the patriot by his relation to all these things. But what seems to happen in the crisis of battle is not the logical building up or analysing of the idea of one's country, but that automatic selection by the mind of some thing of sense accompanied by an equally automatic emotion of affection which I have already described. Throughout his life the conscript has lived in a stream of sensations, the printed pages of the geography book, the sight of streets and fields and faces, the sound of voices or of birds or rivers, all of which go to make up the infinity of facts from which he might abstract an idea of his country. What comes to him in the final charge? Perhaps the row of pollard elms behind his birth-place. More likely some personification of his country, some expedient of custom or imagination for enabling an entity which one can love to stand out from the unrealised welter of experience. If he is an Italian it may be the name, the musical syllables, of Italia. If he is a Frenchman, it may be the marble figure of France with her broken sword, as he saw it in the market-square of his native town, or the maddening pulse of the 'Marseillaise.' Romans have died for a bronze eagle on a wreathed staff, Englishmen for a flag, Scotchmen for the sound of the pipes. Once in a thousand years a man may stand in a funeral crowd after the fighting is over, and his heart may stir within him as he hears Pericles abstract from the million qualities of individual Athenians in the present and the past just those that make the meaning of Athens to the world. But afterwards all that he will remember may be the cadence of Pericles' voice, the movement of his hand, or the sobbing of some mother of the dead. In the evolution of politics, among the most important events have been the successive creations of new moral entities--of such ideals as justice, freedom, right. In their origin that process of conscious logical abstraction, which we are tempted to accept as the explanation of all mental phenomena, must have corresponded in great part to the historical fact. We have, for instance, contemporary accounts of the conversations in which Socrates compared and analysed the unwilling answers of jurymen and statesmen, and we know that the word Justice was made by his work an infinitely more effective political term. It is certain too that for many centuries before Socrates the slow adaptation of the same word by common use was from time to time quickened by some forgotten wise man who brought to bear upon it the intolerable effort of conscious thought. But as soon as, at each stage, the work was done, and Justice, like a rock statue on whom successive generations of artists have toiled, stood out in compelling beauty, she was seen not as an abstraction but as a direct revelation. It is true that this revelation made the older symbols mean and dead, but that which overcame them seemed a real and visible thing, not a difficult process of comparison and analysis. Antigone in the play defied in the name of Justice the command which the sceptre-bearing king had sent through the sacred person of his herald. But Justice to her was a goddess, 'housemate of the nether gods'--and the sons of those Athenian citizens who applauded the Antigone condemned Socrates to death because his dialectic turned the gods back into abstractions. The great Jewish prophets owed much of their spiritual supremacy to the fact that they were able to present a moral idea with intense emotional force without stiffening it into a personification; but that was because they saw it always in relation to the most personal of all gods. Amos wrote, 'I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will not smell the savour of your assemblies.... Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream.'[15] 'Judgment' and 'righteousness' are not goddesses, but the voice which Amos heard was not the voice of an abstraction. [15] Amos, ch. v., vv. 21, 23, 24 (R.V.M.). Sometimes a new moral or political entity is created rather by immediate insight than by the slow process of deliberate analysis. Some seer of genius perceives in a flash the essential likeness of things hitherto kept apart in men's minds--the impulse which leads to anger with one's brother, and that which leads to murder, the charity of the widow's mite and of the rich man's gold, the intemperance of the debauchee and of the party leader. But when the master dies the vision too often dies with him. Plato's 'ideas' became the formulae of a system of magic, and the command of Jesus that one should give all that one had to the poor handed over one-third of the land of Europe to be the untaxed property of wealthy ecclesiastics. It is this last relation between words and things which makes the central difficulty of thought about politics. The words are so rigid, so easily personified, so associated with affection and prejudice; the things symbolised by the words are so unstable. The moralist or the teacher deals, as a Greek would say, for the most part, with 'natural,' the politician always with 'conventional' species. If one forgets the meaning of motherhood or childhood, Nature has yet made for us unmistakable mothers and children who reappear, true to type, in each generation. The chemist can make sure whether he is using a word in precisely the same sense as his predecessor by a few minutes' work in his laboratory. But in politics the thing named is always changing, may indeed disappear and may require hundreds of years to restore. Aristotle defined the word 'polity' to mean a state where 'the citizens as a body govern in accordance with the general good.'[16] As he wrote, self-government in those States from which he abstracted the idea was already withering beneath the power of Macedonia. Soon there were no such States at all, and, now that we are struggling back to Aristotle's conception, the name which he defined is borne by the 'police' of Odessa. It is no mere accident of philology that makes 'Justices' Justice' a paradox. From the time that the Roman jurisconsults resumed the work of the Greek philosophers, and by laborious question and answer built up the conception of 'natural justice, it, like all other political conceptions, was exposed to the two dangers. On the one hand, since the original effort of abstraction was in its completeness incommunicable, each generation of users of the word subtly changed its use. On the other hand, the actions and institutions of mankind, from which the conception was abstracted, were as subtly changing. Even although the manuscripts of the Roman lawyers survived, Roman law and Roman institutions had both ceased to be. When the phrases of Justinian were used by a Merovingian king or a Spanish Inquisitor not only was the meaning of the words changed, but the facts to which the words could have applied in their old sense were gone. Yet the emotional power of the bare words remained. The civil law and canon law of the Middle Ages were able to enforce all kinds of abuses because the tradition of reverence still attached itself to the sound of 'Rome.' For hundreds of years, one among the German princes was made somewhat more powerful than his neighbours by the fact that he was 'Roman Emperor,' and was called by the name of Caesar. [16] _Politics_, ch. vii., [Greek: hotan tò plêthos pròs tò koinòn politeúê tai symphéron.] The same difficulties and uncertainties as those which influence the history of a political entity when once formed confront the statesman who is engaged in making a new one. The great men, Stein, Bismarck, Cavour, or Metternich, who throughout the nineteenth century worked at the reconstruction of the Europe which Napoleon's conquests shattered, had to build up new States which men should respect and love, whose governments they should willingly obey, and for whose continued existence they should be prepared to die in battle. Races and languages and religions were intermingled throughout central Europe, and the historical memories of the kingdoms and dukedoms and bishoprics into which the map was divided were confused and unexciting. Nothing was easier than to produce and distribute new flags and coins and national names. But the emotional effect of such things depends upon associations which require time to produce, and which may have to contend against associations already existing. The boy in Lombardy or Galicia saw the soldiers and the schoolmaster salute the Austrian flag, but the real thrill came when he heard his father or mother whisper the name of Italy or Poland. Perhaps, as in the case of Hanover, the old associations and the new are for many years almost equally balanced. In such times men fall back from the immediate emotional associations of the national name and search for its meaning. They ask what _is_ the Austrian or the German Empire. As long as there was only one Pope men handed on unexamined the old reverence from father to son. When for forty years there had been two Popes, at Rome and at Avignon, men began to ask what constituted a Pope. And in such times some men go further still. They may ask not only what is the meaning of the word Austrian Empire, or Pope, but what in the nature of things is the ultimate reason why the Austrian Empire or the Papacy should exist. The work therefore of nation-building must be carried forward on each plane. The national name and flag and anthem and coinage all have their entirely non-logical effect based on habitual association. Meanwhile the statesmen strive to create as much meaning as possible for such symbols. If all the subjects of a State serve in one army and speak, or understand, one language, or even use a black-letter alphabet which has been abandoned elsewhere, the national name will mean more to them. The Saxon or the Savoyard will have a fuller answer to give himself when he asks 'What does it mean, that I am a German or a Frenchman?' A single successful war waged in common will create not only a common history, but a common inheritance of passionate feeling. 'Nationalists,' meanwhile, may be striving, by songs and pictures and appeals to the past, to revive and intensify the emotional associations connected with older national areas--and behind all this will go on the deliberate philosophical discussion of the advantages to be derived from large or small, racial or regional States, which will reach the statesman at second-hand and the citizen at third-hand. As a result, Italy, Belgium, and the German Empire succeed in establishing themselves as States resting upon a sufficient basis of patriotism, and Austria-Hungary may, when the time of stress comes, be found to have failed. But if the task of State building in Europe during the nineteenth century was difficult, still more difficult is the task before the English statesmen of the twentieth century of creating an imperial patriotism. We have not even a name, with any emotional associations, for the United Kingdom itself. No Englishman is stirred by the name 'British,' the name 'English' irritates all Scotchmen, and the Irish are irritated by both alike. Our national anthem is a peculiarly flat and uninspiring specimen of eighteenth-century opera libretto and opera music. The little naked St. George on the gold coins, or the armorial pattern on the silver coins never inspired any one. The new copper coinage bears, it is true, a graceful figure of Miss Hicks Beach. But we have made it so small and ladylike that it has none of the emotional force of the glorious portrait heads of France or Switzerland. The only personification of his nation which the artisan of Oldham or Middlesbrough can recognise is the picture of John Bull as a fat, brutal, early nineteenth-century Midland farmer. One of our national symbols alone, the 'Union Jack,' though it is as destitute of beauty as a patchwork quilt, is fairly satisfactory. But all its associations so far are with naval warfare. When we go outside the United Kingdom we are in still worse case. 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland together with its Colonies and Dependencies' has no shorter or more inspiring name. Throughout the Colonial Conference of 1907 statesmen and leader writers tried every expedient of periphrasis and allusion to avoid hurting any one's feelings even by using such a term as 'British Empire.' To the _Sydney Bulletin_, and to the caricaturists of Europe, the fact that any territory on the map of the world is coloured red still recalls nothing but the little greedy eyes, huge mouth, and gorilla hands of 'John Bull.' If, again, the young Boer or Hindoo or ex-American Canadian asks himself what is the meaning of membership ('citizenship,' as applied to five-sixths of the inhabitants of the Empire, would be misleading) of the Empire, he finds it extraordinarily difficult to give an answer. When he goes deeper and asks for what purpose the Empire exists, he is apt to be told that the inhabitants of Great Britain conquered half the world in a fit of absence of mind and have not yet had time to think out an _ex post facto_ justification for so doing. The only product of memory or reflection that can stir in him the emotion of patriotism is the statement that so far the tradition of the Empire has been to encourage and trust to political freedom. But political freedom, even in its noblest form, is a negative quality, and the word is apt to bear different meanings in Bengal and Rhodesia and Australia. States, however, constitute only one among many types of political entities. As soon as any body of men have been grouped under a common political name, that name may acquire emotional associations as well as an intellectually analysable meaning. For the convenience, for instance, of local government the suburbs of Birmingham are divided into separate boroughs. Partly because these boroughs occupy the site of ancient villages, partly because football teams of Scotch professionals are named after them, partly because human emotions must have something to attach themselves to, they are said to be developing a fierce local patriotism, and West Bromwich is said to hate Aston as the Blues hated the Greens in the Byzantine theatre. In London, largely under the influence of the Birmingham instance, twenty-nine new boroughs were created in 1899, with names--at least in the case of the City of Westminster--deliberately selected in order to revive half-forgotten emotional associations. However, in spite of Mr. Chesterton's prophecy in _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_, very few Londoners have learnt to feel or think primarily as citizens of their boroughs. Town Halls are built which they never see, coats of arms are invented which they would not recognise; and their boroughs are mere electoral wards in which they vote for a list of unknown names grouped under the general title adopted by their political party. The party is, in fact, the most effective political entity in the modern national State. It has come into existence with the appearance of representative government on a large scale; its development has been unhampered by legal or constitutional traditions, and it represents the most vigorous attempt which has been made to adapt the form of our political institutions to the actual facts of human nature. In a modern State there may be ten million or more voters. Every one of them has an equal right to come forward as a candidate and to urge either as candidate or agitator the particular views which he may hold on any possible political question. But to each citizen, living as he does in the infinite stream of things, only a few of his ten million fellow-citizens could exist as separate objects of political thought or feeling, even if each one of them held only one opinion on one subject without change during his life. Something is required simpler and more permanent, something which can be loved and trusted, and which can be recognised at successive elections as being the same thing that was loved and trusted before; and a party is such a thing. The origin of any particular party may be due to a deliberate intellectual process. It may be formed, as Burke said, by 'a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.'[17] But when a party has once come into existence its fortunes depend upon facts of human nature of which deliberate thought is only one. It is primarily a name, which, like other names, calls up when it is heard or seen an 'image' that shades imperceptibly into the voluntary realisation of its meaning. As in other cases, emotional reactions can be set up by the name and its automatic mental associations. It is the business of the party managers to secure that these automatic associations shall be as clear as possible, shall be shared by as large a number as possible, and shall call up as many and as strong emotions as possible. For this purpose nothing is more generally useful than the party colour. Our distant ancestors must have been able to recognise colour before they recognised language, and the simple and stronger emotions more easily attach themselves to a colour than to a word. The poor boy who died the other day with the ribbon of the Sheffield Wednesday Football Club on his pillow loved the colour itself with a direct and intimate affection. [17] _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ (Macmillan, 1902), p. 81. A party tune is equally automatic in its action, and, in the case of people with a musical 'ear,' even more effective than a party colour as an object of emotion. As long as the Marseillaise, which is now the national tune of France, was the party tune of the revolution its influence was enormous. Even now, outside of France, it is a very valuable party asset. It was a wise suggestion which an experienced political organiser made in the _Westminster Gazette_ at the time of Gladstone's death, that part of the money collected in his honour should be spent in paying for the composition of the best possible marching tune, which should be identified for all time with the Liberal Party.[18] One of the few mistakes made by the very able men who organised Mr. Chamberlain's Tariff Reform Campaign was their failure to secure even a tolerably good tune. [18] _Westminster Gazette_, June 11, 1898. Only less automatic than those of colour or tune come the emotional associations called up by the first and simplest meaning of the word or words used for the party name. A Greek father called his baby 'Very Glorious' or 'Good in Counsel,' and the makers of parties in the same way choose names whose primary meanings possess established emotional associations. From the beginning of the existence and activity of a party new associations are, however, being created which tend to take the place, in association, of the original meaning of the name. No one in America when he uses the terms Republican or Democrat thinks of their dictionary meanings. Any one, indeed, who did so would have acquired a mental habit as useless and as annoying as the habit of reading Greek history with a perpetual recognition of the dictionary meanings of names like Aristobulus and Theocritus. Long and precise names which make definite assertions as to party policy are therefore soon shortened into meaningless syllables with new associations derived from the actual history of the party. The Constitutional Democrats in Russia become Cadets, and the Independent Labour Party becomes the I.L.P. On the other hand, the less conscious emotional associations which are automatically excited by less precise political names may last much longer. The German National Liberals were valuable allies for Bismarck during a whole generation because their name vaguely suggested a combination of patriotism and freedom. When the mine-owners in the Transvaal decided some years ago to form a political party they chose, probably after considerable discussion, the name of 'Progressive.' It was an excellent choice. In South Africa the original associations of the word were apparently soon superseded, but elsewhere it long suggested that Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and his party had the same sort of democratic sympathies as Mr. M'Kinnon Wood and his followers on the London County Council. No one speaking to an audience whose critical and logical faculties were fully aroused would indeed contend that because a certain body of people had chosen to call themselves Progressives, therefore a vote against them was necessarily a vote against progress. But in the dim and shadowy region of emotional association a good name, if its associations are sufficiently subconscious, has a real political value. Conversely, the opponents of a party attempt to label it with a name that will excite feelings of opposition. The old party terms of Whig and Tory are striking instances of such names given by opponents and lasting perhaps half a century before they lost their original abusive associations. More modern attempts have been less successful, because they have been more precise. 'Jingo' had some of the vague suggestiveness of an effectively bad name, but 'Separatist,' 'Little Englander,' 'Food Taxer,' remain as assertions to be consciously accepted or rejected. The whole relation between party entities and political impulse can perhaps be best illustrated from the art of advertisement. In advertisement the intellectual process can be watched apart from its ethical implications, and advertisement and party politics are becoming more and more closely assimilated in method. The political poster is placed side by side with the trade or theatrical poster on the hoardings, it is drawn by the same artist and follows the same empirical rules of art. Let us suppose therefore that a financier thinks that there is an opening for a large advertising campaign in connection, say, with the tea trade. The actual tea-leaves in the world are as varied and unstable as the actual political opinions of mankind. Every leaf in every tea-garden is different from every other leaf, and a week of damp weather may change the whole stock in any warehouse. What therefore should the advertiser do to create a commercial 'entity,' a 'tea' which men can think and feel about? A hundred years ago he would have made a number of optimistic and detailed statements with regard to his opportunities and methods of trade. He would have printed in the newspapers a statement that 'William Jones, assisted by a staff of experienced buyers, will attend the tea-sales of the East India Company, and will lay in parcels from the best Chinese Gardens, which he will retail to his customers at a profit of not more than five per centum.' This, however, is an open appeal to the critical intellect, and by the critical intellect it would now be judged. We should not consider Mr. Jones to be an unbiassed witness as to the excellence of his choice, or think that he would have sufficient motive to adhere to his pledge about his rate of profit if he thought he could get more. Nowadays, therefore, such an advertiser would practice on our automatic and subconscious associations. He would choose some term, say 'Parramatta Tea,' which would produce in most men a vague suggestion of the tropical East, combined with the subconscious memory of a geography lesson on Australia. He would then proceed to create in connection with the word an automatic picture-image having previous emotional associations of its own. By the time that a hundred thousand pounds had been cleverly spent, no one in England would be able to see the word 'Parramatta' on a parcel without a vague impulse to buy, founded on a day-dream recollection of his grandmother, or of the British fleet, or of a pretty young English matron, or of any other subject that the advertiser had chosen for its association with the emotions of trust or affection. When music plays a larger part in English public education it may be possible to use it effectively for advertisement, and a 'Parramatta Motif' would in that case appear in all the pantomimes, in connection, say, with a song about the Soldier's Return, and would be squeaked by a gramophone in every grocer's shop. This instance has the immense advantage, as an aid to clearness of thought, that up to this point no Parramatta Tea exists, and no one has even settled what sort of tea shall be provided under that name. Parramatta tea is still a commercial entity pure and simple. It may later on be decided to sell very poor tea at a large profit until the original associations of the name have been gradually superseded by the association of disappointment. Or it may be decided to experiment by selling different teas under that name in different places, and to push the sale of the flavour which 'takes on.' But there are other attractive names of teas on the hoardings, with associations of babies, and bull-dogs, and the Tower of London. If it is desired to develop a permanent trade in competition with these it will probably be found wisest to supply tea of a fairly uniform quality, and with a distinctive flavour which may act as its 'meaning.' The great difficulty will then come when there is a change of public taste, and when the sales fall off because the chosen flavour no longer pleases. The directors may think it safest to go on selling the old flavour to a diminishing number of customers, or they may gradually substitute another flavour, taking the risk that the number of housewives who say, 'This is not the real Parramatta Tea,' may be balanced by the number of those who say, 'Parramatta Tea has improved.' If people will not buy the old flavour at all, and prefer to buy the new flavour under a new name, the Parramatta Tea Company must be content to disappear, like a religion which has made an unsuccessful attempt to put new wine into old bottles. All these conditions are as familiar to the party politician as they are to the advertiser. The party candidate is, at his first appearance, to most of his constituents merely a packet with the name of Liberal or Conservative upon it. That name has associations of colour and music, of traditional habit and affection, which, when once formed, exist independently of the party policy. Unless he bears the party label--unless he is, as the Americans say, a 'regular' candidate--not only will those habits and affections be cut off from him, but he will find it extraordinarily difficult to present himself as a tangible entity to the electors at all. A proportion of the electors, varying greatly at different times and at different places, will vote for the 'regular' nominee of their party without reference to his programme, though to the rest of them, and always to the nominating committee, he must also present a programme which can be identified with the party policy. But, in any case, as long as he is a party candidate, he must remember that it is in that character that he speaks and acts. The party prepossessions and party expectations of his constituents alone make it possible for them to think and feel with him. When he speaks there is between him and his audience the party mask, larger and less mobile than his own face, like the mask which enabled actors to be seen and heard in the vast open-air theatres of Greece. If he can no longer act the part with sincerity he must either leave the stage or present himself in the mask of another party. Party leaders again have always to remember that the organisation which they control is an entity with an existence in the memory and emotions of the electors, independent of their own opinions and actions. This does not mean that party leaders cannot be sincere. As individuals they can indeed only preserve their political life by being in constant readiness to lose it. Sometimes they must even risk the existence of their party itself. When Sir Robert Peel was converted to Free Trade in 1845, he had to decide whether he and his friends should shatter the Tory Party by leaving it, or should so transform its policy that it might not be recognised, even in the half-conscious logic of habit and association, as that entity for which men had voted and worked four years before. In either case Peel was doing something other and more serious than the expression of his individual opinion on a question of the moment. And yet, if, recognising this, he had gone on advocating corn duties for the sake of his party, his whole personal force as a politician, and therefore even his party value, would have been lost. If a celestial intelligence were now to look down from heaven on the earth with the power of observing every fact about all human beings at once, he might ask, as the newspaper editors are asking as I write, what that Socialism is which influences so many lives? He might answer himself with a definition which could be clumsily translated as 'a movement towards greater social equality, depending for its force upon three main factors, the growing political power of the working classes, the growing social sympathy of many members of all classes, and the belief, based on the growing authority of scientific method, that social arrangements can be transformed by means of conscious and deliberate contrivance.' He would see men trying to forward this movement by proposals as to taxation, wages, and regulative or collective administration; some of which proposals would prove to be successfully adapted to the facts of human existence and some would in the end be abandoned, either because no nation could be persuaded to try them or because when tried they failed. But he would also see that this definition of a many-sided and ever-varying movement drawn by abstraction from innumerable socialistic proposals and desires is not a description of 'Socialism' as it exists for the greater number of its supporters. The need of something which one may love and for which one may work has created for thousands of working men a personified 'Socialism,' a winged goddess with stern eyes and drawn sword to be the hope of the world and the protector of those that suffer. The need of some engine of thought which one may use with absolute faith and certainty has also created another Socialism, not a personification, but a final and authoritative creed. Such a creed appeared in England in 1884, and William Morris took it down in his beautiful handwriting from Mr. Hyndman's lectures. It was the revelation which made a little dimly educated working man say to me three years later, with tears of genuine humility in his eyes, 'How strange it is that this glorious truth has been hidden from all the clever and learned men of the world and shown to me.' Meanwhile Socialism is always a word, a symbol used in common speech and writing. A hundred years hence it may have gone the way of its predecessors--Leveller, Saint-Simonism, Communism, Chartism--and may survive only in histories of a movement which has since undergone other transformations and borne other names. It may, on the other hand, remain, as the Republic has remained in France, to be the title on coins and public buildings of a movement which after many disappointments and disillusionments has succeeded in establishing itself as a government. But the use of a word in common speech is only the resultant of its use by individual men and women, and particularly by those who accept it as a party name. Each one of them, as long as the movement is really alive, will find that while the word must be used, because otherwise the movement will have no political existence, yet its use creates a constant series of difficult problems in conduct. Any one who applies the name to himself or others in a sense so markedly different from common use as to make it certain or probable that he is creating a false impression is rightly charged with want of ordinary veracity. And yet there are cases where enormous practical results may depend upon keeping wide the use of a word which is tending to be narrowed. The 'Modernist' Roman Catholic who has studied the history of religion uses the term 'Catholic Church' to mean a society which has gone through various intellectual stages in the past, and which depends for its vitality upon the existence of reasonable freedom of change in the future. He therefore calls himself a Catholic. To the Pope and his advisers, on the other hand, the Church is an unchanging miracle based on an unchanging revelation. Father Tyrrell, when he says that he 'believes' in the Catholic Church, though he obviously disbelieves in the actual occurrence of most of the facts which constitute the original revelation, seems to them to be simply a liar, who is stealing their name for his own fraudulent purposes. They can no more understand him than can the Ultramontanes among the German Social-Democrats understand Bernstein and his Modernist allies. Bernstein himself, on the other hand, has to choose whether he ought to try to keep open the common use of the name Socialist, or whether in the end he will have to abandon it, because his claim to use it merely creates bad feeling and confusion of thought. Sometimes a man of exceptional personal force and power of expression is, so to speak, a party--a political entity--in himself. He may fashion a permanent and recognisable mask for himself as 'Honest John' or 'The Grand Old Man.' But this can as a rule only be done by those who learn the main condition of their task, the fact that if an individual statesman's intellectual career is to exist for the mass of the present public at all, it must be based either on an obstinate adherence to unchanging opinions or on a development, slow, simple, and consistent. The indifferent and half attentive mind which most men turn towards politics is like a very slow photograph plate. He who wishes to be clearly photographed must stand before it in the same attitude for a long time. A bird that flies across the plate leaves no mark. 'Change of opinion,' wrote Gladstone in 1868, 'in those to whose judgment the public looks more or less to assist its own, is an evil to the country, although a much smaller evil than their persistence in a course which they know to be wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon its trial.'[19] Most statesmen avoid this choice between the loss of force resulting from a public change of opinion, and the loss of character resulting from the public persistence in an opinion privately abandoned, not only by considering carefully every change in their own conclusions, but by a delay, which often seems cowardly and absurd, in the public expression of their thoughts upon all questions except those which are ripe for immediate action. The written or reported word remains, and becomes part of that entity outside himself which the stateman is always building or destroying or transforming. [19] _Gleanings_, vol. vii. p. 100, quoted in Morley's _Life_, vol. i. p. 211. The same conditions affect other political entities besides parties and statesmen. If a newspaper is to live as a political force it must impress itself on men's minds as holding day by day to a consistent view. The writers, not only from editorial discipline, but from the instinctive desire to be understood, write in the character of their paper's personality. If it is sold to a proprietor holding or wishing to advocate different opinions, it must either frankly proclaim itself as a new thing or must make it appear by slow and solemn argumentative steps that the new attitude is a necessary development of the old. It is therefore rightly felt that a capitalist who buys a paper for the sake of using its old influence to strengthen a new movement is doing something to be judged by other moral standards than those which apply to the purchase of so much printing-machinery and paper. He may be destroying something which has been a stable and intelligible entity for thousands of plain people living in an otherwise unintelligible world, and which has collected round it affection and trust as real as was ever inspired by an orator or a monarch. CHAPTER III NON-RATIONAL INFERENCE IN POLITICS The assumption--which is so closely interwoven with our habits of political and economic thought--that men always act on a reasoned opinion as to their interests, may be divided into two separate assumptions: first, that men always act on some kind of inference as to the best means of reaching a preconceived end, and secondly, that all inferences are of the same kind, and are produced by a uniform process of 'reasoning.' In the two preceding chapters I dealt with the first assumption, and attempted to show that it is important for a politician to realise that men do not always act on inferences as to means and ends. I argued that men often act in politics under the immediate stimulus of affection and instinct, and that affection and interest may be directed towards political entities which are very different from those facts in the world around us which we can discover by deliberate observation and analysis. In this chapter I propose to consider the second assumption, and to inquire how far it is true that men, when they do form inferences as to the result of their political actions, always form them by a process of reasoning. In such an inquiry one meets the preliminary difficulty that it is very hard to arrive at a clear definition of reasoning. Any one who watches the working of his own mind will find that it is by no means easy to trace these sharp distinctions between various mental states, which seem so obvious when they are set out in little books on psychology. The mind of man is like a harp, all of whose strings throb together; so that emotion, impulse, inference, and the special kind of inference called reasoning, are often simultaneous and intermingled aspects of a single mental experience. This is especially true in moments of action and excitement; but when we are sitting in passive contemplation we would often find it hard to say whether our successive states of consciousness are best described as emotions or inferences. And when our thought clearly belongs to the type of inference it is often hard to say whether its steps are controlled by so definite a purpose of discovering truth that we are entitled to call it reasoning. Even when we think with effort and with a definite purpose, we do not always draw inferences or form beliefs of any kind. If we forget a name we say the alphabet over to ourselves and pause at each letter to see if the name we want will be suggested to us. When we receive bad news we strive to realise it by allowing successive mental associations to arise of themselves, and waiting to discover what the news will mean for us. A poet broods with intense creative effort on the images which appear in his mind and arranges them, not in order to discover truth, but in order to attain an artistic and dramatic end. In Prospero's great speech in _The Tempest_ the connection between the successive images--the baseless fabric of this vision--the cloud-capped towers--the gorgeous palaces--the solemn temples--the great globe itself--is, for instance, one not of inference but of reverie, heightened by creative effort, and subordinated to poetic intention. Most of the actual inferences which we draw during any day belong, indeed, to a much humbler type of thought than do some of the higher forms of non-inferential association. Many of our inferences, like the quasi-instinctive impulses which they accompany and modify, take place when we are making no conscious effort at all. In such a purely instinctive action as leaping backwards from a falling stone, the impulse to leap and the inference that there is danger, are simply two names for a single automatic and unconscious process. We can speak of instinctive inference as well as of instinctive impulse; we draw, for instance, by an instinctive mental process, inferences as to the distance and solidity of objects from the movements of our eye-muscles in focussing, and from the difference between the images on our two retinas. We are unaware of the method by which we arrive at these inferences, and even when we know that the double photograph in the stereoscope is flat, or that the conjurer has placed two converging sheets of looking-glass beneath his table, we can only say that the photograph 'looks' solid, or that we 'seem' to see right under the table. The whole process of inference, rational or non-rational, is indeed built up from the primary fact that one mental state may call up another, either because the two have been associated together in the history of the individual, or because a connection between the two has proved useful in the history of the race. If a man and his dog stroll together down the street they turn to the right hand or the left, hesitate or hurry in crossing the road, recognise and act upon the bicycle bell and the cabman's shout, by using the same process of inference to guide the same group of impulses. Their inferences are for the most part effortless, though sometimes they will both be seen to pause until they have settled some point by wordless deliberation. It is only when a decision has to be taken affecting the more distant purposes of his life that the man enters on a region of definitely rational thought where the dog cannot follow him, in which he uses words, and is more or less conscious of his own logical methods. But the weakness of inference by automatic association as an instrument of thought consists in the fact that either of a pair of associated ideas may call up the other without reference to their logical connection. The effect calls up the cause as freely as the cause calls up the effect. A patient under a hypnotic trance is wonderfully rapid and fertile in drawing inferences, but he hunts the scent backward as easily as he does forward. Put a dagger in his hand and he believes that he has committed a murder. The sight of an empty plate convinces him that he has had dinner. If left to himself he will probably go through routine actions well enough. But any one who understands his condition can make him act absurdly. In the same way when we dream we draw absurd inferences by association. The feeling of discomfort due to slight indigestion produces a belief that we are about to speak to a large audience and have mislaid our notes, or are walking along the Brighton Parade in a night-shirt. Even when men are awake, those parts of their mind to which for the moment they are not giving full attention are apt to draw equally unfounded inferences. A conjurer who succeeds in keeping the attention of his audience concentrated on the observation of what he is doing with his right hand can make them draw irrational conclusions from the movements of his left hand. People in a state of strong religious emotion sometimes become conscious of a throbbing sound in their ears, due to the increased force of their circulation. An organist, by opening the thirty-two foot pipe, can create the same sensation, and can thereby induce in the congregation a vague and half-conscious belief that they are experiencing religious emotion. The political importance of all this consists in the fact that most of the political opinions of most men are the result, not of reasoning tested by experience, but of unconscious or half-conscious inference fixed by habit. It is indeed mainly in the formation of tracks of thought that habit shows its power in politics. In our other activities habit is largely a matter of muscular adaptation, but the bodily movements of politics occur so seldom that nothing like a habit can be set up by them. One may see a respectable voter, whose political opinions have been smoothed and polished by the mental habits of thirty years, fumbling over the act of marking and folding his ballot paper like a child with its first copybook. Some men even seem to reverence most those of their opinions whose origin has least to do with deliberate reasoning. When Mr. Barrie's Bowie Haggart said: 'I am of opeenion that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency. I have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion,'[20] he was comparing the merely rational conclusion which might have resulted from a reading of Burns's works with the conviction about them which he found ready-made in his mind, and which was the more sacred to him and more intimately his own, because he did not know how it was produced. [20] _Auld Licht Idylls_, p. 220. Opinion thus unconsciously formed is a fairly safe guide in the affairs of our daily life. The material world does not often go out of its way to deceive us, and our final convictions are the resultant of many hundreds of independent fleeting inferences, of which the valid are more numerous and more likely to survive than the fallacious. But even in our personal affairs our memory is apt to fade, and we can often remember the association between two ideas, while forgetting the cause which created that association. We discover in our mind a vague impression that Simpson is a drunkard, and cannot recollect whether we ever had any reason to believe it, or whether some one once told us that Simpson had a cousin who invented a cure for drunkenness. When the connection is remembered in a telling phrase, and when its origin has never been consciously noticed, we may find ourselves with a really vivid belief for which we could, if cross-examined, give no account whatever. When, for instance, we have heard an early-Victorian Bishop called 'Soapy Sam' half a dozen times we get a firm conviction of his character without further evidence. Under ordinary circumstances not much harm is done by this fact; because a name would not be likely to 'catch on' unless a good many people really thought it appropriate, and unless it 'caught on' we should not be likely to hear it more than once or twice. But in politics, as in the conjuring trade, it is often worth while for some people to take a great deal of trouble in order to produce such an effect without waiting for the idea to enforce itself by merely accidental repetition. I have already said that political parties try to give each other bad names by an organised system of mental suggestion. If the word 'Wastrel,' for instance, appears on the contents bills of the _Daily Mail_ one morning as a name for the Progressives during a County Council election, a passenger riding on an omnibus from Putney to the Bank will see it half-consciously at least a hundred times, and will have formed a fairly stable mental association by the end of the journey. If he reflected, he would know that only one person has once decided to use the word, but he does not reflect, and the effect on him is the same as if a hundred persons had used it independently of each other. The contents-bills, indeed, of the newspapers, which were originally short and pithy merely from considerations of space, have developed in a way which threatens to turn our streets (like the advertisement pages of an American magazine) into a psychological laboratory for the unconscious production of permanent associations. 'Another German Insult,' 'Keir Hardie's Crime,' 'Balfour Backs Down,' are intended to stick and do stick in the mind as ready-made opinions. In all this again the same rule holds as in the production of impulse. Things that are nearer sense, nearer to our more ancient evolutionary past, produce a readier inference as well as a more compelling impulse. When a new candidate on his first appearance smiles at his constituents exactly as if he were an old friend, not only does he appeal, as I said in an earlier chapter, to an ancient and immediate instinct of human affection, but he produces at the same time a shadowy belief that he is an old friend; and his agent may even imply this, provided that he says nothing definite enough to arouse critical and rational attention. By the end of the meeting one can safely go as far as to call for three cheers for 'good old Jones.'[21] [21] Three-quarters of the art of the trained salesman depends upon his empirical knowledge of this group of psychological facts. A small girl of my acquaintance, explaining why she had brought back from her first independent shopping expedition a photograph frame which she herself found to be distressing, said: 'The shopman seemed to suppose I had chosen it, and so I paid for it and came away.' But her explanation was the result of memory and reflection. At the moment, in a shadowy way which was sufficient for the shopman, she supposed that she had chosen it. Mr. G.K. Chesterton some years ago quoted from a magazine article on American elections a sentence which said: 'A little sound common-sense often goes further with an audience of American working men than much high-flown argument. A speaker who, as he brought forward his points, hammered nails into a board, won hundreds of votes for his side at the last Presidential election.'[22] The 'sound common-sense' consisted, not, as Mr. Chesterton pretended to believe, in the presentation of the hammering as a logical argument, but in the orator's knowledge of the way in which force is given to non-logical inference and his willingness to use that knowledge. [22] _Heretics_, p. 122. When a vivid association has been once formed it sinks into the mass of our mental experience, and may then undergo developments and transformations with which deliberate ratiocination had very little to do. I have been told that when an English agitation against the importation of Chinese contract labour into South Africa was proposed, an important personage said that 'there was not a vote in it.' But the agitation was set on foot, and was based on a rational argument that the conditions enacted by the Ordinance amounted to a rather cruel kind of slavery imposed upon unusually intelligent Asiatics. Any one, however, who saw much of politics in the winter of 1905-6 must have noticed that the pictures of Chinamen on the hoardings aroused among very many of the voters an immediate hatred of the Mongolian racial type. This hatred was transferred to the Conservative party, and towards the end of the general election of 1906 a picture of a Chinaman thrown suddenly on a lantern screen before a working-class audience would have aroused an instantaneous howl of indignation against Mr. Balfour. After the election, however, the memory of the Chinese faces on the posters tended slowly to identify itself, in the minds of the Conservatives, with the Liberals who had used them. I had at the general election worked in a constituency in which many such posters were displayed by my side, and where we were beaten. A year later I stood for the London County Council in the same constituency. An hour before the close of the poll I saw, with the unnatural clearness of polling-day fatigue, a large white face at the window of the ward committee-room, while a hoarse voice roared: 'Where's your bloody pigtail? We cut it off last time: and now we'll put it round your bloody neck and strangle you.' In February 1907, during the County Council election, there appeared on the London hoardings thousands of posters which were intended to create a belief that the Progressive members on the Council made their personal livelihood by defrauding the ratepayers. If a statement had been published to that effect it would have been an appeal to the critical intellect, and could have been met by argument, or in the law courts. But the appeal was made to the process of subconscious inference. The poster consisted of a picture of a man supposed to represent the Progressive Party, pointing a foreshortened finger and saying, with sufficient ambiguity to escape the law of libel: 'It's your money we want.' Its effectiveness depended on its exploitation of the fact that most men judge of the truth of a charge of fraud by a series of rapid and unconscious inferences from the appearance of the man accused. The person represented was, if judged by the shape of his hat, the fashion of his watch-chain and ring, the neglected condition of his teeth, and the redness of his nose, obviously a professional sharper. He was, I believe, drawn by an American artist, and his face and clothes had a vaguely American appearance, which, in the region of subconscious association, further suggested to most onlookers the idea of Tammany Hall. This poster was brilliantly successful, but, now that the election is over, it, like the Chinese pictures, seems likely to continue a career of irrational transference. One notices that one Progressive evening paper uses a reduced copy of it whenever it wishes to imply that the Moderates are influenced by improper pecuniary motives. I myself find that it tends to associate itself in my mind with the energetic politician who induced the railway companies and others to pay for it, and who, for all I know, may in his own personal appearance recall the best traditions of the English gentleman. Writers on the 'psychology of the crowd' have pointed out the effect of excitement and numbers in substituting non-rational for rational inference. Any cause, however, which prevents a man from giving full attention to his mental processes may produce the phenomena of non-rational inference in an extreme degree. I have often watched in some small sub-committee the method by which either of the two men with a real genius for committee work whom I know could control his colleagues. The process was most successful towards the end of an afternoon, when the members were tired and somewhat dazed with the effort of following a rapid talker through a mass of unfamiliar detail. If at that point the operator slightly quickened the flow of his information, and slightly emphasised the assumption that he was being thoroughly understood, he could put some at least of his colleagues into a sort of waking trance, in which they would have cheerfully assented to the proposition that the best means of securing, _e.g.,_ the permanence of private schools was a large and immediate increase in the number of public schools. It is sometimes argued that such non-rational inferences are merely the loose fringe of our political thinking, and that responsible decisions in politics, whether they are right or wrong, are always the result of conscious ratiocination. American political writers, for instance, of the traditional intellectualist type are sometimes faced with the fact that the delegates to national party conventions, when they select candidates and adopt programmes for Presidential elections, are not in a condition in which they are likely to examine the logical validity of their own mental processes. Such writers fall back on the reflection that the actual choice of President is decided not by excited conventions, but by voters coming straight from the untroubled sanctuary of the American home. President Garfield illustrated this point of view in an often-quoted passage of his speech to the Republican Convention of 1880:-- 'I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man. But I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured.... Not here, in this brilliant circle where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the Republic to be decreed for the next four years ... but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and knowledge of the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by. There God prepares the verdict that shall determine the wisdom of our work to-night.'[23] [23] _Life of J.A. Garfield_, by R. H. Conwell, p. 328. But the divine oracle, whether in America or in England, turns out, too often, only to be a tired householder, reading the headlines and personal paragraphs of his party newspaper, and half-consciously forming mental habits of mean suspicion or national arrogance. Sometimes, indeed, during an election, one feels that it is, after all, in big meetings, where big thoughts can be given with all their emotional force, that the deeper things of politics have the best chance of recognition. The voter as he reads his newspaper may adopt by suggestion, and make habitual by repetition, not only political opinions but whole trains of political argument; and he does not necessarily feel the need of comparing them with other trains of argument already in his mind. A lawyer or a doctor will on quite general principles argue for the most extreme trade-unionism in his own profession, while he thoroughly agrees with a denunciation of trade-unionism addressed to him as a railway shareholder or ratepayer. The same audience can sometimes be led by way of 'parental rights' to cheer for denominational religious instruction, and by way of 'religious freedom' to hoot it. The most skilled political observer that I know, speaking of an organised newspaper attack, said, 'As far as I can make out every argument used in attack and in defence has its separate and independent effect. They hardly ever meet, even if they are brought to bear upon the same mind.' From the purely tactical point of view there is therefore much to be said for Lord Lyndhurst's maxim, 'Never defend yourself before a popular assemblage, except with and by retorting the attack; the hearers, in the pleasure which the assault gives them, will forget the previous charge.'[24] [24] Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, vol. i. p. 122. CHAPTER IV THE MATERIAL OF POLITICAL REASONING But man is fortunately not wholly dependent in his political thinking upon those forms of inference by immediate association which come so easily to him, and which he shares with the higher brutes. The whole progress of human civilisation beyond its earliest stages has been made possible by the invention of methods of thought which enable us to interpret and forecast the working of nature more successfully than we could if we merely followed the line of least resistance in the use of our minds. These methods, however, when applied in politics, still represent a difficult and uncertain art rather than a science producing its effects with mechanical accuracy. When the great thinkers of Greece laid down rules for valid reasoning, they had, it is true, the needs of politics specially in their minds. After the prisoners in Plato's cave of illusion should be unbound by true philosophy it was to the service of the State that they were to devote themselves, and their first triumph was to be the control of passion by reason in the sphere of government. Yet if Plato could visit us now, he would learn that while our glass-makers proceed by rigorous and confident processes to exact results, our statesmen, like the glass-makers of ancient Athens, still trust to empirical maxims and personal skill. Why is it, he would ask us, that valid reasoning has proved to be so much more difficult in politics than in the physical sciences? Our first answer might be found in the character of the material with which political reasoning has to deal. The universe which presents itself to our reason is the same as that which presents itself to our feelings and impulses--an unending stream of sensations and memories, every one of which is different from every other, and before which, unless we can select and recognise and simplify, we must stand helpless and unable either to act or think. Man has therefore to create entities that shall be the material of his reasoning, just as he creates entities to be the objects of his emotions and the stimulus of his instinctive inferences. Exact reasoning requires exact comparison, and in the desert or the forest there were few things which our ancestors could compare exactly. The heavenly bodies seem, indeed, to have been the first objects of consciously exact reasoning, because they were so distant that nothing could be known of them except position and movement, and their position and movement could be exactly compared from night to night. In the same way the foundation of the terrestrial sciences came from two discoveries, first, that it was possible to abstract single qualities, such as position and movement, in all things however unlike, from the other qualities of those things and to compare them exactly; and secondly, that it was possible artificially to create actual uniformities for the purpose of comparison, to make, that is to say, out of unlike things, things so like that valid inferences could be drawn as to their behaviour under like circumstances. Geometry, for instance, came into the service of man when it was consciously realised that all units of land and water were exactly alike in so far as they were extended surfaces. Metallurgy, on the other hand, only became a science when men could actually take two pieces of copper ore, unlike in shape and appearance and chemical constitution, and extract from them two pieces of copper so nearly alike that they would give the same results when treated in the same way. This second power over his material the student of politics can never possess. He can never create an artificial uniformity in man. He cannot, after twenty generations of education or breeding render even two human beings sufficiently like each other for him to prophesy with any approach to certainty that they will behave alike under like circumstances. How far has he the first power? How far can he abstract from the facts of man's state qualities in respect of which men are sufficiently comparable to allow of valid political reasoning? On April 5th, 1788, a year before the taking of the Bastille John Adams, then American Ambassador to England, and afterwards President of the United States, wrote to a friend describing the 'fermentation upon the subject of government' throughout Europe. 'Is Government a science or not?' he describes men as asking. 'Are there any principles on which it is founded? What are its ends? If indeed there is no rule, no standard, all must be accident and chance. If there is a standard, what is it?'[25] [25] _Memoir of T. Brand Hollis_, by J. Disney, p. 32. Again and again in the history of political thought men have believed themselves to have found this 'standard,' this fact about man which should bear the same relation to politics which the fact that all things can be weighed bears to physics, and the fact that all things can be measured bears to geometry. Some of the greatest thinkers of the past have looked for it in the final causes of man's existence. Every man differed, it is true, from every other man, but these differences all seemed related to a type of perfect manhood which, though few men approached, and none attained it, all were capable of conceiving. May not, asked Plato, this type be the pattern--the 'idea'--of man formed by God and laid up 'in a heavenly place'? If so, men would have attained to a valid science of politics when by careful reasoning and deep contemplation they had come to know that pattern. Henceforward all the fleeting and varying things of sense would be seen in their due relation to the eternal and immutable purposes of God. Or the relation of man to God's purpose was thought of not as that between the pattern and the copy, but as that between the mind of a legislator as expressed in enacted law, and the individual instance to which the law is applied. We can, thought Locke, by reflecting on the moral facts of the world, learn God's law. That law confers on us certain rights which we can plead in the Court of God, and from which a valid political science can be deduced. We know our rights with the same certainty that we know his law. 'Men,' wrote Locke, 'being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise maker, all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order and about his business; they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's, pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy another as if we were made for one another's uses as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.'[26] [26] Locke, _Second Treatise of Government_, 1690, ed. 1821, p. 191. When the leaders of the American revolution sought for certainty in their argument against George the Third they too found it in the fact that men 'are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.' Rousseau and his French followers rested these rights on a presumed social contract. Human rights stood upon that contract as the elephant upon the tortoise, though the contract itself, like the tortoise, was apt to stand upon nothing at all. At this point Bentham, backed by the sense of humour of mankind, swept aside the whole conception of a science of politics deduced from natural right. 'What sort of a thing,' he asked, 'is a natural right, and where does the maker live, particularly in Atheist's Town, where they are most rife?'[27] [27] _Escheat vice Taxation_, Bentham's Works, vol. ii. p. 598. Bentham himself believed that he had found the standard in the fact that all men seek pleasure and avoid pain. In that respect men were measurable and comparable. Politics and jurisprudence could therefore be made experimental sciences in exactly the same sense as physics or chemistry. 'The present work,' wrote Bentham, 'as well as any other work of mine that has been or will be published on the subject of legislation or any other branch of moral science, is an attempt to extend the experimental method of reasoning from the physical branch to the moral.'[28] [28] MS. in University College, London, quoted by Halévy, _La Jeunesse de Bentham_, pp. 289-290. Bentham's standard of 'pleasure and pain' constituted in many ways an important advance upon 'natural right.' It was in the first place founded upon a universally accepted fact; all men obviously do feel both pleasure and pain. That fact was to a certain extent measurable. One could, for instance, count the number of persons who suffered this year from an Indian famine, and compare it with the number of those who suffered last year. It was clear also that some pains and pleasures were more intense than others, and that therefore the same man could in a given number of seconds experience varying amounts of pleasure or pain. Above all, the standard of pleasure and pain was one external to the political thinker himself. John Stuart Mill quotes Bentham as saying of all philosophies which competed with his Utilitarianism: 'They consist, all of them, in so many contrivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to accept the author's sentiment or opinion as a reason for itself.'[29] [29] Bentham's _Works_, vol. i. p. 8, quoted in Lytton's _England and the English_ (1833), p. 469. This passage was written by Mill, cf. preface. A 'Benthamite,' therefore, whether he was a member of Parliament like Grote or Molesworth, or an official like Chadwick, or an organising politician like Francis Place, could always check his own feelings about 'rights of property,' 'mischievous agitators,' 'spirit of the Constitution,' 'insults to the flag,' and so on, by examining statistical facts as to the numerical proportion, the income, the hours of work, and the death rate from disease, of the various classes and races who inhabited the British Empire. But as a complete science of politics Benthamism is no longer possible. Pleasure and pain are indeed facts about human nature, but they are not the only facts which are important to the politician. The Benthamites, by straining the meaning of words, tried to classify such motives as instinctive impulse, ancient tradition, habit, or personal and racial idiosyncrasy as being forms of pleasure and pain. But they failed; and the search for a basis of valid political reasoning has to begin again, among a generation more conscious than were Bentham and his disciples of the complexity of the problem, and less confident of absolute success. In that search one thing at least is becoming clear. We must aim at finding as many relevant and measurable facts about human nature as possible, and we must attempt to make all of them serviceable in political reasoning. In collecting, that is to say, the material for a political science, we must adopt the method of the biologist, who tries to discover how many common qualities can be observed and measured in a group of related beings, rather than that of the physicist, who constructs, or used to construct, a science out of a single quality common to the whole material world. The facts when collected must, because they are many, be arranged. I believe that it would be found convenient by the political student to arrange them under three main heads: descriptive facts as to the human type; quantitative facts as to inherited variations from that type observed either in individuals or groups of individuals; and facts, both quantitative and descriptive, as to the environment into which men are born, and the observed effect of that environment upon their political actions and impulses. A medical student already attempts to master as many as possible of those facts about the human type that are relevant to his science. The descriptive facts, for instance, of typical human anatomy alone which he has to learn before he can hope to pass his examinations must number many thousands. If he is to remember them so that he can use them in practice, they must be carefully arranged in associated groups. He may find, for instance, that he remembers the anatomical facts about the human eye most easily and correctly by associating them with their evolutionary history, or the facts about the bones of the hand by associating them with the visual image of a hand in an X-ray photograph. The quantitative facts as to variations from the anatomical human type are collected for him in statistical form, and he makes an attempt to acquire the main facts as to hygienic environment when and if he takes the Diploma of Public Health. The student teacher, too, during his period of training acquires a series of facts about the human type, though in his case they are as yet far less numerous, less accurate and less conveniently arranged than those in the medical text-books. If the student of politics followed such an arrangement, he would at least begin his course by mastering a treatise on psychology, containing all those facts about the human type which have been shown by experience to be helpful in politics, and so arranged that the student's knowledge could be most easily recalled when wanted. At present, however, the politician who is trained for his work by reading the best-known treatises on political theory is still in the condition of the medical student trained by the study of Hippocrates or Galen. He is taught a few isolated, and therefore distorted, facts about the human type, about pleasure and pain, perhaps, and the association of ideas, or the influence of habit. He is told that these are selected from the other facts of human nature in order that he may think clearly on the hypothesis of there being no others. What the others may be he is left to discover for himself; but he is likely to assume that they cannot be the subject of effective scientific thought. He learns also a few empirical maxims about liberty and caution and the like, and, after he has read a little of the history of institutions, his political education is complete. It is no wonder that the average layman prefers old politicians, who have forgotten their book-learning, and young doctors who remember theirs.[30] [30] In the winter of 1907-8 I happened, on different occasions, to discuss the method of approaching political science with two young Oxford students. In each case I suggested that it would be well to read a little psychology. Each afterwards told me that he had consulted his tutor and had been told that psychology was 'useless' or 'nonsense.' One tutor, a man of real intellectual distinction, was said to have added the curiously scholastic reason that psychology was 'neither science nor philosophy.' A political thinker so trained is necessarily apt to preserve the conception of human nature which he learnt in his student days in a separate and sacred compartment of his mind, into which the facts of experience, however laboriously and carefully gathered, are not permitted to enter. Professor Ostrogorski published, for instance, in 1902, an important and extraordinarily interesting book on _Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties_, containing the results of fifteen years' close observation of the party system in America and England. The instances given in the book might have been used as the basis of a fairly full account of those facts in the human type which are of importance to the politician--the nature of our impulses, the necessary limitations of our contact with the external world, and the methods of that thinking brain which was evolved in our distant past, and which we have now to put to such new and strange uses. But no indication was given that Professor Ostrogorski's experience had altered in the least degree the conception of human nature with which he started. The facts observed are throughout regretfully contrasted with 'free reason,'[31] 'the general idea of liberty,'[32] 'the sentiments which inspired the men of 1848,'[33] and the book ends with a sketch of a proposed constitution in which the voters are to be required to vote for candidates known to them through declarations of policy 'from which all mention of party is rigorously excluded.'[34] One seems to be reading a series of conscientious observations of the Copernican heavens by a loyal but saddened believer in the Ptolemaic astronomy. [31] _Passim_, e.g., vol. ii. p. 728. [32] _Ibid_., p. 649. [33] _Ibid_., p. 442. [34] _Ibid_., p. 756. Professor Ostrogorski was a distinguished member of the Constitutional Democratic Party in the first Duma of Nicholas II., and must have learnt for himself that if he and his fellows were to get force enough behind them to contend on equal terms with the Russian autocracy they must be a party, trusted and obeyed as a party, and not a casual collection of free individuals. Some day the history of the first Duma will be written, and we shall then know whether Professor Ostrogorski's experience and his faith were at last fused together in the heat of that great struggle. The English translation of Professor Ostrogorski's book is prefaced by an introduction from Mr. James Bryce. This introduction shows that even in the mind of the author of _The American Constitution_ the conception of human nature which he learnt at Oxford still dwells apart. 'In the ideal democracy,' says Mr. Bryce, 'every citizen is intelligent, patriotic, disinterested. His sole wish is to discover the right side in each contested issue, and to fix upon the best man among competing candidates. His common sense, aided by a knowledge of the constitution of his country, enables him to judge wisely between the arguments submitted to him, while his own zeal is sufficient to carry him to the polling booth.'[35] [35] Ostrogorski, vol. i. p. xliv. A few lines further on Mr. Bryce refers to 'the democratic ideal of the intelligent independence of the individual voter, an ideal far removed from the actualities of any State.' What does Mr. Bryce mean by 'ideal democracy'? If it means anything it means the best form of democracy which is consistent with the facts of human nature. But one feels, on reading the whole passage, that Mr. Bryce means by those words the kind of democracy which might be possible if human nature were as he himself would like it to be, and as he was taught at Oxford to think that it was. If so, the passage is a good instance of the effect of our traditional course of study in politics. No doctor would now begin a medical treatise by saying, 'the ideal man requires no food, and is impervious to the action of bacteria, but this ideal is far removed from the actualities of any known population.' No modern treatise on pedagogy begins with the statement that 'the ideal boy knows things without being taught them, and his sole wish is the advancement of science, but no boys at all like this have ever existed.' And what, in a world where causes have effects and effects causes, does 'intelligent independence' mean? Mr. Herman Merivale, successively Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, under-Secretary for the Colonies, and under-Secretary for India, wrote in 1861: 'To retain or to abandon a dominion is not an issue which will ever be determined on the mere balance of profit and loss, or on the more refined but even less powerful motives supplied by abstract political philosophy. The sense of national honour; the pride of blood, the tenacious spirit of self-defence, the sympathies of kindred communities, the instincts of a dominant race, the vague but generous desire to spread our civilisation and our religion over the world; these are impulses which the student in his closet may disregard, but the statesman dares not....'[36] [36] Herman Merivale, _Colonisation_, 1861, 2nd edition. The book is a re-issue, largely re-written, of lectures given at Oxford in 1837. The passage quoted forms part of the 1861 additions, p. 675. What does 'abstract political philosophy' here mean? No medical writer would speak of an 'abstract' anatomical science in which men have no livers, nor would he add that though the student in his closet may disregard the existence of the liver the working physician dares not. Apparently Merivale means the same thing by 'abstract' political philosophy that Mr. Bryce means by 'ideal' democracy. Both refer to a conception of human nature constructed in all good faith by certain eighteenth-century philosophers, which is now no longer exactly believed in, but which, because nothing else has taken its place, still exercises a kind of shadowy authority in a hypothetical universe. The fact that this or that writer speaks of a conception of human nature in which he is ceasing to believe as 'abstract' or 'ideal' may seem to be of merely academic interest. But such half-beliefs produce immense practical effects. Because Merivale saw that the political philosophy which his teachers studied in their closets was inadequate, and because he had nothing to substitute for it, he frankly abandoned any attempt at valid thought on so difficult a question as the relation of the white colonies to the rest of the British Empire. He therefore decided in effect that it ought to be settled by the rule-of-thumb method of 'cutting the painter'; and, since he was the chief official in the Colonial Office at a critical time, his decision, whether it was right or wrong, was not unimportant. Mr. Bryce has been perhaps prevented by the presence in his mind of such a half-belief from making that constructive contribution to general political science for which he is better equipped than any other man of his time. 'I am myself,' he says in the same Introduction, 'an optimist, almost a professional optimist, as indeed politics would be intolerable were not a man grimly resolved to see between the clouds all the blue sky he can.'[37] Imagine an acknowledged leader in chemical research who, finding that experiment did not bear out some traditional formula, should speak of himself as nevertheless 'grimly resolved' to see things from the old and comfortable point of view! [37] _Loc. cit._, p. xliii. The next step in the course of political training which I am advocating would be the quantitative study of the inherited variations of individual men when compared with the 'normal' or 'average' man who had so far served for the study of the type. How is the student to approach this part of the course? Every man differs quantitatively from every other man in respect of every one of his qualities. The student obviously cannot carry in his mind or use for the purposes of thought all the variations even of a single inherited quality which are to be found among the fifteen hundred millions or so of human beings who even at any one moment are in existence. Much less can he ascertain or remember the inter-relation of thousands of inherited qualities in the past history of a race in which individuals are at every moment dying and being born. Mr. H.G. Wells faces this fact in that extremely stimulating essay on 'Scepticism of the Instrument,' which he has appended to his _Modern Utopia_. His answer is that the difficulty is 'of the very smallest importance in all the practical affairs of life, or indeed in relation to anything but philosophy and wide generalisations. But in philosophy it matters profoundly. If I order two new-laid eggs for breakfast, up come two unhatched but still unique avian individuals, and the chances are they serve my rude physiological purpose.'[38] [38] _A Modern Utopia_, p. 381. To the politician, however, the uniqueness of the individual is of enormous importance, not only when he is dealing with 'philosophy and wide generalisations' but in the practical affairs of his daily activity. Even the fowl-breeder does not simply ask for 'two eggs' to put under a hen when he is trying to establish a new variety, and the politician, who is responsible for actual results in an amazingly complicated world, has to deal with more delicate distinctions than the breeder. A statesman who wants two private secretaries, or two generals, or two candidates likely to receive equally enthusiastic support from nonconformists and trade-unionists, does not ask for 'two men.' On this point, however, most writers on political science seem to suggest that after they have described human nature as if all men were in all respects equal to the average man, and have warned their readers of the inexactness of their description, they can do no more. All knowledge of individual variations must be left to individual experience. John Stuart Mill, for instance, in the section on the Logic of the Moral Sciences at the end of his _System of Logic_ implies this, and seems also to imply that any resulting inexactness in the political judgments and forecasts made by students and professors of politics does not involve a large element of error. 'Excepting,' he says, 'the degree of uncertainty, which still exists as to the extent of the natural differences of individual minds, and the physical circumstances on which these may be dependent, (considerations which are of secondary importance when we are considering mankind in the average or _en masse_), I believe most competent judges will agree that the general laws of the different constituent elements of human nature are even now sufficiently understood to render it possible for a competent thinker to deduce from those laws, with a considerable approach to certainty, the particular type of character which would be formed, in mankind generally, by any assumed set of circumstances.'[39] [39] _System of Logic_, Book vi. vol. ii. (1875), p. 462. Few people nowadays would be found to share Mill's belief. It is just because we feel ourselves unable to deduce with any 'approach to certainty' the effect of circumstances upon character, that we all desire to obtain, if it is possible, a more exact idea of human variation than can be arrived at by thinking of mankind 'in the average or _en masse_.' Fortunately the mathematical students of biology, of whom Professor Karl Pearson is the most distinguished leader, are already showing us that facts of inherited variation can be so arranged that we can remember them without having to get by heart millions of isolated instances. Professor Pearson and the other writers in the periodical _Biometrika_ have measured innumerable beech leaves, snails' tongues, human skulls, etc. etc., and have recorded in each case the variations of any quality in a related group of individuals by that which Professor Pearson calls an 'observation frequency polygon,' but which I, in my own thinking, find that I call (from a vague memory of its shape) a 'cocked hat.' Here is a tracing of such a figure, founded on the actual measurement of 25,878 recruits for the United States army. [Illustration: [Transcriber's Description: A line graph of number of recruits vs. height. The horizontal axis is AC, and the line itself is ABC, which is roughly normal.]] The line _ABC_ records, by its distance at successive points from the line _AC_, the number of recruits reaching successive inches of height. It shows, e.g. (as indicated by the dotted lines) that the number of recruits between 5 ft. 11 in. and 6 ft. was about 1500, and the number of those between 5 ft. 7 in. and 5 ft. 8 in. about 4000.[40] [40] This figure is adapted (by the kind permission of the publishers) from one given in Professor K. Pearson's _Chances of Death_, vol. i. p. 277. For the relation between such records of actual observation and the curves resulting from mathematical calculation of known causes of variation, see _ibid._, chap, viii., the paper by the same author on 'Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Evolution,' in vol. 186 (A) of the _Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions_ (1896), and the chapters on evolution in his _Grammar of Science_, 2nd edition. Such figures, when they simply record the results of the fact that the likeness of the offspring to the parent in evolution is constantly inexact, are (like the records of other cases of 'chance' variation) fairly symmetrical, the greatest number of instances being found at the mean, and the descending curves of those above and those below the mean corresponding pretty closely with each other. Boot manufacturers, as the result of experience, construct in effect such a curve, making a large number of boots of the sizes which in length or breadth are near the mean, and a symmetrically diminishing number of the sizes above and below it. In the next chapter I shall deal with the use in reasoning of such curves, either actually 'plotted' or roughly imagined. In this chapter I point out, firstly, that they can be easily remembered (partly because our visual memory is extremely retentive of the image made by a black line on a white surface) and that we can in consequence carry in our minds the quantitative facts as to a number of variations enormously beyond the possibility of memory if they were treated as isolated instances; and secondly, that we can by imagining such curves form a roughly accurate idea of the character of the variations to be expected as to any inherited quality among groups of individuals not yet born or not yet measured. The third and last division under which knowledge of man can be arranged for the purposes of political study consists of the facts of man's environment, and of the effect of environment upon his character and actions. It is the extreme instability and uncertainty of this element which constitutes the special difficulty of politics. The human type and the quantitative distribution of its variations are for the politician, who deals with a few generations only, practically permanent. Man's environment changes with ever-increasing rapidity. The inherited nature of every human being varies indeed from that of every other, but the relative frequency of the most important variations can be forecasted for each generation. The difference, on the other hand, between one man's environment and that of other men can be arranged on no curve and remembered or forecasted by no expedient. Buckle, it is true, attempted to explain the present and prophesy the future intellectual history of modern nations by the help of a few generalisations as to the effect of that small fraction of their environment which consisted of climate. But Buckle failed, and no one has attacked the problem again with anything like his confidence. We can, of course, see that in the environment of any nation or class at any given time there are some facts which constitute for all its members a common experience, and therefore a common influence. Climate is such a fact, or the discovery of America, or the invention of printing, or the rates of wages and prices. All nonconformists are influenced by their memory of certain facts of which very few churchmen are aware, and all Irishmen by facts which most Englishmen try to forget. The student of politics must therefore read history, and particularly the history of those events and habits of thought in the immediate past which are likely to influence the generation in which he will work. But he must constantly be on his guard against the expectation that his reading will give him much power of accurate forecast. Where history shows him that such and such an experiment has succeeded or failed he must always attempt to ascertain how far success or failure was due to facts of the human type, which he may assume to have persisted into his own time, and how far to facts of environment. When he can show that failure was due to the ignoring of some fact of the type and can state definitely what that fact is, he will be able to attach a real meaning to the repeated and unheeded maxims by which the elder members of any generation warn the younger that their ideas are 'against human nature.' But if it is possible that the cause was one of mental environment, that is to say, of habit or tradition, or memory, he should be constantly on his guard against generalisations about national or racial 'character.' One of the most fertile sources of error in modern political thinking consists, indeed, in the ascription to collective habit of that comparative permanence which only belongs to biological inheritance. A whole science can be based upon easy generalisations about Celts and Teutons, or about East and West, and the facts from which the generalisations are drawn may all disappear in a generation. National habits used to change slowly in the past, because new methods of life were seldom invented and only gradually introduced, and because the means of communicating ideas between man and man or nation and nation were extremely imperfect; so that a true statement about a national habit might, and probably would, remain true for centuries. But now an invention which may produce profound changes in social or industrial life is as likely to be taken up with enthusiasm in some country on the other side of the globe as in the place of its origin. A statesman who has anything important to say says it to an audience of five hundred millions next morning, and great events like the Battle of the Sea of Japan begin to produce their effects thousands of miles off within a few hours of their happening. Enough has already occurred under these new conditions to show that the unchanging East may to-morrow enter upon a period of revolution, and that English indifference to ideas or French military ambition are habits which, under a sufficiently extended stimulus, nations can shake off as completely as can individual men. CHAPTER V THE METHOD OF POLITICAL REASONING The traditional method of political reasoning has inevitably shared the defects of its subject-matter. In thinking about politics we seldom penetrate behind those simple entities which form themselves so easily in our minds, or approach in earnest the infinite complexity of the actual world. Political abstractions, such as Justice, or Liberty, or the State, stand in our minds as things having a real existence. The names of political species, 'governments,' or 'rights,' or 'Irishmen,' suggest to us the idea of single 'type specimens'; and we tend, like medieval naturalists, to assume that all the individual members of a species are in all respects identical with the type specimen and with each other. In politics a true proposition in the form of 'All A is B' almost invariably means that a number of individual persons or things possess the quality B in degrees of variation as numerous as are the individuals themselves. We tend, however, under the influence of our words and the mental habits associated with them to think of A either as a single individual possessing the quality B, or as a number of individuals equally possessing that quality. As we read in the newspaper that 'the educated Bengalis are disaffected' we either see, in the half-conscious substratum of visual images which accompanies our reading, a single Babu with a disaffected expression or the vague suggestion of a long row of identical Babus all equally disaffected. These personifications and uniformities, in their turn, tempt us to employ in our political thinking that method of _a priori_ deduction from large and untried generalisations against which natural science from the days of Bacon has always protested. No scientist now argues that the planets move in circles, because planets are perfect, and the circle is a perfect figure, or that any newly discovered plant must be a cure for some disease because nature has given healing properties to all plants. But 'logical' democrats still argue in America that, because all men are equal, political offices ought to go by rotation, and 'logical' collectivists sometimes argue from the 'principle' that the State should own all the means of production to the conclusion that all railway managers should be elected by universal suffrage. In natural science, again, the conception of the plurality and interaction of causes has become part of our habitual mental furniture; but in politics both the book-learned student and the man in the street may be heard to talk as if each result had only one cause. If the question, for instance, of the Anglo-Japanese alliance is raised, any two politicians, whether they are tramps on the outskirts of a Hyde Park crowd or Heads of Colleges writing to the _Times_, are not unlikely to argue, one, that all nations are suspicious, and that therefore the alliance must certainly fail, and the other that all nations are guided by their interests, and that therefore the alliance must certainly succeed. The Landlord of the 'Rainbow' in _Silas Marner_ had listened to many thousands of political discussions before he adopted his formula, 'The truth lies atween you: you're both right and both wrong, as I allays say.' In Economics the danger of treating abstract and uniform words as if they were equivalent to abstract and uniform things has now been recognised for the last half century. When this recognition began, it was objected by the followers of the 'classical' Political Economy that abstraction was a necessary condition of thought, and that all dangers arising from it would be avoided if we saw clearly what it was that we were doing. Bagehot, who stood at the meeting-point of the old Economics and the new, wrote about 1876:-- 'Political Economy ... is an abstract science, just as statics and dynamics are deductive sciences. And in consequence, it deals with an unreal and imaginary subject, ... not with the entire real man as we know him in fact, but with a simpler imaginary man....'[41] [41] _Economic Studies_ (Longmans, 1895), p. 97. He goes on to urge that the real and complex man can be depicted by printing on our minds a succession of different imaginary simple men. 'The maxim of science,' he says, 'is that of common-sense--simple cases first; begin with seeing how the main force acts when there is as little as possible to impede it, and when you thoroughly comprehend that, add to it in succession the separate effects of each of the encumbering and interfering agencies.'[42] [42] _Ibid._, p. 98. But this process of mental chromolithography, though it is sometimes a good way of learning a science, is not a way of using it; and Bagehot gives no indication how his complex picture of man, formed from successive layers of abstraction, is to be actually employed in forecasting economic results. When Jevons published his _Theory of Political Economy_ in 1871, it was already widely felt that a simple imaginary man, or even a composite picture made up of a series of different simple imaginary men, although useful in answering examination questions, was of very little use in drafting a Factory Act or arbitrating on a sliding scale of wages. Jevons therefore based his economic method upon the variety and not the uniformity of individual instances. He arranged the hours of labour in a working day, or the units of satisfaction from spending money, on curves of increase and decrease, and employed mathematical methods to indicate the point where one curve, whether representing an imaginary estimate or a record of ascertained facts, would cut the others to the best advantage. Here was something which corresponded, however roughly, to the process by which practical people arrive at practical and responsible results. A railway manager who wishes to discover the highest rate of charges which his traffic will bear is not interested if he is told that the rate when fixed will have been due to the law that all men seek to obtain wealth with as little effort as possible, modified in its working by men's unwillingness to break an established business habit. He wants a method which, instead of merely providing him with a verbal 'explanation' of what has happened, will enable him to form a quantitative estimate of what under given circumstances will happen. He can, however, and, I believe, now often does, use the Jevonian method to work out definite results in half-pennies and tons from the intersection of plotted curves recording actual statistics of rates and traffic. Since Jevons's time the method which he initiated has been steadily extended; economic and statistical processes have become more nearly assimilated, and problems of fatigue or acquired skill, of family affection and personal thrift, of management by the _entrepreneur_ or the paid official, have been stated and argued in quantitative form. As Professor Marshall said the other day, _qualitative_ reasoning in economics is passing away and _quantitative_ reasoning is beginning to take its place.[43] [43] _Journal of Economics_, March 1907, pp. 7 and 8. 'What by chemical analogy may be called qualitative analysis has done the greater part of its work.... Much less progress has indeed been made towards the quantitative determination of the relative strength of different economic forces. That higher and more difficult task must wait upon the slow growth of thorough realistic statistics.' How far is a similar change of method possible in the discussion not of industrial and financial processes but of the structure and working of political institutions? It is of course easy to pick out political questions which can obviously be treated by quantitative methods. One may take, for instance, the problem of the best size for a debating hall, to be used, say, by the Federal Deliberative Assembly of the British Empire--assuming that the shape is already settled. The main elements of the problem are that the hall should be large enough to accommodate with dignity a number of members sufficient both for the representation of interests and the carrying out of committee work, and not too large for each member to listen without strain to a debate. The resultant size will represent a compromise among these elements, accommodating a number smaller than would be desirable if the need of representation and dignity alone were to be considered, and larger than it would be if the convenience of debate alone were considered. A body of economists could agree to plot out or imagine a succession of 'curves' representing the advantage to be obtained from each additional unit of size in dignity, adequacy of representation, supply of members for committee work, healthiness, etc., and the disadvantage of each additional unit of size as affecting convenience of debate, etc. The curves of dignity and adequacy might be the result of direct estimation. The curve of marginal convenience in audibility would be founded upon actual 'polygons of variation' recording measurements of the distance at which a sufficient number of individuals of the classes and ages expected could hear and make themselves heard in a room of that shape. The economists might further, after discussion, agree on the relative importance of each element to the final decision, and might give effect to their agreement by the familiar statistical device of 'weighting.' The answer would perhaps provide fourteen square feet on the floor in a room twenty-six feet high for each of three hundred and seventeen members. There would, when the answer was settled, be a 'marginal' man in point of hearing (representing, perhaps, an average healthy man of seventy-four), who would be unable or just able to hear the 'marginal' man in point of clearness of speech--who might represent (on a polygon specially drawn up by the Oxford Professor of Biology) the least audible but two of the tutors at Balliol. The marginal point on the curve of the decreasing utility of successive increments of members from the point of view of committee work might show, perhaps, that such work must either be reduced to a point far below that which is usual in national parliaments, or must be done very largely by persons not members of the assembly itself. The aesthetic curve of dignity might be cut at the point where the President of the Society of British Architects could just be induced not to write to the _Times_. Any discussion which took place on such lines, even although the curves were mere forms of speech, would be real and practical. Instead of one man reiterating that the Parliament Hall of a great empire ought to represent the dignity of its task, and another man answering that a debating assembly which cannot debate is of no use, both would be forced to ask 'How much dignity'? and 'How much debating convenience'? As it is, this particular question seems often to be settled by the architect, who is deeply concerned with aesthetic effect, and not at all concerned with debating convenience. The reasons that he gives in his reports seem convincing, because the other considerations are not in the minds of the Building Committee, who think of one element only of the problem at a time and make no attempt to co-ordinate all the elements. Otherwise it would be impossible to explain the fact that the Debating Hall, for instance, of the House of Representatives at Washington is no more fitted for debates carried on by human beings than would a spoon ten feet broad be fitted for the eating of soup. The able leaders of the National Congress movement in India made the same mistake in 1907, when they arranged, with their minds set only on the need of an impressive display, that difficult and exciting questions of tactics should be discussed by about fifteen hundred delegates in a huge tent, and in the presence of a crowd of nearly ten thousand spectators. I am afraid that it is not unlikely that the London County Council may also despise the quantitative method of reasoning on such questions, and may find themselves in 1912 provided with a new hall admirably adapted to illustrate the dignity of London and the genius of their architect, but unfitted for any other purpose. Nor is the essence of the quantitative method changed when the answer is to be found, not in one, but in several 'unknown quantities.' Take, for instance, the question as to the best types of elementary school to be provided in London. If it were assumed that only one type of school was to be provided, the problem would be stated in the same form as that of the size of the Debating Hall. But it is possible in most London districts to provide within easy walking distance of every child four or five schools of different types, and the problem becomes that of so choosing a limited number of types as to secure that the degree of 'misfit' between child and curriculum shall be as small as possible. If we treat the general aptitude (or 'cleverness') of the children as differing only by more or less, the problem becomes one of fitting the types of school to a fairly exactly ascertainable polygon of intellectual variation. It might appear then that the best results would come from the provision, say, of five types of schools providing respectively for the 2 per cent, of greatest natural cleverness, the succeeding 10 per cent., the intermediate 76 per cent., the comparatively sub-normal 10 per cent., and the 2 per cent, of 'mentally deficient.' That is to say the local authority would have to provide in that proportion Secondary, Higher Grade, Ordinary, Sub-Normal, and Mentally Deficient schools. A general improvement in nutrition and other home circumstances might tend to 'steepen' the polygon of variation, i.e. to bring more children near the normal, or it might increase the number of children with exceptional inherited cleverness who were able to reveal that fact, and so 'flatten' it; and either case might make a change desirable in the best proportion between the types of schools or even in the number of the types. It would be more difficult to induce a committee of politicians to agree on the plotting of curves, representing the social advantage to be obtained by the successive increments of satisfaction in an urban industrial population of those needs which are indicated by the terms Socialism and Individualism. They could, however, be brought to admit that the discovery of curves for that purpose is a matter of observation and inquiry, and that the best possible distribution of social duties between the individual and the state would cut both at some point or other. For many Socialists and Individualists the mere attempt to think in such a way of their problem would be an extremely valuable exercise. If a Socialist and an Individualist were required even to ask themselves the question, 'How much Socialism'? or 'How much Individualism'? a basis of real discussion would be arrived at--even in the impossible case that one should answer, 'All Individualism and no Socialism,' and the other, 'All Socialism and no Individualism.' The fact, of course, that each step towards either Socialism or Individualism changes the character of the other elements in the problem, or the fact that an invention like printing, or representative government, or Civil Service examinations, or the Utilitarian philosophy, may make it possible to provide greatly increased satisfaction both to Socialist and Individualist desires, complicates the question, but does not alter its quantitative character. The essential point is that in every case in which a political thinker is able to adopt what Professor Marshall calls the quantitative method of reasoning, his vocabulary and method, instead of constantly suggesting a false simplicity, warn him that every individual instance with which he deals is different from any other, that any effect is a function of many variable causes, and, therefore, that no estimate of the result of any act can be accurate unless all its conditions and their relative importance are taken into account. But how far are such quantitative methods possible when a statesman is dealing, neither with an obviously quantitative problem, like the building of halls or schools, nor with an attempt to give quantitative meaning to abstract terms like Socialism or Individualism, but with the enormous complexity of responsible legislation? In approaching this question we shall be helped if we keep before us a description of the way in which some one statesman has, in fact, thought of a great constitutional problem. Take, for instance, the indications which Mr. Morley gives of the thinking done by Gladstone on Home Rule during the autumn and winter of 1885-86. Gladstone, we are told, had already, for many years past, pondered anxiously at intervals about Ireland, and now he describes himself as 'thinking incessantly about the matter' (vol. iii. p. 268), and 'preparing myself by study and reflection' (p. 273). He has first to consider the state of feeling in England and Ireland, and to calculate to what extent and under what influences it may be expected to change. As to English feeling, 'what I expect,' he says, 'is a healthy slow fermentation in many minds working towards the final product' (p. 261). The Irish desire for self-government, on the other hand, will not change, and must be taken, within the time-limit of his problem, as 'fixed' (p. 240). In both England and Ireland, however, he believes that 'mutual attachment' may grow (p. 292). Before making up his mind in favour of some kind of Home Rule, he examines every thinkable alternative, especially the development of Irish County Government, or a Federal arrangement in which all three of the united kingdoms would be concerned. Here and there he finds suggestions in the history of Austria-Hungary, of Norway and Sweden, or of the 'colonial type' of government. Nearly every day he reads Burke, and exclaims 'what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America' (p. 280). He gets much help from 'a chapter on semi-sovereign assemblies in Dicey's _Law of the Constitution_ (p. 280). He tries to see the question from fresh points of view in intimate personal discussions, and by imagining what 'the civilised world' (p. 225) will think. As he gets nearer to his subject, he has definite statistical reports made for him by 'Welby and Hamilton on the figures' (p. 306), has 'stiff conclaves about finance and land' (p. 298), and nearly comes to a final split with Parnell on the question whether the Irish contribution to Imperial taxation shall be a fifteenth or a twentieth. Time and persons are important factors in his calculation. If Lord Salisbury will consent to introduce some measure of Irish self-government, the problem will be fundamentally altered, and the same will happen if the general election produces a Liberal majority independent of both Irish and Conservatives; and Mr. Morley describes as underlying all his calculations 'the irresistible attraction for him of all the grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government' (p. 260). It is not likely that Mr. Morley's narrative touches on more than a fraction of the questions which must have been in Gladstone's mind during these months of incessant thought. No mention is made, for instance, of religion, or of the military position, or of the permanent possibility of enforcing the proposed restrictions on self-government. But enough is given to show the complexity of political thought at that stage when a statesman, still uncommitted, is considering what will be the effect of a new political departure. What then was the logical process by which Gladstone's final decision was arrived at? Did he for instance deal with a succession of simple problems or with one complex problem? It is, I think, clear that from time to time isolated and comparatively simple trains of reasoning were followed up; but it is also clear that Gladstone's main effort of thought was involved in the process of co-ordinating all the laboriously collected contents of his mind onto the whole problem. This is emphasised by a quotation in which Mr. Morley, who was closely associated with Gladstone's intellectual toil during this period, indicates his own recollection. 'Historians,' he quotes from Professor Gardiner, 'coolly dissect a man's thoughts as they please; and label them like specimens in a naturalist's cabinet. Such a thing, they argue, was done for mere personal aggrandisement; such a thing for national objects, such a thing from high religious motives. In real life we may be sure it was not so' (p. 277). And it is clear that in spite of the ease and delight with which Gladstone's mind moved among 'the eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government,' he is seeking throughout for a quantitative solution. 'Home Rule' is no simple entity for him. He realises that the number of possible schemes for Irish government is infinite, and he attempts to make at every point in his own scheme a delicate adjustment between many varying forces. A large part of this work of complex co-ordination was apparently in Mr. Gladstone's case unconscious. Throughout the chapters one has the feeling--which any one who has had to make less important political decisions can parallel from his own experience--that Gladstone was waiting for indications of a solution to appear in his mind. He was conscious of his effort, conscious also that his effort was being directed simultaneously towards many different considerations, but largely unconscious of the actual process of inference, which went on perhaps more rapidly when he was asleep, or thinking of something else, than when he was awake and attentive. A phrase of Mr. Morley's indicates a feeling with which every politician is familiar. 'The reader,' he says,'knows in what direction the main current of Mr. Gladstone's thought must have been setting' (p. 236). That is to say, we are watching an operation rather of art than of science, of long experience and trained faculty rather than of conscious method. But the history of human progress consists in the gradual and partial substitution of science for art, of the power over nature acquired in youth by study, for that which comes in late middle age as the half-conscious result of experience. Our problem therefore involves the further question, whether those forms of political thought which correspond to the complexity of nature are teachable or not? At present they are not often taught. In every generation thousands of young men and women are attracted to politics because their intellects are keener, and their sympathies wider than those of their fellows. They become followers of Liberalism or Imperialism, of Scientific Socialism or the Rights of Men or Women. To them, at first, Liberalism and the Empire, Rights and Principles, are real and simple things. Or, like Shelley, they see in the whole human race an infinite repetition of uniform individuals, the 'millions on millions' who 'wait, firm, rapid, and elate.'[44] [44] Shelley, _Poetical Works_ (H.B. Forman), vol. iv. p. 8. About all these things they argue by the old _a priori_ methods which we have inherited with our political language. But after a time a sense of unreality grows upon them. Knowledge of the complex and difficult world forces itself into their minds. Like the old Chartists with whom I once spent an evening, they tell you that their politics have been 'all talk'--all words--and there are few among them, except those to whom politics has become a profession or a career, who hold on until through weariness and disappointment they learn new confidence from new knowledge. Most men, after the first disappointment, fall back on habit or party spirit for their political opinions and actions. Having ceased to think of their unknown fellow citizens as uniform repetitions of a simple type, they cease to think of them at all; and content themselves with using party phrases about the mass of mankind, and realising the individual existence of their casual neighbours. Wordsworth's _Prelude_ describes with pathetic clearness a mental history, which must have been that of many thousands of men who could not write great poetry, and whose moral and intellectual forces have been blunted and wasted by political disillusionment. He tells us that the 'man' whom he loved in 1792, when the French Revolution was still at its dawn, was seen in 1798 to be merely 'the composition of the brain.' After agonies of despair and baffled affection, he saw 'the individual man ... the man whom we behold with our own eyes.'[45] But in that change from a false simplification of the whole to the mere contemplation of the individual, Wordsworth's power of estimating political forces or helping in political progress was gone for ever. [45] _The Prelude_, Bk. XIII., ll. 81-84. If this constantly repeated disappointment is to cease, quantitative method must spread in politics and must transform the vocabulary and the associations of that mental world into which the young politician enters. Fortunately such a change seems at least to be beginning. Every year larger and more exact collections of detailed political facts are being accumulated; and collections of detailed facts, if they are to be used at all in political reasoning, must be used quantitatively. The intellectual work of preparing legislation, whether carried on by permanent officials or Royal Commissions or Cabinet Ministers takes every year a more quantitative and a less qualitative form. Compare for instance the methods of the present Commission on the Poor Law with those of the celebrated and extraordinarily able Commission which drew up the new Poor Law in 1833-34. The argument of the earlier Commissioners' Report runs on lines which it would be easy to put in _a priori_ syllogistic form. All men seek pleasure and avoid pain. Society ought to secure that pain attaches to anti-social, and pleasure to social conduct. This may be done by making every man's livelihood and that of his children normally dependent upon his own exertions, by separating those destitute persons who cannot do work useful to the community from those who can, and by presenting these last with the alternative of voluntary effort or painful restriction. This leads to 'a principle which we find universally admitted, even by those whose practice is at variance with it, that the situation [of the pauper] on the whole shall not be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class.'[46] The _a priori_ argument is admirably illustrated by instances, reported by the sub-commissioners or given in evidence before the Commission, indicating that labouring men will not exert themselves unless they are offered the alternative of starvation or rigorous confinement, though no attempt is made to estimate the proportion of the working population of England whose character and conduct is represented by each instance. [46] _First Report of the Poor Law Commission_, 1834 (reprinted 1894), p. 187. This _a priori_ deduction, illustrated, but not proved by particular instances, is throughout so clear and so easily apprehended by the ordinary man that the revolutionary Bill of 1834, which affected all sorts of vested interests, passed the House of Commons by a majority of four to one and the House of Lords by a majority of six to one. The Poor Law Commission of 1905, on the other hand, though it contains many members trained in the traditions of 1834, is being driven, by the mere necessity of dealing with the mass of varied evidence before it, onto new lines. Instead of assuming half consciously that human energy is dependent solely on the working of the human will in the presence of the ideas of pleasure and pain, the Commissioners are forced to tabulate and consider innumerable quantitative observations relating to the very many factors affecting the will of paupers and possible paupers. They cannot, for instance, avoid the task of estimating the relative industrial effectiveness of health, which depends upon decent surroundings; of hope, which may be made possible by State provision for old age; and of the imaginative range which is the result of education; and of comparing all these with the 'purely economic' motive created by ideas of future pleasure and pain. The evidence before the Commission is, that is to say, collected not to illustrate general propositions otherwise established, but to provide quantitative answers to quantitative questions; and instances are in each case accumulated according to a well-known statistical rule until the repetition of results shows that further accumulation would be useless. In 1834 it was enough, in dealing with the political machinery of the Poor Law, to argue that, since all men desire their own interest, the ratepayers would elect guardians who would, up to the limit of their knowledge, advance the interests of the whole community; provided that electoral areas were created in which all sectional interests were represented, and that voting power were given to each ratepayer in proportion to his interest. It did not then seem to matter much whether the areas chosen were new or old, or whether the body elected had other duties or not. In 1908, on the other hand, it is felt to be necessary to seek for all the causes which are likely to influence the mind of the ratepayer or candidate during an election, and to estimate by such evidence as is available their relative importance. It has to be considered, for instance, whether men vote best in areas where they keep up habits of political action in connection with parliamentary as well as municipal contests; and whether an election involving other points besides poor-law administration is more likely to create interest among the electorate. If more than one election, again, is held in a district in any year it may be found by the record of the percentage of votes that electoral enthusiasm diminishes for each additional contest along a very rapidly descending curve. The final decisions that will be taken either by the Commission or by Parliament on questions of administrative policy and electoral machinery must therefore involve the balancing of all these and many other considerations by an essentially quantitative process. The line, that is to say, which ultimately cuts the curves indicated by the evidence will allow less weight either to anxiety for the future as a motive for exertion, or to personal health as increasing personal efficiency, than would be given to either if it were the sole factor to be considered. There will be more 'bureaucracy' than would be desirable if it were not for the need of economising the energies of the elected representatives, and less bureaucracy than there would be if it were not desirable to retain popular sympathy and consent. Throughout the argument the population of England will be looked upon not (as John Stuart Mill would have said) 'on the average or _en masse_,'[47] but as consisting of individuals who can be arranged in 'polygons of variation' according to their nervous and physical strength, their 'character' and the degree to which ideas of the future are likely to affect their present conduct. [47] See p. 132. Meanwhile the public which will discuss the Report has changed since 1834. Newspaper writers, in discussing the problem of destitution, tend now to use, not general terms applied to whole social classes like the 'poor,' 'the working class,' or 'the lower orders,' but terms expressing quantitative estimates of individual variations, like 'the submerged tenth,' or the 'unemployable'; while every newspaper reader is fairly familiar with the figures in the Board of Trade monthly returns which record seasonal and periodical variations of actual unemployment among Trade Unionists. One could give many other instances of this beginning of a tendency in political thinking, to change from qualitative to quantitative forms of argument. But perhaps it will be sufficient to give one relating to international politics. 'Sixty years ago sovereignty was a simple question of quality. Austin had demonstrated that there must be a sovereign everywhere, and that sovereignty, whether in the hands of an autocracy or a republic, must be absolute. But the Congress which in 1885 sat at Berlin to prevent the partition of Africa from causing a series of European wars as long as those caused by the partition of America, was compelled by the complexity of the problems before it to approach the question of sovereignty on quantitative lines. Since 1885 therefore every one has become familiar with the terms then invented to express gradations of sovereignty: 'Effective occupation,' 'Hinterland,' 'Sphere of Influence'--to which the Algeçiras Conference has perhaps added a lowest grade, 'Sphere of Legitimate Aspiration.' It is already as unimportant to decide whether a given region is British territory or not, as it is to decide whether a bar containing a certain percentage of carbon should be called iron or steel. Even in thinking of the smallest subdivisions of observed political fact some men escape the temptation to ignore individual differences. I remember that the man who has perhaps done more than any one else in England to make a statistical basis for industrial legislation possible, once told me that he had been spending the whole day in classifying under a few heads thousands of 'railway accidents,' every one of which differed in its circumstances from any other; and that he felt like the bewildered porter in _Punch_, who had to arrange the subleties of nature according to the unsubtle tariff-schedule of his company. 'Cats,' he quoted the porter as saying, 'is dogs, and guinea-pigs is dogs, but this 'ere tortoise is a hinsect.' But it must constantly be remembered that quantitative thinking does not necessarily or even generally mean thinking in terms of numerical statistics. Number, which obliterates all distinction between the units numbered, is not the only, nor always even the most exact means of representing quantitative facts. A picture, for instance, may be sometimes nearer to quantitative truth, more easily remembered and more useful for purposes of argument and verification than a row of figures. The most exact quantitative political document that I ever saw was a set of photographs of all the women admitted into an inebriate home. The photographs demonstrated, more precisely than any record of approximate measurements could have done, the varying facts of physical and nervous structure. It would have been easily possible for a committee of medical men to have arranged the photographs in a series of increasing abnormality, and to have indicated the photograph of the 'marginal' woman in whose case, after allowing for considerations of expense, and for the desirability of encouraging individual responsibility, the State should undertake temporary or permanent control. And the record was one which no one who had ever seen it could forget. The political thinker has indeed sometimes to imitate the cabinet-maker, who discards his most finely divided numerical rule for some kinds of specially delicate work, and trusts to his sense of touch for a quantitative estimation. The most exact estimation possible of a political problem may have been contrived when a group of men, differing in origin, education, and mental type, first establish an approximate agreement as to the probable results of a series of possible political alternatives involving, say, increasing or decreasing state interference, and then discover the point where their 'liking' turns into 'disliking.' Man is the measure of man, and he may still be using a quantitative process even though he chooses in each case that method of measurement which is least affected by the imperfection of his powers. But it is just in the cases where numerical calculation is impossible or unsuitable that the politician is likely to get most help by using consciously quantitative conceptions. An objection has been urged against the adoption of political reasoning either implicitly or explicitly quantitative, that it involves the balancing against each other of things essentially disparate. How is one, it is asked, to balance the marginal unit of national honour involved in the continuance of a war with that marginal unit of extra taxation which is supposed to be its exact equivalent? How is one to balance the final sovereign spent on the endowment of science with the final sovereign spent on a monument to a deceased scientist, or on the final detail in a scheme of old age pensions? The obvious answer is that statesmen have to act, and that whoever acts does somehow balance all the alternatives which are before him. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his annual allocation of grants and remissions of taxation balances no stranger things than does the private citizen, who, having a pound or two to spend at Christmas, decides between subscribing to a Chinese Mission and providing a revolving hatch between his kitchen and his dining-room. A more serious objection is that we ought not to allow ourselves to think quantitatively in politics, that to do so fritters away the plain consideration of principle. 'Logical principles' may be only an inadequate representation of the subtlety of nature, but to abandon them is, it is contended, to become a mere opportunist. In the minds of these objectors the only alternative to deductive thought from simple principles seems to be the attitude of Prince Bülow, in his speech in the Reichstag on universal suffrage. He is reported to have said:--'Only the most doctrinaire Socialists still regarded universal and direct suffrage as a fetish and as an infallible dogma. For his own part he was no worshipper of idols, and he did not believe in political dogmas. The welfare and the liberty of a country did not depend either in whole or in part upon the form of its Constitution or of its franchise. Herr Bebel had once said that on the whole he preferred English conditions even to conditions in France. But in England the franchise was not universal, equal, and direct. Could it be said that Mecklenburg, which had no popular suffrage at all, was governed worse than Haiti, of which the world had lately heard such strange news, although Haiti could boast of possessing universal suffrage?'[48] [48] _Times_, March 27, 1908. But what Prince Bülow's speech showed, was that he was either deliberately parodying a style of scholastic reasoning with which he did not agree, or he was incapable of grasping the first conception of quantitative political thought. If the 'dogma' of universal suffrage means the assertion that all men who have votes are thereby made identical with each other in all respects, and that universal suffrage is the one condition of good government, then, and then only, is his attack on it valid. If, however, the desire for universal suffrage is based on the belief that a wide extension of political power is one of the most important elements in the conditions of good government--racial aptitude, ministerial responsibility, and the like, being other elements--then the speech is absolutely meaningless. But Prince Bülow was making a parliamentary speech, and in parliamentary oratory that change from qualitative to quantitative method which has so deeply affected the procedure of Conferences and Commissions has not yet made much progress. In a 'full-dress' debate even those speeches which move us most often recall Mr. Gladstone, in whose mind, as soon as he stood up to speak, his Eton and Oxford training in words always contended with his experience of things, and who never made it quite clear whether the 'grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government' meant that certain elements must be of great and permanent importance in every problem of Church and State, or that an _a priori_ solution of all political problems could be deduced by all good men from absolute and authoritative laws. PART II _Possibilities of Progress_ CHAPTER I POLITICAL MORALITY In the preceding chapters I have argued that the efficiency of political science, its power, that is to say, of forecasting the results of political causes, is likely to increase. I based my argument on two facts, firstly, that modern psychology offers us a conception of human nature much truer, though more complex, than that which is associated with the traditional English political philosophy; and secondly, that, under the influence and example of the natural sciences, political thinkers are already beginning to use in their discussions and inquiries quantitative rather than merely qualitative words and methods, and are able therefore both to state their problems more fully and to answer them with a greater approximation to accuracy. In this argument it was not necessary to ask how far such an improvement in the science of politics is likely to influence the actual course of political history. Whatever may be the best way of discovering truth will remain the best, whether the mass of mankind choose to follow it or not. But politics are studied, as Aristotle said, 'for the sake of action rather than of knowledge,'[49] and the student is bound, sooner or later, to ask himself what will be the effect of a change in his science upon that political world in which he lives and works. [49] _Ethics_, Bk. I. ch. iii. (6). [Greek: epeidê tò telos [tês politikês] estìn ou gnêsis allà praxis.] One can imagine, for instance, that a professor of politics in Columbia University, who had just taken part as a 'Mugwump' in a well-fought but entirely unsuccessful campaign against Tammany Hall, might say: 'The finer and more accurate the processes of political science become, the less do they count in politics. Astronomers invent every year more delicate methods of forecasting the movements of the stars, but cannot with all their skill divert one star an inch from its course. So we students of politics will find that our growing knowledge brings us only a growing sense of helplessness. We may learn from our science to estimate exactly the forces exerted by the syndicated newspaper press, by the liquor saloons, or by the blind instincts of class and nationality and race; but how can we learn to control them? The fact that we think about these things in a new way will not win elections or prevent wars.' I propose, therefore, in this second part of my book to discuss how far the new tendencies which are beginning to transform the science of politics are likely also to make themselves felt as a new political force. I shall try to estimate the probable influence of these tendencies, not only on the student or the trained politician, but on the ordinary citizen whom political science reaches only at second or third hand; and, with that intention, shall treat in successive chapters their relation to our ideals of political morality, to the form and working of the representative and official machinery of the State, and to the possibilities of international and inter-racial understanding. This chapter deals from that point of view with their probable influence on political morality. In using that term I do not mean to imply that certain acts are moral when done from political motives which would not be moral if done from other motives, or _vice versâ_, but to emphasise the fact that there are certain ethical questions which can only be studied in close connection with political science. There are, of course, points of conduct which are common to all occupations. We must all try to be kind, and honest, and industrious, and we expect the general teachers of morals to help us to do so. But every occupation has also its special problems, which must be stated by its own students before they can be dealt with by the moralist at all. In politics the most important of these special questions of conduct is concerned with the relation between the process by which the politician forms his own opinions and purposes, and that by which he influences the opinions and purposes of others. A hundred or even fifty years ago, those who worked for a democracy of which they had had as yet no experience felt no misgivings on this point They looked on reasoning, not as a difficult and uncertain process, but as the necessary and automatic working of man's mind when faced by problems affecting his interest. They assumed, therefore, that the citizens under a democracy would necessarily be guided by reason in the use of their votes, that those politicians would be most successful who made their own conclusions and the grounds for them most clear to others, and that good government would be secured if the voters had sufficient opportunities of listening to free and sincere discussion. A candidate to-day who comes fresh from his books to the platform almost inevitably begins by making the same assumption. He prepares his speeches and writes his address with the conviction that on his demonstration of the relation between political causes and effects will depend the result of the election. Perhaps his first shock will come from that maxim which every professional agent repeats over and over again to every candidate, 'Meetings are no good.' Those who attend meetings are, he is told, in nine cases out of ten, already loyal and habitual supporters of his party. If his speeches are logically unanswerable the chief political importance of that fact is to be found, not in his power of convincing those who are already convinced, but in the greater enthusiasm and willingness to canvass which may be produced among his supporters by their admiration of him as a speaker. Later on he learns to estimate the way in which his address and that of his opponent appeal to the constituents. He may, for instance, become suddenly aware of the attitude of mind with which he himself opens the envelopes containing other candidates addresses in some election (of Poor Law Guardians, for instance), in which he is not specially interested, and of the fact that his attention is either not aroused at all, or is only aroused by words and phrases which recall some habitual train of thought. By the time that he has become sufficiently confident or important to draw up a political programme for himself, he understands the limits within which any utterance must be confined that is addressed to large numbers of voters--the fact that proposals are only to be brought 'within the sphere of practical politics' which are simple, striking, and carefully adapted to the half-conscious memories and likes and dislikes of busy men. All this means that his own power of political reasoning is being trained. He is learning that every man differs from every other man in his interests, his intellectual habits and powers, and his experience, and that success in the control of political forces depends on a recognition of this and a careful appreciation of the common factors of human nature. But meanwhile it is increasingly difficult for him to believe that he is appealing to the same process of reasoning in his hearers as that by which he reaches his own conclusions. He tends, that is to say, to think of the voters as the subject-matter rather than the sharers of his thoughts. He, like Plato's sophist, is learning what the public is, and is beginning to understand 'the passions and desires' of that 'huge and powerful brute, how to approach and handle it, at what times it becomes fiercest and most gentle, on what occasions it utters its several cries, and what sounds made by others soothe or irritate it.'[50] If he resolutely guards himself against the danger of passing from one illusion to another, he may still remember that he is not the only man in the constituency who has reasoned and is reasoning about politics. If he does personal canvassing he may meet sometimes a middle-aged working man, living nearer than himself to the facts of life, and may find that this constituent of his has reasoned patiently and deeply on politics for thirty years, and that he himself is a rather absurd item in the material of that reasoning. Or he may talk with a business man, and be forced to understand some one who sees perhaps more clearly than himself the results of his proposals, but who is separated from him by the gulf of a difference of desire: that which one hopes the other fears. [50] Plato, _Republic_, p. 493. Yet however sincerely such a candidate may respect the process by which the more thoughtful both of those who vote for him and of those who vote against him reach their conclusions, he is still apt to feel that his own part in the election has little to do with any reasoning process at all. I remember that before my first election my most experienced political friend said to me, 'Remember that you are undertaking a six weeks' advertising campaign.' Time is short, there are innumerable details to arrange, and the candidate soon returns from the rare intervals of mental contact with individual electors to that advertising campaign which deals with the electors as a whole. As long as he is so engaged, the maxim that it is wrong to appeal to anything but the severest process of logical thought in his constituents will seem to him, if he has time to think of it, not so much untrue as irrelevant. After a time the politician may cease even to desire to reason with his constituents, and may come to regard them as purely irrational creatures of feeling and opinion, and himself as the purely rational 'over-man' who controls them. It is at this point that a resolute and able statesman may become most efficient and most dangerous. Bolingbroke, while he was trying to teach his 'Patriot King' how to govern men by understanding them, spoke in a haunting phrase of 'that staring timid creature man.'[51] A century before Darwin he, like Swift and Plato, was able by sheer intellectual detachment to see his fellow-men as animals. He himself, he thought, was one of those few 'among the societies of men ... who engross almost the whole reason of the species, who are born to instruct, to guide, and to preserve, who are designed to be the tutors and the guardians of human kind.'[52] For the rest, 'Reason has small effect upon numbers: a turn of imagination, often as violent and as sudden as a gust of wind, determines their conduct.'[53] [51] _Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism_, etc. (ed. of 1785), p. 70. [52] _Ibid._, p. 2. [53] _Ibid._, p. 165. The greatest of Bolingbroke's disciples was Disraeli, who wrote, 'We are not indebted to the Reason of man for any of the great achievements which are the landmarks of human action and human progress.... Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. Even Mormon accounts more votaries than Bentham.'[54] It was Disraeli who treated Queen Victoria 'like a woman,' and Gladstone, with the Oxford training from which he never fully recovered, who treated her 'like a public meeting.' [54] _Coningsby_, ch. xiii. In spite of Disraeli's essentially kindly spirit, his calculated play upon the instincts of the nation which he governed seemed to many in his time to introduce a cold and ruthless element into politics, which seemed colder and more ruthless when it appeared in the less kindly character of his disciple Lord Randolph Churchill. But the same ruthlessness is often found now, and may perhaps be more often found in the future, whenever any one is sufficiently concentrated on some political end to break through all intellectual or ethical conventions that stand in his way. I remember a long talk, a good many years ago, with one of the leaders of the Russian terrorist movement. He said, 'It is no use arguing with the peasants even if we were permitted to do so. They are influenced by events not words. If we kill a Tzar, or a Grand Duke, or a minister, our movement becomes something which exists and counts with them, otherwise, as far as they are concerned, it does not exist at all.' In war, the vague political tradition that there is something unfair in influencing the will of one's fellow-men otherwise than by argument does not exist. This was what Napoleon meant when he said, '� la guerre, tout est moral, et le moral et l'opinion font plus de la moitié de la réalité.'[55] And it is curious to observe that when men are consciously or half-consciously determining to ignore that tradition they drop into the language of warfare. Twenty years ago, the expression 'Class-war' was constantly used among English Socialists to justify the proposal that a Socialist party should adopt those methods of parliamentary terrorism (as opposed to parliamentary argument) which had been invented by Parnell. When Lord Lansdowne in 1906 proposed to the House of Lords that they should abandon any calculation of the good or bad administrative effect of measures sent to them from the Liberal House of Commons, and consider only the psychological effect of their acceptance or rejection on the voters at the next general election, he dropped at once into military metaphor. 'Let us' he said, 'be sure that if we join issue we do so upon ground which is as favourable as possible to ourselves. In this case I believe the ground would be unfavourable to this House, and I believe the juncture is one when, even if we were to win for the moment, our victory would be fruitless in the end.'[56] [55] _Maximes de Guerre et Penseés de Napoleon Ier_ (Chapelot), p. 230. [56] Hansard (Trades Disputes Bill, House of Lords, Dec. 4, 1906), p. 703. At first sight, therefore, it might appear that the change in political science which is now going on will simply result in the abandonment by the younger politicians of all ethical traditions, and the adoption by them, as the result of their new book-learning, of those methods of exploiting the irrational elements of human nature which have hitherto been the trade secret of the elderly and the disillusioned. I have been told, for instance, that among the little group of women who in 1906 and 1907 brought the question of Women's Suffrage within the sphere of practical politics, was one who had received a serious academic training in psychology, and that the tactics actually employed were in large part due to her plea that in order to make men think one must begin by making them feel.[57] [57] Mrs. Pankhurst is reported, in the _Observer_ of July 26, 1908, to have said, 'Whatever the women who were called Suffragists might be, they at least understood how to bring themselves in touch with the public. They had caught the spirit of the age, learnt the art of advertising.' A Hindoo agitator, again, Mr. Chandra Pal, who also had read psychology, imitated Lord Lansdowne a few months ago by saying, 'Applying the principles of psychology to the consideration of political problems we find it is necessary that we ... should do nothing that will make the Government a power for us. Because if the Government becomes easy, if it becomes pleasant, if it becomes good government, then our signs of separation from it will be gradually lost.'[58] Mr. Chandra Pal, unlike Lord Lansdowne, was shortly afterwards imprisoned, but his words have had an important political effect in India. [58] Quoted in _Times_, June 3, 1907. If this mental attitude and the tactics based on it succeed, they must, it may be argued, spread with constantly increasing rapidity; and just as, by Gresham's Law in commerce, base coin, if there is enough of it, must drive out sterling coin, so in politics, must the easier and more immediately effective drive out the more difficult and less effective method of appeal. One cannot now answer such an argument by a mere statement that knowledge will make men wise. It was easy in the old days to rely on the belief that human life and conduct would become perfect if men only learnt to know themselves. Before Darwin, most political speculators used to sketch a perfect polity which would result from the complete adoption of their principles, the republics of Plato and of More, Bacon's Atlantis, Locke's plea for a government which should consciously realise the purposes of God, or Bentham's Utilitarian State securely founded upon the Table of the Springs of Action. We, however, who live after Darwin, have learnt the hard lesson that we must not expect knowledge, however full, to lead us to perfection. The modern student of physiology believes that if his work is successful, men may have better health than they would have if they were more ignorant, but he does not dream of producing a perfectly healthy nation; and he is always prepared to face the discovery that biological causes which he cannot control may be tending to make health worse. Nor does the writer on education now argue that he can make perfect characters in his schools. If our imaginations ever start on the old road to Utopia, we are checked by remembering that we are blood-relations of the other animals, and that we have no more right than our kinsfolk to suppose that the mind of the universe has contrived that we can find a perfect life by looking for it. The bees might to-morrow become conscious of their own nature, and of the waste of life and toil which goes on in the best ordered hive. And yet they might learn that no greatly improved organisation was possible for creatures hampered by such limited powers of observation and inference, and enslaved by such furious passions. They might be forced to recognise that as long as they were bees their life must remain bewildered and violent and short. Political inquiry deals with man as he now is, and with the changes in the organisation of his life that can be made during the next few centuries. It may be that some scores of generations hence, we shall have discovered that the improvements in government which can be brought about by such inquiry, are insignificant when compared with the changes which will be made possible when, through the hazardous experiment of selective breeding, we have altered the human type itself. But however anxious we are to see the facts of our existence without illusion, and to hope nothing without cause, we can still draw some measure of comfort from the recollection that during the few thousand years through which we can trace political history in the past, man, without changing his nature, has made enormous improvements in his polity, and that those improvements have often been the result of new moral ideals formed under the influence of new knowledge. The ultimate and wider effect on our conduct of any increase in our knowledge may indeed be very different from, and more important than, its immediate and narrower effect. We each of us live our lives in a pictured universe, of which only a small part is contributed by our own observation and memory, and by far the greater part by what we have learnt from others. The changes in that mental picture of our environment made for instance by the discovery of America, or the ascertainment of the true movements of the nearer heavenly bodies, exercised an influence on men's general conception of their place in the universe, which proved ultimately to be more important than their immediate effect in stimulating explorers and improving the art of navigation. But none of the changes of outlook in the past have approached in their extent and significance those which have been in progress during the last fifty years, the new history of man and his surroundings, stretching back through hitherto unthought-of ages, the substitution of an illimitable vista of ever changing worlds for the imagined perfection of the ordered heavens, and above all the intrusion of science into the most intimate regions of ourselves. The effects of such changes often come, it is true, more slowly than we hope. I was talking not long ago to one of the ablest of those who were beginning their intellectual life when Darwin published the _Origin of Species_. He told me how he and his philosopher brother expected that at once all things should become new, and how unwillingly as the years went on they had accepted their disappointment. But though slow, they are far-reaching. To myself it seems that the most important political result of the vast range of new knowledge started by Darwin's work may prove to be the extension of the idea of conduct so as to include the control of mental processes of which at present most men are either unconscious or unobservant. The limits of our conscious conduct are fixed by the limits of our self-knowledge. Before men knew anger as something separable from the self that knew it, and before they had made that knowledge current by the invention of a name, the control of anger was not a question of conduct. Anger was a part of the angry man himself, and could only be checked by the invasion of some other passion, love, for instance, or fear, which was equally, while it lasted, a part of self. The man survived to continue his race if anger or fear or love came upon him at the right time, and with the right intensity. But when man had named his anger, and could stand outside it in thought, anger came within the region of conduct, Henceforth, in that respect, man could choose either the old way of half-conscious obedience to an impulse which on the whole had proved useful in his past evolution, or the new way of fully conscious control directed by a calculation of results. A man who has become conscious of the nature of fear, and has acquired the power of controlling it, if he sees a boulder bounding towards him down a torrent bed, may either obey the immediate impulse to leap to one side, or may substitute conduct for instinct, and stand where he is because he has calculated that at the next bound the course of the boulder will be deflected. If he decides to stand he may be wrong. It may prove by the event that the immediate impulse of fear was, owing to the imperfection of his powers of conscious inference, a safer guide than the process of calculation. But because he has the choice, even the decision to follow impulse is a question of conduct. Burke was sincerely convinced that men's power of political reasoning was so utterly inadequate to their task, that all his life long he urged the English nation to follow prescription, to obey, that is to say, on principle their habitual political impulses. But the deliberate following of prescription which Burke advocated was something different, because it was the result of choice, from the uncalculated loyalty of the past. Those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge cannot forget. In other matters than politics the influence of the fruit of that tree is now spreading further over our lives. Whether we will or not, the old unthinking obedience to appetite in eating is more and more affected by our knowledge, imperfect though that be, of the physiological results of the quantity and kind of our food. Mr. Chesterton cries out, like the Cyclops in the play, against those who complicate the life of man, and tells us to eat 'caviare on impulse,' instead of 'grape nuts on principle.'[59] But since we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton is only telling us to eat caviare on principle. The physician, when he knows the part which mental suggestion plays in the cure of disease, may hate and fear his knowledge, but he cannot divest himself of it. He finds himself watching the unintended effects of his words and tones and gestures, until he realises that in spite of himself he is calculating the means by which such effects can be produced. After a time, even his patients may learn to watch the effect of 'a good bedside manner' on themselves. [59] _Heretics_, 1905, p. 136. So in politics, now that knowledge of the obscurer impulses of mankind is being spread (if only by the currency of new words), the relation both of the politician and the voter to those impulses is changing. As soon as American politicians called a certain kind of specially paid orator a 'spell-binder,' the word penetrated through the newspapers from politicians to audiences. The man who knows that he has paid two dollars to sit in a hall and be 'spell-bound,' feels, it is true, the old sensations, but feels them with a subtle and irrevocable difference. The English newspaper reader who has once heard the word 'sensational,' may try to submit every morning the innermost sanctuary of his consciousness to the trained psychologists of the halfpenny journals. He may, according to the suggestion of the day, loathe the sixty million crafty scoundrels who inhabit the German Empire, shudder at a coming comet, pity the cowards on the Government Front Bench, or tremble lest a pantomime lady should throw up her part. But he cannot help the existence in the background of his consciousness of a self which watches, and, perhaps, is a little ashamed of his 'sensations.' Even the rapidly growing psychological complexity of modern novels and plays helps to complicate the relation of the men of our time to their emotional impulses. The young tradesman who has been reading either _Evan Harrington_, or a novel by some writer who has read _Evan Harrington_, goes to shake hands with a countess at an entertainment given by the Primrose League, or the Liberal Social Council, conscious of pleasure, but to some degree critical of his pleasure. His father, who read _John Halifax, Gentleman_, would have been carried away by a tenth part of the condescension which is necessary in the case of the son. A voter who has seen _John Bull's Other Island_ at the theatre, is more likely than his father, who only saw _The Shaughraun_, to realise that one's feelings on the Irish question can be thought about as well as felt. In so far as this change extends, the politician may find in the future that an increasing proportion of his constituents half-consciously 'see through' the cruder arts of emotional exploitation. But such an unconscious or half-conscious extension of self-knowledge is not likely of itself to keep pace with the parallel development of the political art of controlling impulse. The tendency, if it is to be effective, must be strengthened by the deliberate adoption and inculcation of new moral and intellectual conceptions--new ideal entities to which our affections and desires may attach themselves. 'Science' has been such an entity ever since Francis Bacon found again, without knowing it, the path of Aristotle's best thought. The conception of 'Science,' of scientific method and the scientific spirit, was built up in successive generations by a few students. At first their conception was confined to themselves. Its effects were seen in the discoveries which they actually made; but to the mass of mankind they seemed little better than magicians. Now it has spread to the whole world. In every class-room and laboratory in Europe and America the conscious idea of Science forms the minds and wills of thousands of men and women who could never have helped to create it. It has penetrated, as the political conceptions of Liberty or of Natural Right never penetrated, to non-European races. Arab engineers in Khartoum, doctors and nurses and generals in the Japanese army, Hindoo and Chinese students make of their whole lives an intense activity inspired by absolute submission to Science, and not only English or American or German town working men, but villagers in Italy or Argentina are learning to respect the authority and sympathise with the methods of that organised study which may double at any moment the produce of their crops or check a plague among their cattle. 'Science,' however, is associated by most men, even in Europe, only with things exterior to themselves, things that can be examined by test-tubes and microscopes. They are dimly aware that there exists a science of the mind, but that knowledge suggests to them, as yet, no ideal of conduct. It is true that in America, where politicians have learnt more successfully than elsewhere the art of controlling other men's unconscious impulses from without, there have been of late some noteworthy declarations as to the need of conscious control from within. Some of those especially who have been trained in scientific method at the American Universities are now attempting to extend to politics the scientific conception of intellectual conduct. But it seems to me that much of their preaching misses its mark, because it takes the old form of an opposition between 'reason' and 'passion.' The President of the University of Yale said, for instance, the other day in a powerful address, 'Every man who publishes a newspaper which appeals to the emotions rather than to the intelligence of its readers ... attacks our political life at a most vulnerable point.'[60] If forty years ago Huxley had in this way merely preached 'intelligence' as against 'emotion' in the exploration of nature, few would have listened to him. Men will not take up the 'intolerable disease of thought' unless their feelings are first stirred, and the strength of the idea of Science has been that it does touch men's feelings, and draws motive power for thought from the passions of reverence, of curiosity, and of limitless hope. [60] A. T. Hadley in _Munsey's Magazine_, 1907. The President of Yale seems to imply that in order to reason men must become passionless. He would have done better to have gone back to that section of the Republic where Plato teaches that the supreme purpose of the State realises itself in men's hearts by a 'harmony' which strengthens the motive force of passion, because the separate passions no longer war among themselves, but are concentrated on an end discovered by the intellect.[61] [61] Cf. Plato's _Republic_, Book IV. In politics, indeed, the preaching of reason as opposed to feeling is peculiarly ineffective, because the feelings of mankind not only provide a motive for political thought but also fix the scale of values which must be used in political judgment. One finds oneself when trying to realise this, falling back (perhaps because one gets so little help from current language) upon Plato's favourite metaphor of the arts. In music the noble and the base composer are not divided by the fact that the one appeals to the intellect and the other to the feelings of his hearers. Both must make their appeal to feeling, and both must therefore realise intensely the feelings of their audience, and stimulate intensely their own feelings. The conditions under which they succeed or fail are fixed, for both, by facts in our emotional nature which they cannot change. One, however, appeals by easy tricks to part only of the nature of his hearers, while the other appeals to their whole nature, requiring of those who would follow him that for the time their intellect should sit enthroned among the strengthened and purified passions. But what, besides mere preaching, can be done to spread the conception of such a harmony of reason and passion, of thought and impulse, in political motive? One thinks of education, and particularly of scientific education. But the imaginative range which is necessary if students are to transfer the conception of intellectual conduct from the laboratory to the public meeting is not common. It would perhaps more often exist if part of all scientific education were given to such a study of the lives of scientific men as would reveal their mental history as well as their discoveries, if, for instance, the young biologist were set to read the correspondence between Darwin and Lyell, when Lyell was preparing to abandon the conclusions on which his great reputation was based, and suspending his deepest religious convictions, in the cause of a truth not yet made clear. But most school children, if they are to learn the facts on which the conception of intellectual conduct depends, must learn them even more directly. I myself believe that a very simple course on the well-ascertained facts of psychology would, if patiently taught, be quite intelligible to any children of thirteen or fourteen who had received some small preliminary training in scientific method. Mr. William James's chapter on Habit in his _Principles of Psychology_ would, for instance, if the language were somewhat simplified, come well within their range. A town child, again, lives nowadays in the constant presence of the psychological art of advertisement, and could easily be made to understand the reason why, when he is sent to get a bar of soap, he feels inclined to get that which is most widely advertised, and what relation his inclination has to that mental process which is most likely to result in the buying of good soap. The basis of knowledge necessary for the conception of intellectual duty could further be enlarged at school by the study in pure literature of the deeper experiences of the mind. A child of twelve might understand Carlyle's _Essay on Burns_ if it were carefully read in class, and a good sixth form might learn much from Wordsworth's _Prelude_. The whole question, however, of such deliberate instruction in the emotional and intellectual facts of man's nature as may lead men to conceive of the co-ordination of reason and passion as a moral ideal is one on which much steady thinking and observation is still required. The instincts of sex, for instance, are becoming in all civilised countries more and more the subject of serious thought. Conduct based upon a calculation of results is in that sphere claiming to an ever increasing degree control over mere impulse. Yet no one is sure that he has found the way to teach the barest facts as to sexual instinct either before or during the period of puberty, without prematurely exciting the instincts themselves. Doctors, again, are more and more recognising that nutrition depends not only upon the chemical composition of food but upon our appetite, and that we can become aware of our appetite and to some extent control and direct it by our will. Sir William Macewen said not long ago, 'We cannot properly digest our food unless we give it a warm welcome from a free mind with the prospect of enjoyment.'[62] But it would not be easy to create by teaching that co-ordination of the intellect and impulse at which Sir William Macewen hints. If you tell a boy that one reason why food is wholesome is because we like it, and that it is therefore our duty to like that food which other facts of our nature have made both wholesome and likeable, you may find yourself stimulating nothing except his sense of humour. [62] _British Medical Journal_, Oct. 8, 1904. So, in the case of the political emotions, it is very easy to say that the teacher should aim first at making his pupils conscious of the existence of those emotions, then at increasing their force, and finally at subordinating them to the control of deliberate reasoning on the consequences of political action. But it is extraordinarily difficult to discover how this can be done under the actual conditions of school teaching. Mr. Acland, when he was Education Minister in 1893, introduced into the Evening School Code a syllabus of instruction on the Life and Duties of the Citizen. It consisted of statements of the part played in social life by the rate-collector, the policeman, and so on, accompanied by a moral for each section, such as 'serving personal interest is not enough,' 'need of public spirit and intelligence for good Government,' 'need of honesty in giving a vote,' 'the vote a trust as well as a right.' Almost every school publisher rushed out a text-book on the subject, and many School Boards encouraged its introduction; and yet the experiment, after a careful trial, was an acknowledged failure. The new text-books (all of which I had at the time to review), constituted perhaps the most worthless collection of printed pages that have ever occupied the same space on a bookshelf, and the lessons, with their alternations of instruction and edification, failed to stimulate any kind of interest in the students. If our youths and maidens are to be stirred as deeply by the conception of the State as were the pupils of Socrates, teachers and the writers of text-books must apparently approach their task with something of Socrates' passionate love of truth and of the searching courage of his dialectic. If again, at an earlier age, children still in school are to be taught what Mr. Wells calls 'the sense of the State,'[63] we may, by remembering Athens, get some indication of the conditions on which success depends. Children will not learn to love London while getting figures by heart as to the millions of her inhabitants and the miles of her sewers. If their love is to be roused by words, the words must be as beautiful and as simple as the chorus in praise of Athens in the _Oedipus Coloneus_. But such words are not written except by great poets who actually feel what they write, and perhaps before we have a poet who loves London as Sophocles loved Athens it may be necessary to make London itself somewhat more lovely. [63] _The future in America_, chapter ix. The emotions of children are, however, most easily reached not by words but by sights and sounds. If therefore, they are to love the State, they should either be taken to see the noblest aspects of the State or those aspects should be brought to them. And a public building or ceremony, if it is to impress the unflinching eyes of childhood, must, like the buildings of Ypres or Bruges or the ceremonies of Japan, be in truth impressive. The beautiful aspect of social life is fortunately not to be found in buildings and ceremonies only, and no Winchester boy used to come back uninfluenced from a visit to Father Dolling in the slums of Landport; though boys' eyes are even quicker to see what is genuine in personal motive than in external pomp. More subtle are the difficulties in the way of the deliberate intensification by adult politicians of their own political emotions. A life-long worker for education on the London School Board once told me that when he wearied of his work--when the words of reports become mere words, and the figures in the returns mere figures--he used to go down to a school and look closely at the faces of the children in class after class, till the freshness of his impulse came back. But for a man who is about to try such an experiment on himself even the word 'emotion' is dangerous. The worker in full work should desire cold and steady not hot and disturbed impulse, and should perhaps keep the emotional stimulus of his energy, when it is once formed, for the most part below the level of full consciousness. The surgeon in a hospital is stimulated by every sight and sound in the long rows of beds, and would be less devoted to his work if he only saw a few patients brought to his house. But all that he is conscious of during the working hours is the one purpose of healing, on which the half-conscious impulses of brain and eye and hand are harmoniously concentrated. Perhaps indeed most adult politicians would gain rather by becoming conscious of new vices than of new virtues. Some day, for instance, the word 'opinion' itself may become the recognised name of the most dangerous political vice. Men may teach themselves by habit and association to suspect those inclinations and beliefs which, if they neglect the duty of thought, appear in their minds they know not how, and which, as long as their origin is not examined, can be created by any clever organiser who is paid to do so. The most easily manipulated State in the world would be one inhabited by a race of Nonconformist business men who never followed up a train of political reasoning in their lives, and who, as soon as they were aware of the existence of a strong political conviction in their minds, should announce that it was a matter of 'conscience' and therefore beyond the province of doubt or calculation. But, it may be still asked, is it not Utopian to suppose that Plato's conception of the Harmony of the Soul--the intensification both of passion and of thought by their conscious co-ordination--can ever become a part of the general political ideals of a modern nation? Perhaps most men before the war between Russia and Japan would have answered, Yes. Many men would now answer, No. The Japanese are apparently in some respects less advanced in their conceptions of intellectual morality than, say, the French. One hears, for instance, of incidents which seem to show that liberty of thought is not always valued in Japanese universities. But both during the years of preparation for the war, and during the war itself, there was something in what one was told of the combined emotional and intellectual attitude of the Japanese, which to a European seemed wholly new. Napoleon contended against the 'idéologues' who saw things as they wished them to be, and until he himself submitted to his own illusions he ground them to powder. But we associate Napoleon's clearness of vision with personal selfishness. Here was a nation in which every private soldier outdid Napoleon in his determination to see in warfare not great principles nor picturesque traditions, but hard facts; and yet the fire of their patriotism was hotter than Gambetta's. Something of this may have been due to the inherited organisation of the Japanese race, but more seemed to be the effect of their mental environment. They had whole-heartedly welcomed that conception of Science which in Europe, where it was first elaborated, still struggles with older ideals. Science with them had allied, and indeed identified, itself with that idea of natural law which, since they learnt it through China from Hindustan, had always underlain their various religions.[64] They had acquired, therefore, a mental outlook which was determinist without being fatalist, and which combined the most absolute submission to Nature with untiring energy in thought and action. [64] See Okakura, _The Japanese Spirit_ (1905). One would like to hope that in the West a similar fusion might take place between the emotional and philosophical traditions of religion, and the new conception of intellectual duty introduced by Science. The political effect of such a fusion would be enormous. But for the moment that hope is not easy. The inevitable conflict between old faith and new knowledge has produced, one fears, throughout Christendom, a division not only between the conclusions of religion and science, but also between the religious and the scientific habit of mind. The scientific men of to-day no longer dream of learning from an English Bishop, as their predecessors learnt from Bishop Butler, the doctrine of probability in conduct, the rule that while belief must never be fixed, must indeed always be kept open for the least indication of new evidence, action, where action is necessary, must be taken as resolutely on imperfect knowledge, if that is the best available, as on the most perfect demonstration. The policy of the last Vatican Encyclical will leave few Abbots who are likely to work out, as Abbot Mendel worked out in long years of patient observation, a new biological basis for organic evolution. Mental habits count for more in politics than do the acceptance or rejection of creeds or evidences. When an English clergyman sits at his breakfast-table reading his _Times_ or _Mail_, his attitude towards the news of the day is conditioned not by his belief or doubt that he who uttered certain commandments about non-resistance and poverty was God Himself, but by the degree to which he has been trained to watch the causation of his opinions. As it is, Dr. Jameson's prepared manifesto on the Johannesburg Raid stirred most clergymen like a trumpet, and the suggestion that the latest socialist member of Parliament is not a gentleman, produces in them a feeling of genuine disgust and despair. It may be therefore that the effective influence in politics of new ideals of intellectual conduct will have to wait for a still wider change of mental attitude, touching our life on many sides. Some day the conception of a harmony of thought and passion may take the place, in the deepest regions of our moral consciousness, of our present dreary confusion and barren conflicts. If that day comes much in politics which is now impossible will become possible. The politician will be able not only to control and direct in himself the impulses of whose nature he is more fully aware, but to assume in his hearers an understanding of his aim. Ministers and Members of Parliament may then find their most effective form of expression in that grave simplicity of speech which in the best Japanese State papers rings so strangely to our ears, and citizens may learn to look to their representatives, as the Japanese army looked to their generals, for that unbought effort of the mind by which alone man becomes at once the servant and the master of nature. CHAPTER II REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT But our growing knowledge of the causation of political impulse, and of the conditions of valid political reasoning, may be expected to change not only our ideals of political conduct but also the structure of our political institutions. I have already pointed out that the democratic movement which produced the constitutions under which most civilised nations now live, was inspired by a purely intellectual conception of human nature which is becoming every year more unreal to us. If, it may then be asked, representative democracy was introduced under a mistaken view of the conditions of its working, will not its introduction prove to have been itself a mistake? Any defender of representative democracy who rejects the traditional democratic philosophy can only answer this question by starting again from the beginning, and considering what are the ends representation is intended to secure, and how far those ends are necessary to good government. The first end may be roughly indicated by the word consent. The essence of a representative government is that it depends on the periodically renewed consent of a considerable proportion of the inhabitants; and the degree of consent required may shade from the mere acceptance of accomplished facts, to the announcement of positive decisions taken by a majority of the citizens, which the government must interpret and obey. The question, therefore, whether our adoption of representative democracy was a mistake, raises the preliminary question whether the consent of the members of a community is a necessary condition of good government. To this question Plato, who among the political philosophers of the ancient world stood at a point of view nearest to that of a modern psychologist, unhesitatingly answered, No. To him it was incredible that any stable polity could be based upon the mere fleeting shadows of popular opinion. He proposed, therefore, in all seriousness, that the citizens of his Republic should live under the despotic government of those who by 'slaving for it'[65] had acquired a knowledge of the reality which lay behind appearance. Comte, writing when modern science was beginning to feel its strength, made, in effect, the same proposal. Mr. H.G. Wells, in one of his sincere and courageous speculations, follows Plato. He describes a Utopia which is the result of the forcible overthrow of representative government by a voluntary aristocracy of trained men of science. He appeals, in a phrase consciously influenced by Plato's metaphysics, to 'the idea of a comprehensive movement of disillusioned and illuminated men behind the shams and patriotisms, the spites and personalities of the ostensible world....'[66] There are some signs, in America as well as in England, that an increasing number of those thinkers who are both passionately in earnest in their desire for social change and disappointed in their experience of democracy, may, as an alternative to the cold-blooded manipulation of popular impulse and thought by professional politicians, turn 'back to Plato'; and when once this question is started, neither our existing mental habits nor our loyalty to democratic tradition will prevent it from being fully discussed. [65] [Greek: douleusanti tê ktêsei autou] (_Republic,_ p. 494). [66] Wells, _A Modern Utopia_, p. 263. 'I know of no case for the elective Democratic government of modern States that cannot be knocked to pieces in five minutes. It is manifest that upon countless important public issues there is no collective will, and nothing in the mind of the average man except blank indifference; that an electional system simply places power in the hands of the most skilful electioneers....' Wells, _Anticipations_, p. 147. To such a discussion we English, as the rulers of India, can bring an experience of government without consent larger than any other that has ever been tried under the conditions of modern civilisation. The Covenanted Civil Service of British India consists of a body of about a thousand trained men. They are selected under a system which ensures that practically all of them will not only possess exceptional mental force, but will also belong to a race, which, in spite of certain intellectual limitations, is strong in the special faculty of government; and they are set to rule, under a system approaching despotism, a continent in which the most numerous races, in spite of their intellectual subtlety, have given little evidence of ability to govern. Our Indian experiment shows, however, that all men, however carefully selected and trained, must still inhabit 'the ostensible world.' The Anglo-Indian civilian during some of his working hours--when he is toiling at a scheme of irrigation, or forestry, or famine-prevention--may live in an atmosphere of impersonal science which is far removed from the jealousies and superstitions of the villagers in his district. But an absolute ruler is judged not merely by his efficiency in choosing political means, but also by that outlook on life which decides his choice of ends; and the Anglo-Indian outlook on life is conditioned, not by the problem of British India as history will see it a thousand years hence, but by the facts of daily existence in the little government stations, with their trying climates, their narrow society, and the continual presence of an alien and possibly hostile race. We have not, it is true, yet followed the full rigour of Plato's system, and chosen the wives of Anglo-Indian officials by the same process as that through which their husbands pass. But it may be feared that even if we did so, the lady would still remain typical who said to Mr. Nevinson, 'To us in India a pro-native is simply a rank outsider.'[67] [67] _The Nation_, December 21, 1907. What is even more important is the fact that, because those whom the Anglo-Indian civilian governs are also living in the ostensible world, his choice of means on all questions involving popular opinion depends even more completely than if he were a party politician at home, not on things as they are, but on things as they can be made to seem. The avowed tactics of our empire in the East have therefore always been based by many of our high officials upon psychological and not upon logical considerations. We hold Durbars, and issue Proclamations, we blow men from guns, and insist stiffly on our own interpretation of our rights in dealing with neighbouring Powers, all with reference to 'the moral effect upon the native mind.' And, if half what is hinted at by some ultra-imperialist writers and talkers is true, racial and religious antipathy between Hindus and Mohammedans is sometimes welcomed, if not encouraged, by those who feel themselves bound at all costs to maintain our dominant position. The problem of the relation between reason and opinion is therefore one that would exist at least equally in Plato's corporate despotism as in the most complete democracy. Hume, in a penetrating passage in his essay on _The First Principles of Government_, says: 'It is ... on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and the most popular.'[68] It is when a Czar or a bureaucracy find themselves forced to govern in opposition to a vague national feeling, which may at any moment create an overwhelming national purpose, that the facts of man's sublogical nature are most ruthlessly exploited. The autocrat then becomes the most unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial, or religious, or social hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than does the proprietor of the worst newspaper in a democratic State. [68] Hume's _Essays_, chap. iv. Plato, with his usual boldness, faced this difficulty, and proposed that the loyalty of the subject-classes in his Republic should be secured once for all by religious faith. His rulers were to establish and teach a religion in which they need not believe. They were to tell their people 'one magnificent lie';[69] a remedy which in its ultimate effect on the character of their rule might have been worse than the disease which it was intended to cure. [69] [Greek: gennaión ti èn pseudoménous] (_Republic_, p. 414). But even if it is admitted that government without consent is a complicated and ugly process, it does not follow either that government by consent is always possible, or that the machinery of parliamentary representation is the only possible, or always the best possible, method of securing consent. Government by a chief who is obeyed from custom, and who is himself restrained by custom from mere tyranny, may at certain stages of culture be better than anything else which can be substituted for it. And representation, even when it is possible, is not an unchanging entity, but an expedient capable of an infinite number of variations. In England at this moment we give the vote for a sovereign parliament to persons of the male sex above twenty-one years of age, who have occupied the same place of residence for a year; and enrol them for voting purposes in constituencies based upon locality. But in all these respects, age, sex, qualification, and constituency, as well as in the political power given to the representative, variation is possible. If, indeed, there should appear a modern Bentham, trained not by Fénelon and Helvétius, but by the study of racial psychology, he could not use his genius and patience better than in the invention of constitutional expedients which should provide for a real degree of government by consent in those parts of the British Empire where men are capable of thinking for themselves on political questions, but where the machinery of British parliamentary government would not work. In Egypt, for instance, one is told that at elections held in ordinary local constituencies only two per cent, of those entitled to vote go to the poll.[70] As long as that is the case representative government is impossible. A slow process of education might increase the proportion of voters, but meanwhile it would surely be possible for men, who understand the way in which Egyptians or Arabs think and feel, to discover other methods by which the vague desires of the native population can be ascertained, and the policy of the government made in some measure to depend on them. [70] _Times_, January 6, 1908. The need for invention is even more urgent in India, and that fact is apparently being realised by the Indian Government itself. The inventive range of Lord Morley and his advisers does not, however, for the moment appear to extend much beyond the adaptation of the model of the English House of Lords to Indian conditions, and the organisation of an 'advisory Council of Notables';[71] with the possible result that we may be advised by the hereditary rent-collectors of Bengal in our dealings with the tillers of the soil, and by the factory owners of Bombay in our regulation of factory labour. [71] Mr. Morley in the House of Commons. Hansard, June 6, 1907, p. 885. In England itself, though great political inventions are always a glorious possibility, the changes in our political structure which will result from our new knowledge are likely, in our own time, to proceed along lines laid down by slowly acting, and already recognisable tendencies. A series of laws have, for instance, been passed in the United Kingdom during the last thirty or forty years, each of which had little conscious connection with the rest, but which, when seen as a whole, show that government now tends to regulate, not only the process of ascertaining the decision of the electors, but also the more complex process by which that decision is formed; and that this is done not in the interest of any particular body of opinion, but from a belief in the general utility of right methods of thought, and the possibility of securing them by regulation. The nature of this change may perhaps be best understood by comparing it with the similar but earlier and far more complete change that has taken place in the conditions under which that decision is formed which is expressed in the verdict of a jury. Trial by jury was, in its origin, simply a method of ascertaining, from ordinary men whose veracity was secured by religious sanctions, their real opinions on each case.[72] The various ways in which those opinions might have been formed were matters beyond the cognisance of the royal official who called the jury together, swore them, and registered their verdict. Trial by jury in England might therefore have developed on the same lines as it did in Athens, and have perished from the same causes. The number of the jury might have been increased, and the parties in the case might have hired advocates to write or deliver for them addresses containing distortions of fact and appeals to prejudice as audacious as those in the _Private Orations_ of Demosthenes. It might have become more important that the witnesses should burst into passionate weeping than that they should tell what they knew, and the final verdict might have been taken by a show of hands, in a crowd that was rapidly degenerating into a mob. If such an institution had lasted up to our time, the newspapers would have taken sides in every important case. Each would have had its own version of the facts, the most telling points of which would have been reserved for the final edition on the eve of the verdict, and the fate of the prisoner or defendant would often have depended upon a strictly party vote. [72] See, _e.g._, Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law_, vol. i. pp. 260-72. But in the English jury trial it has come to be assumed, after a long series of imperceptible and forgotten changes, that the opinion of the jurors, instead of being formed before the trial begins, should be formed in court. The process, therefore, by which that opinion is produced has been more and more completely controlled and developed, until it, and not the mere registration of the verdict, has become the essential feature of the trial. The jury are now separated from their fellow-men during the whole case. They are introduced into a world of new emotional values. The ritual of the court, the voices and dress of judge and counsel, all suggest an environment in which the petty interests and impulses of ordinary life are unimportant when compared with the supreme worth of truth and justice. They are warned to empty their minds of all preconceived inferences and affections. The examination and cross-examination of the witnesses are carried on under rules of evidence which are the result of centuries of experience, and which give many a man as he sits on a jury his first lesson in the fallibility of the unobserved and uncontrolled inferences of the human brain. The 'said I's,' and 'thought I's,' and 'said he's,' which are the material of his ordinary reasoning, are here banished on the ground that they are 'not evidence,' and witnesses are compelled to give a simple account of their remembered sensations of sight and hearing. The witnesses for the prosecution and the defence, if they are well-intentioned men, often find themselves giving, to their own surprise, perfectly consistent accounts of the events at issue. The barristers' tricks of advocacy are to some extent restrained by professional custom and by the authority of the judge, and they are careful to point out to the jury each other's fallacies. Newspapers do not reach the jury box, and in any case are prevented by the law as to contempt of court from commenting on a case which is under trial. The judge sums up, carefully describing the conditions of valid inference on questions of disputed fact, and warning the jury against those forms of irrational and unconscious inference to which experience has shown them to be most liable. They then retire, all carrying in their minds the same body of simplified and dissected evidence, and all having been urged with every circumstance of solemnity to form their conclusions by the same mental process. It constantly happens therefore that twelve men, selected by lot, will come to a unanimous verdict as to a question on which in the outside world they would have been hopelessly divided, and that that verdict, which may depend upon questions of fact so difficult as to leave the practised intellect of the judge undecided, will very generally be right. An English law court is indeed during a well-governed jury trial a laboratory in which psychological rules of valid reasoning are illustrated by experiment; and when, as threatens to occur in some American States and cities, it becomes impossible to enforce those rules, the jury system itself breaks down.[73] [73] On the jury system see Mr. Wells's _Mankind in the Making_, chapter vii. He suggests the use of juries in many administrative cases where it is desirable that government should be supported by popular consent. At the same time, trial by jury is now used with a certain degree of economy, both because it is slow and expensive, and because men do not make good jurors if they are called upon too often. In order that popular consent may support criminal justice, and that the law may not be unfairly used to protect the interests or policy of a governing class or person, no man, in most civilised countries, may be sentenced to death or to a long period of imprisonment, except after the verdict of a jury. But the overwhelming majority of other judicial decisions are now taken by men selected not by lot, but, in theory at least, by special fitness for their task. In the light of this development of the jury trial we may now examine the tentative changes which, since the Reform Act of 1867, have been introduced into the law of elections in the United Kingdom. Long before that date, it had been admitted that the State ought not to stretch the principle of individual liberty so far as to remain wholly indifferent as to the kind of motives which candidates might bring to bear upon electors. It was obvious that if candidates were allowed to practise open bribery the whole system of representation would break down at once. Laws, therefore, against bribery had been for several generations on the statute books, and all that was required in that respect was the serious attempt, made after the scandals at the general election of 1880, to render them effective. But without entering into definite bargains with individual voters, a rich candidate can by lavish expenditure on his electoral campaign, both make himself personally popular, and create an impression that his connection with the constituency is good for trade. The Corrupt Practices Act of 1883 therefore fixed a maximum of expenditure for each candidate at a parliamentary election. By the same Act of 1883, and by earlier and later Acts, applying both to parliamentary and municipal elections, intimidation of all kinds, including the threatening of penalties after death, is forbidden. No badges or flags or bands of music may be paid for by, or on behalf of, a candidate. In order that political opinion may not be influenced by thoughts of the simpler bodily pleasures, no election meeting may be held in a building where any form of food or drink is habitually sold, although that building may be only a Co-operative Hall with facilities for making tea in an ante-room. The existing laws against Corrupt Practices represent, it is true, rather the growing purpose of the State to control the conditions under which electoral opinion is formed, than any large measure of success in carrying out that purpose. A rapidly increasing proportion of the expenditure at any English election is now incurred by bodies enrolled outside the constituency, and nominally engaged, not in winning the election for a particular candidate, but in propagating their own principles. Sometimes the candidate whom they support, and whom they try to commit as deeply as possible, would be greatly relieved if they withdrew. Generally their agents are an integral part of his fighting organisation, and often the whole of their expenditure at an election is covered by a special subscription made by him to the central fund. Every one sees that this system drives a coach and horse through those clauses in the Corrupt Practices Act which restrict election expenses and forbid the employment of paid canvassers, though no one as yet has put forward any plan for preventing it. But it is acknowledged that unless the whole principle is to be abandoned, new legislation must take place; and Lord Robert Cecil talks of the probable necessity for a 'stringent and far-reaching Corrupt Practices Act.'[74] If, however, an act is carried stringent enough to deal effectually with the existing development of electoral tactics, it will have to be drafted on lines involving new and hitherto unthought-of forms of interference with the liberty of political appeal. [74] _Times_, June 26, 1907. A hundred years ago a contested election might last in any constituency for three or four weeks of excitement and horseplay, during which the voters were every day further removed from the state of mind in which serious thought on the probable results of their votes was possible. Now no election may last more than one day, and we may soon enact that all the polling for a general election shall take place on the same day. The sporting fever of the weeks during which a general election even now lasts, with the ladder-climbing figures outside the newspaper offices, the flash-lights at night, and the cheering or groaning crowds in the party clubs, are not only waste of energy but an actual hindrance to effective political reasoning. A more difficult psychological problem arose in the discussion of the Ballot. Would a voter be more likely to form a thoughtful and public-spirited decision if, after it was formed, he voted publicly or secretly? Most of the followers of Bentham advocated secrecy. Since men acted in accordance with their ideas of pleasure and pain, and since landlords and employers were able, in spite of any laws against intimidation, to bring 'sinister' motives to bear upon voters whose votes were known, the advisability of secret voting seemed to follow as a corollary from utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill, however, whose whole philosophical life consisted of a slowly developing revolt of feeling against the utilitarian philosophy to which he gave nominal allegiance till the end, opposed the Ballot on grounds which really involved the abandonment of the whole utilitarian position. If ideas of pleasure and pain be taken as equivalent to those economic motives which can be summed up as the making or losing money, it is not true, said Mill, that even under a system of open voting such ideas are the main cause which induce the ordinary citizen to vote. 'Once in a thousand times, as in the case of peace or war, or of taking off taxes, the thought may cross him that he shall save a few pounds or shillings in his year's expenditure if the side he votes for wins.' He votes as a matter of fact in accordance with ideas of right or wrong. 'His motive, when it is an honourable one, is the desire to do right. We will not term it patriotism or moral principle, in order not to ascribe to the voter's frame of mind a solemnity that does not belong to it.' But ideas of right and wrong are strengthened and not weakened by the knowledge that we act under the eyes of our neighbours. 'Since then the real motive which induces a man to vote honestly is for the most part not an interested motive in any form, but a social one, the point to be decided is whether the social feelings connected with an act and the sense of social duty in performing it, can be expected to be as powerful when the act is done in secret, and he can neither be admired for disinterested, nor blamed for mean and selfish conduct. But this question is answered as soon as stated. When in every other act of a man's life which concerns his duty to others, publicity and criticism ordinarily improve his conduct, it cannot be that voting for a member of parliament is the single case in which he will act better for being sheltered against all comment.'[75] [75] Letter to the _Reader_, Ap. 29, 1865, signed J.S.M., quoted as Mill's by Henry Romilly in pamphlet, _Public Responsibility and Vote by Ballot_, pp. 89, 90. Almost the whole civilised world has now adopted the secret Ballot; so that it would seem that Mill was wrong, and that he was wrong in spite of the fact that, as against the consistent utilitarians, his description of average human motive was right. But Mill, though he soon ceased to be in the original sense of the word a utilitarian, always remained an intellectualist, and he made in the case of the Ballot the old mistake of giving too intellectual and logical an account of political impulses. It is true that men do not act politically upon a mere stock-exchange calculation of material advantages and disadvantages. They generally form vague ideas of right and wrong in accordance with vague trains of inference as to the good or evil results of political action. If an election were like a jury trial, such inferences might be formed by a process which would leave a sense of fundamental conviction in the mind of the thinker, and might be expressed under conditions of religious and civic solemnity to which publicity would lend an added weight, as it does in those 'acts of a man's life which concern his duty to others,' to which Mill refers--the paying of a debt of honour, for instance, or the equitable treatment of one's relatives. But under existing electoral conditions, trains of thought, formed as they often are by the half-conscious suggestion of newspapers or leaflets, are weak as compared with the things of sense. Apart from direct intimidation the voice of the canvasser, the excitement of one's friends, the look of triumph on the face of one's opponents, or the vague indications of disapproval by the rulers of one's village, are all apt to be stronger than the shadowy and uncertain conclusions of one's thinking brain. To make the ultimate vote secret, gives therefore thought its best chance, and at least requires the canvasser to produce in the voter a belief which, however shadowy, shall be genuine, rather than to secure by the mere manipulation of momentary impulse a promise which is shamefacedly carried out in public because it is a promise. Lord Courtney is the last survivor in public life of the personal disciples of Mill, and at present he is devoting himself to a campaign in favour of 'proportional representation,' in which, as it seems to me, the old intellectualist misconceptions reappear in another form. He proposes to deal with two difficulties, first, that under the existing system of the 'single ballot' a minority in any single-member constituency may, if there are more candidates than two, return its representative, and secondly, that certain citizens who think for themselves instead of allowing party leaders to think for them--the Free-Trade Unionists, for instance, or the High-Church Liberals--have, as a rule, no candidate representing their own opinions for whom they can vote. He proposes, therefore, that each voter shall mark in order of preference a ballot paper containing lists of candidates for large constituencies, each of which returns six or seven members, Manchester with its eight seats being given as an example. This system, according to Lord Courtney, 'will lead to the dropping of the fetters which now interfere with free thought, and will set men and women on their feet, erect, intelligent, independent.'[76] But the arguments used in urging it all seem to me to suffer from the fatal defect of dwelling solely on the process by which opinion is ascertained, and ignoring the process by which opinion is created. If at the assizes all the jurors summoned were collected into one large jury, and if they all voted Guilty or Not Guilty on all the cases, after a trial in which all the counsel were heard and all the witnesses were examined simultaneously, verdicts would indeed no longer depend on the accidental composition of the separate juries; but the process of forming verdicts would be made, to a serious degree, less effective. [76] Address delivered by Lord Courtney at the Mechanics' Institute, Stockport, March 22, 1907, p. 6. The English experiment on which the Proportional Representation Society mainly relies is an imaginary election, held in November 1906 by means of ballot papers distributed through members and friends of the society and through eight newspapers. 'The constituency,' we are told, 'was supposed to return five members; the candidates, twelve in number, were politicians whose names might be expected to be known to the ordinary newspaper reader, and who might be considered as representative of some of the main divisions of public opinion.'[77] The names were, in fact, Sir A. Acland Hood, Sir H. Campbell-Banner-man, Sir Thomas P. Whittaker, and Lord Hugh Cecil, with Messrs. Richard Bell, Austen Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Haldane, Keir Hardie, Arthur Henderson, Bonar Law, and Philip Snowden. In all, 12,418 votes were collected. [77] Proportional Representation Pamphlet, No. 4, p. 6. I was one of the 12,418, and in my case the ballot papers were distributed at the end of a dinner party. No discussion of the various candidates took place with the single exception that, finding my memory of Mr. Arthur Henderson rather vague, I whispered a question about him to my next neighbour. We were all politicians, and nearly all the names were those of persons belonging to that small group of forty or fifty whose faces the caricaturists of the Christmas numbers expect their readers to recognise. At our dinner party not much unreality was introduced by the intellectualist assumption that the list of names were, as a Greek might have said, the same, 'to us,' as they were 'in themselves.' But an ordinary list of candidates' names presented to an ordinary voter is 'to him' simply a piece of paper with black marks on it, with which he will either do nothing or do as he is told. The Proportional Representation Society seem to assume that a sufficient preliminary discussion will be carried on in the newspapers, and that not only the names and party programmes but the reasons for the selection of a particular person as candidate and for all the items in his programme will be known to 'the ordinary newspaper reader,' who is assumed to be identical with the ordinary citizen. But even if one neglects the political danger arising from the modern concentration of newspaper property in the hands of financiers who may use their control for frankly financial purposes, it is not true that each man now reads or is likely to read a newspaper devoted to a single candidature or to the propaganda of a small political group. Men read newspapers for news, and, since the collection of news is enormously costly, nine-tenths of the electorate read between them a small number of established papers advocating broad party principles. These newspapers, at any rate during a general election, only refer to those particular contests in which the party leaders are not concerned as matters of casual information, until, on the day of the poll, they issue general directions 'How to vote.' The choice of candidates is left by the newspapers to the local party organisations, and if any real knowledge of the personality of a candidate or of the details of his programme is to be made part of the consciousness of the ordinary voter, this must still be done by local electioneering in each constituency, _i.e._ by meetings and canvassing and the distribution of 'election literature.' Lord Courtney's proposal, even if it only multiplied the size of the ordinary constituency by six, would multiply by at least six the difficulty of effective electioneering, and even if each candidate were prepared to spend six times as much money at every contest, he could not multiply by six the range of his voice or the number of meetings which he could address in a day. These considerations were brought home to me by my experience of the nearest approximation to Proportional Representation which has ever been actually adopted in England. In 1870 Lord Frederick Cavendish induced the House of Commons to adopt 'plural voting' for School Board elections. I fought in three London School Board elections as a candidate and in two others as a political worker. In London the legal arrangement was that each voter in eleven large districts should be given about five or six votes, and that the same number of seats should be assigned to the district. In the provinces a town or parish was given a number of seats from five to fifteen. The voter might 'plump' all his votes on one candidate or might distribute them as he liked among any of them. This left the local organisers both in London and the country with two alternatives. They might form the list of party candidates in each district into a recognisable entity like the American 'ticket' and urge all voters to vote, on party lines, for the Liberal or Conservative 'eight' or 'five' or 'three.' If they did this they were saved the trouble involved in any serious attempt to instruct voters as to the individual personalities of the members of the list. Or they might practically repeal the plural voting law, split up the constituency by a voluntary arrangement into single member sections, and spend the weeks of the election in making one candidate for each party known in each section. The first method was generally adopted in the provinces, and had all the good and bad effects from a party point of view of the French _scrutin de liste_. The second method was adopted in London, and perhaps tended to make the London elections turn more than they otherwise would have done upon the qualities of individual candidates. Whichever system was adopted by the party leaders was acted upon by practically all the voters, with the exception of the well-organised Roman Catholics, who voted for a Church and not a person, and of those who plumped for representatives of the special interests of the teachers or school-keepers. If Lord Courtney's proposal is adopted for parliamentary elections, it is the 'ticket' system which, owing to the intensity of party feeling, will be generally used. Each voter will bring into the polling booth a printed copy of the ballot paper marked with the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., according to the decision of his party association, and will copy the numbers onto the unmarked official paper. The essential fact, that is to say, on which party tactics would depend under Lord Courtney's scheme is not that the votes would finally be added up in this way or in that, but that the voter would be required to arrange in order more names than there is time during the election to turn for him into real persons. Lord Courtney, in speaking on the second reading of his Municipal Representation Bill in the House of Lords,[78] contrasted his proposed system with that used in the London Borough Council elections, according to which a number of seats are assigned to each ward and the voter may give one vote each, without indication of preference, to that number of candidates. It is true that the electoral machinery for the London Boroughs is the worst to be found anywhere in the world outside of America. I have before me my party ballot-card instructing me how to vote at the last Council election in my present borough. There were six seats to be filled in my ward and fifteen candidates. I voted as I was told by my party organisation giving one vote each to six names, not one of which I remembered to have seen before. If there had been one seat to be filled, and, say, three candidates, I should have found out enough about one candidate at least to give a more or less independent vote; and the local party committees would have known that I and others would do so. Bach party would then have circulated a portrait and a printed account of their candidate and of his principles, and would have had a strong motive for choosing a thoroughly reputable person. But I could not give the time necessary for forming a real opinion on fifteen candidates, who volunteered no information about themselves. I therefore, and probably twenty-nine out of every thirty of those who voted in the borough, voted a 'straight ticket.' If for any reason the party committee put, to use an Americanism, a 'yellow dog' among the list of names, I voted for the yellow dog. [78] April 30, 1907. Under Lord Courtney's system I should have had to vote on the same ticket, with the same amount of knowledge, but should have copied down different marks from my party card. On the assumption, that is to say, that every name on a long ballot paper represents an individual known to every voter there would be an enormous difference between Lord Courtney's proposed system and the existing system in the London Boroughs. But if the fact is that the names in each case are mere names, there is little effective difference between the working of the two systems until the votes are counted. If the sole object of an election were to discover and record the exact proportion of the electorate who are prepared to vote for candidates nominated by the several party organisations Lord Courtney's scheme might be adopted as a whole. But English experience, and a longer experience in America, has shown that the personality of the candidate nominated is at least as important as his party allegiance, and that a parliament of well-selected members who represent somewhat roughly the opinion of the nation is better than a parliament of ill-selected members who, as far as their party labels are concerned, are, to quote Lord Courtney, 'a distillation, a quintessence, a microcosm, a reflection of the community.'[79] [79] Address at Stockport, p. 11. To Lord Courtney the multi-member constituency, which permits of a wide choice, and the preferential vote, which permits of full use of that choice, are equally essential parts of his plan; and that plan will soon be seriously discussed, because parliament, owing to the rise of the Labour Party and the late prevalence of 'three-cornered' contests, will soon have to deal with the question. It will then be interesting to see whether the growing substitution of the new quantitative and psychological for the old absolute and logical way of thinking about elections will have advanced sufficiently far to enable the House of Commons to distinguish between the two points. If so, they will adopt the transferable vote, and so get over the difficulty of three-cornered elections, while retaining single-member constituencies, and therewith the possibility of making the personality of a candidate known to the whole of his constituents. A further effect of the way in which we are beginning to think of the electoral process is that, since 1888, parliament, in reconstructing the system of English local government, has steadily diminished the number of elections, with the avowed purpose of increasing their efficiency. The Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894 swept away thousands of elections for Improvement Boards, Burial Boards, Vestries, etc. In 1902 the separately elected School Boards were abolished, and it is certain that the Guardians of the Poor will soon follow them. The Rural Parish Councils, which were created in 1894, and which represented a reversion by the Liberal Party to the older type of democratic thought, have been a failure, and will either be abolished or will remain ineffective, because no real administrative powers will be given to them. But if we omit the rural districts, the inhabitant of a 'county borough' will soon vote only for parliament and his borough council, while the inhabitant of London or of an urban district or non-county borough will only vote for parliament, his county, and his district or borough council. On the average, neither will be asked to vote more than once a year. In America one notices a similar tendency towards electoral concentration as a means of increasing electoral responsibility. In Philadelphia I found that this concentration had taken a form which seemed to me to be due to a rather elementary quantitative mistake in psychology. Owing to the fact that the reformers had thought only of economising political force, and had ignored the limitations of political knowledge, so many elections were combined on one day that the Philadelphia 'blanket-ballot' which I was shown, with its parallel columns of party 'tickets,' contained some four hundred names. The resulting effects on the _personnel_ of Philadelphian politics were as obvious as they were lamentable. In other American cities, however, concentration often takes the form of the abolition of many of the elected boards and officials, and the substitution for them of a single elected Mayor, who administers the city by nominated commissions, and whose personality it is hoped can be made known during an election to all the voters, and therefore must he seriously considered by his nominators. One noticed again the growing tendency to substitute a quantitative and psychological for an absolute and logical view of the electoral process in the House of Commons debate on the claim set up by the House of Lords in 1907 to the right of forcing a general election (or a referendum) at any moment which they thought advantageous to themselves. Mr. Herbert Samuel, for instance, argued that this claim, if allowed, would give a still further advantage in politics to the electoral forces of wealth acting, at dates carefully chosen by the House of Lords, both directly and through the control of the Press. Lord Robert Cecil alone, whose mind is historical in the worst sense of that term, objected 'What a commentary was that on the "will of the people,"'[80] and thought it somehow illegitimate that Mr. Samuel should not defend democracy according to the philosophy of Thomas Paine, so that he could answer in the style of Canning. The present quarrel between the two Houses may indeed result in a further step in the public control of the methods of producing political opinion by the substitution of General Elections occurring at regular intervals for our present system of sudden party dissolutions at moments of national excitement. [80] _Times_, June 25, 1907. But in the electoral process, as in so many other cases, one dares not hope that these slow and half-conscious changes in the general intellectual attitude will be sufficient to suggest and carry through all the improvements of machinery necessary to meet our growing difficulties, unless they are quickened by a conscious purpose. At my last contest for the London County Council I had to spend the half hour before the close of the vote in one of the polling stations of a very poor district. I was watching the proceedings, which in the crush at the end are apt to be rather irregular, and at the same time was thinking of this book. The voters who came in were the results of the 'final rally' of the canvassers on both sides. They entered the room in rapid but irregular succession, as if they were jerked forward by a hurried and inefficient machine. About half of them were women, with broken straw hats, pallid faces, and untidy hair. All were dazed and bewildered, having been snatched away in carriages or motors from the making of match-boxes, or button-holes, or cheap furniture, or from the public house, or, since it was Saturday evening, from bed. Most of them seemed to be trying, in the unfamiliar surroundings, to be sure of the name for which, as they had been reminded at the door, they were to vote. A few were drunk, and one man, who was apparently a supporter of my own, clung to my neck while he tried to tell me of some vaguely tremendous fact which just eluded his power of speech. I was very anxious to win, and inclined to think that I had won, but my chief feeling was an intense conviction that this could not be accepted as even a decently satisfactory method of creating a government for a city of five million inhabitants, and that nothing short of a conscious and resolute facing of the whole problem of the formation of political opinion would enable us to improve it. Something might be done, and perhaps will be done in the near future, to abolish the more sordid details of English electioneering. Public houses could be closed on the election day, both to prevent drunkenness and casual treating, and to create an atmosphere of comparative seriousness. It is a pity that we cannot have the elections on a Sunday as they have in France. The voters would then come to the poll after twenty or twenty-four hours' rest, and their own thoughts would have some power of asserting themselves even in the presence of the canvasser, whose hustling energy now inevitably dominates the tired nerves of men who have just finished their day's work. The feeling of moral responsibility half consciously associated with the religious use of Sunday would also be so valuable an aid to reflection that the most determined anti-clerical might be willing to risk the chance that it would add to the political power of the churches. It may cease to be true that in England the Christian day of rest, in spite of the recorded protest of the founder of Christianity, is still too much hedged about by the traditions of prehistoric taboo to be available for the most solemn act of citizenship. It might again be possible to lend to the polling-place some of the dignity of a law court, and if no better buildings were available, at least to clean and decorate the dingy schoolrooms now used. But such improvements in the external environment of election-day, however desirable they may be in themselves, can only be of small effect. Some writers argue or imply that all difficulties in the working of the electoral process will disappear of themselves as men approach to social equality. Those who are now rich will, they believe, have neither motive for corrupt electoral expenditure, nor superfluity of money to spend on it; while the women and the working men who are now unenfranchised or politically inactive, will bring into politics a fresh stream of unspoilt impulse. If our civilisation is to survive, greater social equality must indeed come. Men will not continue to live peacefully together in huge cities under conditions that are intolerable to any sensitive mind, both among those who profit, and those who suffer by them. But no one who is near to political facts can believe that the immediate effect either of greater equality or of the extension of the suffrage will be to clear away all moral and intellectual difficulties in political organisation. A mere numerical increase in the number of persons in England who are interested in politics would indeed itself introduce a new and difficult political factor. The active politicians in England, those who take any part in politics beyond voting, are at present a tiny minority. I was to speak not long ago at an election meeting, and having been misdirected as to the place where the meeting was to be held, found myself in an unknown part of North London, compelled to inquire of the inhabitants until I should find the address either of the meeting-hall or of the party committee-room. For a long time I drew blank, but at last a cabman on his way home to tea told me that there was a milkman in his street who was 'a politician and would know.' There are in London seven hundred thousand parliamentary voters, and I am informed by the man who is in the best position to know that it would be safe to say that less than ten thousand persons actually attend the annual ward meetings of the various parties, and that not more than thirty thousand are members of the party associations. That division of labour which assigns politics to a special class of enthusiasts, looked on by many of their neighbours as well-meaning busybodies, is not carried so far in most other parts of England as in London. But in no county in England, as far as I am aware, does the number of persons really active in politics amount to ten per cent. of the electorate. There are, I think, signs that this may soon cease to be true. The English Elementary Education Act was passed in 1870, and the elementary schools may be said to have become fairly efficient by 1880. Those who entered them, being six years old, at that date are now aged thirty-four. The statistics as to the production and sale of newspapers and cheap books and the use of free libraries, show that the younger working men and women in England read many times as much as their parents did. This, and the general increase of intellectual activity in our cities of which it is only a part, may very probably lead, as the social question in politics grows more serious, to a large extension of electoral interest. If so, the little groups of men and women who now manage the three English parties in the local constituencies will find themselves swamped by thousands of adherents who will insist on taking some part in the choice of candidates and the formation of programmes. That will lead to a great increase in the complexity of the process by which the Council, the Executive, and the officers of each local party association are appointed. Parliament indeed may find itself compelled, as many of the American States have been compelled, to pass a series of Acts for the prevention of fraud in the interior government of parties. The ordinary citizen would find then, much more obviously than he does at present, that an effective use of his voting power involves not only the marking of a ballot paper on the day of the election, but an active share in that work of appointing and controlling party committees from which many men whose opinions are valuable to the State shrink with an instinctive dread. But the most important difficulties raised by the extension of political interest from a very small to a large fraction of the population would be concerned with political motive rather than political machinery. It is astonishing that the early English democrats, who supposed that individual advantage would be the sole driving force in politics, assumed, without realising the nature of their own assumption, that the representative, if he were elected for a short term, would inevitably feel his own advantage to be identical with that of the community.[81] At present there is a fairly sufficient supply of men whose imagination and sympathies are sufficiently quick and wide to make them ready to undertake the toil of unpaid electioneering and administration for the general good. But every organiser of elections knows that the supply is never more than sufficient, and payment of members, while it would permit men of good-will to come forward who are now shut out, would also make it possible for less worthy motives to become more effective. The concentration both of administrative and legislative work in the hands of the Cabinet, while it tends to economy of time and effort, is making the House of Commons yearly a less interesting place; and members have of late often expressed to me a real anxiety lest the _personnel_ of the House should seriously deteriorate. [81] E.g. James Mill, _Essay on Government_ (1825), 'We have seen in what manner it is possible to prevent in the Representatives the rise of an interest different from that of the parties who choose them, namely, by giving them little time not dependent upon the will of those parties' (p. 27). The chief immediate danger in the case of the two older parties is that, owing to the growing expense of electioneering and the growing effect of legislation on commerce and finance, an increasing proportion of the members and candidates may be drawn from the class of 'hustling' company-promoters and financiers. The Labour Party, on the other hand, can now draw upon an ample supply of genuine public spirit, and its difficulties in this respect will arise, not from calculated individual selfishness, but from the social and intellectual environment of working-class life. During the last twenty years I have been associated, for some years continuously and afterwards at intervals, with English political working men. They had, it seemed to me, for the most part a great advantage in the fact that certain real things of life were real to them. It is, for instance, the 'class-conscious' working men who, in England as on the Continent, are the chief safeguard against the horrors of a general European war. But as their number and responsibility increase they will, I believe, have to learn some rather hard lessons as to the intellectual conditions of representative government upon a large scale. The town working man lives in a world in which it is very difficult for him to choose his associates. If he is of an expansive temperament, and it is such men who become politicians, he must take his mates in the shop and his neighbours in the tenement house as he finds them--and he sees them at very close range. The social virtue therefore which is almost a necessity of his existence is a good-humoured tolerance of the defects of average human nature. He is keenly aware of the uncertainty of his own industrial position, accustomed to give and receive help, and very unwilling to 'do' any man 'out of his job.' His parents and grandparents read very little and he was brought up in a home with few books. If, as he grows up, he does not himself read, things beyond his direct observation are apt to be rather shadowy for him, and he is easily made suspicious of that which he does not understand. If, on the other hand, he takes to reading when he is already a grown man, words and ideas are apt to have for him a kind of abstract and sharply outlined reality in a region far removed from his daily life. Now the first virtue required in government is the habit of realising that things whose existence we infer from reading are as important as the things observed by our senses, of looking, for instance, through a list of candidates for an appointment and weighing the qualifications of the man whom one has never met by the same standard as those of the man whom one has met, and liked or pitied, the day before; or of deciding on an improvement with complete impartiality as between the district one knows of on the map and the district one sees every morning. If a representative elected to govern a large area allows personal acquaintance and liking to influence his decisions, his acquaintance and liking will he schemed for and exploited by those who have their own ends to gain. The same difficulty arises in matters of discipline, where the interests of the unknown thousands who will suffer from the inefficiency of an official have to be balanced against those of the known official who will suffer by being punished or dismissed; as well as in those numerous cases in which a working man has to balance the dimly realised interests of the general consumer against his intimate sympathy with his fellow-craftsmen. The political risk arising from these facts is not, at present, very great in the parliamentary Labour Party. The working men who have been sent to parliament have been hitherto, as a rule, men of picked intelligence and morale and of considerable political experience. But the success or failure of any scheme aiming at social equality will depend chiefly on its administration by local bodies, to which the working classes must necessarily send men of less exceptional ability and experience. I have never myself served on an elected local body the majority of whose members were weekly wage earners. But I have talked with men, both of working-class and middle-class origin, who have been in that position. What they say confirms that which I have inferred from my own observation, that on such a body one finds a high level of enthusiasm, of sympathy, and of readiness to work, combined with a difficulty in maintaining a sufficiently rigorous standard in dealing with sectional interests and official discipline. One is told that on such a body many members feel it difficult to realise that the way in which a well-intentioned man may deal with his own personal expenditure, his continued patronage, for instance, of a rather inefficient tradesman because he has a large family, or his refusal to contest an account from a dislike of imputing bad motives, is fatal if applied in the expenditure of the large sums entrusted to a public body. Sometimes there are even, one learns, indications of that good-humoured and not ill-meant laxity in expending public money which has had such disastrous results in America, and which lends itself so easily to exploitation by those in whom the habit of giving and taking personal favours has hardened into systematic fraud. When one of the West Ham Guardians, two years ago, committed suicide on being charged with corruption, the _Star_ sent down a representative who filled a column with the news. 'His death,' we were told, 'has robbed the district of an indefatigable public worker. County Council, Board of Guardians, and Liberal interests all occupied his leisure time.' 'One of his friends' is described as saying to the _Star_ reporter, 'You do not need to go far to learn of his big-souled geniality. The poor folks of the workhouse will miss him badly.'[82] When one has waded through masses of evidence on American municipal corruption, that phrase about 'big-souled geniality' makes one shudder. [82] _Star_, November 28th, 1906. The early history of the co-operative and trade-union movements in England is full of pathetic instances of this kind of failure, and both movements show how a new and more stringent ideal may be slowly built up. But such an ideal will not come of itself without an effort, and must be part of the conscious organised thought of each generation if it is to be permanently effective. Those difficulties have in the past been mainly pointed out by the opponents of democracy. But if democracy is to succeed they must be frankly considered by the democrats themselves; just as it is the engineer who is trying to build the bridge, and not the ferry-owner, who is against any bridge at all, whose duty it is to calculate the strain which the materials will stand. The engineer, when he wishes to increase the margin of safety in his plans, treats as factors in the same quantitative problem both the chemical expedients by which he can strengthen his materials and the structural changes by which the strain on those materials can be diminished. So those who would increase the margin of safety in our democracy must estimate, with no desire except to arrive at truth, both the degree to which the political strength of the individual citizen can, in any given time, be actually increased by moral and educational changes, and the possibility of preserving or extending or inventing such elements in the structure of democracy as may prevent the demand upon him being too great for his strength. CHAPTER III OFFICIAL THOUGHT It is obvious, however, that the persons elected under any conceivable system of representation cannot do the whole work of government themselves. If all elections are held in single member constituencies of a size sufficient to secure a good supply of candidates; if the number of elections is such as to allow the political workers a proper interval for rest and reflection between the campaigns; if each elected body has an area large enough for effective administration, a number of members sufficient for committee work and not too large for debate, and duties sufficiently important to justify the effort and expense of a contest; then one may take about twenty-three thousand as the best number of men and women to be elected by the existing population of the United Kingdom--or rather less than one to every two thousand of the population.[83] [83] I arrive at this figure by dividing the United Kingdom into single member parliamentary constituencies, averaging 100,000 in population, which gives a House of Commons of 440--a more convenient number than the existing 670. I take the same unit of 100,000 for the average municipal area. Large towns would contain several parliamentary constituencies, and small towns would, as at present, be separate municipal areas, although only part of a parliamentary constituency. I allow one local council of 50 on the average to each municipal area. This proportion depends mainly on facts in the psychology of the electors, which will change very slowly if they change at all. At present the amount of work to be done in the way of government is rapidly increasing, and seems likely to continue to increase. If so, the number of elected persons available for each unit of work must tend to decrease. The number of persons now elected in the United Kingdom (including, for instance, the Parish Councillors of rural parishes, and the Common Council of the City of London) is, of course, larger than my estimate, though it has been greatly diminished by the Acts of 1888, 1894 and 1902. Owing, however, to the fact that areas and powers are still somewhat uneconomically distributed it represents a smaller actual working power than would be given by the plan which I suggest. On the other hand, the number of persons (excluding the Army and Navy) given in the Census Returns of 1901 as professionally employed in the central and local government of the United Kingdom was 161,000. This number has certainly grown since 1901 at an increasing rate, and consists of persons who give on an average at least four times as many hours a week to their work as can be expected from the average elected member. What ought to be the relation between these two bodies, of twenty-three thousand elected, and, say, two hundred thousand non-elected persons? To begin with, ought the elected members be free to appoint the non-elected officials as they like? Most American politicians of Andrew Jackson's time, and a large number of American politicians to-day, would hold, for instance, as a direct corollary from democratic principles, that the elected congressman or senator for a district or State has a right to nominate the local federal officials. There may, he would admit, be some risk in that method, but the risk, he would argue, is one involved in the whole scheme of democracy, and the advantages of democracy as a whole are greater than its disadvantages. Our political logic in England has never been so elementary as that of the Americans, nor has our faith in it been so unflinching. Most Englishmen, therefore, have no feeling of disloyalty to the democratic idea in admitting that it is not safe to allow the efficiency of officials to depend upon the personal character of individual representatives. At the General Election of 1906 there were at least two English constituencies (one Liberal and the other Conservative) which returned candidates whose personal unfitness had been to most men's minds proved by evidence given in the law courts. Neither constituency was markedly unlike the average in any respect. The facts were well known, and in each case an attempt was made by a few public-spirited voters to split the party vote, but both candidates were successful by large majorities. The Borough of Croydon stands, socially and intellectually, well above the average, but Mr. Jabez Balfour represented Croydon for many years, until he was sentenced to penal servitude for fraud. No one in any of these three cases would have desired that the sitting member should appoint, say, the postmasters, or collectors of Inland Revenue for his constituency. But though the case against the appointment of officials by individual representatives is clear, the question of the part which should be taken by any elected body as a whole in appointing the officials who serve under it is much more difficult, and cannot be discussed without considering what are to be the relative functions of the officials and the representatives after the appointment has taken place. Do we aim at making election in fact as well as in constitutional theory the sole base of political authority, or do we desire that the non-elected officials shall exert some amount of independent influence? The fact that most Englishmen, in spite of their traditional fear of bureaucracy, would now accept the second of these alternatives, is one of the most striking results of our experience in the working of democracy. We see that the evidence on which the verdict at an election must be given is becoming every year more difficult to collect and present, and further removed from the direct observation of the voters. We are afraid of being entirely dependent on partisan newspapers or election leaflets for our knowledge, and we have therefore come to value, even if for that reason only, the existence of a responsible and more or less independent Civil Service. It is difficult to realise how short a time it is since questions for which we now rely entirely on official statistics were discussed by the ordinary political methods of agitation and advocacy. In the earlier years of George the Third's reign, at a time when population in England was, as we now know, rising with unprecedented rapidity, the question of fact whether it was rising or falling led to embittered political controversy.[84] In the spring of 1830 the House of Commons gave three nights to a confused party debate on the state of the country. The Whigs argued that distress was general, and the Tories (who were, as it happened, right) that it was local[85]. In 1798 or 1830 the 'public' who could take part in such discussions numbered perhaps fifty thousand at the most. At least ten million people must, since 1903, have taken part in the present Tariff Reform controversy; and that controversy would have degenerated into mere Bedlam if it had not been for the existence of the Board of Trade Returns, with whose figures both sides had at least to appear to square their arguments. [84] Bonar's _Malthus_, chap. vii. [85] _Hansard_, Feb. 4th, 5th, 6th, 1830. If official figures did not exist in England, or if they did not possess or deserve authority, it is difficult to estimate the degree of political harm which could be done in a few years by an interested and deliberately dishonest agitation on some question too technical for the personal judgment of the ordinary voter. Suppose, for instance, that our Civil Service were either notoriously inefficient or believed to be dominated by party influence, and that an organised and fraudulent 'currency agitation' should suddenly spring up. A powerful press syndicate brings out a series of well-advertised articles declaring that the privileges of the Bank of England and the law as to the gold reserve are 'strangling British Industry.' The contents bills of two hundred newspapers denounce every day the 'monopolists' and the 'gold-bugs,' the 'lies and shams' of the Bank Returns, and the 'paid perjurers of Somerset House.' The group of financiers who control the syndicate stand to win enormous sums by the creation of a more 'elastic' currency, and subscribe largely to a Free Money League, which includes a few sincere paper-money theorists who have been soured by the contempt of the professional economists. A vigorous and well-known member of parliament--a not very reputable aristocrat perhaps, or some one loosely connected with the Labour movement--whom everybody has hitherto feared and no one quite trusted, sees his opportunity. He puts himself at the head of the movement, denounces the 'fossils' and 'superior persons' who at present lead Conservative and Liberal and Labour parties alike, and, with the help of the press syndicate and the subscription fund of the 'Free Money League,' begins to capture the local associations, and through them the central office of the party which is for the moment in opposition, Can any one be sure that such a campaign, if it were opposed only by counter-electioneering, might not succeed, even although its proposals were wholly fraudulent and its leaders so ignorant or so criminal that they could only come into power by discrediting two-thirds of the honest politicians in the country and by replacing them with 'hustlers' and 'boodlers' and 'grafters,' and the other species for whom American political science has provided names? How is the ordinary voter--a market-gardener, or a gas-stoker, or a water-colour painter--to distinguish by the help of his own knowledge and reasoning power between the various appeals made to him by the 'Reformers' and the 'Safe Money Men' as to the right proportion of the gold reserve to the note issue--the 'ten per cent.' on the blue posters and the 'cent. per cent.' on the yellow? Nor will his conscience be a safer guide than his judgment. A 'Christian Service Wing' of the Free Money League may be formed, and his conscience may be roused by a white-cravatted orator, intoxicated by his own eloquence into something like sincerity, who borrows that phrase about 'Humanity crucified on a cross of gold' which Mr. W.J. Bryan borrowed a dozen years ago from some one else. In an optimistic mood one might rely on the subtle network of confidence by which each man trusts, on subjects outside his own knowledge, some honest and better-informed neighbour, who again trusts at several removes the trained thinker. But does such a personal network exist in our vast delocalised urban populations? It is the vague apprehension of such dangers, quite as much as the merely selfish fears of the privileged classes, which preserves in Europe the relics of past systems of non-elective government, the House of Lords, for instance, in England, and the Monarchy in Italy or Norway. Men feel that a second base in politics is required, consisting of persons independent of the tactics by which electoral opinion is formed and legally entitled to make themselves heard. But political authority founded on heredity or wealth is not in fact protected from the interested manipulation of opinion and feeling. The American Senate, which has come to be representative of wealth, is already absorbed by that financial power which depends for its existence on manufactured opinion; and our House of Lords is rapidly tending in the same direction. From the beginning of history it has been found easier for any skilled politician who set his mind to it, to control the opinions of a hereditary monarch than those of a crowd. The real 'Second Chamber,' the real 'constitutional check' in England, is provided, not by the House of Lords or the Monarchy, but by the existence of a permanent Civil Service, appointed on a system independent of the opinion or desires of any politician, and holding office during good behaviour. If such a service were, as it is in Russia and to a large extent in India, a sovereign power, it would itself, as I argued in the last chapter, have to cultivate the art of manipulating opinion. But the English Civil servants in their present position have the right and duty of making their voice heard, without the necessity of making their will, by fair means or foul, prevail. The creation of this Service was the one great political invention in nineteenth-century England, and like other inventions it was worked out under the pressure of an urgent practical problem. The method of appointing the officials of the East India Company had been a critical question in English politics since 1783. By that time it had already become clear that we could not permanently allow the appointment of the rulers of a great empire kept in existence by the English fleet and army to depend upon the irresponsible favour of the Company's directors. Charles James Fox in 1783, with his usual heedlessness, proposed to cut the knot, by making Indian appointments, in effect, part of the ordinary system of parliamentary patronage; and he and Lord North were beaten over their India Bill, not only because George the Third was obstinate and unscrupulous, but because men felt the enormous political dangers involved in their proposal. The question, in fact, could only be solved by a new invention. The expedient of administering an oath to the Directors that they would make their appointments honestly, proved to be useless, and the requirements that the nominees of the Directors should submit to a special training at Hayleybury, though more effective, left the main evil of patronage untouched. As early, therefore, as 1833, the Government Bill introduced by Macaulay for the renewal and revision of the Company's charter contained a clause providing that East India cadetships should be thrown open to competition.[86] For the time the influence of the Directors was sufficient to prevent so great a change from being effected, but in 1853, on a further renewal of the Charter, the system of competition was definitely adopted, and the first open examination for cadetships took place in 1855. [86] It would be interesting if Lord Morley, now that he has access to the records of the East India House, would tell us the true intellectual history of this far-reaching suggestion. For the facts as now known, cf. A.L. Lowell, _Colonial Civil Service_, pp. 243-256. In the meantime Sir Charles Trevelyan, a distinguished Indian Civilian who had married Macaulay's sister, had been asked to inquire, with the help of Sir Stafford Northcote, into the method of appointment in the Home Civil Service. His report appeared in the spring of 1854,[87] and is one of the ablest of those State Papers which have done so much to mould the English constitution during the last two generations. It showed the intolerable effects on the _personnel_ of the existing Service of the system by which the Patronage Secretary of the Treasury distributed appointments in the national Civil Service among those members of parliament whose votes were to be influenced or rewarded, and it proposed that all posts requiring intellectual qualifications should be thrown open to those young men of good character who succeeded at a competitive examination in the subjects which then constituted the education of a gentleman. [87] _Reports and Papers on the Civil Service_, 1854-5. But to propose that members of parliament should give up their own patronage was a very different thing from asking them to take away the patronage of the East India Company. Sir Charles Trevelyan, therefore, before publishing his proposal, sent it round to a number of distinguished persons both inside and outside the Government service, and printed their very frank replies in an appendix. Most of his correspondents thought that the idea was hopelessly impracticable. It seemed like the intrusion into the world of politics of a scheme of cause and effect derived from another universe--as if one should propose to the Stock Exchange that the day's prices should be fixed by prayer and the casting of lots. Lingen, for instance, the permanent head of the Education Office, wrote considering that, as matter of fact, patronage is one element of power, and not by any means an unreal one; considering the long and inestimably valuable habituation of the people of this country to political contests in which the share of office ... reckons among the legitimate prizes of war; considering that socially and in the business of life, as well as in Downing Street, rank and wealth (as a fact, and whether we like it or not) hold the keys of many things, and that our modes of thinking and acting proceed, in a thousand ways, upon this supposition, considering all these things, I should hesitate long before I advised such a revolution of the Civil Service as that proposed by yourself and Sir Stafford Northcote.'[88] Sir James Stephen of the Colonial Office put it more bluntly, 'The world we live in is not, I think, half moralised enough for the acceptance of such a scheme of stern morality as this.'[89] When, a few years later, competition for commissions in the Indian army was discussed, Queen Victoria (or Prince Albert through her) objected that it reduced the sovereign to a mere signing machine.'[90] [88] _Reports and Papers on the Civil Service_, pp. 104, 105. [89] _Ibid._, p. 78 [90] _Life of Queen Victoria_, vol. iii. p. 377 (July 29, 1858). In 1870, however, sixteen years after Trevelyan's Report, Gladstone established open competition throughout the English Civil Service, by an Order in Council which was practically uncriticised and unopposed; and the parliamentary government of England in one of its most important functions did in fact reduce itself 'to a mere signing machine.' The causes of the change in the political atmosphere which made this possible constitute one of the most interesting problems in English history. One cause is obvious. In 1867 Lord Derby's Reform Act had suddenly transferred the ultimate control of the House of Commons from the 'ten pound householders' in the boroughs to the working men. The old 'governing classes' may well have felt that the patronage which they could not much longer retain would be safer in the hands of an independent Civil Service Commission, interpreting, like a blinded figure of Justice, the verdict of Nature, than in those of the dreaded 'caucuses,' which Mr. Schnadhorst was already organising. But one seems to detect a deeper cause of change than the mere transference of voting power. The fifteen years from the Crimean War to 1870 were in England a period of wide mental activity, during which the conclusions of a few penetrating thinkers like Darwin or Newman were discussed and popularised by a crowd of magazine writers and preachers and poets. The conception was gaining ground that it was upon serious and continued thought and not upon opinion that the power to carry out our purposes, whether in politics or elsewhere, must ultimately depend. Carlyle in 1850 had asked whether 'democracy once modelled into suffrages, furnished with ballot-boxes and such-like, will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from Delusive to Real,' and had answered, 'Your ship cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting. The ship may vote this and that, above decks and below, in the most harmonious exquisitely constitutional manner: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can, by voting or without voting, ascertain those conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot--the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again.'[91] [91] _Latter Day Pamphlets, No. I, The Present Time_. (Chapman and Hall, 1894, pp. 12 and 14.) By 1870 Carlyle's lesson was already well started on its course from paradox to platitude. The most important single influence in that course had been the growth of Natural Science. It was, for instance, in 1870 that Huxley's _Lay Sermons_ were collected and published. People who could not in 1850 understand Carlyle's distinction between the Delusive and the Eeal, could not help understanding Huxley's comparison of life and death to a game of chess with an unseen opponent who never makes a mistake.[92] And Huxley's impersonal Science seemed a more present aid in the voyage round Cape Horn than Carlyle's personal and impossible Hero. [92] _Lay Sermont_, p. 31, 'A Liberal Education' (1868). But the invention of a competitive Civil Service, when it had once been made and adopted, dropped from the region of severe and difficult thought in which it originated, and took its place in our habitual political psychology. We now half-consciously conceive of the Civil Service as an unchanging fact whose good and bad points are to be taken or left as a whole. Open competition has by the same process become a principle, conceived of as applying to those cases to which it has been in fact applied, and to no others. What is therefore for the moment most needed, if we are to think fruitfully on the subject, is that we should in our own minds break up this fact, and return to the world of infinite possible variations. We must think of the expedient of competition itself as varying in a thousand different directions, and shading by imperceptible gradations into other methods of appointment; and of the posts offered for competition as differing each from all the rest, as overlapping those posts for which competition in some form is suitable though it has not yet been tried, and as touching, at the marginal point on their curve, those posts for which competition is unsuitable. Directly we begin this process one fact becomes obvious. There is no reason why the same system should not be applied to the appointment of the officials of the local as to those of the central government. It is an amazing instance of the intellectual inertia of the English people that we have never seriously considered this point. In America the term Civil Service is applied equally to both groups of offices, and 'Civil Service principles' are understood to cover State and Municipal as well as Federal appointments. The separation of the two systems in our minds may, indeed, be largely due to the mere accident that from historical reasons we call them by different names. As it is, the local authorities are (with the exception that certain qualifications are required for teachers and medical officers) left free to do as they will in making appointments. Perhaps half a dozen Metropolitan and provincial local bodies have adopted timid and limited schemes of open competition. But in all other cases the local civil servants, who are already probably as numerous as those of the central government,[93] are appointed under conditions which, if the Government chose to create a Commission of Inquiry, would probably be found to have reproduced many of the evils that existed in the patronage of the central government before 1855. [93] The figures in the census of 1901 were--National, 90,000; Local, 71,000. But the local officials since then have, I believe, increased much more rapidly than the national. It would not, of course, be possible to appoint a separate body of Civil Service Commissioners to hold a separate examination for each locality, and difficulties would arise from the selection of officials by a body responsible only to the central government, and out of touch with the local body which controls, pays, and promotes them when appointed. But similar difficulties have been obviated by American Civil Service Reformers, and a few days' hard thinking would suffice to adapt the system to English local conditions. One object aimed at by the creation of a competitive Civil Service for the central government in England was the prevention of corruption. It was made more difficult for representatives and officials to conspire together in order to defraud the public, when the official ceased to owe his appointment to the representative. If an English member of parliament desired now to make money out of his position, he would have to corrupt a whole series of officials in no way dependent on his favour, who perhaps intensely dislike the human type to which he belongs, and who would be condemned to disgrace or imprisonment years after he had lost his seat if some record of their joint misdoing were unearthed. This precaution against corruption is needed even more clearly under the conditions of local government. The expenditure of local bodies in the United Kingdom is already much larger than that of the central State, and is increasing at an enormously greater rate, while the fact that most of the money is spent locally, and in comparatively small sums, makes fraud easier. English municipal life is, I believe, on the whole pure, but fraud does occur, and it is encouraged by the close connection that may exist between the officials and the representatives. A needy or thick-skinned urban councillor or guardian may at any moment tempt, or be tempted, by a poor relation who helped him at his election, and for whom (perhaps as the result of a tacit understanding that similar favours should be allowed to his colleagues), he obtained a municipal post. The railway companies, again, in England are coming every year more and more under State control, but no statesman has ever attempted to secure in their case, as was done in the case of the East India Company a century ago, some reasonable standard of purity and impartiality in appointments and promotion. Some few railways have systems of competition for boy clerks, even more inadequate than those carried on by municipalities; but one is told that under most of the companies both appointment and promotion may be influenced by the favour of directors or large shareholders. We regulate the minutiae of coupling and signalling on the railways, but do not realise that the safety of the public depends even more directly upon their systems of patronage. How far this principle should be extended, and how far, for instance, it would be possible to prevent the head of a great private firm from ruining half a country side by leaving the management of his business to a hopelessly incompetent relation, is a question which depends, among other things, upon the powers of political invention which may be developed by collectivist thinkers in the next fifty years. We must meanwhile cease to treat the existing system of competition by the hasty writing of answers to unexpected examination questions as an unchangeable entity. That system has certain very real advantages. It is felt by the candidates and their relations to be 'fair.' It reveals facts about the relative powers of the candidates in some important intellectual qualities which no testimonials would indicate, and which are often unknown, till tested, to the candidates themselves. But if the sphere of independent selection is to be widely extended, greater variety must be introduced into its methods. In this respect invention has stood still in England since the publication of Sir Charles Trevelyan's Report in 1855. Some slight modifications have taken place in the subjects chosen for examination, but the enormous changes in English educational conditions during the last half century have been for the most part ignored. It is still assumed that young Englishmen consist of a small minority who have received the nearly uniform 'education of a gentleman,' and a large majority who have received no intellectual training at all. The spread of varied types of secondary schools, the increasing specialisation of higher education, and the experience which all the universities of the world have accumulated as to the possibility of testing the genuineness and intellectual quality of 'post graduate' theses have had little or no effect. The Playfair Commission of 1875 found that a few women were employed for strictly subordinate work in the Post Office. Since then female typewriters and a few better-paid women have been introduced into other offices in accordance with the casual impulses of this or that parliamentary or permanent chief; but no systematic attempt has been made to enrich the thinking power of the State by using the trained and patient intellects of the women who graduate each year in the newer, and 'qualify by examination to graduate,' in the older Universities. To the general public indeed, the adoption of open competition in 1870 seemed to obviate any necessity for further consideration not only of the method by which officials were appointed but also of the system under which they did their work. The race of Tite Barnacles, they learnt, was now to become extinct. Appointment was to be by 'merit,' and the announcement of the examination results, like the wedding in a middle-Victorian novel, was to be the end of the story. But in a Government office, as certainly as in a law-court or a laboratory, effective thinking will not be done unless adequate opportunities and motives are secured by organisation during the whole working life of the appointed officials. Since 1870, however, the organisation of the Government Departments has either been left to the casual development of office tradition in each Department or has been changed (as in the case of the War Office) by an agitation directed against one Department only. The official relations, for instance, between the First Division minority and the Second Division majority of the clerks in each office vary, not on any considered principle, but according to the opinions and prejudices of some once-dominant but now forgotten chief. The same is true of the relation between the heads of each section and the officials immediately below them. In at least one office important papers are brought first to the chief. His decision is at once given and is sent down the hierarchy for elaboration. In other offices the younger men are given invaluable experience, and the elder men are prevented from getting into an official rut by a system which requires that all papers should be sent first to a junior, who sends them up to his senior accompanied not only by the necessary papers but also by a minute of his own suggesting official action. One of these two types of organisation must in fact be better than the other, but no one has systematically compared them. In the Colonial Office, again, it is the duty of the Librarian to see that the published books as well as the office records on any question are available for every official who has to report on it. In the Board of Trade, which deals with subjects on which the importance of published as compared with official information is even greater, room has only just been found for a technical library which was collected many years ago.[94] The Foreign Office and the India Office have libraries, the Treasury and the Local Government Board have none. [94] For a long time the Library of the Board of Trade was kept at the Foreign Office. In the Exchequer and Audit Department a deliberate policy has been adopted of training junior officials by transferring them at regular intervals to different branches of the work. The results are said to be excellent, but nothing of the kind is systematically done or has even been seriously discussed in any other Department which I know. Nearly all departmental officials are concerned with the organisation of non-departmental work more directly executive than their own, and part of a wise system of official training would consist in 'seconding' young officials for experience in the kind of work which they are to organise. The clerks of the Board of Agriculture should be sent at least once in their career to help in superintending the killing of infected swine and interviewing actual farmers, while an official in the Railway section of the Board of Trade should acquire some personal knowledge of the inside of a railway office. This principle of 'seconding' might well be extended so as to cover (as is already done in the army) definite periods of study during which an official, on leave of absence with full pay, should acquire knowledge useful to his department; after which he should show the result of his work, not by the answering of examination questions, but by the presentation of a book or report of permanent value. The grim necessity of providing, after the events of the Boer War, for effective thought in the government of the British army produced the War Office Council. The Secretary of State, instead of knowing only of those suggestions that reach him through the 'bottle-neck' of his senior official's mind, now sits once a week at a table with half a dozen heads of sub-departments. He hears real discussion; he learns to pick men for higher work; and saves many hours of circumlocutory writing. At the same time, owing to a well-known fact in the physiology of the human brain, the men who are tired of thinking on paper find a new stimulus in the spoken word and the presence of their fellow human beings, just as politicians who are tired with talking, find, if their minds are still uninjured, a new stimulus in the silent use of a pen. If this periodical alternation of written and oral discussion is useful in the War Office, it would probably be useful in other offices; but no one with sufficient authority to require an answer has ever asked if it is so. One of the most important functions of a modern Government is the effective publication of information, but we have no Department of Publicity, though we have a Stationery Office; and it is, for instance, apparently a matter of accident whether any particular Department has or has not a Gazette and how and when that Gazette is published. Nor is it any one's business to discover and criticise and if necessary co-ordinate the statistical methods of the various official publications. On all these points and many others a small Departmental Committee (somewhat on the lines of that Esher Committee which reorganised the War Office in 1904), consisting perhaps of an able manager of an Insurance Company, with an open-minded Civil Servant, and a business man with experience of commercial and departmental organisation abroad, might suggest such improvements as would without increase of expense double the existing intellectual output of our Government offices. But such a Committee will not be appointed unless the ordinary members of parliament, and especially the members who advocate a wide extension of collective action, consider much more seriously than they do at present the organisation of collective thought. How, for instance, are we to prevent or minimise the danger that a body of officials will develop 'official' habits of thought, and a sense of a corporate interest opposed to that of the majority of the people? If a sufficient proportion of the ablest and best equipped young men of each generation are to be induced to come into the Government service they must be offered salaries which place them at once among the well-to-do classes. How are we to prevent them siding consciously or unconsciously on all questions of administration with their economic equals? If they do, the danger is not only that social reform will be delayed, but also that working men in England may acquire that hatred and distrust of highly educated permanent officials which one notices in any gathering of working men in America. We are sometimes told, now that good education is open to every one, that men of every kind of social origin and class sympathy will enter to an increasing extent the higher Civil Service. If that takes place it will be an excellent thing, but meanwhile any one who follows the development of the existing examination system knows that care is required to guard against the danger that preference in marking may, if only from official tradition, be given to subjects like Greek and Latin composition, whose educational value is not higher than others, but excellence in which is hardly ever acquired except by members of one social class. It would, of course, be ruinous to sacrifice intellectual efficiency to the dogma of promotion from the ranks, and the statesmen of 1870 were perhaps right in thinking that promotion from the second to the first division of the service would be in their time so rare as to be negligible. But things have changed since then. The competition for the second division has become incomparably more severe, and there is no reasonable test under which some of those second class officials who have continued their education by means of reading and University teaching in the evening would not show, at thirty years of age, a greater fitness for the highest work than would be shown by many of those who had entered by the more advanced examination. But however able our officials are, and however varied their origin, the danger of the narrowness and rigidity which has hitherto so generally resulted from official life would still remain, and must be guarded against by every kind of encouragement to free intellectual development. The German Emperor did good service the other day when he claimed (in a semi-official communication on the Tweedmouth letter) that the persons who are Kings and Ministers in their official capacity have as Fachmänner (experts) other and wider rights in the republic of thought. One only wishes that he would allow his own officials after their day's work to regroup themselves, in the healthy London fashion, with labour leaders, and colonels, and schoolmasters, and court ladies, and members of parliament, as individualists or socialists, or protectors of African aborigines, or theosophists, or advocates of a free stage or a free ritual. The intellectual life of the government official is indeed becoming part of a problem which every year touches us all more closely. In literature and science as well as in commerce and industry the independent producer is dying out and the official is taking his place. We are nearly all of us officials now, bound during our working days, whether we write on a newspaper, or teach in a university, or keep accounts in a bank, by restrictions on our personal freedom in the interest of a larger organisation. We are little influenced by that direct and obvious economic motive which drives a small shopkeeper or farmer or country solicitor to a desperate intensity of scheming how to outstrip his rivals or make more profit out of his employees. If we merely desire to do as little work and enjoy as much leisure as possible in our lives, we all find that it pays us to adopt that steady unanxious 'stroke' which neither advances nor retards promotion. The indirect stimulus, therefore, of interest and variety, of public spirit and the craftsman's delight in his skill, is becoming more important to us as a motive for the higher forms of mental effort, and threats and promises of decrease or increase of salary less important. And because those higher efforts are needed not only for the advantage of the community but for the good of our own souls we are all of us concerned in teaching those distant impersonal masters of ours who are ourselves how to prevent the opportunity of effective thought from being confined to a tiny rich minority, living, like the Cyclops, in irresponsible freedom. If we consciously accept the fact that organised work will in future be the rule and unorganised work the exception, and if we deliberately adjust our methods of working as well as our personal ideals to that condition, we need no longer feel that the direction of public business must be divided between an uninstructed and unstable body of politicians and a selfish and pedantic bureaucracy. CHAPTER IV NATIONALITY AND HUMANITY I have discussed, in the three preceding chapters, the probable effect of certain existing intellectual tendencies on our ideals of political conduct, our systems of representation, and the methods which we adopt for securing intellectual initiative and efficiency among our professional officials--that is to say, on the internal organisation of the State. In this chapter I propose to discuss the effect of the same tendencies on international and inter-racial relations. But, as soon as one leaves the single State and deals with the interrelation of several States, one meets with the preliminary question, What is a State? Is the British Empire, or the Concert of Europe, one State or many? Every community in either area now exerts political influence on every other, and the telegraph and the steamship have abolished most of the older limitations on the further development and extension of that influence. Will the process of coalescence go on either in feeling or in constitutional form, or are there any permanent causes tending to limit the geographical or racial sphere of effective political solidarity, and therefore the size and composition of States? Aristotle, writing under the conditions of the ancient world, laid it down that a community whose population extended to a hundred thousand would no more be a State than would one whose population was confined to ten.[95] He based his argument on measurable facts as to the human senses and the human memory. The territory of a State must be 'visible as a whole' by one eye, and the assembly attended by all the full citizens must be able to hear one voice--which must be that of an actual man and not of the legendary Stentor. The governing officials must be able to remember the faces and characters of all their fellow citizens.[96] He did not ignore the fact that nearly all the world's surface as he knew it was occupied by States enormously larger than his rule allowed. But he denied that the great barbarian monarchies were in the truest sense 'States' at all. [95] _Ethics_, IX., X. 3. [Greek: oúte gàr ek déka anthrôpôn génoit' àn pólis, oút' ek déka myriádôn éti pólis estín.] [96] Aristotle, _Polit._, Bk. VII. ch. iv. We ourselves are apt to forget that the facts on which Aristotle relied were both real and important. The history of the Greek and mediaeval City-States shows how effective a stimulus may be given to some of the highest activities and emotions of mankind when the whole environment of each citizen comes within the first-hand range of his senses and memory. It is now only here and there, in villages outside the main stream of civilisation, that men know the faces of their neighbours and see daily as part of one whole the fields and cottages in which they work and rest. Yet, even now, when a village is absorbed by a sprawling suburb or overwhelmed by the influx of a new industrial population, some of the older inhabitants feel that they are losing touch with the deeper realities of life. A year ago I stood with a hard-walking and hard-thinking old Yorkshire schoolmaster on the high moorland edge of Airedale. Opposite to us was the country-house where Charlotte Brontë was governess, and below us ran the railway, linking a string of manufacturing villages which already were beginning to stretch out towards each other, and threatened soon to extend through the valley an unbroken succession of tall chimneys and slate roofs. He told me how, within his memory, the old affection for place and home had disappeared from the district. I asked whether he thought that a new affection was possible, whether, now that men lived in the larger world of knowledge and inference, rather than in the narrower world of sight and hearing, a patriotism of books and maps might not appear which should be a better guide to life than the patriotism of the village street. This he strongly denied; as the older feeling went, nothing, he said, had taken its place, or would take its place, but a naked and restless individualism, always seeking for personal satisfaction, and always missing it. And then, almost in the words of Morris and Ruskin, he began to urge that we should pay a cheap price if we could regain the true riches of life by forgetting steam and electricity, and returning to the agriculture of the mediaeval village and the handicrafts of the mediaeval town. He knew and I knew that his plea was hopeless. Even under the old conditions the Greek and Italian and Flemish City-States perished, because they were too small to protect themselves against larger though less closely organised communities; and industrial progress is an invader even more irresistible than the armies of Macedon or Spain. For a constantly increasing proportion of the inhabitants of modern England there is now no place where in the old sense they 'live.' Nearly the whole of the class engaged in the direction of English industry, and a rapidly increasing proportion of the manual workers, pass daily in tram or train between sleeping-place and working-place a hundred times more sights than their eyes can take in or their memory retain. They are, to use Mr. Wells's phrase, 'delocalised.'[97] [97] _Mankind in the Making_, p. 406. But now that we can no longer use the range of our senses as a basis for calculating the possible area of the civilised State, there might seem to be no facts at all which can be used for such a calculation. How can we fix the limits of effective intercommunication by steam or electricity, or the area which can be covered by such political expedients as representation and federalism? When Aristotle wished to illustrate the relation of the size of the State to the powers of its citizens he compared it to a ship, which, he said, must not be too large to be handled by the muscles of actual men. 'A ship of two furlongs length would not be a ship at all.'[98] But the _Lusitania_ is already not very far from a furlong and a half in length, and no one can even guess what is the upward limit of size which the ship-builders of a generation hence will have reached. If once we assume that a State may be larger than the field of vision of a single man, then the merely mechanical difficulty of bringing the whole earth under a government as effective as that of the United States or the British Empire has already been overcome. If such a government is impossible, its impossibility must be due to the limits not of our senses and muscles but of our powers of imagination and sympathy. [98] Aristotle, _Polit._, Bk. VII. ch. iv. I have already pointed out[99] that the modern State must exist for the thoughts and feelings of its citizens, not as a fact of direct observation but as an entity of the mind, a symbol, a personification, or an abstraction. The possible area of the State will depend, therefore, mainly on the facts which limit our creation and use of such entities. Fifty years ago the statesmen who were reconstructing Europe on the basis of nationality thought that they had found the relevant facts in the causes which limit the physical and mental homogeneity of nations. A State, they thought, if it is to be effectively governed, must be a homogeneous 'nation,' because no citizen can imagine his State or make it the object of his political affection unless he believes in the existence of a national type to which the individual inhabitants of the State are assimilated; and he cannot continue to believe in the existence of such a type unless in fact his fellow-citizens are like each other and like himself in certain important respects. Bismarck deliberately limited the area of his intended German Empire by a quantitative calculation as to the possibility of assimilating other Germans to the Prussian type. He always opposed the inclusion of Austria, and for a long time the inclusion of Bavaria, on the ground that while the Prussian type was strong enough to assimilate the Saxons and Hanoverians to itself, it would fail to assimilate Austrians and Bavarians. He said, for instance, in 1866: 'We cannot use these Ultramontanes, and we must not swallow more than we can digest.'[100] [99] Part I. ch. ii. pp. 72, 73, and 77-81. [100] _Bismarck_ (J.W. Headlam), p. 269. Mazzini believed, with Bismarck, that no State could be well governed unless it consisted of a homogeneous nation. But Bismarck's policy of the artificial assimilation of the weaker by the stronger type seemed to him the vilest form of tyranny; and he based his own plans for the reconstruction of Europe upon the purpose of God, as revealed by the existing correspondence of national uniformities with geographical facts. 'God,' he said, 'divided humanity into distinct groups or nuclei upon the face of the earth.... Evil governments have disfigured the Divine design. Nevertheless you may still trace it, distinctly marked out--at least as far as Europe is concerned--by the course of the great rivers, the direction of the higher mountains, and other geographical conditions.'[101] [101] _Life, and Writings_ (Smith, Elder, 1891), vol. iv. (written 1858), p. 275. Both Mazzini and Bismarck, therefore, opposed with all their strength the humanitarianism of the French Revolution, the philosophy which, as Canning said, 'reduced the nation into individuals in order afterwards to congregate them into mobs.'[102] Mazzini attacked the 'cosmopolitans,' who preached that all men should love each other without distinction of nationality, on the ground that they were asking for a psychological impossibility. No man, he argued, can imagine, and therefore no one can love, mankind, if mankind means to him all the millions of individual human beings. Already in 1836 he denounced the original Carbonari for this reason: 'The cosmopolitan,' he then said, 'alone in the midst of the immense circle by which he is surrounded, whose boundaries extend beyond the limits of his vision; possessed of no other weapons than the consciousness of his rights (often misconceived) and his individual faculties--which, however powerful, are incapable of extending their activity over the whole sphere of application constituting the aim ... has but two paths before him. He is compelled to choose between despotism and inertia.'[103] He quotes the Breton fisherman who, as he puts out to sea, prays to God, 'Help me my God! My boat is so small and Thy ocean so wide.'[104] [102] Canning, _Life_ by Stapleton, p. 341 (speech at Liverpool, 1818). [103] Mazzini, _Life and Writings_ (Smith, Elder, 1891), vol. iii. p. 8. [104] _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 274. For Mazzini the divinely indicated nation stood therefore between the individual man and the unimaginable multitude of the human race. A man could comprehend and love his nation because it consisted of beings like himself 'speaking the same language, gifted with the same tendencies and educated by the same historical tradition,'[105] and could be thought of as a single national entity. The nation was 'the intermediate term between humanity and the individual,'[106] and man could only attain to the conception of humanity by picturing it to himself as a mosaic of homogeneous nations. 'Nations are the citizens of humanity as individuals are the citizens of the nation,'[107] and again, 'The pact of humanity cannot be signed by individuals, but only by free and equal peoples, possessing a name, a banner, and the consciousness of a distinct existence.'[108] [105] _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 276 (written 1858). [106] _Ibid._, vol. v. p. 273. [107] Mazzini, _Life and Writings_ (Smith, Elder, 1891), vol. v. p. 274 (written 1849). [108] _Ibid_., vol. iii. p. 15 (written 1836). Nationalism, as interpreted either by Bismarck or by Mazzini, played a great and invaluable part in the development of the political consciousness of Europe during the nineteenth century. But it is becoming less and less possible to accept it as a solution for the problems of the twentieth century. We cannot now assert with Mazzini, that the 'indisputable tendency of our epoch' is towards a reconstitution of Europe into a certain number of homogeneous national States 'as nearly as possible equal in population and extent'[109] Mazziui, indeed, unconsciously but enormously exaggerated the simplicity of the question even in his own time. National types throughout the greater part of south-eastern Europe were not even then divided into homogeneous units by 'the course of the great rivers and the direction of the high mountains,' but were intermingled from village to village; and events have since forced us to admit that fact. We no longer, for instance, can believe, as Mr. Swinburne and the other English disciples of Mazzini and of Kossuth seem to have believed in the eighteen sixties, that Hungary is inhabited only by a homogeneous population of patriotic Magyars. We can see that Mazzini was already straining his principle to the breaking point when he said in 1852: 'It is in the power of Greece ... to become, by extending itself to Constantinople, a powerful barrier against the European encroachments of Russia.'[110] In Macedonia to-day bands of Bulgarian and Greek patriots, both educated in the pure tradition of Mazzinism, are attempting to exterminate the rival populations in order to establish their own claim to represent the purposes of God as indicated by the position of the Balkan mountains. Mazzini himself would, perhaps, were he living now, admit that, if the Bismarckian policy of artificial assimilation is to be rejected, there must continue to be some States in Europe which contain inhabitants belonging to widely different national types. [109] _Ibid._, vol. v. p. 275. [110] _Life and Writings_ (Smith, Elder, 1891), vol. vi. p. 258. Bismarck's conception of an artificial uniformity created by 'blood and iron' corresponded more closely than did Mazzini's to the facts of the nineteenth century. But its practicability depended upon the assumption that the members of the dominant nationality would always vehemently desire to impose their own type on the rest. Now that the Social-Democrats, who are a not inconsiderable proportion of the Prussian population, apparently admire their Polish or Bavarian or Danish fellow-subjects all the more because they cling to their own national characteristics, Prince Bülow's Bismarckian dictum the other day, that the strength of Germany depends on the existence and dominance of an intensely national Prussia, seemed a mere political survival. The same change of feeling has also shown itself in the United Kingdom, and both the English parties have now tacitly or explicitly abandoned that Anglicisation of Ireland and Wales, which all parties once accepted as a necessary part of English policy. A still more important difficulty in applying the principle that the area of the State should be based on homogeneity of national type, whether natural or artificial, has been created by the rapid extension during the last twenty-five years of all the larger European states into non-European territory. Neither Mazzini, till his death in 1872, nor Bismarck, till the colonial adventure of 1884, was compelled to take into his calculations the inclusion of territories and peoples outside Europe. Neither of them, therefore, made any effective intellectual preparation for those problems which have been raised in our time by 'the scramble for the world.' Mazzini seems, indeed, to have vaguely expected that nationality would spread from Europe into Asia and Africa, and that the 'pact of humanity' would ultimately be 'signed' by homogeneous and independent 'nations,' who would cover the whole land surface of the globe. But he never indicated the political forces by which that result was to be brought about. The Italian invasion of Abyssinia in 1896 might have been represented either as a necessary stage in the Mazzinian policy of spreading the idea of nationality to Africa, or as a direct contradiction of that idea itself. Bismarck, with his narrower and more practical intellect, never looked forward, as Mazzini did, to a 'pact of humanity,' which should include even the nations of Europe, and, indeed, always protested against the attempt to conceive of any relation whatsoever, moral or political, as existing between any State and the States or populations outside its boundaries. 'The only sound principle of action,' he said, 'for a great State is political egoism.'[111] When, therefore, after Bismarck's death German sailors and soldiers found themselves in contact with the defenceless inhabitants of China or East Africa, they were, as the Social-Democrats quickly pointed out, provided with no conception of the situation more highly developed than that which was acted upon in the fifth century A.D., by Attila and his Huns. [111] Speech, 1850, quoted by J.W. Headlam, _Bismarck_, p. 83. The modern English imperialists tried for some time to apply the idea of national homogeneity to the facts of the British Empire. From the publication of Seeley's _Expansion of England_ in 1883 till the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 they strove to believe in the existence of a 'Blood,' an 'Island Race,' consisting of homogeneous English-speaking individuals, among whom were to be reckoned not only the whole population of the United Kingdom, but all the reasonably white inhabitants of our colonies and dependencies; while they thought of the other inhabitants of the Empire as 'the white man's burden'--the necessary material for the exercise of the white man's virtues. The idealists among them, when they were forced to realise that such a homogeneity of the whites did not yet exist, persuaded themselves that it would come peacefully and inevitably as a result of the reading of imperial poems and the summoning of an imperial council. The Bismarckian realists among them believed that it would be brought about, in South Africa and elsewhere, by 'blood and iron.' Lord Milner, who is perhaps the most loyal adherent of the Bismarckian tradition to be found out of Germany, contended even at Vereeniging against peace with the Boers on any terms except such an unconditional surrender as would involve the ultimate Anglicisation of the South African colonies. He still dreams of a British Empire whose egoism shall be as complete as that of Bismarck's Prussia, and warns us in 1907, in the style of 1887, against those 'ideas of our youth' which were 'at once too insular and too cosmopolitan.'[112] [112] _Times_, Dec. 19, 1907. But in the minds of most of our present imperialists, imperial egoism is now deprived of its only possible psychological basis. It is to be based not upon national homogeneity but upon the consciousness of national variation. The French in Canada are to remain intensely French, and the Dutch in South Africa intensely Dutch; though both are to be divided from the world outside the British Empire by an unbridgeable moral chasm. To imperialism so conceived facts lend no support. The loyal acceptance of British Imperial citizenship by Sir Wilfred Laurier or General Botha constitutes something more subtle, something, to adapt Lord Milner's phrase, less insular but more cosmopolitan than imperial egoism. It does not, for instance, involve an absolute indifference to the question whether France or Holland shall be swallowed up by the sea. At the same time the non-white races within the Empire show no signs of enthusiastic contentment at the prospect of existing, like the English 'poor' during the eighteenth century, as the mere material of other men's virtues. They too have their own vague ideas of nationality; and if those ideas do not ultimately break up our Empire, it will be because they are enlarged and held in check, not by the sentiment of imperial egoism, but by those wider religious and ethical conceptions which pay little heed to imperial or national frontiers. It may, however, be objected by our imperial 'Real-politiker' that cosmopolitan feeling is at this moment both visionary and dangerous, not because, as Mazzini thought, it is psychologically impossible, but because of the plain facts of our military position. Our Empire, they say, will have to fight for its existence against a German or a Russian Empire or both together during the next generation, and our only chance of success is to create that kind of imperial sentiment which has fighting value. If the white inhabitants of the Empire are encouraged to think of themselves as a 'dominant race,' that is to say as both a homogeneous nation and a natural aristocracy, they will soon be hammered by actual fighting into a Bismarckian temper of imperial 'egoism.' Among the non-white inhabitants of the Empire (since either side in the next inter-imperial war will, after its first serious defeat, abandon the convention of only employing European troops against Europeans) we must discover and drill those races who like the Gurkhas and the Soudanese, may be expected to fight for us and to hate our enemies without asking for political rights. In any case we, like Bismarck, must extirpate, as the most fatal solvent of empire, that humanitarianism which concerns itself with the interests of our future opponents as well as those of our fellow-subjects. This sort of argument might of course be met by a _reductio ad absurdum_. If the policy of imperial egoism is a successful one it will be adopted by all empires alike, and whether we desire it or not, the victor in each inter-imperial war will take over the territory of the loser. After centuries of warfare and the steady retrogression, in the waste of blood and treasure and loyalty, of modern civilisation, two empires, England and Germany, or America and China, may remain. Both will possess an armament which represents the whole 'surplus value,' beyond mere subsistence, created by its inhabitants. Both will contain white and yellow and brown and black men hating each other across a wavering line on the map of the world. But the struggle will go on, and, as the result of a naval Armageddon in the Pacific, only one Empire will exist. 'Imperial egoism,' having worked itself out to its logical conclusion, will have no further meaning, and the inhabitants of the globe, diminished to half their number, will be compelled to consider the problems of race and of the organised exploitation of the globe from the point of view of mere humanitarianism. Is the suggestion completely wanting in practicability that we might begin that consideration before the struggle goes any further? Fifteen hundred years ago, in south-eastern Europe, men who held the Homoousian opinion of the Trinity were gathered in arms against the Homoiousians. The generals and other 'Real-politiker' on both sides may have feared, like Lord Milner, lest their followers should become 'too cosmopolitan,' too ready to extend their sympathies across the frontiers of theology. 'This' a Homoousian may have said 'is a practical matter. Unless our side learn by training themselves in theological egoism to hate the other side, we shall be beaten in the next battle.' And yet we can now see that the practical interests of Europe were very little concerned with the question whether 'we' or 'they' won, but very seriously concerned with the question whether the division itself into 'we' or 'they' could not be obliterated by the discovery either of a less clumsy metaphysic or of a way of thinking about humanity which made the continued existence of those who disagreed with one in theology no longer intolerable. May the Germans and ourselves be now marching towards the horrors of a world-war merely because 'nation' and 'empire' like 'Homoousia' and 'Homoiousia' are the best that we can do in making entities of the mind to stand between us and an unintelligible universe, and because having made such entities our sympathies are shut up within them? I have already urged, when considering the conditions of political reasoning, that many of the logical difficulties arising from our tendency to divide the infinite stream of our thoughts and sensations into homogeneous classes and species are now unnecessary and have been avoided in our time by the students of the natural sciences. Just as the modern artist substitutes without mental confusion his ever-varying curves and surfaces for the straight and simple lines of the savage, so the scientific imagination has learnt to deal with the varying facts of nature without thinking of them as separate groups, each composed of identical individuals and represented to us by a single type. Can we learn so to think of the varying individuals of the whole human race? Can we do, that is to say, what Mazzini declared to be impossible? And if we can, shall we be able to love the fifteen hundred million different human beings of whom we are thus enabled to think? To the first question the publication of the _Origin of Species_ in 1859 offered an answer. Since then we have in fact been able to represent the human race to our imagination, neither as a chaos of arbitrarily varying individuals, nor as a mosaic of homogeneous nations, but as a biological group, every individual in which differs from every other not arbitrarily but according to an intelligible process of organic evolution.[113] And, since that which exists for the imagination can exist also for the emotions, it might have been hoped that the second question would also have been answered by evolution, and that the warring egoisms of nations and empires might henceforth have been dissolved by love for that infinitely varying multitude whom we can watch as they work their way through so much pain and confusion towards a more harmonious relation to the universe. [113] Sir Sydney Olivier, e.g. in his courageous and penetrating book _White Capital and Coloured Labour_ considers (in chap. ii.) the racial distinctions between black and white from the point of view of evolution. This consideration brings him at once to 'the infinite, inexhaustible distinctness of personality between individuals, so much a fundamental fact of life that one almost would say that the amalgamating race-characteristics are merely incrustations concealing this sparkling variety' (pp. 12, 13). But it was the intellectual tragedy of the nineteenth century that the discovery of organic evolution, instead of stimulating such a general love of humanity, seemed at first to show that it was for ever impossible. Progress, it appeared, had been always due to a ruthless struggle for life, which must still continue unless progress was to cease. Pity and love would turn the edge of the struggle, and therefore would lead inevitably to the degeneration of the species. This grim conception of an internecine conflict, inevitable and unending, in which all races must play their part, hung for a generation after 1859 over the study of world-politics as the fear of a cooling sun hung over physics, and the fear of a population to be checked only by famine and war hung over the first century of political economy. Before Darwin wrote, it had been possible for philanthropists to think of the non-white races as 'men and brothers' who, after a short process of education, would become in all respects except colour identical with themselves. Darwin made it clear that the difficulty could not be so glossed over. Racial variations were shown to be unaffected by education, to have existed for millions of years, and to be tending perhaps towards divergence rather than assimilation. The practical problem also of race relationship has by a coincidence presented itself since Darwin wrote in a sterner form. During the first half of the nineteenth century the European colonists who were in daily contact with non-European races, although their impulses and their knowledge alike revolted from the optimistic ethnology of Exeter Hall, yet could escape all thought about their own position by assuming that the problem would settle itself. To the natives of Australia or Canada or the Hottentots of South Africa trade automatically brought disease, and disease cleared the land for a stronger population. But the weakest races and individuals have now died out, the surviving population are showing unexpected powers of resisting the white man's epidemics, and we are adding every year to our knowledge of, and therefore our responsibility for, the causation of infection. We are nearing the time when the extermination of races, if it is done at all, must be done deliberately. But if the extermination is to be both inevitable and deliberate how can there exist a community either of affection or purpose between the killers and the killed? No one at this moment professes, as far as I know, to have an easy and perfect answer to this question. The point of ethics lies within the region claimed by religion. But Christianity, which at present is the religion chiefly concerned, has conspicuously failed even to produce a tolerable working compromise. The official Christian theory is, apparently, that all human souls are of equal value, and that it ought to be a matter of indifference to us whether a given territory is inhabited a thousand years hence by a million converted Central African pigmies or a million equally converted Europeans or Hindus. On the practical point, however, whether the stronger race should base its plans of extension on the extermination of the weaker race, or on an attempt, within the limits of racial possibility, to improve it, Christians have, during the nineteenth century, been infinitely more ruthless than Mohammedans, though their ruthlessness has often been disguised by more or less conscious hypocrisy. But the most immediately dangerous result of political 'Darwinism' was not its effect in justifying the extermination of African aborigines by European colonists, but the fact that the conception of the 'struggle for life' could be used as a proof that that conflict among the European nations for the control of the trade-routes of the world which has been threatening for the last quarter of a century is for each of the nations concerned both a scientific necessity and a moral duty. Lord Ampthill, for instance, the athletic ex-governor of Madras, said the other day: 'From an individual struggle, a struggle of families, of communities, and nations, the struggle for existence has now advanced to a struggle of empires.'[114] [114] _Times_, Jan. 22, 1908. The exhilaration with which Lord Ampthill proclaims that one-half of the species must needs slaughter the other half in the cause of human progress is particularly terrifying when one reflects that he may have to conduct negotiations as a member of the next Conservative Government with a German statesman like Prince Büllow, who seems to combine the teaching of Bismarck with what he understands to have been the teaching of Darwin when he defends the Polish policy of his master by a declaration that the rules of private morality do not apply to national conduct. Any such identification of the biological advantage arising from the 'struggle for life' among individuals with that which is to be expected from a 'struggle of empires' is, of course, thoroughly unscientific. The 'struggle of empires' must either be fought out between European troops alone, or between Europeans in combination with their non-European allies and subjects. If it takes the first form, and if we assume, as Lord Ampthill probably does, that the North European racial type is 'higher' than any other, then the slaughter of half a million selected Englishmen and half a million selected Germans will clearly be an act of biological retrogression. Even if the non-European races are brought in and a corresponding number of selected Turks and Arabs and Tartars, or of Gurkhas and Pathans and Soudanese are slaughtered, the biological loss to the world, as measured by the percentage of surviving 'higher' or 'lower' individuals will only be slightly diminished. Nor is that form of the argument much better founded which contends that the evolutionary advantage to be expected from the 'struggle of empires' is the 'survival' not of races but of political and cultural types. Our victory over the German Empire, for instance, would mean, it is said, a victory for the idea of political liberty. This argument, which, when urged by the rulers of India, sounds somewhat temerarious, requires the assumption that types of culture are in the modern world most successfully spread by military occupation. But in the ancient world Greek culture spread most rapidly after the fall of the Greek Empire; Japan in our own time adopted Western culture more readily as an independent nation than she would have done as a dependency of Russia or France; and India is perhaps more likely to-day to learn from Japan than from England. Lord Ampthill's phrase, however, represents not so much an argument, as a habit of feeling shared by many who have forgotten or never known the biological doctrine which it echoes. The first followers of Darwin believed that the human species had been raised above its prehuman ancestors because, and in so far as, it had surrendered itself to a blind instinct of conflict. It seemed, therefore, as if the old moral precept that men should control their more violent impulses by reflection had been founded upon a mistake. Unreflecting instinct was, after all, the best guide, and nations who acted instinctively towards their neighbours might justify themselves like the Parisian ruffians of ten years ago, by claiming to be 'strugforlifeurs.' If this habit of mind is to be destroyed it must be opposed not merely by a new argument but by a conception of man's relation to the universe which creates emotional force as well as intellectual conviction. And the change that has already shown itself in our conception of the struggle for life among individuals indicates that, by some divine chance, a corresponding change may come in our conception of the struggle between peoples. The evolutionists of our own time tell us that the improvement of the biological inheritance of any community is to be hoped for, not from the encouragement of individual conflict, but from the stimulation of the higher social impulses under the guidance of the science of eugenics; and the emotional effect of this new conception is already seen in the almost complete disappearance from industrial politics of that unwillingly brutal 'individualism' which afflicted kindly Englishmen in the eighteen sixties. An international science of eugenics might in the same way indicate that the various races should aim, not at exterminating each other, but at encouraging the improvement by each of its own racial type. Such an idea would not appeal to those for whom the whole species arranges itself in definite and obvious grades of 'higher' and 'lower,' from the northern Europeans downwards, and who are as certain of the ultimate necessity of a 'white world' as the Sydney politicians are of the necessity of a 'white Australia.' But in this respect during the last few years the inhabitants of Europe have shown signs of a new humility, due partly to widespread intellectual causes and partly to the hard facts of the Russo-Japanese war and the arming of China. The 'spheres of influence' into which we divided the Far East eight years ago, seem to us now a rather stupid joke, and those who read history are already bitterly ashamed that we destroyed by the sack of the Summer Palace in 1859, the products of a thousand years of such art as we can never hope to emulate. We are coming honestly to believe that the world is richer for the existence both of other civilisations and of other racial types than our own. We have been compelled by the study of the Christian documents to think of our religion as one only among the religions of the world, and to acknowledge that it has owed much and may owe much again to the longer philosophic tradition and the subtler and more patient brains of Hindustan and Persia. Even if we look at the future of the species as a matter of pure biology, we are warned by men of science that it is not safe to depend only on one family or one variety for the whole breeding-stock of the world. For the moment we shrink from the interbreeding of races, but we do so in spite of some conspicuous examples of successful interbreeding in the past, and largely because of our complete ignorance of the conditions on which success depends. Already, therefore, it is possible without intellectual dishonesty to look forward to a future for the race which need not be reached through a welter of blood and hatred. We can imagine the nations settling the racial allocation of the temperate or tropical breeding-grounds, or even deliberately placing the males and females of the few hopelessly backward tribes on different islands, without the necessity that the most violent passions of mankind should be stimulated in preparation for a general war. No one now expects an immediate, or prophesies with certainty an ultimate, Federation of the Globe; but the consciousness of a common purpose in mankind, or even the acknowledgment that such a common purpose is possible, would alter the face of world-politics at once. The discussion at the Hague of a halt in the race of armaments would no longer seem Utopian, and the strenuous profession by the colonising powers that they have no selfish ends in view might be transformed from a sordid and useless hypocrisy into a fact to which each nation might adjust its policy. The irrational race-hatred which breaks out from time to time on the fringes of empire, would have little effect in world politics when opposed by a consistent conception of the future of human progress. Meanwhile, it is true, the military preparations for a death-struggle of empires still go on, and the problem even of peaceful immigration becomes yearly more threatening, now that shipping companies can land tens of thousands of Chinese or Indian labourers for a pound or two a head at any port in the world. But when we think of such things we need no longer feel ourselves in the grip of a Fate that laughs at human purpose and human kindliness. An idea of the whole existence of our species is at last a possible background to our individual experience. Its emotional effect may prove to be not less than that of the visible temples and walls of the Greek cities, although it is formed not from the testimony of our eyesight, but from the knowledge which we acquire in our childhood and confirm by the half-conscious corroboration of our daily life. We all of us, plain folk and learned alike, now make a picture for ourselves of the globe with its hemispheres of light and shadow, from every point of which the telegraph brings us hourly news, and which may already be more real to us than the fields and houses past which we hurry in the train. We can all see it, hanging and turning in the monstrous emptiness of the skies, and obedient to forces whose action we can watch hundreds of light-years away and feel in the beating of our hearts. The sharp new evidence of the camera brings every year nearer to us its surface of ice and rock and plain, and the wondering eyes of alien peoples. It may be that we shall long continue to differ as to the full significance of this vision. But now that we can look at it without helpless pain it may stir the deepest impulses of our being. To some of us it may bring confidence in that Love that Dante saw, 'which moves the Sun and the other Stars.' To each of us it may suggest a kinder pity for all the bewildered beings who hand on from generation to generation the torch of conscious life. INDEX Abyssinia, Italian invasion of, Acland, Mr., Adams, John Quincy, Airedale, America, appointment of non-elected officials in, Civil Service, science and politics in, tendency to electoral concentration in, Amos, Ampthill, Lord, Antigone, Aristotle, comparison of State to a ship, criticism of Plato's communism, definition of 'polity', maximum size of a State, on action as the end of politics, on political affection, Athens, glassmakers of, Sophocles' love of, Austin, John, Bacon, Francis, Atlantis of, Bagehot, Walter, Balfour, Mr. A.J., Mr. Jabez, Balliol College, Ballot, Barrie, Mr. J.M., Bebel, Beccaria, Bentham, Jeremy, Macaulay's attack on, on criminology, on 'natural right,' _Principles of Morals and Legislation_, Benthamism, as a science of politics, Berlin, Congress of, 1885, Bernstein, Bismarck, and artificial homogeneity of national type, on political egoism, Bolingbroke, Lord, Botha, General, Breeding, selective, Brighton Parade, British Empire, difficulty of conceiving as a political entity, national homogeneity in, political status of non-European races in, Brontë, Charlotte, Bryan, Mr. W.J., Bryce, Mr. James, Buckle, H.T., Bülow, Prince, on dominance of Prussia, on private and national morality, on universal suffrage, Burke, Edmund, on man's power of political reasoning, on 'party,' Burney, Fanny, Burns, Robert, Butler, Bishop, Canning, George, Carlyle, Thomas, essay on Burns of, Cavendish, Lord Frederick, Cavour, Cecil, Lord Robert, Chadwick, Sir E., Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, Charity Schools, Chesterton, Mr. G.K., China, Chinese Labour, agitation against, Christianity and race question, Harnack on expansion of, Churchill, Lord Randolph, Civil Service, creation of English, of India, importance of an independent, Sir C. Trevelyan's Report on, Comenius, Competition, system of, in municipal appointments, in railway appointments, variety in methods of, Comte, Auguste, Corrupt Practices Act, Corrupt Practices Act, practical failure of, Corruption, prevented by competitive Civil Service, Courtney, Lord, Crimean War, Croydon, Dante, Darwin, Charles, correspondence with Lyell, effect of his work, on persistence of racial variation, _Origin of Species_ of, Demosthenes, Derby, Lord, Reform Act of, De Wet, Diderot, Disraeli, Benjamin, Dolling, Father, Education Act, 1870, Egypt, Esher Committee, Fénelon, Fitzpatrick, Sir Percy, Fourier, Fox, Charles James, Gambetta, Galen, Gardiner, Professor S.R., Garfield, President, George III. and American Revolution, and Fox's India Bill, popularity of, German Emperor, Gladstone, W. E., and English Civil Service, and Queen Victoria, on change of opinion, on Ireland, parliamentary oratory of, Government Departments, organisation of, Graham's Law, Grote, George, Hadley, A.T., Hague, The, Hall, Professor Stanley, Harnack, T., Helvetius, Herbart, J.F., Hicks-Beach, Miss, Hippocrates, Hobbes, Thomas, Homoiousians, Homoousians, Hume, Joseph, Huxley, T.H., Lay Sermons of, Hyndman, Mr., India, and representative democracy, applicability of democratic principles in, appointment of East India Company officials, Civil Service, English dislike of natives in, Individualism, curve of, Ireland, Home Rule for, Jackson, Andrew, James, Professor William, on sense of effective reality, _Principles of Psychology_ of, Jameson, Dr., Japan, Japanese, mental environment of, State Papers, Jevons, Professor, Jury. _See_ Trial by Jury. Justice, conception of, as political term, Justinian, Kossuth, Louis, Labour Party and intellectual conditions of representative government, Lansdowne, Lord, Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, LeBon, G., Lingen, Lord, Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, Locke, John, and basis of government, and pedagogy, on relation of man to God's law, Lombroso, C., London, Borough Council elections, creation of love for, lack of citizenship in, proportion of active registered voters in, provision of schools in, School Board elections in, County Council Debating Hall, election posters, Lyell, Sir Charles, Lyndhurst, Lord, MacCulloch, J.R., Macedonia, Macewen, Sir William, Macaulay, Lord, and East India Company, Essay in _Edinburgh Review_ on Benthamism, Marseillaise, Marshall, Professor, Marx, Karl, Mazzini, Joseph, attack on cosmopolitanism, on geographical division of humanity, Mendel, Abbot, Merivale, Mr. Herman, Metternich, Mill, James, J.S., on mankind in the average, opposition to the Ballot of, Milner, Lord, Molesworth, Sir W., More, Sir Thomas, Republic of, Morgan, Professor Lloyd, Morley, Lord, on W.K. Gladstone, Morris, William, Municipal Representation Bill, Napoleon I. and psychology of war, Louis, Negro Suffrage in United States, Nevinson, Mr. H.W., Newman, J.H., on sonification, Nicholas H., North, Lord, Northcote, Sir Stafford, Olivier, Sir Sydney, Ostrogorski, Professor, Owen, Robert, Paine, Thomas, Pal, Mr. Chandra, Palmerston, Lord, Pankhurst, Mrs., Parnell, C.S., Parramatta Tea, Party as a political entity, Patroclus, Pearson, Professor Karl, Peel, Sir Robert, Pericles, Persia, Philadelphia, Philippines, Place, Francis, Plato, 'cave of illusion' of, his 'harmony of the Soul' in modern political life, on basis of government, on government by consent, on idea of perfect man, on the public, religion in the Republic of, Republic of, Playfair Commission, Poor Law Commission of 1834, of 1905 Proportional Representation and Lord Courtney, Society, Prospero, Putney, Race Problem and representative democracy, in international politics, in India, Reform Act of 1867 Religion of Comte, in Plato's Republic, Representative democracy and India, and race problem, in Egypt, in England, in United States, Rome, Roosevelt, Theodore, Rousseau, J.J., and pedagogy, on human rights, Rural Parish Councils, Ruskin, John, Samuel, Mr. Herbert, Schnadhorst, Mr., Science, as an entity, Seeley, J.R., _Expansion of England_ of, Senior, Nassau, _Political Economy_ of, Shelley, Socialism, conception of as a working creed, curve of, Socrates, Somerset House, Sophocles, Spencer, Mr. Herbert, Stein, H.F., Stephen, Sir James, Suffrage, for women at 1906 election, negro, universal, Prince Bülow's attack on, Swift, Dean, Swinburne, A.C., Tammany Hall, Tarde, G., Tennyson, Lord, Thackeray, Togo, Admiral, Trevelyan, Sir Charles, Trial by Jury, development of Tweefontein, Tyrrell, Father, United Kingdom, proportion of elected to electors in, United States and Negro Suffrage, and representative democracy, Vaux, Madame De, Vereeniging, Peace of, Victoria, Queen, on competition for Indian Army commissions, portrait of, on coins, Virgin of Kevlaar, War Office Council, Wells, Mr. H.G., on delocalised population, on representative democracy, on 'sense of the State,' on uniqueness of the individual Whately, Archbishop Women's Suffrage at 1906 election methods of suffragists, Wood, Mr. M'Kinnon, Wordsworth, _Prelude_ of, 
9097	----	ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER === Page 1 ============================================================= Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies --- Part I. Rules of Order. A Compendium of Parliamentary Law, based upon the rules and practice of Congress. Part II. Organization and Conduct Of Business. A simple explanation of the methods of organizing and conducting the business of societies, conventions, and other deliberative assemblies. By Major Henry M. Robert, Corps of Engineers, U.S.A. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Company. 1876. === Page 2 ============================================================= --- Copyright, A.D. 1876, by H. M. Robert --- Printed by Burdick & Armitage, Milwaukee === Page 3 ============================================================= PREFACE. There appears to be much needed a work on parliamentary law, based, in its general principles, upon the rules and practice of Congress, and adapted, in its details, to the use of ordinary societies. Such a work should give, not only the methods of organizing and conducting the meetings, the duties of the officers and the names of the ordinary motions, but in addition, should state in a systematic manner, in reference to each motion, its object and effect; whether it can be amended or debated; if debatable, the extent to which it opens the main question to debate; the circumstances under which it can be made, and what other motions can be made while it is pending. This Manual has been prepared with a view to supplying the above information in a condensed and systematic manner, each rule being either complete in itself, or giving references to every section that in any way qualifies it, so that a stranger to the work can refer to any special subject with safety. To aid in quickly referring to as many as possible of the rules relating to each motion, there is placed immediately before the Index, a Table of Rules, which enables one, without turning a page, to find the answers to some two hundred questions. The Table of Rules is so arranged as to greatly assist the reader in systematizing his knowledge of parliamentary law. The second part is a simple explanation of the common methods of conducting business in ordinary === Page 4 ============================================================= meetings, in which the motions are classified according to their uses, and those used for a similar purpose compared together. This part is expressly intended for that large class of the community, who are unfamiliar with parliamentary usages and are unwilling to devote much study to the subject, but would be glad with little labor to learn enough to enable them to take part in meetings of deliberative assemblies without fear of being out of order. The object of Rules of Order in deliberative assemblies, is to assist an assembly to accomplish the work for which it was designed, in the best possible manner. To do this, it is necessary to somewhat restrain the individual, as the right of an individual in any community to do what he pleases, is incompatible with the best interests of the whole. Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty. Experience has shown the importance of definiteness in the law; and in this country, where customs are so slightly established and the published manuals of parliamentary practice so conflicting, no society should attempt to conduct business without having adopted some work upon the subject, as the authority in all cases not covered by their own rules. It has been well said by one of the greatest of English writers on parliamentary law: "Whether these forms be in all cases the most rational or not is really not of so great importance. It is much more material that there should be a rule to go by, than what that rule is, that there may be a uniformity of proceeding in business, not subject to the caprice of the chairman, or captiousness of the members. It is very material that order, decency and regularity be preserved in a dignified public body." H. M. R. December, 1875. === Page 5 ============================================================= TABLE OF CONTENTS. Introduction. Page. Parliamentary Law .................................................. 9 Plan of the Work .................................................. 12 '' Part I .................................................... 13 '' Part II ................................................... 14 Definitions ....................................................... 15 Part I.--Rules of Order. Art. I.--Introduction of Business. § 1. How introduced ................................................. 17 2. Obtaining the floor ............................................ 17 3. What precedes debate on a question ............................. 19 4. What motions to be in writing, and how they shall be divided ...................................... 20 5. Modification of a motion by the mover .......................... 21 Art. II.--General Classification of Motions. § 6. Principal or Main motions ...................................... 22 7. Subsidiary or Secondary motions ................................ 22 8. Incidental motions ............................................. 23 9. Privileged motions ............................................. 24 Art. III.--Motions and their Order of Precedence. Privileged Motions. 10. To fix the time to which to adjourn ........................... 25 11. Adjourn ....................................................... 26 12. Questions of privilege ........................................ 28 13. Orders of the day ............................................. 28 Incidental Motions. 14. Appeal [Questions of Order] ................................... 30 15. Objection to the consideration of a question ...................................................... 32 16. Reading papers ................................................ 33 17. Withdrawal of a motion ........................................ 34 18. Suspension of the Rules ....................................... 34 === Page 6 ============================================================= Subsidiary Motions. § 19. Lie on the table .............................................. 35 20. Previous Question ............................................. 37 21. Postpone to a certain day ..................................... 40 22. Commit [or Re-commit] ......................................... 41 23. Amend ......................................................... 43 24. Postpone indefinitely ......................................... 46 Miscellaneous Motions. 25. Filling blanks, and Nominations ............................... 47 26. Renewal of a motion ........................................... 48 27. Reconsideration ............................................... 49 Art. IV.--Committees and Informal Action. § 28. Committees .................................................... 54 29. '' Form of their Reports .............................. 58 30. '' Reception '' .............................. 59 31. '' Adoption '' .............................. 61 32. Committee of the Whole ........................................ 61 33. Informal consideration of a question .......................... 65 Art. V.--Debate and Decorum. § 34. Debate ........................................................ 66 35. Undebatable questions and those opening the main question to debate ................................... 68 36. Decorum in debate ............................................. 71 37. Closing debate, methods of .................................... 72 Art. VI.--Vote. § 38. Voting, various modes of ...................................... 74 39. Motions requiring more than a majority vote ................................................. 80 Art. VII.--Officers and the Minutes. § 40. Chairman or President ......................................... 81 41. Clerk, or Secretary, and the Minutes .......................... 85 Art. VIII.--Miscellaneous. § 42. Session ....................................................... 90 43. Quorum ........................................................ 93 44. Order of business ............................................. 94 45. Amendment of the Rules of Order ............................... 97 === Page 7 ============================================================= Part II.-Organization and Conduct of Business. Art. IX.--Organization and Meetings. § 46. An Occasional or Mass Meeting. (a) Organization .............................................. 99 (b) Adoption of resolutions .................................. 101 (c) Committee on '' .................................. 102 (d) Additional Officers ...................................... 105 47. A Convention or Assembly of Delegates .................................................... 106 48. A Permanent Society. (a) First meeting ............................................. 108 (b) Second meeting ............................................ 111 49. Constitutions, By-Laws, Rules of Order and Standing Rules ..................................... 115 Art. X.--Officers and Committees. § 50. President or Chairman ........................................ 119 51. Secretary, or Clerk, and the Minutes ......................... 120 52. Treasurer .................................................... 123 53. Committees ................................................... 127 Art. XI--Introduction of Business. § 54. Introduction of Business ..................................... 129 Art. XII.--Motions. § 55. Motions classified according to their object ....................................................... 131 56. To Amend or modify. (a) Amend .................................................... 133 (5) Commit ................................................... 134 57. To Defer action. (a) Postpone to a certain time ............................... 134 (b) Lie on the table ......................................... 135 58. To Suppress Debate. (a) Previous Question ........................................ 136 (b) An Order limiting or closing debate ................................................... 137 === Page 8 ============================================================= § 59. To Suppress the question. (a) Objection to its consideration ........................... 138 (b) Postpone indefinitely .................................... 139 (c) Lie on the table ......................................... 139 60. To Consider a question the second time (a) Reconsider ............................................... 140 61. Order and Rules. (a) Orders of the day ........................................ 142 (b) Special orders ........................................... 143 (c) Suspension of the rules .................................. 144 (d) Questions of order ....................................... 144 (e) Appeal ................................................... 145 62. Miscellaneous. (a) Reading of papers ........................................ 146 (b) Withdrawal of a motion ................................... 146 (c) Questions of privilege ................................... 146 63. To close a meeting. (a) Fix the time to which to adjourn ......................... 147 (b) Adjourn .................................................. 147 64. Order of Precedence of motions ............................... 149 Art. XIII.--Debate. § 65. Rules of speaking in debate .................................. 150 66. Undebatable questions and those that open the main question to debate ............................. 151 Art. XIV.--Miscellaneous. § 67. Forms of stating and putting questions ....................... 154 68. Motions requiring a two-thirds vote for their adoption ........................................... 154 69. Unfinished business .......................................... 154 70. Session ...................................................... 155 71. Quorum ....................................................... 156 72. Order of Business ............................................ 156 73. Amendment of Constitutions, By-Laws and Rules of Order ........................................... 157 Legal Rights of Deliberative Assemblies ............................ 158 Table of Rules Relating to Motions ................................. 166 Index .............................................................. 169 === Page 9 ============================================================= INTRODUCTION. Parliamentary Law. Parliamentary Law refers originally to the customs and rules of conducting business in the English Parliament; and thence to the customs and rules of our own legislative assemblies. In England these customs and usages of Parliament form a part of the unwritten law of the land, and in our own legislative bodies they are of authority in all cases where they do not conflict with existing rules or precedents. But as a people we have not the respect which the English have for customs and precedents, and are always ready for innovations which we think are improvements, and hence changes have been and are being constantly made in the written rules which our legislative bodies have found best to adopt. As each house adopts its own rules, it results that the two houses of the same legislature do not always agree in their practice; even in Congress the order of precedence of motions is not the same in both houses, and the Previous Question is admitted in the House of Representatives, but not in the Senate. As a consequence of this, the exact method of conducting business in any particular === Page 10 ============================================================ legislative body is to be obtained only from the Legislative Manual of that body. The vast number of societies, political, literary, scientific, benevolent and religious, formed all over the land, though not legislative, are still deliberative in their character, and must have some system of conducting business, and some rules to govern their proceedings, and are necessarily subject to the common parliamentary law where it does not conflict with their own special rules. But as their knowledge of parliamentary law has been obtained from the usages in this country, rather than from the customs of Parliament, it has resulted that these societies have followed the customs of our own legislative bodies, and our people have thus been educated under a system of parliamentary law which is peculiar to this country, and yet so well established as to supersede the English parliamentary law as the common law of ordinary deliberative assemblies. The practice of the National House of Representatives should have the same force in this country as the usages of the House of Commons have in England, in determining the general principles of the common parliamentary law of the land; but it does not follow that in every matter of detail the rules of Congress can be appealed to as the common law governing every deliberative assembly. In these matters of detail, the rules of each House of Congress are adapted to their own peculiar wants, and are of no force whatever in other assemblies. === Page 11 ============================================================ But upon all great parliamentary questions, such as what motions can be made, what is their order of precedence, which can be debated, what is their effect, etc., the common law of the land is settled by the practice of the U. S. House of Representatives, and not by that of the English Parliament, the U. S. Senate, or any other body. While in extreme cases there is no difficulty in deciding the question as to whether the practice of Congress determines the common parliamentary law, yet between these extremes there must necessarily be a large number of doubtful cases upon which there would be great difference of opinion, and to avoid the serious difficulties always arising from a lack of definiteness in the law, every deliberative assembly should imitate our legislative bodies in adopting Rules of Order for the conduct of their business.* [Where the practice of Congress differs from that of Parliament upon a material point, the common law of this country follows the practice of Congress. Thus in every American deliberative assembly having no rules for conducting business, the motion to adjourn would be decided to be undebatable, as in Congress, the English parliamentary law to the contrary notwithstanding; so if the Previous Question were negatived, the debate upon the subject would continue as in Congress, whereas in Parliament the subject would be immediately dismissed; so too the Previous Question could be moved when there was before the assembly a motion either to amend, to commit, or to postpone definitely or indefinitely, just as in Congress, notwithstanding that, according to English parliamentary law, the Previous Question could not be moved under such circumstances. When the rules of the two Houses of Congress conflict, the H. R. rules are of greater authority than those of the Senate in determining the parliamentary law of the country, just as the practice of the House of Commons, and not the House of Lords, determines the parliamentary law of England. For instance, though the Senate rules do not allow the motion for the Previous Question, and make the motion to postpone indefinitely take precedence of every other subsidiary motion [§ 7] except to lie on the table, yet the parliamentary law of the land follows the practice of the House of Representatives, in recognizing the Previous Question as a legitimate motion, and assigning to the very lowest rank the motion to postpone indefinitely. But in matters of detail, the rules of the House of Representatives are adapted to the peculiar wants of that body, and are of no authority in any other assembly. No one for instance would accept the following H. R. rules as common parliamentary law in this country: That the chairman, in case of disorderly conduct, would have the power to order the galleries to be cleared; that the ballot could not be used in electing the officers of an assembly; that any fifteen members would be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members and make them pay the expenses of the messengers sent after them; that all committees not appointed by the Chair would have to be appointed by ballot, and if the required number were not elected by a majority vote, then a second ballot must be taken in which a plurality of votes would prevail; that each member would be limited in debate upon any question, to one hour; that a day's notice must be given of the introduction of a bill, and that before its passage it must be read three times, and that without the special order of the assembly it cannot be read twice the same day. These examples are sufficient to show the absurdity of the idea that the rules of Congress in all things determine the common parliamentary law.] === Page 12 ============================================================ Plan of the Work. This Manual is prepared to partially meet this want in deliberative assemblies that are not legislative in their character. It has been made sufficiently complete to answer for the rules of an assembly, until they see fit to adopt special rules conflicting with and superseding any of its rules of detail, such as the Order of Business [§ 44], etc. Even in matters of detail the practice of Congress is followed, wherever it is not manifestly unsuited to ordinary assemblies, and in such cases, in Part I, there will be found, in a foot note, the Congressional practice. In the important matters referred to above, in which the practice of the House of === Page 13 ============================================================ Representatives settles the common parliamentary law of the country, this Manual strictly conforms to such practice.* [On account of the party lines being so strictly drawn in Congress, no such thing as harmony of action is possible, and it has been found best to give a bare majority in the House of Representatives (but not in the Senate) the power to take final action upon a question without allowing of any discussion. In ordinary societies more regard should be paid to the rights of the minority, and a two-thirds vote be required, as in this Manual [§ 39], for sustaining an objection to the introduction of a question, or for adopting a motion for the Previous Question, or for adopting an order closing or limiting debate. In this respect the policy of the Pocket Manual is a mean between those of the House and Senate. But some societies will doubtless find it advantageous to follow the practice of the H. R., and others will prefer that of the Senate. It requires a majority, according to the Pocket Manual, to order the yeas and nays, which is doubtless best in the majority of assemblies; but in all bodies in which the members are responsible to their constituents, a much smaller number should have this power. In Congress it requires but a one-fifth vote, and in some bodies a single member can require a vote to be taken by yeas and nays. Any society adopting this Manual, should make its rules govern them in all cases to which they are applicable, and in which they are not inconsistent with the By-Laws and Rules of Order of the society. Their own rules should include all of the cases where it is desirable to vary from the rules in the Manual, and especially should provide for a Quorum [§ 43], and an Order of Business [§ 44], as suggested in these rules.] The Manual is divided into two distinct parts, each complete in itself. [The table at the end contains a large amount of information in a tabular form, for easy reference in the midst of the business of a meeting.] Part I contains a set of Rules of Order systematically arranged, as shown in the Table of Contents. Each one of the forty-five sections is complete in itself, so that no one unfamiliar with the work can be misled in examining any particular subject. Cross references are freely used to save repeating === Page 14 ============================================================ from other sections, and by this means the reader, without using the index, is referred to everything in the Rules of Order that has any bearing upon the subject he is investigating. The references are by sections, and for convenience the numbers of the sections are placed at the top of each page. The motions are arranged under the usual classes, in their order of rank, but in the index under the word motion will be found an alphabetical list of all the motions generally used. In reference to each motion there is stated: (1) Of what motions it takes precedence (that is, what motions may, be pending, and yet it be in order to make this motion). (2) To what motions it yields (that is, what motions may be made while this motion is pending). (3) Whether it is debatable or not. (4) Whether it can be amended or not. (5) In case the motion can have no subsidiary motion applied to it, the fact is stated [see Adjourn, § 11, for an example: the meaning is, that the particular motion to adjourn, for example, cannot be laid on the table, postponed, committed or amended]. (6) The effect of the motion if adopted. (7) The form of stating the question when peculiar, and whatever other information is necessary to enable one to understand the question. Part II. While the second part covers the entire ground of the first part, it does so in a much simpler manner, being intended for those who have === Page 15 ============================================================ no acquaintance with the usages of deliberative assemblies. It also explains the method of organizing an assembly or society, and conducting a meeting. The motions are treated on an entirely different plan, being classified according to the objects for which they are used, and those of each class compared together so that the reader may obtain the best motion for the accomplishment of any given object. It omits the complications of parliamentary law, and has but few references to the rules of Congress, or those in this Manual. In order to make it complete in itself, it was necessary to repeat a few pages from the first part. Definitions. In addition to the terms defined above (taking precedence of, yielding to and applying to, see p. 14), there are other terms that are liable to be misunderstood, to which attention should he called. Meeting and Session.--In this Manual the term "meeting" is used to denote an assembling together of the members of a deliberative assembly for any length of time, during which there is no separation of the members by adjournment. An adjournment to meet again at some other time, even the same day, terminates the meeting, but not the session, which latter includes all the adjourned meetings. The next meeting, in this case, would be an "adjourned meeting" of the same session. A "meeting" of an assembly is terminated by a === Page 16 ============================================================ temporary adjournment; a "session" of an assembly ends with an adjournment without day, and may consist of many meetings [see Session, § 42]. Previous Question--This term is frequently understood to refer to the question previously under consideration. As used in this country it is equivalent to a motion to "Stop debate, and proceed to voting on all the questions before the assembly," with certain exceptions, where it affects only one motion (as to postpone, to reconsider and an appeal; see § 20 for a full explanation). Shall the Question be Considered (or discussed)? This question, which is put as soon as a subject is brought before an assembly, if any member "objects to its consideration" (or "discussion," or "introduction"), is not intended to merely cut off debate, but to prevent the question from coming before the assembly for its action. If decided by a two-thirds vote in the negative, the question is removed from before the assembly immediately [see § 15]. Whenever the word "assembly," which is used throughout these rules, occurs in forms of motions (as in Appeals, § 14), it is better to replace it by the special term used to designate the particular assembly; as for instance, "Society," or "Convention," or "Board." The term "Congress," when used in this Manual, refers to the House of Representatives of the U.S. === Page 17 ============================================================ Part I. Rules of Order. --- Art. I. Introduction of Business. [§§ 1-5.] 1. All business should be brought before the assembly by a motion of a member, or by the presentation of a communication to the assembly. It is not usual, however, to make a motion to receive the reports of committees [§ 30] or communications to the assembly; and in many other cases in the ordinary routine of business, the formality of a motion is dispensed with; but should any member object, a regular motion becomes necessary. 2. Before a member can make a motion or address the assembly upon any question, it is necessary that he obtain the floor; that is, he must rise and address the presiding officer === Page 18 ============================================================ by his title, thus: "Mr. Chairman" [§ 34], who will then announce the member's name. Where two or more rise at the same time the Chairman must decide who is entitled to the floor, which he does by announcing that member's name. From this decision, however, an appeal [§ 14] can he taken; though if there is any doubt as to who is entitled to the floor, the Chairman can at the first allow the assembly to decide the question by a vote--the one getting the largest vote being entitled to the floor. The member upon whose motion the subject under discussion was brought before the assembly (or, in case of a committee's report, the one who presented the report) is entitled to be recognized as having the floor (if he has not already had it during that discussion), notwithstanding another member may have first risen and addressed the Chair. If the Chairman rise to speak before the floor has been assigned to any one, it is the duty of a member who may have previously risen to take his seat. [See Decorum in Debate, § 36.] When a member has obtained the floor, he cannot be cut off from addressing the assembly, nor be interrupted in this speech by a === Page 19 ============================================================ motion to adjourn, or for any purpose, by either the Chairman or any member, except (a) to have entered on the minutes a motion to reconsider [§ 27]; (b) by a call to order [§ 14]; (c) by an objection to the consideration of the question [§ 15]; or (d) by a call for the orders of the day [§ 13].* [See note to § 61.] In such cases the member when he arises and addresses the Chair should state at once for what purpose he rises, as, for instance, that he "rises to a point of order." A call for an adjournment, or for the question, by members in their seats, is not a motion; as no motion can be made, without rising and addressing, the Chair, and being announced by the presiding officer. Such calls for the question are themselves breaches of order, and do not prevent the speaker from going on if he pleases. 3. Before any subject is open to debate [§ 34] it is necessary, first, that a motion he made; second, that it be seconded, (see exceptions below); and third, that it be stated by the presiding officer. When the motion is in writing it shall be handed to the Chairman, and read before it is debated. This does not prevent suggestions of alterations, before the question is stated by the === Page 20 ============================================================ presiding officer. To the contrary, much time may be saved by such informal remarks; which, however, must never be allowed to run into debate. The member who offers the motion, until it has been stated by the presiding officer, can modify his motion, or even withdraw it entirely; after it is stated he can do neither, without the consent of the assembly. [See §§ 5 and 17]. When the mover modifies his motion, the one who seconded it can withdraw his second. Exceptions: A call for the order of the day, a question of order (though not an appeal), or an objection to the consideration of a question [§§ 13, 14, 15], does not have to be seconded; and many questions of routine are not seconded or even made; the presiding officer merely announcing that, if no objection is made, such will be considered the action of the assembly. 4. All Principal Motions [§ 6], Amendments and Instructions to Committees, should be in writing, if required by the presiding officer. Although a question is complicated, and capable of being made into several questions, no one member (without there is a special rule allowing it) can insist upon its being divided; his resource is to move that the question be divided, specifying in his motion how it is to be divided. Any one else can move as === Page 21 ============================================================ an amendment to this, to divide it differently. This Division of a Question is really an amendment [§ 23], and subject to the same rules. Instead of moving a division of the question, the same result can be usually attained by moving some other form of an amendment. When the question is divided, each separate question must be a proper one for the assembly to act upon, even if none of the others were adopted. Thus, a motion to "commit with instructions," is indivisible, because if divided, and the motion to commit should fail, then the other motion to instruct the committee would be improper, as there would be no committee to instruct.* [The 46th Rule of the House of Representatives requires the division of a question on the demand of one member, provided "it comprehends propositions in substance so distinct that one being taken away, a substantive proposition shall remain for the decision of the House." But this does not allow a division so as to have a vote on separate items or names. The 121st Rule expressly provides that on the demand of one-fifth of the members a separate vote shall be taken on such items separately, and others collectively, as shall be specified in the call, in the case of a bill making appropriations for internal improvements. But this right to divide a question into items extends to no case but the one specified. The common parliamentary law allows of no division except when the assembly orders it, and in ordinary assemblies this rule will be found to give less trouble than the Congressional one.] The motion to "strike out certain words and insert others," is indivisible, as it is strictly one proposition. 5. After a question has been stated by the presiding officer, it is in the possession of the === Page 22 ============================================================ assembly for debate; the mover cannot withdraw or modify it, if any one objects, except by obtaining leave from the assembly [§ 17], or by moving an amendment. Art. II. General Classification of Motions. [§§ 6-9.] 6. A Principal or Main Question or Motion, is a motion made to bring before the assembly, for its consideration, any particular subject. No Principal Motion can be made when any other question is before the assembly. It takes precedence of nothing, and yields to all Privileged, Incidental and Subsidiary Questions [§§ 7, 8, 9]. 7. Subsidiary or Secondary Questions or Motions relate to a Principal Motion, and enable the assembly to dispose of it in the most appropriate manner. These motions take precedence of the Principal Question, and must be decided before the Principal Question can be acted upon. They yield to Privileged and Incidental Questions [§§ 8, 9], and are as follows (being arranged in their order of precedence among themselves): === Page 23 ============================================================ Lie on the Table .................... See § 19. The Previous Question ............... '' § 20. Postpone to a Certain Day ........... '' § 21. Commit .............................. '' § 22. Amend ............................... '' § 23. Postpone Indefinitely ............... '' § 24. Any of these motions (except Amend) can be made when one of a lower order is pending, but none can supersede one of a higher order. They cannot be applied* [See Plan of Work and Definitions, in Introduction, for explanation of some of these technical terms.] to one another except in the following cases: (a) the Previous Question applies to the motion to Postpone, without affecting the principal motion, and can, if specified, be applied to a pending amendment [§ 20]; (b) the motions to Postpone to a certain day, and to Commit, can be amended; and (c) a motion to Amend the minutes can be laid on the table without carrying the minutes with it [§ 19]. 8. Incidental Questions are such as arise out of other questions, and, consequently, take precedence of, and are to be decided before, the questions which give rise to them. They yield to Privileged Questions [§ 9], and cannot be amended. Excepting an Appeal, === Page 24 ============================================================ they are undebatable; an Appeal is debatable or not, according to circumstances, as shown in § 14. They are as follows: Appeal (or Questions of Order) ........................... See § 14. Objection to the Consideration of a Question ............. '' § 15. The Reading of Papers .................................... '' § 16. Leave to Withdraw a Motion ............................... '' § 17. Suspension of the Rules .................................. '' § 18. 9. Privileged Questions are such as, on account of their importance, take precedence over all other questions whatever, and on account of this very privilege they are undebatable [§ 35], excepting when relating to the rights of the assembly or its members, as otherwise they could be made use of so as to seriously interrupt business. They are as follows (being arranged in their order of precedence among themselves): To Fix the Time to which the Assembly shall Adjourn ...... See § 10. Adjourn .................................................. '' § 11. Questions relating to the Rights and Privileges of the Assembly or any of its Members ............................................ '' § 12. Call for the Orders of the Day ........................... '' § 13. === Page 25 ============================================================ Art. III. Motions and their Order of Precedence.* [For a list of all the ordinary motions, arranged in their order of precedence, see § 64. All the Privileged and Subsidiary ones in this Article are so arranged.] [§§ 10-27.] Privileged Motions. [§§ 10-13. See § 9.] 10. To Fix the Time to which the Assembly shall Adjourn. This motion takes precedence of all others, and is in order even after the assembly has voted to adjourn, provided the Chairman has not announced the result of the vote. If made when another question is before the assembly, it is undebatable [§ 35]; it can be amended by altering the time. If made when no other question is before the asembly, it stands as any other principal motion, and is debatable.** [In ordinary societies it is better to follow the common parliamentary law, and permit this question to be introduced as a principal question, when it can be debated and suppressed [§ 58, 59] like other questions. In Congress, it is never debatable, and has entirely superseded the unprivileged and inferior motion to "adjourn to a particular time."] The Form of this motion is, "When this assembly === Page 26 ============================================================ adjourns, it adjourns to meet at such a time." 11. To Adjourn. This motion (when unqualified) takes precedence of all others, except to "fix the time to which to adjourn," to which it yields. It is not debatable, and cannot be amended, or have any other subsidiary motion [§ 7] applied to it. If qualified in any way it loses its privileged character, and stands as any other principal motion. The motion to adjourn can be repeated if there has been any intervening business, though it be simply progress in debate [§ 26]. When a committee is through with any business referred to it, and prepared to report, instead of adjourning, a motion should be made "to rise," which motion, in committee, has the same privileges as to adjourn in the assembly [§ 32]. The effect upon Unfinished Business of an adjournment is as follows* ["After six days from the commencement of a second or subsequent session of any Congress, all bills, resolutions and reports which originated in the House, and at the close of the next preceding session remained undetermined, shall be resumed, and acted on in the same manner as if an adjournment had not taken place." Rule 136, H. R. Any ordinary society that meets as seldom as once each year, is apt to be composed of as different membership at its successive meetings, as any two successive Congresses, and only trouble would result from allowing unfinished business to hold over to the next yearly meeting.] [see Session, § 42]: === Page 27 ============================================================ (a) When it does not close the session, the business interrupted by the adjournment is the first in order after the reading of the minutes at the next meeting, and is treated the same as if there had been no adjournment; an adjourned meeting being legally the continuation of the meeting of which it is an adjournment. (b) When it closes a session in an assembly which has more than one regular session each year, then the unfinished business is taken up at the next succeeding session previous to new business, and treated the same as if there had been no adjournment [see § 44, for its place in the order of business]. Provided, that, in a body elected for a definite time (as a board of directors elected for one year), unfinished business falls to the ground with the expiration of the term for which the board or any portion of them were elected. (c) When the adjournment closes a session in an assembly which does not meet more frequently than once a year, or when the assembly is an elective body, and this session ends === Page 28 ============================================================ the term of a portion of the members, the adjournment shall put an end to all business unfinished at the close of the session. The business can be introduced at the next session, the same as if it had never been before the assembly. 12. Questions of Privilege. Questions relating to the rights and privileges of the assembly, or any of its members, take precedence of all other questions, except the two preceding, to which they yield. The Previous Question [§ 20] can be applied to these, as to all other debatable questions. 13. Orders of the Day. A call for the Orders of the Day takes precedence of every other motion, excepting to Reconsider [§ 27], and the three preceding, to which latter three it yields, and is not debatable, nor can it be amended. It does not require to be seconded. When one or more subjects have been assigned to a particular day or hour, they become the Orders of the Day for that day or hour, and they cannot be considered before that time, except by a two-thirds vote [§ 39]. And when that day or hour arrives, if called up, they take precedence of all but the three === Page 29 ============================================================ preceding questions [§§ 10, 11, 12]. Instead of considering them, the assembly may appoint another time for their consideration. If not taken up on the day specified, the order falls to the ground. When the Orders of the Day are taken up, it is necessary to take up the separate questions in their exact order, the one first assigned to the day or hour, taking precedence of one afterwards assigned to the same day or hour. (A motion to take up a particular part of the Orders of the Day, or a certain question, is not a privileged motion). Any of the subjects, when taken up, instead of being then considered, can be assigned to some other time. The Form of this question, as put by the Chair when the proper time arrives, or on the call of a member, is, "Shall the Order of the Day be taken up?" or, "Will the assembly now proceed with the Orders of the Day?" The Effect of an affirmative vote on a call for the Orders of the Day, is to remove the question under consideration from before the assembly, the same as if it had been interrupted by an adjournment [§ 11]. The Effect of a negative vote is to dispense === Page 30 ============================================================ with the orders merely so far as they interfere with the consideration of the question then before the assembly. Incidental Motions. [§§ 14-18; see § 8] 14. Appeal [Questions of Order]. A Question of Order takes precedence of the question giving rise to it, and must be decided by the presiding officer without debate. If a member objects to the decision, he says, "I appeal from the decision of the Chair." If the Appeal is seconded, the Chairman immediately states the question as follows: "Shall the decision of the Chair stand as the judgement of the assembly?"* [The word Assembly can be replaced by Society, Convention, Board, etc., according to the name of the organization.] This Appeal yields to Privileged Questions [§ 9]. It cannot be amended; it cannot be debated when it relates simply to indecorum [§ 36], or to transgressions of the rules of speaking, or to the priority of business, or if it is made while the previous question [§ 20] is pending. When debatable, no member is allowed to speak but once, and whether debatable or not, the presiding officer, without leaving the === Page 31 ============================================================ Chair, can state the reasons upon which he bases his decision. The motions to Lie on the Table [§ 19], or for the Previous Question [§ 20], can be applied to an Appeal, when it is debatable, and when adopted they affect nothing but the Appeal. The vote on an Appeal may also be reconsidered [§ 27]. An Appeal is not in order when another Appeal is pending. It is the duty of the presiding officer to enforce the rules and orders of the assembly, without debate or delay. It is also the right of every member, who notices a breach of a rule to insist upon its enforcement. In such cases he shall rise from his seat, and say, "Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order." The speaker should immediately take his seat, and the Chairman requests the member to state his point of order, which he does, and resumes his seat. The Chair decides the point, and then, if no appeal is taken, permits the first member to resume his speech. If the member's remarks are decided to be improper, and any one objects to his continuing his speech, he cannot continue it without a vote of the assembly to that effect. Instead of the method just described, it is usual, when it is simply a case of improper language used in debate, for a member to say, "I call the gentleman to order;" the Chairman === Page 32 ============================================================ decides whether the speaker is in or out of order, and proceeds as before. The Chairman can ask the advice of members when he has to decide questions of order, but the advice must be given sitting, to avoid the appearance of debate; or the Chair, when unable to decide the question, may at once submit it to the assembly. The effect of laying an appeal on the table, is to sustain, at least for the time, the decision of the Chair, and does not carry to the table the question which gave rise to the question of order. 15. Objection to the Consideration of a Question. An objection can be made to any principal motion [§ 6], but only when it is first introduced, before it has been debated. It is similar to a question of order [§ 14,] in that it can be made while another member has the floor, and does not require a second; and as the Chairman can call a member to order, so can he put this question if he deems it necessary, upon his own responsibility. It can not be debated [§ 35] or have any subsidiary motion [§ 7] applied to it. When a motion is made and any member "objects to its consideration," the Chairman shall immediately put the question, "Will the assembly consider it?" or, "Shall the question be considered" === Page 33 ============================================================ [or discussed]? If decided in the negative by a two-thirds vote [§ 39], the whole matter is dismissed for that session [§ 42]; otherwise the discussion continues as if this question had never been made. The Object of this motion is not to cut off debate (for which other motions are provided, see § 37), but to enable the assembly to avoid altogether any question which it may deem irrelevant, unprofitable or contentious.* [In Congress, the introduction of such questions could be temporarily prevented by a majority vote under the 41st Rule of the House of Representatives, which is as follows: "Where any motion or proposition is made, the question, 'Will the House now consider it?' shall not be put unless it is demanded by some member, or is deemed necessary by the Speaker." The English use the "Previous Question," for a similar purpose [see note to § 20]. The question of consideration is seldom raised in Congress, but in assemblies with very short sessions, where but few questions can or should be considered, it seems a necessity that two-thirds of the assembly should be able to instantly throw out a question they do not wish to consider. The more common form, in ordinary societies, of putting this question, is, "Shall the question be discussed?" The form to which preference is given in the rule conforms more to the Congressional one, and is less liable to be misunderstood.] 16. Reading Papers. [For the order of precedence, see § 8.] Where papers are laid before the assembly, every member has a right to have them once read before he can be compelled to vote on them, and whenever a member asks for the reading of any such === Page 34 ============================================================ paper, evidently for information, and not for delay, the Chair should direct it to be read, if no one objects. But a member has not the right to have anything read (excepting stated above) without getting permission from the assembly. 17. Withdrawal of a Motion. [For order of precedence, see § 8.] When a question is before the assembly and the mover wishes to withdraw or modify it, or substitute a different one in its place, if no one objects, the presiding officer grants the permission; if any objection is made, it will be necessary to obtain leave to withdraw, etc., on a motion for that purpose. This motion cannot be debated or amended. When a motion is withdrawn, the effect is the same as if it had never been made.* [In Congress, a motion may be withdrawn by the mover, before a decision or amendment [Rule 40, H. R.]. Nothing would be gained in ordinary societies by varying from the common law as stated above.] 18. Suspension of the Rules. [For the order of precedence, see § 8.] This motion is not debatable, and cannot be amended, nor can any subsidiary [§ 7] motion be applied to it, nor a vote on it be reconsidered [§ 27], === Page 35 ============================================================ nor a motion to suspend the rules for the same purpose be renewed [§ 26] at the same meeting, though it may be renewed after an adjournment, though the next meeting be held the same day.* [In Congress, it cannot be renewed the same day.] The rules of the assembly shall not be suspended except for a definite purpose, and by a two-thirds vote. The Form of this motion is, to "suspend the rules which interfere with," etc., specifying the object of the suspension. Subsidiary Motions. [§§ 19-24; see § 7.] 19. To Lie on the Table. This motion takes precedence of all other Subsidiary Questions [§ 7], and yields to any Privileged [§ 9] or Incidental [§ 8] Question. It is not debatable, and cannot be amended or have any other subsidiary motion [§ 7] applied to it. It removes the subject from consideration till the assembly vote to take it from the table. The Form of this motion is, "I move that the question lie on the table," or, "that it be laid on the table," or, "to lay the question === Page 36 ============================================================ on the table." When it is desired to take the question up again, a motion is made, either "to take the question from the table," or "to now consider such and such a question;" which motion is undebatable, and cannot have any subsidiary motion applied to it. The Object of this motion is to postpone the subject in such a way, that at any time it can be taken up, either at the same or some future meeting, which could not be accomplished by a motion to postpone, either definitely or indefinitely. It is also frequently used to suppress a question [§ 59], which it does, provided a majority vote can never be obtained to take it from the table during that session [§ 42]. The Effect of this motion is in general to place on the table everything that adheres to the subject; so that if an amendment be ordered to lie on the table, the subject which it is proposed to amend, goes there with it. The following cases are exceptional: (a) An appeal [§ 14] being laid on the table, has the effect of sustaining, at least for the time, the decision of the Chair, and does not carry the original subject to the table. (b) So when a motion to reconsider [§ 27] a question is === Page 37 ============================================================ laid on the table, the original question is left where it was before the reconsideration was moved. (c) An amendment to the minutes being laid on the table does not carry the minutes with it. Even after the ordering of the Previous Question up to the moment of taking the last vote under it, it is in order to lay upon the table the questions still before the assembly. 20. The Previous Question* [The Previous Question is a technical name for this motion, conveying a wrong impression of its import, as it has nothing to do with the subject previously under consideration. To demand the previous question is equivalent in effect to moving "That debate now cease, and the assembly immediately proceed to vote on the questions before it," (the exceptions are stated above). The English Previous Question is an entirely different one from ours, and is used for a different purpose. In the English Parliament it is moved by the enemies of a measure, who then vote in the negative, and thus prevent for the day, the consideration of the main question, (which in this country could be accomplished by "objecting to the consideration of the question" [§ 15], if the objection were sustained). In our Congress, it is moved by the friends of a measure, who vote in the affirmative with a view to cutting off debate and immediately bringing the assembly to a vote on the questions before it. The rules in the two cases are as different as the objects of the motions. It requires only a majority vote for its adoption in the House of Representatives, and is not allowed in the United States Senate.] takes precedence of every debatable question [§ 35], and yields to Privileged [§ 9] and Incidental [§ 8] questions, and to the motion to Lie on the table [§ 19]. It is not debatable, and cannot be amended or have any other Subsidiary === Page 38 ============================================================ [§ 7] motion applied to it. It shall require a two-thirds vote for its adoption. When a member calls for the previous question, and the call is seconded, the presiding officer must immediately put the question: "Shall the main question be now put?" If adopted, the member who introduced the pending measure still has the right to close the debate [§ 34]; after which the presiding officer, without allowing further discussion, shall put to vote the questions before the assembly, in their order of precedence, till the main question, with all its subsidiary and incidental questions, is disposed of (see the exceptions below). If it fails, the discussion continues as if this motion had not been made. The previous question can be moved on a pending amendment, and if adopted, debate is closed on the amendment only. After the amendment is voted on, the main question is again open to debate and amendments. [In this case the form of the question would be similar to this : "Shall the amendment be now put to the question?"] === Page 39 ============================================================ The Object of this motion is to bring the assembly to a vote on the question before it without further debate. In ordinary assemblies it is rarely expedient to deprive a large minority of the right of debate, and yet two-thirds of the members should have the right to close the debate when they think it best. It applies to questions of privilege [§ 12] as well as any other debatable questions. It is allowable for a member to submit a resolution and at the same time move the previous question thereon. To illustrate the Effect of this motion, suppose it is adopted when we have before the assembly, (a) the main question; (b) an amendment; (c) a motion to commit; (d) a motion to amend the last motion by giving the committee instructions. The previous question being carried, the presiding officer would immediately put the question on the last motion (d); then on the motion to commit, (c); and if this is adopted, of course the subject is referred to the committee and disposed of for the present; but if it fails, the amendment (b) is put, and finally the main question. Exceptions: If the Previous Question is === Page 40 ============================================================ carried while a motion to Postpone is pending, its effect is only to bring the assembly to a vote on that motion; if it is voted not to postpone, the subject is again open for debate. So if an Appeal [§ 14] or a motion to Reconsider [§ 27] is pending when the Previous Question is ordered, it applies only to them and is exhausted by the vote on them. An affirmative vote on the motion to Commit [§ 22] exhausts the Previous Question, and if the vote is reconsidered, it is divested of the Previous Question. [For other methods of closing debate see § 37 and § 58]. 21. To Postpone to a Certain Day. This motion takes precedence of a motion to Commit, or Amend, or Indefinitely Postpone, and yields to any Privileged [§ 9] or Incidental [§ 8] question, and to the motion to Lie on the Table, or for the Previous Question. It can be amended by altering the time, and the Previous Question can be applied to it without affecting any other motions pending. It allows of very limited debate [§ 35], and that must not go into the merits of the subject matter any further than is necessary to enable the === Page 41 ============================================================ assembly to judge the propriety of the postponement. The Effect of this motion is to postpone the entire subject to the time specified, until which time it cannot be taken up except by a two-thirds vote [§ 13]. When that time arrives it is entitled to be taken up in preference to every thing except Privileged questions. Where several questions are postponed to different times and are not reached then, they shall be considered in the order of the times to which they were postponed. It is not in order to postpone to a time beyond that session [§ 42] of the assembly, except* [In Congress a motion cannot be postponed to the next session, but it is customary in ordinary societies.] to the day of the next session when it comes up with the unfinished business, and consequently takes precedence of new business [§ 44]. If it is desired to hold an adjourned meeting to consider a special subject, the time to which the assembly shall adjourn [§ 10] should be first fixed before making the motion to postpone the subject to that day. 22. To Commit [or Recommit as it is called when the subject has been previously committed]. This motion takes precedence of the motions to Amend or Indefinitely Postpone, and yields to any Privileged [§ 9] or Incidental === Page 42 ============================================================ [§ 8] Question, and also to the motion to Lie on the Table, or for the Previous Question, or to Postpone to a certain day. It can be amended by altering the committee, or giving it instructions. It is debatable, and opens to debate [§ 35] the merits of the question it is proposed to commit. The Form of this motion is "to refer the subject to a committee." When different committees are proposed they should he voted in the following order: (1) Committee the whole [§ 32], (2) a standing committee, and (3) a special (or select) committee. The number of a committee is usually decided without the formality of a motion, as in filling blanks [§ 25]: the Chairman asks "of how many shall the committee consist?" and a question is then put upon each number suggested, beginning with the largest. The number and kind of the committee need not be decided till after it has been voted to refer the subject to a committee. If the committee is a select one, and the motion does not include the method of appointing it, and there is no standing rule on the subject, the Chairman inquires how the committee shall be appointed, and this is usually decided informally. Sometimes the Chair "appoints," in which case he names the members of the committee and no vote is taken === Page 43 ============================================================ upon them; or the committee is "nominated" either by the Chair or members of the assembly (no member nominating more than one except by general consent), and then they are all voted upon together, except where more nominations are made than the number of the committee, when they shall be voted upon singly. Where a committee is one for action (a committee of arrangements for holding a public meeting, for example), it should generally be small, and no one placed upon it who is not favorable to the proposed action; and if any such should be appointed he should ask to be excused. But when the committee is for deliberation or investigation, it is of the utmost importance that all parties be represented on it, so that in committee the fullest discussion may take place, and thus diminish the chances of unpleasant debates in the assembly. In ordinary assemblies, by judicious appointment of committees, debates upon delicate and troublesome questions can be mostly confined to the committees, which will contain the representative members of all parties. [See Reports of Committees, § 29.] 23. To Amend. This motion takes precedence of nothing but the question which it proposed to amend, and yields to any Privileged === Page 44 ============================================================ [§ 9], Incidental [§ 8] or Subsidiary [§ 7] Question, except to Indefinitely Postpone. It can be amended itself, but this "amendment of an amendment" cannot be amended. An Amendment may be inconsistent with one already adopted, or may directly conflict with the spirit of the original motion, but it must have a direct bearing upon the subject of that motion. To illustrate: a motion for a vote of thanks could be amended by substituting for "thanks" the word "censure;" or one condemning certain customs could be amended by adding other customs. An Amendment may be in any of the following forms: (a) to "add or insert" certain words or paragraphs; (b) to "strike out" certain words or paragraphs, the question, however, being stated by the Chair thus: "Shall these words (or paragraphs) stand as a part of the resolution?" and if this is adopted (that is, the motion to "strike out," fails) it does not preclude either amendment or a motion to "strike out and insert;" (c) "to strike certain words and insert others," which motion is indivisible, and if lost does not preclude === Page 45 ============================================================ another motion to strike out the same words and insert different ones; (d) to "substitute" another motion on the same subject for the one pending; (e) to "divide the question" into two or more questions, as the mover specifies, so as to get a separate vote on any particular point or points [see § 4]. If a paragraph is inserted it should be perfected by its friends previous to voting on it, as when once inserted it cannot be struck out or amended except by adding to it. The same is true in regard to words to be inserted in a resolution, as when once inserted they cannot be struck out, except by a motion to strike out the paragraph, or such a portion of it as shall make the question an entirely different one from that of inserting the particular words. The principle involved is that when the assembly has voted that certain words shall form a part of a resolution, it is not in order to make another motion which involves exactly the same question as the one they have decided. The only way to bring it up again is to move a Reconsideration [§ 27] of the vote by which the words were inserted. In stating the question on an Amendment the Chairman should read (1) the passage to be amended; (2) the words to be struck out, if any; (3) the words to be inserted, if any; and (4) the whole passage as it will stand if === Page 46 ============================================================ the amendment is adopted. [For amending reports of committees, and propositions containing several paragraphs, see § 44.] The numbers prefixed to paragraphs are only marginal indications, and should be corrected, if necessary, by the clerk, without any motion to amend. The following motions cannot be amended: To Adjourn (when unqualified) ............................ See § 11. For the Orders of the Day ................................ '' § 12. All Incidental Questions ................................. '' § 8. To Lie on the Table ...................................... '' § 19. For the Previous Question ................................ '' § 20. An Amendment of an Amendment ............................. '' § 23. To Postpone Indefinitely ................................. '' § 24. Reconsider ............................................... '' § 27. An Amendment to Rules of Order, By-Laws or a Constitution shall require previous notice and a two-thirds vote for its adoption [see § 45]. 24. To Postpone Indefinitely. This motion takes precedence of nothing except the Principal Question [§ 6], and yields to any Privileged [§ 9], Incidental [§ 8] or Subsidiary [§ 7] Motion, except to Amend. It cannot be amended; it opens to debate the entire question which it is proposed to postpone. Its effect is to entirely remove the question from before the assembly for that session [§ 42]. === Page 47 ============================================================ The Previous Question [§ 20], if ordered when this motion is pending, applies only to it without affecting the main question. Miscellaneous Motions. [§§ 25-27.] 25. Filling Blanks. In filling blanks the largest sum and the longest time proposed shall be first put to the question. Sometimes the most convenient way of amending a resolution is to create a blank by moving to strike out a certain number or time. It is customary for any number of members to propose numbers to fill a blank without the formality of a motion, these different propositions not being regarded in the light of amendments. Nominations are treated in a similar manner, so that the second nomination, instead of being an amendment to the first, is an independent motion, which, if the first fails, is to be immediately voted upon. Any number of nominations can be made, the Chairman announcing each name as he hears it, and they === Page 48 ============================================================ should be voted upon in the order announced, until one receives a vote sufficient for an election. 26. Renewal of a Motion. When any Principal Question [§ 6] or Amendment has been once acted upon by the assembly, it cannot be taken up again at the same session [§ 42] except by a motion to Reconsider [§ 27]. The motion to Adjourn can be renewed if there has been progress in debate, or any business transacted. As a general rule the introduction of any motion that alters the state of affairs makes it admissible to renew any Privileged or Incidental motion (excepting Suspension of the Rules as provided in § 18), or Subsidiary motion (excepting an amendment), as in such a case the real question before the assembly is a different one. To illustrate: a motion that a question lie on the table having failed, suppose afterwards it be moved to refer the matter to a committee, it is now in order to move again that the subject lie on the table; but such a motion would not be in order, if it were not made till after the failure of the motion to commit, as === Page 49 ============================================================ the question then resumes its previous condition. When a subject has been referred to a committee which reports at the same meeting, the matter stands before the assembly as if it had been introduced for the first time. A motion which has been withdrawn has not been acted upon, and therefore can be renewed. 27. Reconsider. It is in order at any time, even when another member has the floor, or while the assembly is voting on the motion to Adjourn, during the day* [In Congress any one can move a reconsideration, excepting where the vote is taken by yeas and nays [§ 38], when the rule above applies. The motion can be made on the same or succeeding day.] on which a motion has been acted upon, to move to "Reconsider the vote" and have such motion "entered on the record," but it cannot be considered while another question is before the assembly. It must be made, excepting when the vote is by ballot, by a member who voted with the prevailing side; for instance, in case a motion fails to pass for lack of a two-thirds vote, a reconsideration must be moved by one who voted against the motion. A motion to reconsider the vote on a Subsidiary [§ 7] motion takes precedence of the main question. It yields to Privileged [§ 9] === Page 50 ============================================================ questions (except for the Orders of the Day), and Incidental [§ 8] questions. This motion can be applied* [It is not the practice to reconsider an affirmative vote on the motion to lie on the table, as the same result can be more easily reached by the motion to take from the table. For a similar reason, an affirmative vote on the motion to take from the table cannot be reconsidered.] to every question, except to Adjourn and to Suspend the Rules. It is debatable or not, just as the question to be reconsidered is debatable or undebatable [§ 35]; when debatable, it opens up for discussion the entire subject to be reconsidered, and can have the Previous question [§ 20] applied to it without affecting any thing but the motion to reconsider. It can be laid on the table [§ 19], and in such cases the last motion cannot be reconsidered; it is quite common and allowable to combine these two motions (though they must be voted on separately); in this case, the reconsideration like any other question, can be taken from the table, but possesses no privilege.** [In Congress this is a common method used by the friends of a measure to prevent its reconsideration.] The motion to reconsider being laid on the table does not carry with it the pending measure. If an amendment to a motion has been either adopted or rejected, and then a vote taken on the motion as amended, it is not in order to reconsider the vote on the amendment until === Page 51 ============================================================ after the vote on the original motion has been reconsidered. If anything which the assembly cannot reverse, has been done as the result a vote, then that vote cannot be reconsidered. The Effect of making this motion is to suspend all action that the original motion would have required until the reconsideration is acted upon; but if it is not called up, its effect terminates with the session [§ 42], provided,* [In Congress the effect always terminates with the session, and it cannot be called up by any one but the mover, until the expiration of the time during which it is in order to move a reconsideration.] that in an assembly having regular meetings as often as monthly, if no adjourned meeting upon another day is held of the one at which the reconsideration was moved, its effect shall not terminate till the close of the next succeeding session. [See note at end of this section.] While this motion is so highly privileged as far as relates to having it entered on the minutes, yet the reconsideration of another question cannot be made to interfere with the discussion of a question before the assembly, but as soon as that subject is disposed of, the reconsideration, if called up, takes precedence of every thing except the motions to adjourn, and to fix the time to which to adjourn. As long as its effect lasts (as shown above), any one can call up the motion to reconsider and have it acted upon--excepting that when its effect extends beyond the meeting at which the motion was made, no one but the mover can call it up at that meeting. But the reconsideration of an Incidental [§ 8] or Subsidiary [§ 7] === Page 52 ============================================================ motion shall be immediately acted upon, as otherwise it would prevent action on the main question. The Effect of the adoption of this motion is to place before the assembly the original question in the exact position it occupied before it was voted upon; consequently no one can debate the question reconsidered who had previously exhausted his right of debate [§ 34] on that question; his only resource is to discuss the question while the motion to reconsider is before the assembly. When a vote taken under the operation of the previous question [§ 20] is reconsidered, the question is then divested of the previous question, and is open to debate and amendment, provided the previous question had been exhausted [see latter part of § 20] by votes taken on all the questions covered by it, before the motion to reconsider was made. A reconsideration requires only a majority vote, regardless of the vote necessary to adopt the motion reconsidered. [For reconsidering in committee see § 28]. Note On Reconsider.--In the English Parliament a vote once taken cannot be reconsidered, but in our Congress it is allowed to move a reconsideration of the vote on the same or succeeding day, and after the close of the last day for making the motion, any one can call up the motion to reconsider, so that this motion cannot delay action more than two days, and the effect === Page 53 ============================================================ of the motion, if not acted upon, terminates with the session. There seems to be no reason or good precedent for permitting merely two persons, by moving a reconsideration, to suspend for any length of time all action under resolutions adopted by the assembly, and yet where the delay is very short the advantages of reconsideration overbalance the evils. Where a permanent society has meetings weekly or monthly, and usually only a small proportion of the society is present, it seems best to allow a reconsideration to hold over to another meeting, so that the society may have notice of what action is about to be taken. To prevent the motion being used to defeat a measure that cannot be deferred till the next regular meeting, it is provided that in case the society adjourn, to meet the next day for instance, then the reconsideration will not hold over beyond that session; this allows sufficient delay to notify the society, while, if the question is one requiring immediate action, the delay cannot extend beyond the day to which they adjourn. Where the meetings are only quarterly or annual, the society should be properly represented at each meeting, and their best interests are subserved by following the practice of Congress, and letting the effect of the reconsideration terminate with the session. === Page 54 ============================================================ Art. IV. Committees and Informal Action. [§§ 28-33.] 28. Committees. It is usual in deliberative assemblies, to have all preliminary work in the preparation of matter for their action, done by means of committees. These may be either "standing committees" (which are appointed for the session [§ 42], or for some definite time, as one year); or "select committees," appointed for a special purpose; or a "committee of the whole" [§ 32], consisting of the entire assembly. [For method of appointing committees of the whole, see § 32; other committees, see commit, § 22.] The first person named on a committee is chairman, and should act as such, without the committee should see fit to elect another chairman, which they are competent to do. The clerk should furnish him, or some other member of the committee, with notice of the appointment of the committee, giving the names === Page 55 ============================================================ of the members, the matter referred to them, and such instructions as the assembly have decided upon. The chairman shall call the committee together, and if there is a quorum (a majority of the committee, see § 43,) he should read or have read, the entire resolutions referred to them; he should then read each paragraph, and pause for amendments to be offered; when the amendments to that paragraph are voted on he proceeds to the next, only taking votes on amendments, as the committee cannot vote on the adoption of matter referred to them by the assembly. If the committee originate the resolutions, they vote, in the same way, on amendments to each paragraph of the draft of the resolutions, (which draft has been previously prepared by one of their members or a sub-committee); they do not vote on the separate paragraphs, but having completed the amendments, they vote on the adoption of the entire report. When there is a preamble, it is considered last. If the report originates with the committee, all amendments are to be incorporated in the report; but, if the resolutions were referred, the committee cannot alter === Page 56 ============================================================ the text, but must submit the original paper intact, with their amendments (which may be in the form of a substitute, § 23) written on a separate sheet. A committee is a miniature assembly that must meet together in order to transact business, and usually one of its members should be appointed its clerk. Whatever is not agreed to by the majority of the members present at a meeting (at which a quorum, consisting of a majority of the members of the committee, shall be present) cannot form a part of its report. The minority may be permitted to submit their views in writing also, either together, or each member separately, but their reports can only be acted upon, by voting to substitute one of them for the report of the committee. The rules of the assembly, as far as possible, shall apply in committee; but a reconsideration [§ 27] of a vote shall be allowed, regardless of the time elapsed, only when every member who voted with the majority is present when the reconsideration is moved.* [Both the English common parliamentary law and the rules of Congress prohibit the reconsideration of a vote by a committee; but the strict enforcement of this rule in ordinary committees, would interfere with rather than assist the transaction of business. The rule given above seems more just, and more in accordance with the practice of ordinary committees, who usually reconsider at pleasure. No improper advantage can be taken of the privilege, as long as every member who voted with the majority must be present when the reconsideration is moved.] A committee (except a committee === Page 57 ============================================================ of the whole, § 32] may appoint a sub-committee. When through with the business assigned them, a motion is made for the committee to "rise" (which is equivalent to the motion to adjourn), and that the chairman (or some member who is more familiar with the subject) make its report to the assembly. The committee ceases to exist as soon as the assembly receives the report [§ 30]. The committee has no power to punish its members for disorderly conduct, its resource being to report the facts to the assembly. No allusion can be made in the assembly to what has occurred in committee, except it be by a report of the committee, or by general consent. It is the duty of a committee to meet on the call of any two its of members, if the chairman be absent or decline to appoint such meeting. When a committee adjourns without appointing a time for the next meeting, it is called together in the same way as at its first meeting. When a committee adjourns to meet at another time, it is not necessary (though === Page 58 ============================================================ usually advisable) that absent members should be notified of the adjourned meeting. 29. Forms of Reports of Committees. The form of a report is usually similar to the following: A standing committee reports thus: "The committee on [insert name of committee] respectfully report," [or "beg leave to report," or "beg leave to submit the following report,"] etc., letting the report follow. A select or special committee reports as follows: "The committee to which was referred [state the matter referred] having considered the same respectfully report," etc. Or for "The committee" is sometimes written "Your committee," or "The undersigned, a committee." When a minority report is submitted, it should be in this form (the majority reporting as above): "The undersigned, a minority of a committee to which was referred," etc. The majority report is the report of the committee, and should never be made out as the report of the majority. All reports conclude with, "All of which is === Page 59 ============================================================ respectfully submitted." They are sometimes signed only by the chairman of the committee, but if the matter is of much importance, it is better that the report be signed by every member who concurs. The report is not usually dated, or addressed, but can he headed, as for example, "Report of the Finance Committee of the Y. P. A., on Renting a Hall." 30. Reception of Reports. When the report of a committee is to be made, the chairman (or member appointed to make the report) informs the assembly that the committee to whom was referred such a subject or paper, has directed him to make a report thereon, or report it with or without amendment, as the case may be; either he or any other member may move that it be "received"* [A very common error is, after a report has been read, to move that it be received; whereas, the fact that it has been read, shows that it has been already received by the assembly. Another mistake, less common, but dangerous, is to vote that the report be accepted (which is equivalent to adopting it, see § 31), when the intention is only to have the report up for consideration and afterwards move its adoption. Still a third error is to move that "the report be adopted and the committee discharged," when the committee have reported in full and their report been received, so that the committee has already ceased to exist. If the committee however have made but a partial report, or report progress, then it is in order to move that the committee be discharged from the further consideration of the subject.] now or at some other specified time. === Page 60 ============================================================ Usually the formality of a vote on the reception of a report of a committee is dispensed with, the time being settled by general consent. Should any one object, a formal motion becomes necessary. When the time arrives for the assembly to receive the report, the chairman of the committee reads it in his place, and then delivers it to the clerk, when it lies on the table till the assembly sees fit to consider it. If the report consists of a paper with amendments, the chairman of the committee reads the amendments with the coherence in the paper, explaining the alterations and reasons of the committee for the amendments, till he has gone through the whole. If the report is very long, it is not usually read until the assembly is ready to consider it [see §§ 31 and 44]. When the report has been received, whether it has been read or not, the committee is thereby dissolved, and can act no more without it is revived by a vote to recommit. If the report is recommitted, all the parts of the report that have not been agreed to by the assembly, are ignored by the committee as if the report had never been made. === Page 61 ============================================================ 31. Adoption of Reports. When the assembly is to consider a report, a motion should be made to "adopt," "accept," or "agree to" the report, all of which, when carried, have the same effect, namely, to make the doings of the committee become the acts of the assembly, the same as if done by the assembly without the intervention of a committee. If the report contains merely a statement of opinion or facts, the motion should be to "accept" the report; if it also concludes with resolutions or certain propositions, the motion should be to "agree to" the resolutions, or to "adopt" the propositions. After the above motion is made, the matter stands before the assembly exactly the same as if there had been no committee, and the subject had been introduced by the motion of the member who made the report. [See § 34 for his privileges in debate, and § 44 for the method of treating a report containing several propositions, when being considered by the assembly.] 32. Committee of the Whole. When an assembly has to consider a subject which it does not wish to refer to a committee, and yet where the subject matter is not well digested === Page 62 ============================================================ and put into proper form for its definite action, or, when for any other reason, it is desirable for the assembly to consider a subject with all the freedom of an ordinary committee, it is the practice to refer the matter to the "Committee of the Whole."* [In large assemblies, such as the U. S. House of Representatives, where a member can speak to any question but once, the committee of the whole seems almost a necessity, as it allows the freest discussion of a subject, while at any time it can rise and thus bring into force the strict rules of the assembly.] If it is desired to consider the question at once, the motion is made, "That the assembly do now resolve itself into a committee of the whole to take under consideration," etc., specifying the subject. This is really a motion to "commit" [see § 22 for its order of precedence, etc.] If adopted, the Chairman immediately calls another member to the chair, and takes his place as a member of the committee. The committee is under the rules of the assembly, excepting as stated hereafter in this section. The only motions in order are to amend and adopt, and that the committee "rise and report," as it cannot adjourn; nor can it order the "yeas and nays" [§ 38]. The only way to close or limit debate in committee of the whole, is for the assembly to vote that the debate in committee shall cease at a certain time, or that after a certain time no debate shall be allowed excepting on new amendments, and then only one speech in favor of === Page 63 ============================================================ and one against it, of say, five minutes each; or in some other way regulate the time for debate.* [In Congress no motion to limit debate in committee of the whole is in order till after the subject has been already considered in committee of the whole. As no subject would probably be considered more than once in committee of the whole, in an ordinary society, the enforcement of this rule would practically prevent such a society from putting any limit to debate in the committee. The rule as given above, allows the society, whenever resolving itself into committee of the whole, to impose upon the debate in the committee, such restrictions as are allowed in Congress after the subject has already been considered in committee of the whole.] If no limit is prescribed, any member may speak as often as he can get the floor, and as long each time as allowed in debate in the assembly, provided no one wishes the floor who has not spoken on that particular question. Debate having been closed at a particular time by order of the assembly, it is not competent for the committee, even by unanimous consent, to extend the time. The committee cannot refer the subject to another committee. Like other committees [§ 28], it cannot alter the text of any resolution referred to it; but if the resolution originated in the committee, then all the amendments are incorporated in it. When it is through with the consideration of the subject referred to it, or if it wishes to adjourn, or to have the assembly limit debate, a motion is made that "the committee rise and report," etc., specifying the result of its proceedings. === Page 64 ============================================================ This motion "to rise" is equivalent to the motion to adjourn, in the assembly, and is always in order (except when another member has the floor), and is undebatable. As soon as this motion is adopted, the presiding officer takes the chair, and the chairman of the committee, having resumed his place in the assembly, arises and informs him, that "the committee have gone through the business referred to them, and that he is ready to make the report, when the assembly is ready to receive it;" or he will make such other report as will suit the case. The clerk does not record the proceedings of the committee on the minutes, but should keep a memorandum of the proceedings for the use of the committee. In large assemblies the clerk vacates his chair, which is occupied by the chairman of the committee, and the assistant clerk acts as clerk of the committee. Should the committee get disorderly, and the chairman be unable to preserve order, the presiding officer can take the chair, and declare the committee dissolved. The quorum of the committee of the whole is the same as that of the assembly [§ 43]. If the committee finds itself without a quorum, it can only rise and report the fact to the assembly, which in such a case would have to adjourn. === Page 65 ============================================================ 33. Informal Consideration of a Question (or acting as if in committee of the whole). It has become customary in many assemblies, instead of going into committee of the whole, to consider the question "informally," and afterwards to act "formally." In a small assembly there is no objection to this.* [In the U. S. Senate all bills, joint resolutions and treaties, upon their second reading are considered "as if the Senate were in committee of the whole," which is equivalent to considering them informally. [U. S. Senate Rules 28 and 38.] In large assemblies it is better to follow the practice of the House of Representatives, and go into committee of the whole.] While acting informally upon any resolutions, the assembly can only amend and adopt them, and without further motion the Chairman announces that "the assembly acting informally [or as in committee of the whole] has had such a subject under consideration, and has made certain amendments, which he will report." The subject comes before the assembly then as if reported by a committee. While acting informally, the Chairman retains his seat, as it is not necessary to move that the committee rise, but at any time the adoption of such motions as to adjourn, the previous question, to commit, or any motion except to amend or adopt, puts an end to the informal consideration; as for example, the motion to commit is equivalent to the following motions when in committee of the whole: (1) That the committee rise; (2) that the committee of === Page 66 ============================================================ the whole be discharged from the further consideration of the subject, and (3) that it be referred to a committee. While acting informally, every member can speak as many times as he pleases, and as long each time as permitted in the assembly [§ 34], and the informal action may be rejected or altered by the assembly. While the clerk should keep a memorandum of the informal proceedings, it should not be entered on the minutes, being only for temporary use. The Chairman's report to the assembly of the informal action, should be entered on the minutes, as it belongs to the assembly's proceedings. Art. V. Debate and Decorum. [§§ 34-37.] 34. Debate.* [In connection with this section read §§ 1-5.] When a motion is made and seconded, it shall be stated by the Chairman before being debated [see § 3]. When any member is about to speak in debate, he shall rise and respectfully address himself to "Mr. Chairman." ["Mr. President" is used where that is the designated title of the presiding === Page 67 ============================================================ officer; "Brother Moderator" is more common in religious meetings.] The Chairman shall then announce his name [see § 2]. By parliamentary courtesy, the member upon whose motion a subject is brought before the assembly is first entitled to the floor, even though another member has risen first and addressed the Chair; [in case of a report of a committee, it is the member who presents the report] ; and this member is also entitled to close the debate, but not until every member choosing to speak, has spoken. This right to make the last speech upon the question, is not taken away by the Previous Question [§ 20] being ordered, or in any other way. With this exception, no member shall speak more than twice to the same question (only once to a question of order, § 14), nor longer than ten minutes at one time, without leave of the assembly, and the question upon granting the leave shall be decided by a majority vote without debate.* [The limit in time should vary to suit circumstances, but the limit of two speeches of ten minutes each will usually answer in ordinary assemblies, and it can be increased, when desirable, by a majority vote as shown above, or diminished as shown in § 37. In the U. S. House of Representatives no member can speak more than once to the same question, nor longer than one hour. The fourth rule of the Senate is as follows: "No Senator shall speak more than twice in any one debate on the same day, without leave of the Senate, which question shall be decided without debate." If no rule is adopted, each member can speak but once to the same question.] If greater freedom is desired, the === Page 68 ============================================================ proper course is to refer the subject to the committee of the whole [§ 32], or to consider it informally [§ 33]. [For limiting or closing the debate, see § 37.] No member can speak the second time to a question, until every member choosing to speak has spoken. But an amendment, or any other motion being offered, makes the real question before the assembly a different one, and, in regard to the right to debate, is treated as a new question. Merely asking a question, or making a suggestion, is not considered as speaking. 35. Undebatable Questions. The following questions shall be decided without debate, all others being debatable [see note at end of this section]: To Fix the Time to which the Assembly shall Adjourn (when a privileged question, § 10). To Adjourn [§ 11], (or in committee, to rise, which is used instead of to adjourn). For the Orders of the Day [§ 13], and questions relating to the priority of business. An Appeal [§ 14] when made while the Previous Question is pending, or when simply relating to indecorum or transgressions of the rules of speaking, or to the priority of business. Objection to the Consideration of a Question [§ 15]. === Page 69 ============================================================ Questions relating to Reading of Papers [§ 16], or Withdrawing a Motion [§ 17], or Suspending the Rules [§ 18], or extending the limits of debate [§ 34], or limiting or closing debate, or granting leave to continue his speech to one who has been guilty of indecorum in debate [§ 36]. To Lie on the Table or to Take from the Table [§ 19]. The Previous Question [§ 20]. To Reconsider [§ 26] a question which is itself undebatable. The motion to Postpone to a certain time [§ 21] allows of but very limited debate, which must be confined to the propriety of the postponement; but to Reconsider a debatable question [§ 26], or to Commit [§ 22], or Indefinitely Postpone [§ 24], opens the main question [§ 6] to debate. To Amend [§ 23] opens the main question to debate only so far as it is necessarily involved in the amendment. The distinction between debate and making suggestions or asking a question, should always be kept in view, and when the latter will assist the assembly in determining the question, is allowed to a limited extent, even though the question before the assembly is undebatable. Note On Undebatable Questions.--The English common parliamentary law makes all motions === Page 70 ============================================================ debatable, without there is a rule adopted limiting debate [Cushing's Manual, § 330]; but every assembly is obliged to restrict debate upon certain motions. The restrictions to debate prescribed in this section conform to the practice of Congress, where, however, it is very common to allow of brief remarks upon the most undebatable questions, sometimes five or six members speaking; this of course is allowed only when no one objects. By examining the above list, it will be found, that, while free debate is allowed upon every principal question [§ 6], it is permitted or prohibited upon other questions in accordance with the following principles: (a) Highly privileged questions, as a rule, should not be debated, as in that case they could be used to prevent the assembly from coming to a vote on the main question; (for instance, if the motion to adjourn were debatable, it could be used [see § 11] in a way to greatly hinder business). High privilege is, as a rule, incompatible with the right of debate on the privileged question. (b) A motion that has the effect to suppress a question before the assembly, so that it cannot again be taken up that session [§ 42], allows of free debate. And a subsidiary motion [§ 7, except commit, which see below,] is debatable to just the extent that it interferes with the right of the assembly to take up the original question at its pleasure. Illustrations: To "Indefinitely Postpone" [§ 24] a question, places it out of the power of the assembly to again take it up during that session, and consequently this motion allows of free debate, even involving the whole merits of the original question. To "Postpone to a certain time" prevents the assembly taking up the question till the specified time, and therefore allows of limited debate upon the propriety of the postponement. To "Lie on the Table" leaves the question so === Page 71 ============================================================ that the assembly can at any time consider it, and therefore should not be, and is not debatable. To "Commit" would not be very debatable, according to this rule, but it is an exception, because it is often important that the committee should know the views of the assembly on the question, and it therefore is not only debatable, but opens to debate the whole question which it is proposed to refer to the committee. 36. Decorum in Debate [see § 2]. In debate a member must confine himself to the question before the assembly, and avoid personalities. He cannot reflect upon any act of the assembly, unless he intends to conclude his remarks with a motion to rescind such action, or else while debating such motion. In referring to another member, he should, as much as possible, avoid using his name, rather referring to him as "the member who spoke last," or in some other way describing him. The officers of the assembly should always be referred to by their official titles. It is not allowable to arraign the motives of a member, but the nature or consequences of a measure may be condemned in strong terms. It is not the man, but the measure, that is the subject of debate. If at any time the Chairman rises to state a point of order, or give information, or otherwise speak, within his privilege [see === Page 72 ============================================================ § 40], the member speaking must take his seat till the Chairman has been first heard. When called to order, the member must sit down until the question of order is decided. If his remarks are decided to be improper, he cannot proceed, if any one objects, without the leave of the assembly expressed by a vote, upon which question there shall be no debate. Disorderly words should be taken down by the member who objects to them, or by the clerk, and then read to the member; if he denies them, the assembly shall decide by a vote whether they are his words or not. If a member cannot justify the words he used, and will not suitably apologize for using them, it is the duty of the assembly to act in the case, requiring both members to withdraw* [If both are personally interested. [See page 161.]] till it has decided its course, it being a general rule that no member should he present in the assembly when any matter relating to himself is under debate. If any business has taken place since the member spoke, it is too late to take notice of any disorderly words he used. 37. Closing Debate. Debate upon a question is not closed by the Chairman rising to put the question, as, until both the affirmative === Page 73 ============================================================ and negative are put, a member can claim the floor, and re-open debate [see § 38]. Debate can be closed by the following motions, which are undebatable [§ 35], and, except to Lie on the Table, shall require a two-thirds* [In Congress, where each speaker can occupy the floor one hour, any of these motions to cut off debate can be adopted by a mere majority. In ordinary societies harmony is so essential, that a two-thirds vote should be required to force the assembly to a final vote without allowing free debate.] vote for their adoption [§ 39]: (a) An objection to the consideration of a question [only allowable when the question is first introduced, § 15], which, if sustained, not only stops debate, but also throws the subject out of the assembly for that session [§ 42]; which latter effect is the one for which it was designed. (b) To lie on the table [§ 19], which, if adopted, carries the question to the table, from which it cannot be taken without a majority favors such action. (c) The previous question [§ 20], which has the effect of requiring all the questions before the assembly [excepting as limited in § 20] to be put to vote at once without further debate. It may be applied merely to an amendment or to an amendment of an amendment. === Page 74 ============================================================ (d) For the assembly to adopt an order (1) limiting debate upon a special subject, either as to the number or length of the speeches; or (2) closing debate upon the subject at a stated time, when all pending questions shall be put to vote without further debate. Either of these two measures may be applied only to a pending amendment, or an amendment thereto, and when this is voted upon, the original question is still open to debate and amendment. Art. VI. Vote. [§§ 38-39.] 38. Voting. Whenever from the nature of the question it permits of no modification or debate, the Chairman immediately puts it to vote; if the question is debatable, when the Chairman thinks the debate has been brought to a close, he should inquire if the assembly is ready for the question, and if no one rises he puts the question to vote. There are various forms for putting the question, in use in different parts of the country. The rule in Congress, in === Page 75 ============================================================ the House of Representatives, is as follows: "Questions shall be distinctly put in this form, to-wit: 'As many as are of the opinion that (as the question may be) say Aye;' and after the affirmative voice is expressed, 'As many as are of the contrary opinion, say No.'" The following form is very common: "It has been moved and seconded that (here state the question). As many as are favor of the motion say Aye; those opposed, No." Or, if the motion is for the adoption of a certain resolution, after it has been read the Chairman can say, "You have heard the resolution read; those in favor of its adoption will hold up the right hand; those opposed will manifest it by the same sign." These examples are sufficient to show the usual methods of putting a question, the affirmative being always put first. When a vote is taken, the Chairman should always announce the result in the following form: "The motion is carried--the resolution is adopted," or, "The ayes have it--the resolution is adopted." If, when he announces a vote, any member rises and states that he doubts the vote, or calls for a "division," the === Page 76 ============================================================ Chairman shall say, "A division is called for; those in favor of the motion will rise." After counting these, and announcing the number, he shall say, "Those opposed will rise." will count these, announce the number, and declare the result; that is, whether the motion is carried or lost. Instead of counting the vote himself, he can appoint tellers to make the count and report to him. When tellers are appointed, they should be selected from both sides of the question. A member has the right to change his vote (when not made by ballot) before the decision of the question has been finally and conclusively pronounced by the Chair, but not afterwards. Until the negative is put, it is in order for any member, in the same manner as if the voting had not been commenced, to rise and speak, make motions for amendment or otherwise, and thus renew the debate; and this, whether the member was in the assembly room or not when the question was put and the vote partly taken. In such case the question is in the same condition as if it had never been put. No one can vote on a question affecting === Page 77 ============================================================ himself, but if more than one name is included in the resolution (though a sense of delicacy would prevent this right being exercised, excepting when it would change the vote) all are entitled to vote; for if this were not so, a minority could control an assembly by including the names of a sufficient number in a motion, say for preferring charges against them, and suspend them, or even expel them from the assembly. When there is a tie vote the motion fails, without the Chairman gives his vote for the affirmative, which in such case he can do. Where his vote will make a tie, he can cast it and thus defeat the measure. Another form of voting is by ballot. This method is only adopted when required by the constitution or by-laws of the assembly, or when the assembly has ordered the vote to be so taken. The Chairman, in such cases, appoints at least two tellers, who distribute slips of paper upon which each member, including the Chairman,* [Should the Chairman neglect to vote before the ballots are counted, he cannot then vote without the permission of the assembly.] writes his vote; the votes are then collected, counted by the tellers, and the result reported to the Chairman, who announces === Page 78 ============================================================ it to the assembly. The Chairman announces the result of the vote, in case of an election to office, in a manner similar to the following: "The whole number of votes cast is --; the number necessary for an election is --; Mr. A. received --; Mr. B. --; Mr. C. --. Mr. B. having received the required number is elected --." Where there is only one candidate for an office, and the constitution requires the vote to be by ballot, it is common to authorize the clerk to cast the vote of the assembly for such and such a person; if any one objects however, it is necessary to ballot in the usual way. So when a motion is made to make a vote unanimous, it fails if any one objects. In counting the ballots all blanks are ignored. The assembly can by a majority vote order that the vote on any question be taken by Yeas and Nays.* [Taking a vote by yeas and nays, which has the effect to place on the record how each member votes, is peculiar to this country, and while it consumes a great deal of time, is rarely useful in ordinary societies. By the Constitution, one-fifth of the members present can, in either house of Congress, order a vote to be taken by yeas and nays, and to avoid some of the resulting inconveniences various rules and customs have been established, which are ignored in this Manual, as according to it the yeas and nays can only be ordered by a majority, which prevents its being made use of to hinder business. In representative bodies it is very useful, especially where the proceedings are published, as it enables the people to know how their representatives voted on important measures. In some small bodies a vote on a resolution must be taken by yeas and nays, upon the demand of a single member.] In this method of voting the Chairman states both sides of the question === Page 79 ============================================================ at once; the clerk calls the roll and each member as his name is called rises and answers yes or no, and the clerk notes his answer. Upon the completion of the roll call the clerk reads over the names of those who answered the affirmative, and afterwards those in the negative, that mistakes may be corrected; he then gives the number voting on each side to the Chairman, who announces the result. An entry must be made in the minutes of the names of all voting in the affirmative, and also of those in the negative. The form of putting a question upon which the vote has been ordered to be taken by yeas and nays, is similar to the following: "As many as are in favor of the adoption of these resolutions will, when their names are called, answer yes [or aye]--those opposed will answer no." The Chairman will then direct the clerk to call the roll. The negative being put at the same time as the affirmative, it is too late, after the question is put, to renew the === Page 80 ============================================================ debate. After the commencement of the roll call, it is too late to ask to be excused from voting. The yeas and nays cannot be ordered in committee of the whole [§ 32]. 39. Motions Requiring More than a Majority Vote.* [Where no rule to the contrary is adopted, a majority vote of the assembly, when a quorum [§ 43] is present, is sufficient for the adoption of any motion, except for the suspension of a rule, which can only be done by general consent, or unanimously. Congress requires a two-thirds vote for only the motions to suspend and to amend the Rules, to take up business out of its proper order, and to make a special order [see note to § 37].] The following motions shall require a two-thirds vote for their adoption, as the right of discussion, and the right to have the rules enforced, should not be abridged by a mere majority: An Objection to the Consideration of a Question .............. § 15. To Take up a Question out of its proper order ................ § 13. To Suspend the Rules ......................................... § 18. The Previous Question ........................................ § 20. To Close or Limit Debate ..................................... § 37. To Amend the Rules (requires previous notice also) ........... § 43. To Make a special order ...................................... § 13. === Page 81 ============================================================ Art. VII. The Officers and the Minutes. [§§ 40, 41.] 40. Chairman* [In connection with this section read § 44, and also § 40, 41.] or President. The presiding officer, when no special title has been assigned him, is ordinarily called the Chairman (or in religious assemblies more usually the Moderator); frequently the constitution of the assembly prescribes for him a title, such as President. His duties are generally as follows: To open the session at the time at which the assembly is to meet, by taking the chair and calling the members to order; to announce the business before the assembly in the order in which it is to be acted upon [§ 44]; to state and to put to vote [§ 38] all questions which are regularly moved, or necessarily arise in the course of proceedings, and to announce the result of the vote; To restrain the members, when engaged in === Page 82 ============================================================ debate, within the rules of order; to enforce on all occasions the observance of order and decorum [§ 36] among the members, deciding all questions of order (subject to an appeal to the assembly by any two members, § 14), and to inform the assembly when necessary, or when referred to for the purpose, on a point of order or practice; To authenticate, by his signature, when necessary, all the acts, orders and proceedings of the assembly, and in general to represent and stand for the assembly, declaring its will, and in all things obeying its commands. The chairman shall rise* [It is not customary for the chairman to rise while putting questions in very small bodies, such as committees, boards of trustees, &c.] to put a question to vote, but may state it sitting; he shall also rise from his seat (without calling any one to the chair), when speaking to a question of order, which he can do in preference to other members. In referring to himself he should always use his official title thus: "The Chair decides so and so," not "I decide, &c." When a member has the floor, the chairman cannot interrupt him as long as he does not transgress === Page 83 ============================================================ any of the rules of the assembly, excepting as provided in § 2. He is entitled to vote when the vote is by ballot,* [But this right is lost if he does not use it before the tellers have commenced to count the ballots. The assembly can give leave to the chairman to vote under such circumstances.] and in all other cases where the vote would change the result. Thus in a case where two-thirds vote is necessary, and his vote thrown with the minority would prevent the adoption of the question, he can cast his vote; so also he can vote with the minority when it will produce a tie vote and thus cause the motion to fail. Whenever a motion is made referring especially to the chairman, the maker of the motion should put it to vote. The chairman can, if it is necessary to vacate the chair, appoint a chairman pro tem.,** [When there are Vice Presidents, then the first one on the list that is present, is, by virtue of his office, chairman during the absence of the President, and should always be called to the chair when the President temporarily vacates it.] but the first adjournment puts an end to the appointment, which the assembly can terminate before, if it pleases, by electing another chairman. But the regular chairman, knowing that he will be absent from a future meeting, cannot authorize another member to act === Page 84 ============================================================ in his place at such meeting; the clerk [§ 41], or in his absence any member, should in such case call the meeting to order, and a chairman pro tem. be elected, who would hold office during that session [§ 42], without such office was terminated by the entrance of the regular chairman. The chairman sometimes calls a member to the chair, and himself takes part in the debate. But this should rarely be done, and nothing can justify it in a case where much feeling is shown, and there is a liability to difficulty in preserving order. If the chairman has even the appearance of being a partisan, he loses much of his ability to control those who are on the opposite side of the question.* [The unfortunate habit many chairmen have of constantly speaking upon questions before the assembly, even interrupting the member who has the floor, is unjustified by either the common parliamentary law, or the practice of Congress. One who expects to take an active part in debate should never accept the chair. "It is a general rule, in all deliberative assemblies, that the presiding officer shall not participate in the debate, or other proceedings, in any other capacity than as such officer. He is only allowed, therefore, to state matters of fact within his knowledge; to inform the assembly on points of order or the course of proceeding, when called upon for that purpose, or when he finds it necessary to do so; and on appeals from his decision on questions of order, to address the assembly in debate." [Cushing's Manual, page 106.] "Though the Speaker [chairman] may of right speak to matters of order and be first heard, he is restrained from speaking on any other subject except where the assembly have occasion for facts within his knowledge; then he may, with their leave, state the matter of fact." [Jefferson's Manual, sec. xvii, and Barclay's "Digest of the Rules and Practice of the House of Representatives, U. S.," page 195.]] The chairman should not only be familiar with parliamentary usage, and set the example of strict conformity to it, but he should be a === Page 85 ============================================================ man of executive ability, capable of controlling men; and it should never be forgotten, that, to control others, it is necessary to control one's self. An excited chairman can scarcely fail to cause trouble in a meeting. A chairman will often find himself perplexed with the difficulties attending his position, and in such cases he will do well to heed the advice of a distinguished writer on parliamentary law, and recollect that--"The great purpose of all rules and forms, is to subserve the will of the assembly, rather than to restrain it; to facilitate, and not to obstruct, the expression of their deliberate sense." 41. Clerk or Secretary [and the Minutes]. The recording officer is usually called === Page 86 ============================================================ the "Clerk" or "Secretary,"* [When there are two secretaries, he is termed the "recording secretary," and the other one, the "corresponding secretary." In many societies the secretary, besides acting as recording officer, collects the dues of members, and thus becomes to a certain extent a financial officer. In most cases the treasurer acts as banker, only paying on the order of the society, signed by the secretary alone, or by the president and secretary. In such cases the secretary becomes in reality the financial officer of the society, and should make reports to the society, of funds received and from what sources, and of the funds expended and for what purposes. See § 52 for his duties as financial officer.] and the record of proceedings the "Minutes." His desk should be near that of the chairman, and in the absence of the chairman, (if there is no vice president present) when the hour for opening the session arrives, it is his duty to call the meeting to order, and to preside until the election of a chairman pro tem., which should be done immediately. He should keep a record of the proceedings, commencing in a form similar to the following :** [See Clerk and Minutes in Part II, § 51.] "At a regular quarterly meeting of [state the name of the society] held on the 31st day of March, 1875, at [state the place of meeting], the President in the chair, the minutes were read by the clerk and approved." If the regular clerk is absent, insert after the words "in the chair," the following: "The clerk being absent, Robert Smith was appointed clerk pro tem. === Page 87 ============================================================ The minutes were then read and approved." If the minutes were not read, say "the reading of the minutes was dispensed with." The above form will show the essentials, which are as follows: (a) The kind of meeting, "regular" [or stated] or "special," or "adjourned regular," or "adjourned special;" (6) name of the assembly; (c) date and place of meeting (excepting when the place is always the same); (d) the fact of the presence of the regular chairman and clerk, or in their absence the names of their substitutes; (e) whether the minutes of the previous meeting were approved. The minutes should be signed by the person who acted as clerk for that meeting: in some societies the chairman must also sign them. When published, they should be signed by both officers. In keeping the minutes much depends upon the kind of meeting, and whether the minutes are to be published. If they are to be published, it is often of far more interest to know what was said by the leading speakers, than to know what routine business was done, and what resolutions adopted. === Page 88 ============================================================ In such case the duties of the secretary are arduous, and he should have at least one assistant. In ordinary society meetings and meetings of Boards of Managers and Trustees, on the contrary, there is no object in reporting the debates; the duty of the clerk, in such cases, is mainly to record what is "done" by the assembly, not what is said by the members. Without there is a rule to the contrary, he should enter every Principal motion [§ 6] that is before the assembly, whether it is adopted or rejected; and where there is a division [see Voting, § 38], or where the vote is by ballot, he should enter the number of votes on each side; and when the voting is by yeas and nays [§ 38], he should enter a list of the names of those voting on each side. He should endorse on the reports of committees, the date of their reception, and what further action was taken upon them, and preserve them among the records, for which he is responsible. He should in the minutes make a brief summary of a report that has been agreed to, except where it contains resolutions, in which case the resolutions will be entered in full as adopted by the assembly, and not as === Page 89 ============================================================ if it was the report accepted. The proceedings of the committee of the whole [§ 32], or while acting informally [§ 33], should not be entered on the minutes. Before an adjournment without day, it is customary to read over the minutes for approval, if the next meeting of the board or society will not occur for a long period. Where the regular meetings are not separated by too great a time, the minutes are read at the next meeting. The clerk should, previous to each meeting, for the use of the chairman, make out an order of business [§ 44], showing in their exact order what is necessarily to come before the assembly. He should also have at each meeting a list of all standing committees, and such select committees as are in existence at the time. When a committee is appointed, he should hand the names of the committee and all papers referred to it to the chairman, or some other of its members. === Page 90 ============================================================ Art. VIII. Miscellaneous. [§§ 42-45.] 42. A Session of an assembly is a meeting* [See definitions in Introduction for the distinction between "meeting" and "session."] which, though it may last for days, is virtually one meeting, as a session of a Convention; or even months, as a session of Congress; it terminates by an "adjournment without day." The intermediate adjournments from day to day, or the recesses taken during the day, do not destroy the continuity of the meeting--they in reality constitute one session. In the case of a permanent society, having regular meetings every week, month, or year, for example, each meeting constitutes a separate session of the society, which session however can be prolonged by adjourning to another day. If a principal motion [§ 6] is indefinitely postponed or rejected at one session, while it cannot be introduced again at the same session [see Renewal of a Motion, § 26], it can be at === Page 91 ============================================================ the next, without it is prohibited by a rule of the assembly. No one session of the assembly can interfere with the rights of the assembly at any future session,* [Any one session can adopt a rule or resolution of a permanent nature, and it continues in force until at some future session it is rescinded. But these Standing Rules, as they are termed, do not interfere with future sessions, because at any moment a majority can suspend or rescind them, or adopt new ones.] without it is expressly so provided in their Constitution, Bylaws, or Rules of Order, all of which are so guarded (by requiring notice of amendments, and at least a two-thirds vote for their adoption) that they are not subject to sudden changes, but may be considered as expressing the deliberate views of the whole society, rather than the opinions or wishes of any particular meeting. Thus, if the presiding officer were ill, it would not be competent for one session of the assembly to elect a chairman to hold office longer than that session, as it cannot control or dictate to the next session of the assembly. By going through the prescribed routine of an election to fill the vacancy, giving whatever notice is required, it could then legally elect a chairman to hold office while the vacancy lasted. So it === Page 92 ============================================================ is improper for an assembly to postpone anything to a day beyond the next succeeding session, and thus attempt to prevent the next session from considering the question. On the other hand, it is not permitted to move a reconsideration [§ 27] of a vote taken at a previous session [though the motion to reconsider can be called up, provided it was made at the last meeting of the previous session.] Committees can be appointed to report at a future session. Note On Session--In Congress, and in fact all legislative bodies, the limits of the sessions are clearly defined; but in ordinary societies having a permanent existence, with regular meetings more or less frequent, there appears to be a great deal of confusion upon the subject. Any society is competent to decide what shall constitute one of its sessions, but, where there is no rule on the subject, the common parliamentary law would make each of its regular or special meetings a separate session, as they are regarded in this Manual. The disadvantages of a rule making a session include all the meetings of an ordinary society, held during a long time as one year, are very great. [Examine Indefinitely Postpone, § 24, and Renewal of a Motion, § 26.] If members of any society take advantage of the freedom allowed by considering === Page 93 ============================================================ each regular meeting a separate session, and repeatedly renew obnoxious or unprofitable motions, the society can adopt a rule prohibiting the second introduction of any principal question [§ 6] within, say, three or six months after its rejection, or indefinite postponement, or after the society has refused to consider it. But generally it is better to suppress the motion by refusing to consider it [§ 15]. 43. A Quorum of an assembly is such a number as is competent to transact its business. Without there is a special rule on the subject, the quorum of every assembly is a majority of all the members of the assembly. But whenever a society has any permanent existence, it is usual to adopt a much smaller number, the quorum being often less than one-twentieth of its members; this becomes a necessity in most large societies, where only a small fraction of the members are ever present at a meeting.* [While a quorum is competent to transact any business, it is usually not expedient to transact important business without there is a fair attendance at the meeting, or else previous notice of such action has been given.] The Chairman should not take the chair till a quorum is present, except where there is no hope of there being a quorum, and then no business can be transacted, except simply === Page 94 ============================================================ to adjourn. So whenever during the meeting there is found not to be a quorum present, the only thing to be done is to adjourn--though if no question is raised about it, the debate can be continued, but no vote taken, except to adjourn. In committee of the whole, the quorum is the same as in the assembly; in any other committee the majority is a quorum, without the assembly order otherwise, and it must wait for a quorum before proceeding to business. If the number afterwards should be reduced below a quorum, business is not interrupted, unless a member calls attention to the fact; but no question can be decided except when a quorum is present. Boards of Trustees, Managers, Directors, etc., are on the same footing as committees, in regard to a quorum. Their power is delegated to them as a body, and what number shall be present in order that they may act as a Board, is to be decided by the society that appoints the Board. If no quorum is specified, then a majority constitutes a quorum. 44. Order of Business. It is customary for every society having a permanent existence, === Page 95 ============================================================ to adopt an order of business for its meetings. When no rule has been adopted, the following is the order: (1) Reading the Minutes of the previous meeting [and their approval]. (2) Reports of Standing Committees. (3) Reports of Select Committees. (4) Unfinished Business. (5) New Business. Boards of Managers, Trustees, etc., come under the head of standing committees. Questions that have been postponed from a previous meeting, come under the head of unfinished business; and if a subject has been made a "special order" for the day, it shall take precedence of all business except reading the minutes. If it is desired to transact business out of its order, it is necessary to suspend the rules [§ 18], which can only be done by a two-thirds vote; but as each subject comes up, a majority can at once lay it on the table [§ 19], and thus reach any question which they desire to first dispose of. The order of business, in considering any report or proposition containing several paragraphs,* [No vote should be taken on the adoption of the several paragraphs,--one vote being taken finally on the adoption of the whole paper. By not adopting separately the different paragraphs, it is in order, after they have all been amended, to go back and amend any of them still further. In committee a similar paper would be treated the same way [see § 30]. In § 48 (b) an illustration is given of the practical application of this section.] is as follows: === Page 96 ============================================================ The whole paper should be read entirely through by the clerk; then the Chairman should read it by paragraphs, pausing at the end of each, and asking, "Are there any amendments proposed to this paragraph?" If none are offered, he says, "No amendments being offered to this paragraph, the next will be read;" he then reads the next, and proceeds thus to the last paragraph, when he states that the whole report or resolutions have been read, and are open to amendment. He finally puts the question on agreeing to or adopting the whole paper as amended. If there is a preamble it should be read after the last paragraph. If the paper has been reported back by a committee with amendments, the clerk reads only the amendments, and the Chairman then reads the first and puts it to the question, and so on till all the amendments are adopted or rejected, admitting amendments to the committee's amendments, but no others. When === Page 97 ============================================================ through with the committee's amendments, the Chairman pauses for any other amendments to be proposed by the assembly; and when these are voted on, he puts the question on agreeing to or adopting the paper as amended. Where the resolutions have been just read by the member presenting them, the reading by the clerk is usually dispensed with without the formality of a vote. By "suspending the rules" [§ 18], or by general consent, a report can be at once adopted without following any of the above routine. 45. Amendments of Rules of Order. These rules can be amended at any regular meeting of the assembly, by a two-thirds vote of the members present, provided the amendment was submitted in writing at the previous regular meeting. And no amendment to Constitutions or By-Laws shall be permitted, without at least equal notice and a two-thirds vote.* [Constitutions, By-Laws and Rules of Order should always prohibit their being amended by less than a two-thirds vote, and without previous notice of the amendment being given. If the By-Laws should contain rules that it may be desirable to occasionally suspend, then they should state how they can be suspended, just as is done in these Rules of Order, § 18. If there is no such rule it is impossible to suspend any rule, if a single member objects. === Page 98 ============================================================ === Page 99 ============================================================ PART II. ORGANIZATION AND CONDUCT OF BUSINESS.* [The exact words used by the chairman or member, are in many cases in quotations. It is not to be inferred that these are the only forms permitted, but that these forms are proper and common. They are inserted for the benefit of those unaccustomed to parliamentary forms, and are sufficiently numerous for ordinary meetings.] Art. IX. Organization and Meetings. [§§ 46-49.] 46. An Occasional or Mass Meeting. (a) Organization. When a meeting is held which is not one of an organized society, shortly after the time appointed for the meeting, some member of the assembly steps forward and says: "The meeting will please come to order; I move that Mr. A. act as chairman of this meeting." Some one else says, "I second the motion." The first member then puts the === Page 100 =========================================================== question to vote, by saying, "It has been moved and seconded that Mr. A. act as chairman of this meeting; those in favor of the motion will say aye," and when the affirmative vote is taken, he says, "those opposed will say no." If the majority vote in the affirmative, he says, "The motion is carried; Mr. A. will take the chair." If the motion is lost, he announces that fact, and calls for the nomination of some one else for chairman, and proceeds with the new nomination as in the first case.* [Sometimes a member nominates a chairman and no vote is taken, the assembly signifying their approval by acclamation. The member who calls the meeting to order, instead of making the motion himself, may act as temporary chairman, and say: "The meeting will please come to order: will some one nominate a chairman?" He puts the question to vote on the nomination as described above. In large assemblies, the member who nominates, with one other member, frequently conducts the presiding officer to the chair, and the chairman makes a short speech, thanking the assembly for the honor conferred on him.] When Mr. A. takes the chair, he says, "The first business in order is the election of a secretary." Some one then makes a motion as just described, or he says "I nominate Mr. B," when the chairman puts the question as before. Sometimes several names are called out, and the chairman, as he hears them, says, "Mr. B. is nominated; Mr. C. is nominated," etc; he then takes a vote on the first one he heard, putting the question thus: "As many as are in favor of === Page 101 =========================================================== Mr. B. acting as secretary of this meeting, will say aye;--those opposed will say no." If the motion is lost the question is put on Mr. C., and so on, till some one is elected. In large meetings the secretary takes his seat near the chairman: he should in all cases keep a record of the proceedings as described in § 51. (b) Adoption of Resolutions. These two officers are all that are usually necessary for a meeting; so, when the secretary is elected, the chairman asks, "What is the further pleasure of the meeting?" If the meeting is merely a public assembly called together to consider some special subject, it is customary at this stage of the proceedings for some one to offer a series of resolutions previously prepared, or else to move the appointment of a committee to prepare resolutions upon the subject. In the first case he rises and says, "Mr. Chairman;" the chairman responds, "Mr. C." Mr. C., having thus obtained the floor, then says, "I move the adoption of the following resolutions," which he then reads and hands to the chairman;* [The practice in legislative bodies, is to send to the clerk's desk all resolutions, bills, etc., the title of the bill and the name of the member introducing it, being endorsed on each. In such bodies, however, there are several clerks and only one chairman. In many assemblies there is but one clerk or secretary, and, as he has to keep the minutes, there is no reason for his being constantly interrupted to read every resolution offered. In such assemblies, without there is a rule or established custom to the contrary, it is allowable, and frequently much better, to hand all resolutions, reports, etc., directly to the chairman. If they were read by the member introducing them, and no one calls for another reading, the chairman can omit reading them when be thinks they are fully understood. In reference to the manner of reading and stating the question, when the resolution contains several paragraphs, see Rules of Order, § 44.] === Page 102 =========================================================== some one else says, "I second the motion." The chairman sometimes directs the secretary to read the resolutions again, after which he says, "The question is on the adoption of the resolutions just read," and if no one rises immediately, he adds, "Are you ready for the question?" If no one then rises, he says, "As many as are in favor of the adoption of the resolutions just read, will say aye;" after the ayes have voted, he says, "As many as are of a contrary opinion will say no;" he then announces the result of the vote as follows: "The motion is carried--the resolutions are adopted," or, "The ayes have it--the resolutions are adopted." (c) Committee to draft Resolutions. If it is preferred to appoint a committee to draft resolutions, a member, after he has addressed the Chair and been recognized, says, "I move that a committee be appointed to draft resolutions expressive of the sense of this meeting on," === Page 103 =========================================================== etc., adding the subject for which the meeting was called. This motion being seconded, the Chairman states the question [§ 67] and asks, "Are you ready for the question?" If no one rises, he puts the question, announces the result, and, if it is carried, he asks, "Of how many shall the committee consist?" If only one number is suggested, he announces that the committee will consist of that number; if several numbers are suggested, he states the different ones and then takes a vote on each, beginning with the largest, until one number is selected. He then inquires, "How shall the committee be appointed?" This is usually decided without the formality of a vote. The committee may be "appointed" by the Chair--in which case the chairman names the committee and no vote is taken; or the committee may be "nominated" by the Chair, or the members of the assembly (no member naming more than one, except by unanimous consent), and then the assembly vote on their appointment. When the chairman nominates, after stating the names he puts one question on the entire committee, thus: "As many as are in favor of these gentlemen constituting the committee, will say === Page 104 =========================================================== aye." If nominations are made by members of the assembly, and more names mentioned than the number of the committee, a separate vote should be taken on each name. (In a mass meeting it is safer to have all committees appointed by the chairman.) When the committee are appointed they should at once retire and agree upon a report, which should be written out as described in § 53. During their absence other business may be attended to, or the time may be occupied with hearing addresses. Upon their return the chairman of the committee (who is the one first named on the committee, and who quite commonly, though not necessarily, is the one who made the motion to appoint the committee), avails himself of the first opportunity to obtain the floor,* [See Rules of Order, § 2.] when he says, "The committee appointed to draft resolutions, are prepared to report." The chairman tells him that the assembly will now hear the report, which is then read by the chairman of the committee, and handed to the presiding officer, upon which the committee is dissolved without any action of the assembly. A member then moves the "adoption" or === Page 105 =========================================================== "acceptance" of the report, or that "the resolutions be agreed to," which motions have the same effect if carried, namely, to make the resolutions the resolutions of the assembly just as if the committee had had nothing to do with them.* [A very common error is, after a report has been read, to move that it be received; whereas, the fact that it has been read, shows that it has been already received by the assembly. Another mistake, less common but dangerous, is to vote that the report be accepted which is equivalent to adopting it), when the intention is only to have the report up for consideration and afterwards move its adoption.] When one of these motions is made, the chairman acts as stated above when the resolutions were offered by a member. If it is not desired to immediately adopt the resolutions, they can be debated, modified, their consideration postponed, etc., as explained in §§ 55-63. When through with the business for which the assembly were convened, or when from any other cause it is desirable to close the meeting, some one moves "to adjourn;" if the motion is carried and no other time for meeting has been appointed, the chairman says, "The motion is carried; --this assembly stands adjourned without day." [Another method by which the meeting may be conducted is shown in § 48.] (d) Additional Officers. If more officers are === Page 106 =========================================================== required than a chairman and secretary, they can be appointed before introducing the resolutions, in the manner described for those officers; or the assembly can first form a temporary organization in the manner already described, only adding "pro tem." to the title of the officers, thus: "chairman pro tem." In this latter case, as soon as the secretary pro tem. is elected, a committee is appointed to nominate the permanent officers, as in the case of a convention [§ 47]. Frequently the presiding officer is called the President, and sometimes there is a large number of Vice Presidents appointed for mere complimentary purposes. The Vice Presidents in large formal meetings, sit on the platform beside the President, and in his absence, or when he vacates the chair, the first on the list that is present should take the chair. 47. Meeting of a Convention or Assembly of Delegates. If the members of the assembly have been elected or appointed as members, it becomes necessary to know who are properly members of the assembly and entitled to vote, before the permanent organization is effected. In this case a temporary organization is made, as already described, by the election of a chairman === Page 107 =========================================================== and secretary "pro tem.," when the chairman announces, "The next business in order is the appointment of a committee on credentials." A motion may then be made covering the entire case, thus: "I move that a committee of three on the credentials of members be appointed by the Chair, and that the committee report as soon as practicable;" or they may include only one of these details, thus: "I move that a committee be appointed on the credentials of members." In either case the Chair proceeds as already described in the cases of committees on resolutions [§ 46, (c)]. On the motion to accept the report of the committee, none can vote except those reported by the committee as having proper credentials. The committee, beside reporting a list of members with proper credentials, may report doubtful or contested cases, with recommendations, which the assembly may adopt, or reject, or postpone, etc. Only members whose right to their seats is undisputed, can vote. The chairman, after the question of credentials is disposed of, at least for the time, announces that "The next business in order is the election of permanent officers of the assembly." Some one then moves the appointment of a === Page 108 =========================================================== committee to nominate the officers, in a form similar to this: "I move that a committee of three be appointed by the Chair to nominate the permanent officers of this convention." This motion is treated as already explained. When the committee make their report, some one moves "That the report of the committee be accepted and that the officers nominated be declared the officers of this convention."* [Where there is any competition for the offices, it is better that they be elected by ballot. In this case, when the nominating committee report, a motion can be made as follows: "I move that the convention now proceed to ballot for its permanent officers;" or "I move that we now proceed to the election, by ballot, of the permanent officers of this convention." [See Rules of Order, § 38, for balloting, and other methods of voting.] The constitutions of permanent societies usually provide that the officers shall be elected by ballot.] This motion being carried, the chairman declares the officers elected, and instantly calls the new presiding officer to the chair, and the temporary secretary is at the same time replaced. The convention is now organized for work. 48. A Permanent Society. (a) First Meeting. When it is desired to form a permanent society, those interested in it should see that only the proper persons are invited to be present, at a certain time and place. It is not usual in mass meetings, or meetings called to organize a society, to commence until === Page 109 =========================================================== fifteen or thirty minutes after the appointed time, when some one steps forward and says, "The meeting will please come to order; I move that Mr. A. act as chairman of this meeting;" some one "seconds the motion," when the one who made the motion puts it to vote (or, as it is called, "puts the question"), as already described, under an "occasional meeting" [§ 46, (a)]; and, as in that case, when the chairman is elected, he announces as the first business in order the election of a secretary. After the secretary is elected, the chairman calls on some member who is most interested in getting up the society, to state the object of the meeting. When this member rises he says, "Mr. Chairman;" the chairman then announces his name, when the member proceeds to state the object of the meeting. Having finished his remarks, the chairman may call on other members to give their opinions upon the subject, and sometimes a particular speaker is called out by members who wish to hear him. The chairman should observe the wishes of the assembly, and while being careful not to be too strict, he must not permit any one to occupy too much time and weary the meeting. When a sufficient time has been spent in this === Page 110 =========================================================== informal way, some one should offer a resolution, so that definite action can be taken. Those interested in getting up the meeting, if it is to be a large one, should have previously agreed upon what is to be done, and be prepared at the proper time to offer a suitable resolution, which may be in a form similar to this: "Resolved, That it is the sense of this meeting that a society for [state the object of the society] should now be formed in this city." This resolution, when seconded, and stated by the chairman, would be open to debate and be treated as already described [§ 46, (b)]. This preliminary motion could have been offered at the commencement of the meeting, and if the meeting is a very large one, this would probably be better than to have the informal discussion. After this preliminary motion has been voted on, or even without waiting for such motion, one like this can be offered: "I move that a committee of five be appointed by the Chair, to draft a Constitution and By-Laws for a society for [here state the object], and that they report at an adjourned meeting of this assembly." This motion can be amended [§ 56] by striking out and adding words, etc., and it is debatable. === Page 111 =========================================================== When this committee is appointed, the chairman may inquire, "Is there any other business to be attended to?" or, "What is the further pleasure of the meeting?" When all business is finished, a motion can be made to adjourn to meet at a certain place and time, which, when seconded, and stated by the Chair, is open to debate and amendment. It is usually better to fix the time of the next meeting [see § 63] at an earlier stage of the meeting, and then, when it is desired to close the meeting, move simply "to adjourn," which cannot be amended or debated. When this motion is carried, the chairman says, "This meeting stands adjourned to meet at," etc., specifying the time and place of the next meeting. (b) Second Meeting.* [Ordinary meetings of a society are conducted like this second meeting, the chairman, however, announcing the business in the order prescribed by the rules of the society [§ 72]. For example, after the minutes are read and approved, he would say, "The next business in order is hearing reports from the standing committees." He may then call upon each committee in their order, for a report, thus: "Has the committee on applications for membership any report to make?" In which case the committee may report, as shown above, or some member of it reply that they have no report to make. Or, when the chairman knows that there are but few if any reports to make, it is better, after making the announcement of the business, for him to ask, "Have these committees any reports to make?" After a short pause, if no one rises to report, he states, "There being no reports from the standing committees, the next business in order is hearing the reports of select committees," when he will act the same as in the case of the standing committees. The chairman should always have a list of the committees, to enable him to call upon them, as well as to guide him in the appointment of new committees.] At the next meeting the officers of the previous meeting, if present, serve until the permanent officers are elected. When the hour arrives for the meeting, the chairman standing, says, "The meeting will === Page 112 =========================================================== please come to order:" as soon as the assembly is seated, he adds, "The secretary will read the minutes of the last meeting." If any one notices an error in the minutes, he can state the fact as soon as the secretary finishes reading them; if there is no objection, without waiting for a motion, the chairman directs the secretary to make the correction. The chairman then says, "If there is no objection the minutes will stand approved as read" [or "corrected," if any corrections have been made]. He announces as the next business in order, "the hearing of the report of the committee on the Constitution and By-Laws." The chairman of the committee, after addressing "Mr. Chairman" and being recognized, reads the committee's report and then hands it to the chairman.* [In large and formal bodies the chairman, before inquiring what is to be done with the report, usually directs the secretary to read it again. See note to § 46 (c), for a few common errors in acting upon reports of committees. [See also note to § 46 (b).]] If no motion is made, the chairman says, "You have heard the report read -- === Page 113 =========================================================== what order shall be taken upon it?" Or simply inquires, "What shall be done with the report?" Some one moves its adoption, or still better, moves "the adoption of the Constitution reported by the committee," and when seconded, the chairman says, "The question is on the adoption of the Constitution reported by the committee." He then reads the first article of the Constitution, and asks, "Are there any amendments proposed to this article?" If none are offered, after a pause, he reads the next article and asks the same question, and proceeds thus until he reads the last article, when he says, "The whole Constitution having been read, it is open to amendment." Now any one can move amendments to any part of the Constitution. When the chairman thinks it has been modified to suit the wishes of the assembly, he inquires, "Are you ready for the question?" If no one wishes to speak, he puts the question, "As many as are in favor of adopting the Constitution as amended, will say aye;" and then, "As many as are opposed, will say no." He distinctly announces the result of the vote, which should always be done. If the articles of the Constitution are subdivided into sections === Page 114 =========================================================== or paragraphs, then the amendments should be made by sections or paragraphs, instead of by articles. The chairman now states that the Constitution having been adopted, it will be necessary for those wishing to become members to sign it (and pay the initiation fee, if required by the Constitution), and suggests, if the assembly is a large one, that a recess be taken for the purpose. A motion is then made to take a recess for say ten minutes, or until the Constitution is signed. The constitution being signed, no one is permitted to vote excepting those who have signed it. The recess having expired, the chairman calls the meeting to order and says, "The next business in order is the adoption of By-Laws." Some one moves the adoption of the By-Laws reported by the committee, and they are treated just like the Constitution. The chairman then asks, "What is the further pleasure of the meeting?" or states that the next business in order is the election of the permanent officers of the society. In either case some one moves the appointment of a committee to nominate the permanent officers of the society, which motion is treated as already described in § 47. As === Page 115 =========================================================== each officer is elected he replaces the temporary one, and when they are all elected the organization is completed. If the society is one that expects to own real estate, it should be incorporated according to the laws of the state in which it is situated, and for this purpose, some one on the committee on the Constitution should consult a lawyer before this second meeting, so that the laws may be conformed to. In this case the trustees are usually instructed to take the proper measures to have the society incorporated. 49. Constitutions, By-Laws, Rules of Order and Standing Rules. In forming a Constitution and By-Laws, it is always best to procure copies of those adopted by several similar societies, and for the committee, after comparing them, to select one as the basis of their own, amending each article just as their own report is amended by the Society. When they have completed amending the Constitution, it is adopted by the committee. The By-Laws are treated in the same way, and then, having finished the work assigned them, some one moves, "That the committee rise, and that the chairman (or some other === Page 116 =========================================================== member) report the Constitution and By-Laws to the assembly." If this is adopted, the Constitution and By-Laws are written out, and a brief report made of this form: "Your committee, appointed to draft a Constitution and By-Laws, would respectfully submit the following, with the recommendation that they be adopted as the Constitution and By-Laws of this society;" which is signed by all the members of the committee that concur in it. Sometimes the report is only signed by the chairman of the committee. In the organization just given, it is assumed that both a Constitution and By-Laws are adopted. This is not always done; some societies adopt only a Constitution, and others only By-Laws. Where both are adopted, the constitution usually contains only the following: (1) Name and object of the society. (2) Qualification of members. (3) Officers, their election and duties. (4) Meetings of the society (only including what is essential, leaving details to the By-Laws). (5) How to amend the Constitution. These can be arranged in five articles, each article being subdivided into sections. The === Page 117 =========================================================== Constitution containing nothing but what is fundamental, it should be made very difficult to amend; usually previous notice of the amendment is required, and also a two-thirds or three-fourths vote for its adoption [§ 73]. It is better not to require a larger vote than two-thirds, and, where the meetings are frequent, an amendment should not be allowed to be made except at a quarterly or annual meeting, after having been proposed at the previous quarterly meeting. The By-Laws contain all the other standing rules of the society, of such importance that they should be placed out of the power of any one meeting to modify; or they may omit the rules relating to the conduct of business in the meetings, which would then constitute the Rules of Order of the society. Every society, in its By-Laws or Rules of Order, should adopt a rule like this: "The rules contained in--(specifying the work on parliamentary practice) shall govern the society in all cases to which they are applicable, and in which they are not inconsistent with the Rules of Order (or By-Laws) adopted by the society." Without such a rule, any one so disposed, could cause great trouble in a meeting. === Page 118 =========================================================== In addition to the Constitution, By-Laws and Rules of Order, in nearly every society resolutions of a permanent nature are occasionally adopted, which are binding on the society until they are rescinded or modified. These are called Standing Rules, and can be adopted by a majority vote at any meeting. After they have been adopted, they cannot be modified at the same session except by a reconsideration [§ 60]. At any future session they can be suspended, modified or rescinded by a majority vote. The Standing Rules, then, comprise those rules of a society which have been adopted like ordinary resolutions, without the previous notice, etc., required for By-Laws, and consequently, future sessions of the society are at liberty to terminate them whenever they please. No Standing Rule (or other resolution) can be adopted which conflicts with the Constitution, By-Laws or Rules of Order.* [In practice these various classes of rules are frequently very much mixed. The Standing Rules of some societies are really By-Laws, as the society cannot suspend them, nor can they be amended until previous notice is given. This produces confusion without any corresponding benefit. Standing Rules should contain only such rules as are subject to the will of the majority of any meeting, and which it may be expedient to change at any time, without the delay incident to giving previous notice. Rules of Order should contain only the rules relating to the orderly transaction of the business in the meetings of the society. The By-Laws should contain all the other rules of the society which are of too great importance to be changed without giving notice to the society of such change; provided that the most important of these can be placed in a Constitution instead of in the By-Laws. These latter three should provide for their amendment. The Rules of Order should provide for their suspension. The By-Laws sometimes provide for the suspension of certain articles. None of these three can be suspended without it is expressly provided for. === Page 119 =========================================================== Art. X. Officers and Committees. 50. Chairman or President. It is the duty of the chairman to call the meeting to order at the appointed time, to preside at all the meetings, to announce the business before the assembly in its proper order, to state and put all questions properly brought before the assembly, to preserve order and decorum, and to decide all questions of order (subject to an appeal). When he "puts a question" to vote, and when speaking upon an appeal, he should stand;* [In meetings of boards of managers, committees and other small bodies, the chairman usually retains his seat, and even members in speaking do not rise.] in all other cases he can sit. In all cases where his vote would affect the result, or where the vote is by ballot, he can vote. When a member rises to speak, he === Page 120 =========================================================== should say, "Mr. Chairman," and the chairman should reply, "Mr. A;" he should not interrupt a speaker as long as he is in order, but should listen to his speech, which should be addressed to him and not to the assembly. The chairman should be careful to abstain from the appearance of partizanship, but he has the right to call another member to the chair while he addresses the assembly on a question; when speaking to a question of order he does not leave the chair. 51. The Clerk, Secretary or Recording Secretary, as he is variously called, should keep a record of the proceedings, the character of which depends upon the kind of meeting. In an occasional or mass meeting, the record usually amounts to nothing, but he should always record every resolution or motion that is adopted. In a convention it is often desirable to keep a full record for publication, and where it lasts for several days, it is usual, and generally best, to appoint one or more assistant clerks. Frequently it is a tax on the judgment of the clerk to decide what to enter on the record, or the "Minutes," as it is usually called. Sometimes the points of each speech should be entered, === Page 121 =========================================================== and at other times only the remark that the question was discussed by Messrs. A., B. and C. in the affirmative, and Messrs. D., E. and F. in the negative. Every resolution that is adopted should be entered, which can be done in this form: "On motion of Mr. D. it was resolved that, &c." Sometimes a convention does its work by having certain topics previously assigned to certain speakers, who deliver formal addresses or essays, the subjects of which are afterwards open for discussion in short speeches, of five minutes, for instance. In such cases the minutes are very brief, without they are to be published, when they should contain either the entire addresses or carefully prepared abstracts of them, and should show the drift of the discussion that followed each one. In permanent societies, where the minutes are not published, they consist of a record of what was done and not what was said, and should be kept in a book. The Form of the Minutes can be as follows: "At a regular meeting of the M. L. Society, held in their hall, on Tuesday evening, March 16, 1875, Mr. A. in the chair and Mr. B. acting as secretary, the minutes of the previous meeting were read and === Page 122 =========================================================== approved. The committee on Applications reported the names of Messrs. C. and D. as applicants for membership; and on motion of Mr. F. they were admitted as members. The committee on --- reported a series of resolutions, which were thoroughly discussed and amended, and finally adopted as follows: "Resolved, That * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * " On motion of Mr. L. the society adjourned. L- B-, Secretary. If the proceedings are to be published, the secretary should always examine the published proceedings of similar meetings, so as to conform to the custom, excepting where it is manifestly improper. The Constitution, By-Laws, Rules of Order and Standing Rules should all be written in one book, leaving every other page blank; and whenever an amendment is made to any of them, it should be immediately entered on the page opposite to the article amended, with a reference to the date and page of the minutes where is recorded the action of the society. The secretary has the custody of all papers belonging to the society, not specially under charge of any other officer. Sometimes his === Page 123 =========================================================== duties are also of a financial kind, when he should make such reports as are prescribed in the next section. 52. Treasurer. The duties of this officer vary in different societies. In probably the majority of cases he acts as a banker, merely holding the funds deposited with him, and paying them out on the order of the society signed by the secretary. His annual report, which is always required, in this case consists of merely a statement of the amount on hand at the commencement of the year, the amount received during the year (stating from what source received), the total amount paid out by order of the society, and the balance on hand. When this report is presented it is referred to an "auditing committee," consisting of one or two persons, who examine the treasurer's books and vouchers, and certify on his report that they "have examined his accounts and vouchers and find them correct, and the balance on hand is," etc., stating the amount on hand. The auditing committee's report being accepted is equivalent to a resolution of the society to the same effect, namely, that the treasurer's report is correct. In the case here supposed, the real financial === Page 124 =========================================================== statement is made either by the board of trustees, or by the secretary or some other officer, according to the Constitution of the society. The principles involved, are, that every officer who receives money is to account for it in a report to the society, and that whatever officer is responsible for the disbursements, shall report them to the society. If the secretary, as in many societies, is really responsible for the expenses, the treasurer merely paying upon his order, then the secretary should make a full report of these expenses, so classified as to enable the society to readily see the amounts expended for various purposes. It should always be remembered that the financial report is made for the information of members. The details of dates and separate payments for the same object, are a hinderance to its being understood, and are useless, as it is the duty of the auditing committee to examine into the details and see if the report is correct. Every disbursing officer should be careful to get a receipt whenever he makes a payment; these receipts should be preserved in regular order, as they are the vouchers for the payments, which must be examined by the auditing committee. Disbursing officers cannot be === Page 125 =========================================================== too careful in keeping their accounts, and they should insist upon having their accounts audited every time they make a report, as by this means any error is quickly detected and may be corrected. When the society has accepted the auditing committee's report that the financial report is correct, the disbursing officer is relieved from the responsibility of the past, and if his vouchers were lost afterwards, it would cause no trouble. The best form for these financial reports depends upon the kind of society, and is best determined by examining those made in similar societies. The following form can be varied to suit most cases: (when the statement of receipts and expenses is very long, it is often desirable to specify the amounts received from one or two particular sources, which can be done immediately after stating the total receipts; the same course can be taken in regard to the expenditures): Treasurer's Report. The undersigned, Treasurer of the M. L. Society, begs leave to submit the following annual report: The balance on hand at the commencement of the year was --- dollars and --- cents. There was received from all sources during the year, --- dollars and --- cents; during the same time the === Page 126 =========================================================== expenses amounted to --- dollars and --- cents, leaving a balance on hand of --- dollars and --- cents. The annexed statement of receipts and expenditures will show in detail the sources from which the receipts were obtained, and the objects to which the expenditures have been applied. All of which is respectfully submitted. S-- M--, Treasurer M. L. S. The "Statement of receipts and expenditures" can be made, by simply giving a list of receipts, followed by a list of expenses, and finishing up with the balance on hand. The auditing committee's certificate to the correctness of the account should be written on the statement. Often the statement is made out in the form of an account, as follows: Dr. The M. L. S. in acct. with S. M., Treas. Cr. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1874. 1874. Dec. 31. To rent of hall .. $500 00 Jan. 1. By balance on hand '' Gas ........... 80 00 from last year's '' Stationery .... 26 50 account .......... $ 21 13 '' Janitor ....... 360 00 Dec. 31. By initiation fees 95 00 '' Balance on hand 24 63 '' members' dues .. 875 00 ------- ------- $991 13 $991 13 We do hereby certify that we have examined the accounts and vouchers of the treasurer, and find them correct; and that the balance in his hands is twenty-four dollars and sixty-three cents. R. V., J. L., Audit Comm. === Page 127 =========================================================== 53. Committees. In small assemblies, especially in those where but little business is done, there is not much need of committees. But in large assemblies, or in those doing a great deal of business, committees are of the utmost importance. When a committee is properly selected, in nine cases out of ten its action decides that of the assembly. A committee for action should be small and consist only of those heartily in favor of the proposed action. A committee for deliberation or investigation, on the contrary, should be larger and represent all parties in the assembly, so that its opinion will carry with it as great weight as possible. The usefulness of the committee will be greatly impaired, if any important faction of the assembly be unrepresented on the committee. The appointment of a committee is fully explained in § 46 (c). The first member named on a committee is their chairman, and it is his duty to call together the committee, and preside at their meetings. If he is absent, or from any cause fails or declines to call a meeting, it is the duty of the committee to assemble on the call of any two of their members. The committee are a miniature assembly, only being able to act when === Page 128 =========================================================== a quorum is present. If a paper is referred to them they must not deface it in any way, but write their amendments on a separate sheet. If they originate the paper, all amendments must be incorporated in it. When they originate the paper, usually one member has previously prepared a draft, which is read entirely through, and then read by paragraphs, the chairman pausing after each paragraph and asking, "Are there any amendments proposed to this paragraph?" No vote is taken on the adoption of the separate paragraphs, but after the whole paper has been read in this way, it is open to amendment, generally, by striking out any paragraph or inserting new ones, or by substituting an entirely new paper for it. When it has been amended to suit the committee, they should adopt it as their report, and direct the chairman or some other member to report it to the assembly. It is then written out, usually commencing in a style similar to this: "The committee to which was referred [state the matter referred], beg leave to submit the following report;" or, "Your committee appointed to [specify the object], would respectfully report," etc. It usually closes thus: "All of which is respectfully submitted," followed by the signatures of === Page 129 =========================================================== all the members concurring in the report, or sometimes by only that of the chairman. If the minority submit a report, it commences thus: "The undersigned, a minority of the committee appointed," etc., continuing as the regular report of the committee. After the committee's report has been read, it is usual to allow the minority to present their report, but it cannot be acted upon except by a motion to substitute it for the report of the committee. When the committee's report is read, they are discharged without any motion. A motion to refer the paper back to the same committee (or to re-commit), if adopted, revives the committee. Art. XI. Introduction of Business. 54. Any member wishing to bring business before the assembly, should, without it is very simple, write down in the form of a motion, what he would like to have the assembly adopt, thus: Resolved, That the thanks of this convention be tendered to the citizens of this community for their hearty welcome and generous hospitality. === Page 130 =========================================================== When there is no other business before the assembly, he rises and addresses the chairman by his title, thus: "Mr. Chairman," who immediately recognizes him by announcing his name.* [If the chairman has any special title, as President, for instance, he should be addressed by it, thus: "Mr. President." Sometimes the chairman recognizes the speaker by merely bowing to him, but the proper course is to announce his name.] He, then having the floor, says that he "moves the adoption of the following resolution," which he reads and hands to the chairman.** [Or, when he is recognized by the chair, he may say that he wishes to offer the following resolutions, which he reads and then moves their adoption.] Some one else seconds the motion, and the chairman says, "It has been moved and seconded that the following resolution be adopted," when he reads the resolution; or he may read the resolution and then state the question thus: "The question is on the adoption of the resolution just read." The merits of the resolution are then open to discussion, but before any member can discuss the question or make any motion, he must first obtain the floor as just described. After the chairman states the question, if no one rises to speak, or when he thinks the debate closed, he asks, "Are you ready for the question?" If no one then rises, he puts the question in a form similar to the following: "The question is on the adoption of the resolution === Page 131 =========================================================== which you have heard; as many as are in favor of its adoption will say aye." When the ayes have voted, he says, "As many as are of a contrary opinion will say no."* [There are many other ways of putting a question; see § 67, and Rules of Order, § 38. Other illustrations of the ordinary practice in introducing business will be seen in §§ 46-48.] He then announces the result, stating that the motion is carried, or lost, as the case may be, in the following form: "The motion is carried--the resolution is adopted;" or, "The ayes have it--the resolution is adopted." A majority of the votes cast is sufficient for the adoption of any motion, excepting those mentioned in § 68. Art. XII. Motions. 55. Motions Classified According to their Object. Instead of immediately adopting or rejecting a resolution as originally submitted, it may be desirable to dispose of it in some other way, and for this purpose various motions have come into use, which can be made while a resolution is being considered, and for the time being, supersede it. No one can make any of these motions while another member has the floor, === Page 132 =========================================================== excepting as shown in § 64, which see for the circumstances under which each motion can be made. The following list comprises most of these motions, arranged in eight classes, according to the object for which each motion is used. [The names of the motions are printed in Italics; each class is treated separately, as shown by the references.] Motions Classified. (1) To Amend or Modify ....................................... [§ 56] (a) Amend. (b) Commit. (2) To Defer action .......................................... [§ 57] (a) Postpone to a certain time. (b) Lie on the Table. (3) To Suppress Debate ....................................... [§ 58] (a) Previous Question. (b) An Order limiting or closing Debate. (4) To Suppress the question ................................. [§ 59] (a) Objection to its Consideration. (b) Postpone Indefinitely. (c) Lie on the Table. (5) To Consider a question the second time ................... [§ 60] (a) Reconsider. (6) Order and Rules .......................................... [§ 61] (a) Orders of the day. (b) Special Orders. (c) Suspension of the Rules. (d) Questions of Order. (e) Appeal. === Page 133 =========================================================== (7) Miscellaneous ............................................ [§ 62] (a) Reading of Papers. (b) Withdrawal of a Motion. (c) Questions of Privilege. (8) To close a meeting ....................................... [§ 63] (a) Fix the time to which to Adjourn. (b) Adjourn. 56. To Amend or Modify. (a) Amend. If it is desired to modify the question in any way, the proper motion to make is to "amend," either by "adding" words, or by "striking out" words; or by "striking out certain words and inserting others;" or by "substituting" a different motion on the same subject for the one before the assembly; or by "dividing the question" into two or more questions, as the mover specifies, so as to get a separate vote on any particular point or points. Sometimes the enemies of a measure seek to amend it in such a way as to divide its friends, and thus defeat it. When the amendment has been moved and seconded, the chairman should always state the question distinctly, so that every one may know exactly what is before them, reading first the paragraph which it is proposed to amend; then the words to be struck out, if there are any; next, the words to be inserted, if any; and finally, the paragraph as it will stand if the === Page 134 =========================================================== amendment is adopted. He then states that the question is on the adoption of the amendment, which is open to debate, the remarks being confined to the merits of the amendment, only going into the main question so far as is necessary in order to ascertain the propriety of adopting the amendment. This amendment can be amended, but an "amendment of an amendment" cannot be amended. None of the undebatable motions mentioned in § 66, except to fix the time to which to adjourn, can be amended, nor can the motion to postpone indefinitely. (b) Commit. If the original question is not well digested, or needs more amendment than can well be made in the assembly, it is usual to move "to refer it to a committee." This motion can be made while an amendment is pending, and it opens the whole merits of the question to debate. This motion can be amended by specifying the number of the committee, or how they shall be appointed, or when they shall report, or by giving them any other instructions. [See § 53 on committees, and § 46 (c) on their appointment.] 57. To Defer Action. (a) Postpone to a certain time. If it is desired to defer action === Page 135 =========================================================== upon a question till a particular time, the proper motion to make, is to "postpone it to that time." This motion allows of but limited debate, which must be confined to the propriety of the postponement to that time; it can be amended by altering the time, and this amendment allows of the same debate. The time specified must not be beyond that session [§ 70] of the assembly, except it be the next session, in which case it comes up with the unfinished business at the next session. This motion can be made when a motion to amend, or to commit or to postpone indefinitely, is pending. (b) Lie on the table. Instead of postponing a question to a particular time, it may be desired to lay it aside temporarily until some other question is disposed of, retaining the privilege of resuming its consideration at any time.* [In Congress this motion is commonly used to defeat a measure, though it does not prevent a majority from taking it at any other time. Some societies prohibit a question from being taken from the table, except by a two-thirds vote. This rule deprives the society of the advantages of the motion to "lie on the table." because it would not be safe to lay a question aside temporarily, if one-third of the assembly were opposed to the measure, as that one-third could prevent its ever being taken from the table. A bare majority should not have the power, in ordinary societies, to adopt or reject a question, or prevent its consideration, without debate. [See note at end of § 35, Rules of Order, on the principles involved in making questions undebatable.] The only way to accomplish this, is to move that the question "lie on the table." This motion === Page 136 =========================================================== allowing of neither debate nor amendment, the chairman immediately puts the question; if carried, the whole matter is laid aside until the assembly vote to "take it from the table" (which latter motion is undebatable and possesses no privilege). Sometimes this motion is used to suppress a measure, as shown in § 59 (c). 58. To Suppress Debate. (a) Previous Question. While as a general rule free debate is allowed upon every motion,* [Except an "objection to the consideration of the question" [§ 59 (a)]. See note to § 35, Rules of Order, for a full discussion of this subject of debate.] which, if adopted, has the effect of adopting the original question or removing it from before the assembly for the session,--yet, to prevent a minority from making an improper use of this privilege, it is necessary to have methods by which debate can be closed, and final action at once be taken upon a question. To accomplish this, when any debatable question is before the assembly, it is only necessary for some one to obtain the floor and "call for the previous question;" this call being seconded, the chairman, as it allows of no debate, instantly puts the question, thus: "Shall the main question be now put?" If this is carried by a two-thirds vote [§ 68], all debate instantly === Page 137 =========================================================== ceases, excepting that the member who offered the original resolution, or reported it from a committee, is, as in all other cases, entitled to the floor to close the debate; after which, the chairman immediately puts the questions to the assembly, first, on the motion to commit, if it is pending; if this is carried, of course the subject goes to the committee; if, however, it fails, the vote is next taken on amendments, and finally on the resolution as amended. If a motion to postpone, either definitely or indefinitely, or a motion to reconsider, or an appeal is pending, the previous question is exhausted by the vote on the postponement, reconsideration or appeal, and does not cut off debate upon any other motions that may be pending. If the call for the previous question fails, that is, the debate is not cut off, the debate continues the same as if this motion had not been made. The previous question can be called for simply on an amendment, and after the amendment has been acted upon, the main question is again open to debate. (b) An order limiting or closing debate. Sometimes, instead of cutting off debate entirely by ordering the previous question, it is desirable to allow of but very limited debate. In === Page 138 =========================================================== this case, a motion is made to limit the time allowed each speaker or the number of speeches on each side, or to appoint a time at which debate shall close and the question be put. The motion may be made to limit debate on an amendment, in which case the main question would afterwards be open to debate and amendment; or it may be made simply on an amendment to an amendment. In ordinary societies, where harmony is so important, a two-thirds vote should be required for the adoption of any of the above motions to cut off or limit debate.* [In the House of Representatives, these motions require only a majority vote for their adoption. In the Senate, to the contrary, not even two-thirds of the members can force a measure to its passage without allowing debate, the Senate rules not recognizing the above motions. 59. To Suppress the Question. (a) Objection to the consideration of a question. Sometimes a resolution is introduced that the assembly do not wish to consider at all, because it is profitless, or irrelevant to the objects of the assembly, or for other reasons. The proper course to pursue in such case, is for some one, as soon as it is introduced, to "object to the consideration of the question." This objection not requiring a second, the chairman immediately === Page 139 =========================================================== puts the question, "Will the assembly consider this question?" If decided in the negative by a two-thirds vote, the question is immediately dismissed, and cannot be again introduced during that session. This objection must be made when the question is first introduced, before it has been debated, and it can be made when another member has the floor. (b) Postpone indefinitely. After the question has been debated, the proper motion to use in order to suppress the question for the session, is to postpone indefinitely. It cannot be made while any motion except the original or main question is pending, but it can be made after an amendment has been acted upon, and the main question, as amended, is before the assembly. It opens the merits of the main question to debate to as great an extent as if the main question were before the assembly. On account of these two facts, in assemblies with short sessions it is not very useful, as the same result can usually be more easily attained by the next motion. (c) Lie on the table. If there is no possibility during the remainder of the session of obtaining a majority vote for taking up the question, then the quickest way of suppressing it is === Page 140 =========================================================== to move "that the question lie on the table;" which, allowing of no debate, enables the majority to instantly lay the question on the table, from which it cannot be taken without their consent. From its high rank [§ 64] and undebatable character, this motion is very commonly used to suppress a question, but, as shown in § 57 (b), its effect is merely to lay the question aside till the assembly choose to consider it, and it only suppresses the question so long as there is a majority opposed to its consideration. 60. To Consider a question a second time. Reconsider. When a question has been once adopted, rejected or suppressed, it cannot be again considered during that session [§ 70], except by a motion to "reconsider the vote" on that question. This motion can only be made by one who voted on the prevailing side, and on the day the vote was taken which it is proposed to reconsider.* [In Congress it can be made on the same or succeeding day; and if the yeas and nays were not taken on the vote, any one can move the reconsideration. The yeas and nays are however ordered on all important votes in Congress, which is not the case in ordinary societies.] It can be made and entered on the minutes in the midst of debate, even when another member has the floor, but cannot be considered until there is no question === Page 141 =========================================================== before the assembly, when, if called up, it takes precedence of every motion except to adjourn and to fix the time to which the assembly shall adjourn. A motion to reconsider a vote on a debatable question, opens to debate the entire merits of the original motion. If the question to be reconsidered is undebatable, then the reconsideration is undebatable. If the motion to reconsider is carried, the chairman announces that the question now recurs on the adoption of the question the vote on which has been just reconsidered: the original question is now in exactly the same condition that it was in before the first vote was taken on its adoption, and must be disposed of by a vote. When a motion to reconsider is entered on the minutes, it need not be called up by the mover till the next meeting, on a succeeding day.* [If the assembly has not adopted these or similar rules, this paragraph would not apply, but this motion to reconsider would, like any other motion, fall to the ground if not acted upon before the close of the session at which the original vote was adopted.] If he fails to call it up then, any one else can do so. But should there be no succeeding meeting, either adjourned or regular, within a month, then the effect of the motion to reconsider === Page 142 =========================================================== terminates with the adjournment of the meeting at which it was made, and any one can call it up at that meeting. In general no motion (except to adjourn) that has been once acted upon, can again be considered during the same session, except by a motion to reconsider. [The motion to adjourn can be renewed if there has been progress in business or debate, and it cannot be reconsidered.] But this rule does not prevent the renewal of any of the motions mentioned in § 64, provided the question before the assembly has in any way changed; for in this case, while the motions are nominally the same, they are in fact different.* [Thus to move to postpone a resolution is a different question from moving to postpone it after it has been amended. A motion to suspend the rules for a certain purpose cannot be renewed at the same meeting, but can be at an adjourned meeting. A call for the orders of the day that has been negatived, cannot be renewed while the question then before the assembly is still under consideration. See Rules of Order, § 27, for many peculiarities of this motion.] 61. Order and Rules. (a) Orders of the Day. Sometimes an assembly decides that certain questions shall be considered at a particular time, and when that time arrives those questions constitute what is termed the "orders of the day," and if any member "calls for the orders of the day," as it requires no second, the === Page 143 =========================================================== chairman immediately puts the question, thus: "Will the assembly now proceed to the orders of the day?" If carried, the subject under consideration is laid aside, and the questions appointed for that time are taken up in their order. When the time arrives, the chairman may state that fact, and put the above question without waiting for a motion. If the motion fails, the call for the orders of the day cannot be renewed till the subject then before the assembly is disposed of.* [In Congress, a member entitled to the floor cannot be interrupted by a call for the orders of the day. In an ordinary assembly, the most common case where orders of the day are decided upon is where it is necessary to make a programme for the session. When the hour arrives for the consideration of any subject on the programme, these rules permit any member to call for the orders of the day (as described in Rules of Order, § 2) even though another person has the floor. If this were not permitted, it would often be impossible to carry out the programme, though wished for by the majority. A majority could postpone the orders of the day, when called for, so as to continue the discussion of the question then before the assembly. An order as to the time when any subject shall be considered, must not be confounded with the rules of the assembly; the latter must be enforced by the chairman, without they are suspended by a two-thirds vote; the former, in strictness, can only be carried out by the order of a majority of the assembly then present and voting.] (b) Special Order. If a subject is of such importance that it is desired to consider it at a special time in preference to the orders of the day and established order of business, then a motion should be made to make the question a "special order" for that particular time. This === Page 144 =========================================================== motion requires a two-thirds vote for its adoption, because it is really a suspension of the rules, and it is in order whenever a motion to suspend the rules is in order. If a subject is a special order for a particular day, then on that day it supersedes all business except the reading of the minutes. A special order can be postponed by a majority vote. If two special orders are made for the same day, the one first made takes precedence. (c) Suspension of the Rules. It is necessary for every assembly, if discussion is allowed, to have rules to prevent its time being wasted, and to enable it to accomplish the object for which the assembly was organized. And yet at times their best interests are subserved by suspending their rules temporarily. In order to do this, some one makes a motion "to suspend the rules that interfere with," etc., stating the object of the suspension. If this motion is carried by a two-thirds vote, then the particular thing for which the rules were suspended can be done. By "general consent," that is, if no one objects, the rules can at any time be ignored without the formality of a motion. (d) Questions of Order. It is the duty of the chairman to enforce the rules and preserve === Page 145 =========================================================== order, and when any member notices a breach of order, he can call for the enforcement of the rules. In such cases, when he rises he usually says, "Mr. Chairman, I rise to a point of order." The chairman then directs the speaker to take his seat, and having heard the point of order, decides the question and permits the first speaker to resume his speech, directing him to abstain from any conduct that was decided to be out of order. When a speaker has transgressed the rules of decorum he cannot continue his speech, if any one objects, without permission is granted him by a vote of the assembly. Instead of the above method, when a member uses improper language, some one says, "I call the gentleman to order;" when the chairman decides as before whether the language is disorderly. (e) Appeal. While on all questions of order, and of interpretation of the rules and of priority of business, it is the duty of the chairman to first decide the question, it is the privilege of any member to "appeal from the decision." If the appeal is seconded, the chairman states his decision, and that it has been appealed from, and then states the question, thus: "Shall the decision of the chair stand as the judgment of the assembly?" [or society, convention, etc.] === Page 146 =========================================================== The chairman can then, without leaving the chair, state the reasons for his decision, after which it is open to debate (no member speaking but once), excepting in the following cases, when it is undebatable: (1) When it relates to transgressions of the rules of speaking, or to some indecorum, or to the priority of business; and (2) when the previous question was pending at the time the question of order was raised. After the vote is taken, the chairman states that the decision of the chair is sustained, or reversed, as the case may be. 62. Miscellaneous. (a) Reading of papers and (b) Withdrawal of a motion. If a speaker wishes to read a paper, or a member to withdraw his motion after it has been stated by the chair, it is necessary, if any one objects, to make a motion to grant the permission. (c) Questions of Privilege. Should any disturbance occur during the meeting, or anything affecting the rights of the assembly or any of the members, any member may "rise to a question of privilege," and state the matter, which the chairman decides to be, or not to be, a matter of privilege: (from the chairman's decision of course an appeal can be taken). If the question is one of privilege, it supersedes, === Page 147 =========================================================== for the time being, the business before the assembly; its consideration can be postponed to another time, or the previous question can be ordered on it so as to stop debate, or it can be laid on the table, or referred to a committee to examine and report upon it. As soon as the question of privilege is in some way disposed of, the debate which was interrupted is resumed. 63. To Close the Meeting. (a) Fix the time to which to adjourn. If it is desired to have an adjourned meeting of the assembly, it is best some time before its close to move, "That when this assembly adjourns, it adjourns to meet at such a time," specifying the time. This motion can be amended by altering the time, but if made when another question is before the assembly, neither the motion nor the amendment can be debated. If made when no other business is before the assembly, it stands as any other main question, and can be debated. This motion can be made even while the assembly is voting on the motion to adjourn, but not when another member has the floor. (b) Adjourn. In order to prevent an assembly === Page 148 =========================================================== from being kept in session an unreasonably long time, it is necessary to have a rule limiting the time that the floor can be occupied by any one member at one time.* [Ten minutes is allowed by these rules.] When it is desired to close the meeting, without the member who has the floor will yield it, the only resource is to wait till his time expires, and then a member who gets the floor should move "to adjourn." The motion being seconded, the chairman instantly put the question, as it allows of no amendment or debate; and if decided in the affirmative, he says, "The motion is carried;--this assembly stands adjourned." If the assembly is one that will have no other meeting, instead of "adjourned," he says "adjourned without day," or "sine die." If previously it had been decided when they adjourned to adjourn to a particular time, then he states that the assembly stands adjourned to that time. If the motion to adjourn is qualified by specifying the time, as, "to adjourn to to-morrow evening," it cannot be made when any other question is before the assembly; like any other main motion, it can then be amended and debated.** [For the effect of an adjournment upon unfinished business see § 69.] === Page 149 =========================================================== 64. Order of Precedence of Motions. The ordinary motions rank as follows, and any of them (except to amend) can be made while one of a lower order is pending, but none can supersede one of a higher order: To Fix the Time to which to Adjourn. To Adjourn (when unqualified). For the Orders of the Day. To Lie on the Table. For the Previous Question. To Postpone to a Certain Time. To Commit. To Amend. To Postpone Indefinitely. The motion to Reconsider can be made when any other question is before the assembly, but cannot be acted upon until the business then before the assembly is disposed of; when, if called up, it takes precedence of all other motions except to adjourn and to fix the time to which to adjourn. Questions incidental to those before the assembly take precedence of them, and must be acted upon first. A question of order, a call for the orders of the day, or an objection to the consideration of a question, can be made while another member has the floor: so, too, can a motion to reconsider, but it can only be entered on the minutes === Page 150 =========================================================== at that time, as it cannot supersede the question then before the assembly. Art. XIII. Debate. 65. Rules of Speaking in Debate. All remarks must be addressed to the chairman, and must be confined to the question before the assembly, avoiding all personalities and reflections upon any one's motives. It is usual for permanent assemblies to adopt rules limiting the number of times any member can speak to the same question, and the time allowed for each speech;* [In Congress the House of Representatives allows from each member only one speech of one hour's length; the Senate allows two speeches without limit as to length.] as otherwise one member, while he could speak only once to the same question, might defeat a measure by prolonging his speech and declining to yield the floor except for a motion to adjourn. In ordinary assemblies two speeches should be allowed each member (except upon an appeal), and these rules also limit the time for each speech to ten minutes. A majority can permit a member to speak oftener or longer whenever it is desired, and the motion granting such permission cannot be debated. === Page 151 =========================================================== However, if greater freedom is wanted, it is only necessary to consider the question informally, or if the assembly is large, go into committee of the whole.* [See Rules of Order, §§ 32, 33.] If on the other hand it is desired to limit the debate more, or close it altogether, it can be done by a two-thirds vote, as shown in § 58 (b). 66. Undebatable Questions and those Opening the Main Question to Debate. [A full list of these will be found in § 35, to which the reader is referred. To the undebatable motions in that list, should be added the motion to close or limit debate.] Art. XIV. Miscellaneous. 67. Forms of Stating and Putting Questions. Whenever a motion has been made and seconded, it is the duty of the chairman, if the motion is in order, to state the question so that the assembly may know what question is before them. The seconding of a motion is required to prevent a question being introduced when only one member is in favor of it, and consequently === Page 152 =========================================================== but little attention is paid to it in mere routine motions, or when it is evident that many are in favor of the motion; in such cases the chairman assumes that the motion is seconded. Often in routine work the chairman puts the question without waiting for even a motion, as few persons like to make such formal motions, and much time would be wasted by waiting for them: (but the chairman can only do this as long as no one objects.) The following motions, however, do not have to be seconded: (a) a call for the orders of the day; (b) a call to order, or the raising of any question of order; and (c) an objection to the consideration of a question. One of the commonest forms of stating a question is to say that, "It is moved and seconded that," and then give the motion. When an amendment has been voted on, the chairman announces the result, and then says, "The question now recurs on the resolution," or, "on the resolution as amended," as the case may be. So in all cases, as soon as a vote is taken, he should immediately state the question then before the assembly, if there be any. If the motion is debatable or can be amended, the chairman, usually after stating the question, and === Page 153 =========================================================== always before finally putting it, inquires, "Are you ready for the question?" Some of the common forms of stating and putting questions are shown in §§ 46-48. The forms of putting the following questions, are, however, peculiar: If a motion is made to Strike out certain words, the question is put in this form: "Shall these words stand as a part of the resolution?" so that on a tie vote they are struck out. If the Previous Question is demanded, it is put thus: "Shall the main question be now put?" If an Appeal is made from the decision of the Chair, the question is put thus: "Shall the decision of the Chair stand as the judgment of the assembly?" [convention, society, etc.] If the Orders of the Day are called for, the question is put thus: "Will the assembly now proceed to the Orders of the Day?" When, upon the introduction of a question, some one objects to its consideration, the chairman immediately puts the question thus: "Will the assembly consider it?" or, "Shall the question be considered?" [or discussed.] If the vote has been ordered to be taken by yeas and nays, the question is put in a form similar to the following: "As many as are in favor of the adoption of these resolutions, will, when their names are called, answer yes [or aye]--those opposed will answer no." === Page 154 =========================================================== 68. Motions requiring a two-thirds vote.* [See Two-thirds Vote, page 159, and § 39 of Rules of Order.] All motions that have the effect to make a variation from the established rules and customs, should require a two-thirds vote for their adoption. Among these established customs should be regarded the right of free debate upon the merits of any measure, before the assembly can be forced to take final action upon it. The following motions would come under this rule: To amend or suspend the rules. To make a special order. To take up a question out of its proper order. An objection to the consideration of a question. The Previous Question, or a motion to limit or close debate. 69. Unfinished Business. When an assembly adjourns, the unfinished business comes up at the adjourned meeting, if one is held, as the first business after the reading of the minutes; if there is no adjourned meeting, the unfinished business comes up immediately before new business at the next regular meeting, provided the regular meetings are more frequent than yearly.** [See Rules of Order, § 11, for a fuller explanation of the effect of an adjournment upon unfinished business, and the Congressional practice.] If the meetings are only once a === Page 155 =========================================================== year, the adjournment of the session puts an end to all unfinished business. 70. Session. Each regular meeting of a society constitutes a separate session. Any meeting which is not an adjournment of another meeting, commences a new session; the session terminates as soon as the assembly "adjourns without day."* [In ordinary practice, a meeting is closed by moving simply "to adjourn;" the society meet again at the time provided either by their rules or by a resolution of the society. If they do not meet till the time for the next regular meeting, as provided in the By-Laws, then the adjournment closed the session, and was in effect an adjournment without day. If, however, they had previously fixed the time for the next meeting, either by a direct vote, or by adopting a programme of exercises covering several meetings or even days, in either case the adjournment is in effect to a certain day, and does not close the session.] When an assembly has meetings for several days consecutively, they all constitute one session. Each session of a society is independent of the other sessions, excepting as expressly provided in their Constitution, By-Laws, or Rules of Order, and excepting that resolutions adopted by one session are in force during succeeding sessions until rescinded by a majority vote [see note to § 49]. Where a society holds more than one regular session a year, these rules limit the independence of each session as follows: (a) The Order of Business prescribed in § 72 requires that the === Page 156 =========================================================== minutes of the previous meeting, the reports of committees previously appointed, and the unfinished business of the last session, shall all take precedence of new business, and that no subject can be considered out of its proper order, except by a two-thirds vote; (b) it is allowable to postpone a question to the next session, when it comes up with unfinished business, but it is not allowable to postpone to a day beyond the next session, and thus interfere with the right of the next session to consider the question; (c) a motion to reconsider a vote can be made at one meeting and called up at the next meeting even though it be another session, provided the society holds its regular sessions as frequently as monthly.* [See Rules of Order, § 42, for a full discussion of this subject.] 71. Quorum. [See § 43 for full information on this subject.] 72. Order of Business. Every society should adopt an order of business adapted to its special wants. The following is the usual order where no special rule is adopted, and when more than one regular meeting is held each year: === Page 157 =========================================================== (1) Reading of the minutes of the last meeting. (2) Reports of Boards of Trustees or Managers, and Standing Committees. (3) Reports of Select Committees. (4) Unfinished Business (including questions postponed to this meeting). (5) New Business. Business cannot be considered out of its order, except by a two-thirds vote; but a majority can lay on the table the different questions as they come up, and thus reach a subject they wish first to consider. If a subject has been made a Special Order for this meeting, then it is to be considered immediately after the minutes are read. 73. Amendments of Constitutions, By-Laws and Rules of Order, should be permitted only when adopted by a two-thirds vote, at a regular meeting of the society, after having been proposed at the previous regular meeting. If the meetings are very frequent, weekly, for instance, amendments should be adopted only at the quarterly meetings, after having been proposed at the previous quarterly meeting. === Page 158 =========================================================== Legal Rights of Assemblies and the Trial of their Members. The Right of Deliberative Assemblies to Punish their Members. A deliberative assembly has the inherent right to make and enforce its own laws and punish an offender--the extreme penalty, however, being expulsion from its own body. When expelled, if the assembly is a permanent society, it has a right, for its own protection, to give public notice that the person has ceased to be a member of that society. But it has no right to go beyond what is necessary for self protection and publish the charges against the member. In a case where a member of a society was expelled, and an officer of the society published, by their order, a statement of the grave charges upon which he had been found guilty, the expelled member recovered damages from the officer, in a suit for libel--the court holding that the truth of the charges did not affect the case. === Page 159 =========================================================== The Right of an Assembly to Eject any one from its place of meeting. Every deliberative assembly has the right to decide who may be present during its session, and when the assembly, either by a rule or by a vote, decides that a certain person shall not remain in the room, it is the duty of the chairman to enforce the rule or order, using whatever force is necessary to eject the party. The chairman can detail members to remove the person, without calling upon the police. If, however, in enforcing the order, any one uses harsher treatment than is necessary to remove the person, the courts have held that he, and he alone is liable to prosecution, just the same as a policeman would be under similar circumstances. However badly the man may be abused while being removed from the room, neither the chairman nor the society are liable for damages, as, in ordering his removal, they did not exceed their legal rights. Rights of Ecclesiastical Tribunals. Many of our deliberative assemblies are ecclesiastical bodies, and it is important to know how much respect will be paid to their decisions by the civil courts. A church became divided and each party === Page 160 =========================================================== claimed to be the church, and therefore entitled to the church property. The case was taken into the civil courts, and finally, on appeal, to the U. S. Supreme Court, which held the case under advisement for one year, and then reversed the decision of the State Court, because it conflicted with the decision of the highest ecclesiastical court that had acted upon the case. The Supreme Court, in rendering its decision, laid down the broad principle that, when a local church is but a part of a larger and more general organization or denomination, it will accept the decision of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal to which the case has been carried within that general church organization, as final, and will not inquire into the justice or injustice of its decree as between the parties before it. The officers, the ministers, the members, or the church body which the highest judiciary of the denomination recognizes, the court will recognize. Whom that body expels or cuts off, the court will hold to be no longer members of that church. Trial of Members of Societies. Every deliberative assembly, having the right to purify its own body, must therefore have the right to investigate the character of its members. === Page 161 =========================================================== It can require any of them to testify in the case, under pain of expulsion if they refuse. In § 36 is shown the method of procedure when a member is charged with violating the rules of decorum in debate. If the disorderly words are of a personal nature, before the assembly proceeds to deliberate upon the case, both parties to the personality should retire. It is not necessary for the member objecting to the words to retire, unless he is personally involved in the case. When the charge is against the member's character, it is usually referred to a committee of investigation or discipline, or to some standing committee to report upon. Some societies have standing committees, whose duty it is to report cases for discipline whenever any are known to them. In either case the committee investigate the matter and report to the society. This report need not go into details, but should contain their recommendations as to what action the society should take, and should usually close with resolutions covering the case, so that there is no need for any one to offer any additional resolutions upon it. The ordinary resolutions, where the member is recommended to be expelled, === Page 162 =========================================================== are (1) to fix the time to which the society shall adjourn; and (2) to instruct the clerk to cite the member to appear before the society at this adjourned meeting to show cause why he should not be expelled, upon the following charges, which should then be given. After charges are preferred against a member and the assembly has ordered that he be cited to appear for trial, he is theoretically under arrest, and is deprived of all the rights of membership until his case is disposed of. The clerk should send the accused a written notice to appear before the society at the time appointed, and should at the same time furnish him with a copy of the charges. A failure to obey the summons is generally cause enough for summary expulsion. At the appointed meeting, what may be called the trial, takes place. Frequently the only evidence required against the member is the report of the committee. After it has been read and any additional evidence offered that the committee may see fit to introduce, the accused should be allowed to make an explanation and introduce witnesses if he so desires. Either party should be allowed to cross-examine the other's witnesses and introduce rebutting testimony. === Page 163 =========================================================== When the evidence is all in, the accused should retire from the room, and the society deliberate upon the question, and finally act by a vote upon the question of expulsion or other punishment proposed. In acting upon the case, it must be borne in mind that there is a vast distinction between the evidence necessary to convict in a civil court and that required to convict in an ordinary society or ecclesiastical body. A notorious pickpocket could not even be arrested, much less convicted, by a civil court, simply on the ground of being commonly known as a pickpocket; while such evidence would convict and expel him from any ordinary society. The moral conviction of the truth of the charge is all that is necessary in an ecclesiastical or other deliberative body, to find the accused guilty of the charges. If the trial is liable to be long and troublesome, or of a very delicate nature, the member is frequently cited to appear before a committee, instead of the society, for trial. In this case the committee report to the society the result of their trial of the case, with resolutions covering the punishment which they recommend the society to adopt. === Page 164 =========================================================== === Page 165 =========================================================== TABLE OF RULES RELATING TO MOTIONS. [This Table contains the answers to more than two hundred questions on parliamentary law, and should always be consulted before referring to the body of the Manual.] === Page 166 =========================================================== TABLE OF RULES RELATING TO MOTIONS. Explanation of the Table. A Star shows that the rule heading the column in which it stands, applies to the motion opposite to which it is placed: a blank shows that the rule does not apply: a figure shows that the rule only partially applies, the figure referring to the note on the next page showing the limitations. Take, for example, "Lie on the table:" the Table shows that § 19 of the Pocket Manual treats of this motion; that it is "undebatable" and "cannot be amended;" and that an affirmative vote on it (as shown in note 3) "cannot be reconsidered:" -- the four other columns being blank, show that this motion does not "open the main question to debate," that it does not "require a 2/3 vote," that it does "require to be seconded," and that it is not "in order when another member has the floor." The column headed "Requires a two-thirds vote," applies only where the "Pocket Manual of Rules of Order," or similar rules, have been adopted. [See "Two-thirds Vote," on next page, under Miscellaneous Rules.] After the note to the Table is some additional information that a chairman should always have at hand, such as the Order of Precedence of Motions, the Forms Of Putting Certain Questions, etc. In order when another has the floor [§ 2]-------------| Requires no Second [§ 3]-----------| | Requires a 2/3 vote [§ 39]--See Note 1.---------| | | Cannot be Reconsidered [§ 27]-------| | | | Cannot be Amended [§ 23]-----| | | | | Opens Main Question to Debate [§ 35]---| | | | | | Undebatable [§ 35]-| | | | | | | |- Section in Pocket Manual | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 11 Adjourn ............................................. x . x x . . . 10 Adjourn, Fix the Time to which to ................... 2 . . . . . . 23 Amend ............................................... . . . . . . . 23 Amend an Amendment .................................. . . x . . . . 43 Amend the Rules ..................................... . . . . x . . 14 Appeal, relating to indecorum, etc., [6] ............ x . x . . . x 14 Appeal, all other cases ............................. . . x . . . x 14 Call to Order ....................................... x . x . . x x 37 Close Debate, motion to ............................. x . . . x . . 22 Commit .............................................. . x . . . . . 31 Extend the limits of debate, motion to .............. x . . . . . . 10 Fix the Time to which to Adjourn .................... 2 . . . . . . 15 Leave to continue speaking when guilty of indecorum x . x . . . . 19 Lie on the Table .................................... x . x 3 . . . 37 Limit Debate, motion to ............................. x . . . x . . 13 Objection to Consideration of a Question [7] ........ x . x . x x x 13 Orders of the Day, motion for the ................... x . x . . x x 21 Postpone to a certain time .......................... 4 . . . . . . 24 Postpone indefinitely ............................... . x x . . . . 20 Previous Question ................................... x . x . x . . 44 Priority of Business, questions relating to ......... x . . . . . . 16 Reading Papers ...................................... x . x . . . . 27 Reconsider a debatable question ..................... . x x . . . 5 27 Reconsider an undebatable question .................. x . x . . . 5 22 Refer (same as Commit) .............................. . x . . . . . 11 Rise (in Committee equals Adjourn) .................. x . x x . . . 11 Shall the question be discussed? [7] ................ x . x . x x x 61 Special Order, to make a ............................ . . . . x . . 23 Substitute (same as Amend) .......................... . . . . . . . 18 Suspend the Rules ................................... x . x x x . . 59 Take from the table ................................. x . x 3 . . . 44 Take up a question out of its proper order .......... x . x . x . . 17 Withdrawal of a motion .............................. x . x . . . . === Page 167 =========================================================== Notes To The Table. (1) This column only applies to assemblies that have adopted these Rules. If no rules are adopted, a majority vote is sufficient for the adoption of any motion, except to "suspend the rules," which requires a unanimous vote. [See Two-thirds Vote, below.] (2) Undebatable if made when another question is before the assembly. (3) An affirmative vote on this motion cannot be reconsidered. (4) Allows of but limited debate upon the propriety of the postponement. (5) Can be moved and entered on the record when another has the floor, but cannot interrupt the business then before the assembly; it must be made on the day the original vote was taken, and by one who voted with the prevailing side. (6) An appeal is undebatable only when relating to indecorum, or to transgressions of the rules of speaking, or to the priority of business, or when made while the Previous Question is pending. When debatable, only one speech from each member is permitted. (7) The objection can only be made when the question is first introduced, before debate. MISCELLANEOUS RULES. Order of Precedence of Motions. The ordinary motions rank as follows, and any of them (except to amend) can be made while one of a lower order is pending, but none can supercede one of a higher order: To Fix the Time to which to Adjourn. To Adjourn (when unqualified). For the Orders of the Day. To Lie on the Table. For the Previous Question. To Postpone to a Certain Time. To Commit. To Amend. To Postpone Indefinitely. The motion to Reconsider can be made when any other question is before the assembly, but cannot be acted upon until the business then before the assembly is disposed of [see note 5 above], when, if called up, it takes precedence of all other motions except to adjourn and to fix the time to which to adjourn. Questions incidental to those before the assembly, take precedence of them and must be acted upon first. Two-thirds Vote. In Congress the only motions requiring a two-thirds vote, are to suspend or amend the Rules, to take up business out of its proper order, and to make a special order. In ordinary societies harmony is so essential, that a two-thirds vote should be required to force the assembly to a final vote upon a resolution without allowing free debate. The Table conforms to the Rules of Order, which are based upon this principle. If an assembly has adopted no Rules of Order, then a majority vote is sufficient for the adoption of any motion, except to "suspend the rules," which would require a unanimous vote. Forms of Putting Certain Questions. If a motion is made to Strike out certain words, the question is put in this form: "Shall these words stand as a part of the resolution?" so that on a tie vote they are struck out. If the Previous Question is demanded, it is put thus: "Shall the main question now be put?" If an Appeal is made from the decision of the Chair, the question is put thus: "Shall the decision of the Chair stand as the judgement of the assembly?" [convention, society, etc.]. If the Orders of the Day are called for, the question is put thus: "Will the assembly now proceed to the Orders of the Day?" When, upon the introduction of a question, some one objects to its consideration, the chairman immediately puts the question thus: "Will the assembly consider it?" or "Shall the question be considered?" [or discussed.] If the vote has been ordered to be taken by yeas and nays, the question is put in a form similar to the following: "As many as are in favor of the adoption of these resolutions, will, when their names are called, answer yes [or aye]--those opposed will answer no." Various Forms of Amendments. An Amendment may be either (1) by "adding" or (2) by "striking out" words or paragraphs; or (3) by "striking out certain words and inserting others;" or (4) by "substituting" a different motion on the same subject; or (5) by "dividing the question" into two or more questions, so as to get a separate vote on any particular point or points. === Page 168 =========================================================== Additions and Corrections. [These corrections, though mostly contained in other parts of the Manual, are also needed in the places here indicated.] 19th page, 7th line, after "§ 13" insert a star referring to this note: "See note to § 61." 50th '' 2d line of last note, omit all after "reconsideration." 51st '' at end of 12th line, insert "upon another day." '' '' 10th line, insert a star, referring to this note: "In Congress the effect always terminates with the session, and it cannot be called up by any one but the mover, until the expiration of the time during which it is in order to move a reconsideration." 69th '' 4th line, after "§ 34," insert "or limiting or closing debate." 72d '' 17th line, insert a star referring to this note: "If both are personally interested. [See p. 161.]" 73d '' last line of note, insert "final" before "vote." 80th '' add to the list in § 39 the motion "To make a special order." === Page 169 =========================================================== INDEX. The figures from 1 to 45 refer to sections in Part I; those greater than 45, to sections in Part II. A complete list of motions will be found in the Index, under the title Motions, list of. The arrangement of the work can be most easily seen by examining the Table of Contents [pp. 5-8]; its plan is explained in the Introduction, pp. 12-15. SECTION. Adjourn, motion to ............................................. 11, 63b when in order ................................................ 11, 64 effect upon unfinished business .............................. 11, 69 motion to "fix the time to which to adjourn" .................. 10, 63 Amendment, motion to "amend" .................................. 23, 56a by "adding" or "striking out" ................................ 23, 56a by "striking out and inserting" .............................. 23, 56a by "substituting" ............................................ 23, 56a by "dividing the question" ................................ 4, 23, 56a of an amendment .............................................. 23, 56a in committee .................................................. 28, 53 in committee of the whole ........................................ 32 of reports or propositions with several paragraphs ........... 44, 48b of Rules of Order, By-Laws and Constitutions .................. 45, 73 motions that cannot be amended ............................... 23, 56a Announcing the vote. See Forms. Appeal from the decision of the chair .......................... 14, 61e Apply, meaning of (Introduction, page 14). Assembly, how organized ..................................... 46, 47, 48 the word to be replaced by Society, Convention, etc., when it occurs in forms of questions, p 16. legal rights of, pp. 158-163. right to punish members, p. 158. right to eject persons from their room, p. 159. trial of members, p. 160. Ayes and Noes. See Yeas and Nays, § 38. Ballot .............................................................. 38 Blanks, filling of .................................................. 25 in balloting, not to be counted ................................... 38 === Page 170 =========================================================== Boards of Trustees, Managers, etc., their reports in order when reports of standing committees are made ............ 44, 72 (See Quorum.) Business, introduction of ...................................... 1-5, 54 order of ...................................................... 44, 72 unfinished, effect of an adjournment upon ..................... 11, 69 [See Priority of Business.] By-Laws, what they should contain ................................... 49 adoption of ...................................................... 46a amendment of .................................................. 45, 73 Chairman, duties of ............................................. 40, 50 election of ...................................................... 46a temporary ..................................................... 40, 47 of a committee ................................................ 28, 53 of committee of the whole ........................................... 32 Change of Vote allowed before result is announced ................... 38 Classification of Motions according to their object ................. 55 into Privileged, Incidental, Subsidiary, etc. .................... 6-9 Clerk, duties of ................................................ 41, 51 additional duties of when receiving money ......................... 52 election of ...................................................... 46a Commit, motion to .............................................. 22, 56b Committees, appointment of ..................................... 22, 46c how they should be composed ................................... 22, 53 object of ..................................................... 28, 53 manner of conducting business in .............................. 28, 53 Reports of, their form ........................................ 29, 53 their reception ............................................ 30, 46c their adoption ............................................. 31, 46c their place in the order of business ........................ 44, 72 common errors in acting upon (note) ........................ 30, 46c Minority Reports of, their form ............................... 29, 53 to be acted upon must be moved as a substitute for the committee's report ................................ 28, 53 of the whole ...................................................... 32 as if in committee of the whole ................................... 33 === Page 171 =========================================================== Congress, rules of, the basis of this work, pp. 10-12. Consideration of a question, objection to ...................... 15, 59a Constitutions, what they should contain ............................. 49 adoption of by a society ......................................... 48b amendment of .................................................. 45, 73 Convention, manner of organizing and conducting a meeting of ..................................................... 47 Credentials of delegates ............................................ 47 Debate, what precedes ............................................ 3, 54 no member to speak but twice in same .......................... 34, 65 no member to speak longer than ten minutes at one time ........................................................ 34, 65 a majority can extend the number and length of speeches allowed ........................................... 34, 65 number of speeches and time allowed in Congress (note) ...................................................... 34, 65 member introducing measure has right to close ..................... 34 list of undebatable questions ................................. 35, 66 motions that open the main question to ............................ 35 principles regulating the extent of (see note) .................... 35 decorum in .................................................... 36, 65 closing or limiting ........................................... 37, 58 Decorum in debate ............................................... 36, 65 Definitions of various terms [Introduction, p. 15]. Delegates, organization of a meeting of ............................. 47 Division of the assembly ............................................ 38 of questions [see Amendment] .................................. 4, 56a Ecclesiastical Tribunals, legal rights of, p. 159. Election of Officers ........................................... 46a, 47 Fix the time to which to Adjourn, motion to .................... 10, 63a Floor, how to obtain ............................................. 2, 54 Forms of making motions ......................................... 46, 54 of stating and putting questions .............................. 38, 67 of announcing the result of a vote ............................ 38, 54 of reports of committees ...................................... 29, 53 of treasurers' reports ............................................ 52 of minutes of a meeting ....................................... 41, 51 === Page 172 =========================================================== Forms-Continued. of conducting an occasional or mass meeting ....................... 46 of conducting a meeting of delegates .............................. 47 of conduction a meeting to organize a society ..................... 48 of conducting an ordinary meeting of a society ................... 48b Incidental questions ................................................. 8 Indefinite postponement ........................................ 24, 59b Informal consideration of a question ................................ 33 Introduction of Business ....................................... 1-5, 54 Journal, or minutes ............................................. 41, 51 Legal Rights. See Assembly and Ecclesiastical Tribunals. Lie on the table, motion to ............................... 19, 57b, 59c Main question ........................................................ 6 Majority. See Two-thirds and Quorum. Meeting, distinction between it and session ..................... 42, 70 [See also Introduction, page 15.] how to conduct. See Forms. Members not to be present during a debate or vote concerning themselves ............................................. 36 trial of, p. 160. Minority Report. See Committees. Minutes, form and contents of ................................... 41, 51 Moderator. See Chairman. Modification of a motion by the mover ................................ 5 Motions, list of. [For details, see each motion in the Index.] Adjourn ...................................................... 11, 63b Adjourn, Fix the time to which to ............................ 10, 63a Amend ........................................................ 23, 56a Adopt a report (same as accept or agree to) .................. 31, 46c Appeal ....................................................... 14, 61e Blanks, filling ................................................... 25 Call to order ................................................ 14, 61d Close debate .................................................. 37, 58 Commit ....................................................... 22, 56b Consideration of a question, objection to ................... 15, 59a Divide the question ....................................... 4, 23, 56a === Page 173 =========================================================== Motions-Continued. Extend the limits of debate ................................... 34, 65 Fix the time to which to adjourn ............................. 10, 63a Incidental motions or questions .................................... 8 Indefinitely postpone ........................................ 24, 59b Informal consideration of a question .............................. 33 Leave to continue speech when guilty of indecorum ................. 36 Leave to withdraw a motion ................................... 17, 62b Lie on the table ........................................ 19, 57b, 59c Limit Debate ................................................. 37, 58b Main motions or questions .......................................... 6 Objection to the consideration of a question ................. 15, 59a Order, questions of .......................................... 14, 61d Orders of the day ............................................ 13, 61a Orders, special .................................................. 61b Postpone to a certain day .................................... 21, 57a Postpone indefinitely ........................................ 24, 59b Previous question ............................................ 20, 58a Principal motions or questions ..................................... 6 Priority of Business, questions relating to ....................... 35 Privileged motions or questions .................................... 9 Privilege, questions of ...................................... 12, 62c Reading papers ................................................ 16, 62 Reception of a report [see Committees] ....................... 30, 46c Recommit [same as Commit] ..................................... 22, 56 Reconsider .................................................... 27, 60 Refer [same as Commit] ....................................... 22, 56b Renewal of a motion ........................................... 26, 60 Rise [in committee, equals adjourn] ........................... 11, 32 Shall the question be considered? [or discussed] ............. 15, 59a Special Order, to make a ......................................... 61b Strike out [see Amendment] ................................... 23, 56a Subsidiary motions or questions .................................... 7 Substitute (same as Amendment, which see) .................... 23, 56a Suspension of the Rules ...................................... 18, 61c Take from the table [see Lie on the table] ................... 19, 57b Take up a question out of its proper order .................... 44, 72 Withdrawal of a motion ........................................ 17, 62 === Page 174 =========================================================== Motions, tabular view of rules relating to, page 166. classified according to their object .............................. 55 classified into Privileged, Incidental, Subsidiary, etc. ......... 6-9 order of precedence of [see each motion, §§ 10-27] ................ 64 how to be made .......................................... 1, 2, 46, 54 a second required (with certain exceptions) .................... 3, 67 to be stated by chairman before being discussed ................ 3, 54 when to be in writing .......................................... 4, 54 how to be divided .................................................. 4 how to be modified by the mover ............................. 3, 5, 17 how to be stated and put to the question ...................... 38, 67 that cannot be amended ....................................... 23, 56a that cannot be debated ........................................ 35, 66 that open main question to debate ................................. 35 that require two-thirds vote for their adoption ............... 39, 68 Nominations, how treated ....................................... 25, 46a Numbers of paragraphs to be corrected by clerk without a vote ............................................................ 23 Objection to the consideration (discussion or introduction of a question ................................................ 15, 59a Officers of an assembly. See Chairman, Clerk, Treasurer and Vice-Presidents. Order, questions of and a call to .............................. 14, 61d of business ................................................... 44, 72 of the day ................................................... 13, 61a distinction between, and rules of the assembly (note) .......... 61a special .......................................................... 61b of precedence of motions. See Precedence. Organization of an occasional or mass meeting ...................... 46a of a convention or assembly of delegates .......................... 47 of a permanent society ............................................ 48 Papers and documents, reading of ................................ 16, 62 in custody of clerk ........................................... 41, 51 Parliamentary Law, its origin, etc., (Introduction. p. 9.) Plan of the Manual, (Introduction, page 12.) of Part I, Rules of Order, (Introduction, page 13.) of Part II, Organization and Conduct of Business, (Introduction, page 14.) === Page 175 =========================================================== Postpone to a certain time ..................................... 21, 57a indefinitely ................................................. 24, 59b Preamble, considered after the rest of a paper ...................... 44 Precedence of motions [see each motion, §§ 10-27] ................... 64 meaning of, (Introduction, page 14.) Presiding Officer. See Chairman. Previous Question .............................................. 20, 58a Principal (or main) question ......................................... 6 Priority of Business, questions relating to are undebatable ......... 35 Privilege, questions of ........................................ 12, 62c Privileged questions ................................................. 9 Putting the question, form of ................................... 38, 67 Questions. See Forms, Motions, Privilege and Order. Quorum, when there is no rule, consists of a majority ............... 43 committees and boards cannot decide upon .......................... 43 Reading of Papers ............................................... 16, 62 Reception of a report. See Committees. Re-commit (same as Commit) ..................................... 22, 56b Reconsider ...................................................... 27, 60 Record, or minutes .............................................. 41, 51 Recording officer. See Clerk. Refer [same as Commit] ......................................... 22, 56b Renewal of a motion ............................................. 26, 60 Reports of committees. See Committees. Rights of assemblies. See Assembly. of ecclesiastical tribunals, p. 159. Rise, motion to, in committee, equals adjourn ................... 11, 32 Rules of debate. See Debate. of Order, amendment of ........................................ 45, 73 of Order, what they should contain ................................ 49 standing, what they should contain ................................ 49 suspension of ................................................ 18, 61c relating to motions, tabular view of p. 166. === Page 176 =========================================================== Seconding, motions that do not require ........................... 3, 67 Secretary. See Clerk. Session [See also Meeting] ...................................... 42, 70 Shall the question be considered (or discussed) ................ 15, 59a Speaking, rules of, See Debate. Special Order ...................................................... 61b Standing Rules ...................................................... 49 Stating a question, form of ..................................... 38, 67 Strike out (see Amendment) ..................................... 23, 56a Subsidiary motions or questions ...................................... 7 Substitute (see Amendment) ..................................... 23, 56a Sum, largest, first put ............................................. 25 Suspension of the rules ........................................ 18, 61c Table of Rules relating to motions, p. 166. Take from the table, motion to ................................. 19, 57b Time, longest, first put ............................................ 25 Treasurer, duties of ................................................ 52 Trial of Members, p. 160. Two-thirds vote, motions requiring .............................. 39, 68 Undebatable Questions ........................................... 35, 66 Unfinished business, effect of adjournment upon ................. 11, 69 its place in the order of business ............................ 44, 72 Vice-Presidents .................................................... 46d Vote, form of announcing [see also Forms] ....................... 38, 54 motions requiring more than a majority ........................ 39, 68 change of, permitted before result is announced ................... 38 Voting, various methods of .......................................... 38 Withdrawal of a motion .......................................... 17, 62 Yeas and Nays, voting by ............................................ 38 Yields, meaning of, (Introduction, page 14.) 
9630	----	PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION A STUDY IN METHODS OF ELECTION BY JOHN H. HUMPHREYS HON. SECRETARY, PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE RT. HON. LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH _First Published in 1911_ TO THE MEMORY OF CATHERINE HELEN SPENCE OF ADELAIDE AN UNWEARIED WORKER IN THE CAUSE OF REAL REPRESENTATION INTRODUCTION BY LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH I believe this book will generally be welcomed as opportune. Proportional Representation has made very rapid, almost startling advances in recent years. In one shape or another it has been adopted in many countries in Northern Europe, and there is a prospect of a most important extension of this adoption in the reform of the parliamentary institutions of France. Among ourselves, every political writer and speaker have got some inkling of the central principle of proportional representation, and not a few feel, sometimes with reluctance, that it has come to stay, that it will indeed be worked into our own system when the inevitable moment arrives for taking up again the reform of the House of Commons. They know and confess so much among themselves, but they want to be familiarized with the best machinery for working proportional representation, and they would not be sorry to have the arguments for and against its principles once more clearly examined so that they may be properly equipped for the reception of the coming change. This little book of Mr. Humphreys is just what they desire. The author has no doubt about his conclusions, but he goes fairly and with quite sufficient fulness through the main branches of the controversy over proportional representation, and he explains the working of an election under the system we must now regard as the one most likely to be adopted among us. His qualifications for his work are indeed rare, and his authority in a corresponding measure high. A convinced adherent of proportional representation, he stimulated the revival of the Society established to promote it. He was the chief organizer of the enlarged illustrative elections we have had at home. He has attended elections in Belgium and again in Sweden, and when the time came for electing Senators in the colonies of South Africa, and Municipal Councils in Johannesburg and Pretoria, the local governments solicited his assistance in conducting them, and put on record their obligations for his help. The reader can have no better guide in argument, no more experienced hand in the explanation of machinery, and if I add that Mr. Humphreys has done his work with complete mastery of his subject and with conspicuous clearness of exposition, I need say no more in recommendation of his book. It may be objected that the Royal Commission which issued its Report last spring, did not recommend the incorporation of proportional representation into our electoral system. This is most true. One member indeed (Lord Lochee) did not shrink from this conclusion, but his colleagues were unable to report that a case had been made out for the adoption "here and now" of proportional representation. Their hesitancy and the reasons they advanced as justifying it must lead many to a conclusion opposite to their own. They themselves are indeed emphatic in pressing the limitation "here and now" as qualifying their verdict. They wish it to be most distinctly understood that they have no irresistible objection to proportional representation. They indeed openly confess that conditions may arise among ourselves at some future time which would appear to be not necessarily distant, when the balance of expediency may turn in favour of its adoption. They suggest "that some need may become felt which can only be satisfied by proportional representation in some form or another," and I do not think I misrepresent their attitude in believing that a very small change of circumstances might suffice to precipitate a reversal of their present conclusion. All who are familiar with the conduct of political controversies must recognize the situation thus revealed. Again and again have proposals of reform been made which the wise could not recommend for acceptance "here and now." They are seen to be good for other folk; they fit into the circumstances of other societies; they may have worked well in climates different from our own; nay, among ourselves they might be tried in some auxiliary fashion separated from the great use for which they have been recommended, but we will wait for the proper moment of their undisguised general acceptance. It is in this way that political ideas have been propagated, and it would be a mistake if we were hastily to condemn what are sure and trusty lines of progress. When the Royal Commissioners, after all their hesitations about the intrusion of proportional representation even in the thinnest of wedges into the House of Commons, go on to say that "there would be much to be said in its favour as a method for the constitution of an elected Second Chamber," and again, though admitting that this was beyond their reference, express a pretty transparent wish that it might be tried in municipal elections, the friends of the principle may well be content with the line which the tide of opinion has reached. The concluding words of this branch of the Report are scarcely necessary for their satisfaction: "We need only add, that should it be decided at any time to introduce proportional representation here for political elections the change would be facilitated if experience had been gained in municipal elections alike by electors and officials." A few words may be permitted in reference to the line of defence advanced by the Commissioners against the inroad of proportional representation. Mr. Humphreys has dealt with this with sufficient fullness in Chapters X and XI which deal with objections to proportional representation; and I refer the reader to what he has written on the general subject. My own comment on the position of the Commissioners must be short. Briefly stated, their position is that proportional representation "cannot be recommended in a political election where the question which party is to govern the country plays a predominant part," and, as elsewhere they put it, "a general election is in fact considered by a large portion of the electorate of this country as practically a referendum on the question which of two governments shall be returned to power." The first remark to be made upon this wonderful barrier is that a general election avowedly cannot be trusted as a true referendum. It produces a balance of members in favour of one party, though even this may fail to be realized at no distant future, but the balance of members may be and has been under our present system in contradiction to the balance of the electors; or in other words, a referendum would answer the vital question which party is to govern, in the opposite sense to the answer given by a general election. This is so frankly admitted in the Report that it is difficult to understand how the Commissioners can recommend adherence to a process which they have proved to be a delusion. Even on the bare question of ascertaining what government the nation desires to see installed at Westminster, the present method is found wanting, whilst the reformed plan, by giving us a reproduction in miniature of the divisions of national opinion, would in the balance of judgment of the microcosm give us the balance of judgment in the nation. If a referendum is really wanted, a general election with single-member constituencies does not give us a secure result, and an election under proportional representation would ensure it. A different question obviously disturbs many minds, to wit, the stability of a government resting on the support of a truly representative assembly. Here again it may be asked whether our present machinery really satisfies conditions of stable equilibrium. We know they are wanting, and with the development of groups among us, they will be found still more wanting. The groups which emerge under existing processes are uncertain in shape, in size, and in their combinations, and governments resting upon them are infirm even when they appear to be strong. It is only when the groups in the legislature represent in faithful proportion bodies of convinced adherents returning them as their representatives that such groups become strong enough to restore parliamentary efficiency and to combine in the maintenance of a stable administration. It may require a little exercise of political imagination to realize how the transformed House of Commons would work, and to many the demonstration will only come through a new experience to which they will be driven through the failure of the existing apparatus. Meanwhile it may be suggested to doubters whether their anxiety respecting the possible working of a reformed House of Commons is not at bottom a distrust of freedom. They are afraid of a House of chartered liberties, whereas they would find the best security for stable and ordered progress in the self-adjustment of an assembly which would be a nation in miniature. COURTNEY OF PENWITH AUTHOR'S NOTE Current constitutional and electoral problems cannot be solved in the absence of a satisfactory method of choosing representatives. An attempt has therefore been made in the present volume to contrast the practical working of various methods of election; of majority systems as exemplified in single-member constituencies and in multi-member constituencies with the block vote; of majority systems modified by the use of the second ballot or of the transferable vote; of the earlier forms of minority representation; and, lastly, of modern systems of proportional representation. Care has been taken to ensure accuracy in the descriptions of the electoral systems in use. The memorandum on the use of the single vote in Japan has been kindly supplied by Mr. Kametaro Hayashida, the Chief Secretary of the Japanese House of Representatives; the description of the Belgian system of proportional representation has been revised by Count Goblet d'Alviella, Secretary of the Belgian Senate; the account of the Swedish system by Major E. von Heidenstam, of Ronneby; that of the Finland system by Dr. J.N. Reuter, of Helsingfors; whilst the chapter on the second ballot and the transferable vote in single-member constituencies is based upon information furnished by correspondents in the countries in which these systems are in force. The statistical analyses of elections in the United Kingdom were prepared by Mr. J. Booke Corbett, of the Manchester Statistical Society, whose figures were accepted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as representing "the truth as correctly as circumstances will permit." The author is greatly indebted to his colleagues of the Proportional Representation Society, Mr. J. Fischer Williams and Mr. Alfred J. Gray, for the cordial assistance rendered by them in the preparation of this book. Acknowledgments are also due to the editors of the _Times_, the _Contemporary Review_, and the _Albany Review_, for permission to make use of contributions to these journals. J.H.H. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE NATIONAL WILL The spread of Representative Government--The House of Commons and sovereign power--The demand for complete sovereignty--Complete sovereignty demands complete representation--Strengthening the foundations of the House of Commons--The rise of a new party--The new political conditions and electoral reform. CHAPTER II THE DIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS The exaggeration of majorities--The disfranchisement of minorities--The under-representation of majorities--A "game of dice"--The importance of boundaries--The "gerrymander"--The modern gerrymander--The "block" vote--The election of the London County Council--The election of aldermen of the London County Council--The election of Representative Peers of Scotland--The Australian Senate--London Borough Councils--Provincial Municipal Councils--Summary. CHAPTER III THE INDIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS False impressions of public opinion--become the basis of legislative action--Loss of prestige by the House of Commons--Unstable representation--Weakened personnel--Degradation of party strife--The "final rally"--Bribery and "nursing"--The organization of victory--Party exclusiveness--Mechanical debates--Disfranchisement of minorities in bi-racial countries--Defective representation in municipal bodies--Wasteful municipal finance--No continuity in administration--The root of the evil. CHAPTER IV THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES The Limited vote--The Cumulative vote--The Single vote--The need of minority representation. CHAPTER V THE SECOND BALLOT AND THE TRANSFERABLE VOTE IN SINGLE-MEMBER CONSTITUENCIES Three-cornered contests--The second ballot--Experience in Germany, Austria, Belgium, France--The bargainings at second ballots in France--The "Kuh-Handel" in Germany--The position of a deputy elected at a second ballot--The Alternative vote--The Alternative or Contingent vote in Queensland, in West Australia--Mr. Deakin's failure to carry the Alternative vote--Probable effect of the Alternative vote in England--The Alternative vote not a solution of the problem of three-cornered contests. CHAPTER VI PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION The essential features of a sound electoral method--Constituencies returning several members--Proportional representation of the electors--Experience in Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, German States, France, Holland, Finland, Sweden, Australasia, South Africa, Canada, Oregon, The United Kingdom--The success of proportional representation in practice--An election by miners. CHAPTER VII THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE Its present application--An English movement--The system in brief--Large constituencies--The single vote--The vote made transferable--How votes are transferred--The quota--A simple case--The transfer of surplus votes--The elimination of the lowest unelected candidate--The result--Different methods of transferring surplus votes: The Hare method--The Hare-Clark method--The Gregory method--The Gove or Dobbs method--The Model election of 1908--The counting of votes: general arrangements--The first count--The quota--The transfer of surplus votes--The elimination of unsuccessful candidates--The fairness of the result--Improved arrangements in the Transvaal elections--Criticisms of the single transferable vote--Effect of late preferences--Elimination of candidates at the bottom of the poll--Quota representation the basis of the system. CHAPTER VIII LIST SYSTEMS OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. The Belgian electoral system--The Franchise--Compulsory voting--Partial renewal of Chamber--The presentation of lists--The act of voting--The allotment of seats to parties--The selection of the successful candidates--A Belgian election, Ghent, 1908: the poll--The counting of the votes--The final process--Public opinion favourable to the system--The relation of the Belgian to other list systems--The different methods of apportioning seats to lists--Criticism of the d'Hondt rule--The formation of Cartels--The different methods of selecting successful candidates--Panachage--The single vote and _case de tête_--The limited and cumulative vote--Special characteristics of Swedish and Finnish systems. CHAPTER IX A COMPARISON OF LIST SYSTEMS WITH THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE The influence of previous conditions--Party the basis of representation in a list system--The freedom of the elector within the party--Comparative accuracy--Panachage--Applicability to non-political elections--Bye-elections--Relative simplicity of scrutiny. CHAPTER X PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND PARTY GOVERNMENT Proportional representation and the two-party system--Burke's view of party and party discipline--Narrow basis fatal to a large party--Proportional representation and party discipline--"Free questions" in Japan--The formation of groups--The formation of an executive--A check on partisan legislation--Unlike the referendum, proportional representation will strengthen the House of Commons--Proportional representation facilitates legislation desired by the nation--Proportional representation in Standing Committees--Taking off the Whips--New political conditions. CHAPTER XI OBJECTIONS TO PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION The question of practicability--The elector's task--The returning officer's task--Time required for counting the votes--Fads and sectional interests--The representation of localities--The member and his constituents--Objections of party agents--Alleged difficulties in the organization of elections--Alleged increase of cost--The accuracy of representation--Summary. CHAPTER XII THE KEY TO ELECTORAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM Electoral problems awaiting solution--Simplification of the franchise--Redistribution--Should be automatic--Secures neither one vote one value nor true representation--The problem simplified by proportional representation--The case of Ireland--Three-cornered contests--Partial adoption of proportional representation not desirable--Proportional representation and democratic principles --Constitutional reform--Federal Home Rule--Imperial Federation --Conclusion. APPENDICES APPENDIX I THE JAPANESE ELECTORAL SYSTEM--THE SINGLE NON-TRANSFERABLE VOTE Failure of single-member system--Multi-member constituencies: Single Vote adopted 1900--Equitable results--The new system and party organization--The position of independents--Public opinion and the new system. APPENDIX II THE SECOND BALLOT: A NOTE ON THE GERMAN GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 1903 AND 1907 The effect of unequal constituencies on representation--The effect of second ballots--Second ballots and the swing of the pendulum--The second ballot and the representation of minorities--Summary. APPENDIX III THE SWEDISH SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION The former constitution of the two Chambers--The struggle for electoral reform--The Swedish law of 1909--The Swedish system of proportional representation--The allotment of seats to parties--The selection of the successful candidates--Free voters and double candidatures--An election at Carlskrona--The poll--The allotment of seats to parties--The selection of the successful candidates--The election of suppliants--Comparison with Belgian system--The system and party organization--The great improvement effected by the Swedish system. APPENDIX IV THE FINLAND SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION The influence of the Belgian system--Schedules and "compacts" in place of lists--An election in Nyland--Returning officer's task--The allotment of seats--Successful candidates in the Nyland election--Equitable results--Elector's freedom of choice. APPENDIX V STATISTICS OF THE GENERAL ELECTIONS, 1885-1910 Explanatory notes--The representation of minorities. APPENDIX VI PREFERENTIAL VOTING: THE TRANSFER OF SUPERFLUOUS VOTES I. The element of chance involved: Its magnitude. II. Method of eliminating the chance element--Example. APPENDIX VII THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: SCHEDULE TO MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATION BILL, 1910 APPENDIX VIII THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: SCHEDULE TO TASMANIAN ELECTORAL ACT, 1907 APPENDIX IX THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE: REGULATIONS FOR THE ELECTION OF SENATORS UNDER THE SOUTH AFRICA ACT, 1909 APPENDIX X LIST SYSTEM: BILL PRESENTED TO THE FRENCH CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, 1907 APPENDIX XI LIST SYSTEM: LAW ADOPTED BY THE CANTON OF BÂLE TOWN, 1905 INDEX "The object of our deliberation is to promote the good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences." --BURKE CHAPTER I THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE NATIONAL WILL "The virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons, consists in its being the express image of the nation."--BURKE. "It is necessary," said Burke, "to resort to the theory of government whenever you propose any alteration in the frame of it, whether that alteration means the revival of some former antiquated and forsaken constitution or state, or the introduction of some new improvement in the commonwealth." The following chapters are a plea for an improvement in our electoral methods, and although the suggested improvement and the arguments with which it is supported are not new, yet it is desirable, in the spirit of Burke's declaration, to preface the plea with some reference to the main feature of our constitution. _The spread of representative government_. The outstanding characteristic of the British Constitution, its fundamental principle, is now, if not fully so in Burke's time, the government of the nation by its chosen representatives. Indeed, so much is this the case that, in spite of the continued presence of elements which are far from representative in character, originating in that distant past when commoners had little, if any, political influence, the British Constitution and Representative Government are almost synonymous terms, and the "mother of parliaments" has given birth to so long a succession of constitutions of which the cardinal principle is representative government--the association of the governed with the government--that we cannot now think of our House of Commons save as the most complete expression of this principle. Nor, despite the criticisms, many of them fully deserved, which have been directed against the working of parliamentary institutions, has the House of Commons ceased to be taken in other lands as a model to be reproduced in general outline. New parliaments continue to arise and in the most unexpected quarters. China is insistently demanding the immediate realisation of full representative government. Japan has not only assimilated western learning, but has adopted western representative institutions, and in copying our electoral machinery has added improvements of her own. Russia has established a parliament which, although not at present elected upon a democratic basis, must inevitably act as a powerful check upon autocracy, and in the process will assuredly seek that increased authority which comes from a more complete identification with the people. The Reichstag has demanded the cessation of the personal rule of the German Emperor, and will not be content until, in the nation's name, it exercises a more complete control over the nation's affairs. Parliamentary government was recently established at Constantinople amid the plaudits of the whole civilized world, and although the new régime has not fulfilled all the hopes formed of it, yet upon its continuance depends the maintenance of the improvements already effected in Turkey. Lord Morley signalized his tenure of office as Secretary of State for India by reforms that make a great advance in the establishment of representative institutions. Some of these experiments may be regarded as premature, but in the case of civilized nations there would appear to be no going back; for them there is no alternative to democracy, and if representative institutions have not yielded so far all the results that were expected of them, progress must be sought in an improvement of these institutions rather than in a return to earlier conditions. The only criticism, therefore, of the House of Commons that is of practical value must deal with those defects which experience has disclosed, and with those improvements in its organization and composition which are essential if in the future it is to discharge efficiently and adequately its primary function of giving effect to the national will. _The House of Commons and sovereign power._ "The essential property of representative government," says Professor Dicey, "is to produce coincidence between the wishes of the Sovereign and the wishes of the subject.... This, which is true in its measure of all real representative government applies with special truth to the English House of Commons." [1] This conception of the House of Commons as the central and predominant factor in the constitution, exercising sovereign power because it represents the nation which it governs, has been notably strengthened during the last fifty years. A change having far-reaching consequences took place in 1861, when the repeal of the paper duties was effected by a clause in the annual Bill providing for the necessary reimposition of annual duties, a proceeding which deprived the Lords of the opportunity of defeating the new proposal other than by rejecting the whole of the measure of which it formed a part. This example has since been followed by both the great parties of the State. Sir William Harcourt embodied extensive changes in the Death Duties in the Finance Bill of 1894; Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in 1899, included proposals for altering the permanent provisions made for the reduction of the National Debt; Mr. Lloyd George, following these precedents, included in the Finance Bill of 1909 important new taxes which, prior to 1861, would have been submitted to both Houses in the form of separate Bills. The House of Commons, however, has not yet attained the position of full unqualified sovereignty, for, whilst the relations between the King and the Commons have been harmonised by making the King's Ministry dependent upon that House, the decisions of the House of Lords are not yet subject to the same control. The Lords successfully rejected the Education, Licensing, and Plural Voting Bills, all of which were passed by the Commons by large majorities during the Parliament of 1906-1909. Further, it refused its consent to the Finance Bill of 1909 until the measure had been submitted to the judgment of the country, and by this action compelled a dissolution of Parliament.[2] _The demand for complete sovereignty._ These assertions of authority on the part of the House of Lords called forth from the Commons a fresh demand for complete sovereignty--a demand based on the ground that the House of Commons expresses the will of the people, and that the rejection by the hereditary House of measures desired by the nation's representatives is directly opposed to the true principles of representative government. In consequence of the rejection of the Education and Plural Voting Bills of 1906, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in June 1907, moved in the House of Commons the following resolution: "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House, should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limit of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail." The first clause of this resolution advances the claim already referred to--that the House of Commons is the representative and authoritative expression of the national will--and in support of this claim Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman quoted the declaration of Burke, that "the virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the nation." In the Parliament elected in January 1910, further resolutions were carried by the Commons defining more precisely the proposed limitation of the legislative power of the Lords. It was resolved[3] that the House of Lords should be disabled by law from rejecting or amending a money Bill, and that any Bill other than a money Bill which had passed the House of Commons in three successive sessions should become law without the consent of the House of Lords. These resolutions were embodied in the Parliament Bill, but the measure was not proceeded with owing to the death of King Edward, and a conference between the leaders of the two chief parties met for the purpose of finding a settlement of the controversy by consent. The conference failed, and the Government at once took steps to appeal to the country for a decision in support of its proposals. Meanwhile the House of Lords, which had already placed on record its opinion that the possession of a peerage should no longer confer the right to legislate, carried resolutions outlining a scheme for a new Second Chamber, and proposing that disputes between the two Houses should be decided by joint sessions, or, in matters of great gravity, by means of a Referendum. The result of the appeal to the country (Dec. 1910) was in favour of the Government. The Parliament Bill was re-introduced, and this measure, if passed, will mark an important step in the realisation of the demand of the Commons for complete sovereignty. _Complete sovereignty demands complete representation._ The Parliament Bill does not, however, contemplate the establishment of single-chamber Government, and it would appear that complete sovereignty is only claimed whilst the House of Lords is based upon the hereditary principle. For the preamble of the Bill declares that "it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis," and that "provision will require hereafter to be made by Parliament in a measure effecting such substitution for limiting and defining the powers of the new Second Chamber." But whatever constitutional changes may take place, the national will must remain the final authority in legislation, and the ultimate position of the House of Commons in the constitution and in public esteem will depend upon the confidence with which it can be regarded as giving expression to that will. It cannot claim to be the sole authority for legislation without provoking searching inquiries into the methods of election by which it is brought into being. At a General Election the citizens are asked to choose representatives who shall have full power to speak in their name on all questions which may arise during the lifetime of a Parliament. But, although invariably there are several important questions before the country awaiting decision, the elector is usually restricted in his choice to two candidates, and it is obvious that this limited choice affords him a most inadequate opportunity of giving expression to his views upon the questions placed before him. There can be no guarantee that the decisions of representatives so chosen are always in agreement with the wishes of those who elected them. Even in the General Election of December 1910, when every effort was made to concentrate public attention upon one problem--the relations between the two Houses of Parliament--the elector in giving his vote had to consider the probable effect of his choice upon many other questions of first-class importance--the constitution of a new Second Chamber, Home Rule for Ireland, the maintenance of Free Trade, the establishment of an Imperial Preference, Electoral Reform, the reversal or modification of the Osborne Judgment, Payment of Members, Invalidity Insurance; in respect of all of which legislative proposals might possibly be submitted to the new Parliament. Obviously before the House of Commons can be regarded with complete confidence as the expression of the national will, the elector must be given a wider and more effective choice in the selection of a representative. It is, however, contended by many politicians that the main object of a General Election is not the creation of a legislature which shall give expression to the views of electors on public questions. "A General Election," says the Report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems,[4] "is in fact considered by a large portion of the electorate as practically a referendum on the question which of two Governments shall be returned to power." But were this interpretation of a General Election accepted it would destroy the grounds on which it is claimed that the decisions of the Commons in respect of legislation shall prevail "within the limit of a single Parliament." Some means should be available for controlling the Government in respect of its legislative proposals, and the history of the Unionist administrations of 1895-1906, during which the House of Lords failed to exercise any such control, demonstrated the need of a check upon the action of a House of Commons elected under present conditions. Mr. John M. Robertson, whose democratic leanings are not open to the least suspicion, has commented in this sense upon the lack of confidence in the representative character of the House of Commons. "Let me remind you," said he, "that the state of things in which the Progressive party can get in on a tidal movement of political feeling with a majority of 200, causes deep misgivings in the minds of many electors.... Those who desire an effective limitation of the power of the House of Lords and its ultimate abolition, are bound to offer to the great mass of prudent electors some measure of electoral reform which will give greater stability to the results of the polls, and will make the results at a General Election more in keeping with the actual balance of opinion in the country." [5] The preamble of the Parliament Bill itself implies that the decisions of the House of Commons may not always be in accordance with the national wishes. It foreshadows the creation of a new Second Chamber, and the only purpose which this chamber can serve is to make good the deficiencies of the First. The fact that our electoral methods are so faulty that their results produce in the minds of many electors deep misgivings as to the representative character of the House of Commons must materially undermine the authority of that House. All who desire the final and complete triumph of representative institutions--a triumph that depends upon their success in meeting the demands made upon them--all who are anxious that the House of Commons shall not only maintain, but increase, the prestige that has hitherto been associated with it, must, in the face of possible constitutional developments, endeavour to strengthen its position by making it in fact, as it is in theory, fully representative of the nation. For Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's quotation from Burke is double-edged, and may be expressed thus: "the virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons departs as soon as it ceases to be the express image of the nation." Such a House cannot furnish an adequate basis of support for a Government. For the Government which issues from it will not command public confidence. The debates in the House in 1905, before the resignation of Mr. Balfour, bore testimony to the fact that the strength and power of a Government which, according to the theory of our constitution, depends upon the number of its supporters in the House of Commons, in reality rests upon its reputation with the country. There was quoted more than once with excellent effect this dictum of Sir William Anson: "Ministers are not only the servants of the Crown, they represent the public opinion of the United Kingdom. When they cease to impersonate public opinion they become a mere group of personages who must stand or fall by the prudence and success of their actions. They have to deal with disorders at home or hostile manifestations abroad; they would have to meet these with the knowledge that they had not the confidence or support of the country; and their opponents at home and abroad would know this too." [6] The strength and stability of a democratic Government thus depend upon its capacity to interpret the will of the country, and the support which the House of Commons can give is of value only to the extent to which that House reflects national opinion. The Commons, if it is to maintain unimpaired its predominant position in the constitution, must make good its claim to be the representative expression of the national will. The measures for which it makes itself responsible must have behind them that irresistible authority, the approval of the electorate. If then our electoral methods fail to yield a fully representative House, and if, in consequence, the House cannot satisfactorily fulfil its double function of affording an adequate basis of support to the Government which springs from it, and of legislating in accordance with the nation's wishes, the resultant dissatisfaction and instability must give rise to a demand for their improvement. The House of Commons must re-establish itself upon surer foundations. _Strengthening the foundations of the House of Commons._ Each change in the constitution of the House of Commons--and its foundations have been strengthened on more than one occasion--has been preceded by a recognition of its failure to meet in full the requirements of a representative chamber. Large changes have again and again been made in consequence of such recognition since the day when Burke alleged that its virtue lay in its being "the express image of the nation." At the close of the eighteenth century, when these words were spoken, it could be alleged with apparent truth that 306 members were virtually returned by the influence of 160 persons.[7] The consciousness that such a House could not be the express image of the nation produced the Reform Bill of 1832, and a further recognition that a still larger number of the governed must be associated with the Government, produced the further changes of 1867 and of 1884, embodied in measures significantly called Acts for the Representation of the People. These changes, by conferring the franchise upon an ever-widening circle of citizens, have, from one point of view, rendered the House of Commons more fully representative of the nation at large. But even whilst the process of extending the franchise was still in operation, it was recognized that such extensions were not in themselves sufficient to create a House of Commons that could claim to be a true expression of the national will. The test of a true system of representation, laid down by Mill in _Representative Government_, has never been successfully challenged. It still remains the last word upon the subject, and, until the House of Commons satisfies that test with reasonable approximation, it will always be open to the charge that it is not fully representative, and that in consequence its decisions lack the necessary authority. "In a really equal democracy," runs the oft-quoted phrase, "any and every section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of the electors would always have a majority of the representatives; but a minority of electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully represented as the majority." [8] Mill's philosophy finds but little favour in many quarters of political activity to-day, and the rejection of his philosophy has induced many to regard his views on representative government as of little value. Even so staunch an admirer as Lord Morley of Blackburn has underestimated the importance of Mill's declaration, for, in a recent appreciation of the philosopher[9] he declared that Mill "was less successful in dealing with parliamentary machinery than in the infinitely more important task of moulding and elevating popular character, motives, ideals, and steady respect for truth, equity and common sense--things that matter a vast deal more than machinery." Yet Lord Morley, in his attempt to make a beginning with representative institutions in India, found that questions of electoral machinery were of the first importance; that they, indeed, constituted his chief difficulty; and he was compelled in adjusting the respective claims of Hindus and Muhammadans to have recourse to Mill's famous principle--the due representation of minorities. Mill, as subsequent chapters will show, understood what Lord Morley seems to have insufficiently recognized, that the development or repression of growth in popular character, motives and ideals, nay, the successful working of representative institutions themselves, depends in a very considerable degree upon electoral machinery. Its importance increases with every fresh assertion of democratic principles, and the constitutional issues raised during the Parliaments of 1906, 1910, and 1911 must involve a revision of our electoral methods before a complete solution is attained. The demand on the part of the House of Commons for complete sovereignty must evoke a counter demand that that House shall make itself fully representative. _The rise of a new party._ But the relations which should subsist between the two Houses of Parliament, whether the upper House is reformed or not, is not the only question which is giving rise to a closer examination of the foundations of the House of Commons. To this external difficulty there must be added the internal, and in the future a more pressing, problem created by the rise of a new organized party within the House of Commons itself. The successive extensions of the franchise have given birth to new political forces which are not content to give expression to their views along the old channels of the two historic parties, and the growth of the Labour Party must accelerate the demand for a more satisfactory electoral method. For a system which fails in many respects to meet the requirements of two political parties cannot possibly do justice to the claims of three parties to fair representation in the House of Commons. It is true that some statesmen regard the rise of a new party with fear and trembling; they imagine that it forebodes the bankruptcy of democratic institutions, the success of which, in their judgment, is necessarily bound up with the maintenance of the two-party system. The two-party system must indeed be a plant of tender growth if it depends for existence upon the maintenance of antiquated electoral methods. But those politicians who deprecate any change on the ground that single-member constituencies afford the only means by which the two-party system can be preserved, have failed to explain why this electoral system has not prevented the growth of Labour parties in Australia and in England, or why numerous parties and single-member constituencies go hand in hand both in France and Germany. Single-member constituencies may distort and falsify the representation of parties, but they cannot prevent the coming of a new party if that party is the outcome, the expression, of a new political force. _The new political conditions and electoral reform._ Why should the rise of a new party cause so much uneasiness? Can democracy make no use of that increased diffusion of political intelligence from which springs these new political movements? Mr. Asquith takes no such pessimistic view. He, least, realises that our present system is not necessarily the final stage in the development of representative government. He does not imagine that, whilst we welcome progress in all things else, we must at all costs adhere to the electoral methods which have done duty in the past. Speaking at St. Andrews, 19 February 1906, he declared that: "It was infinitely to the advantage of the House of Commons, if it was to be a real reflection and mirror of the national mind, that there should be no strain of opinion honestly entertained by any substantial body of the King's subjects which should not find there representation and speech. No student of political development could have supposed that we should always go along in the same old groove, one party on one side and another party on the other side, without the intermediate ground being occupied, as it was in every other civilized country, by groups and factions having special ideas and interests of their own. If real and genuine and intelligent opinion was more split up than it used to be, and if we could not now classify everybody by the same simple process, we must accept the new conditions and adapt our machinery to them, our party organization, our representative system, and the whole scheme and form of our government." This is not a chance saying, standing by itself, for a fortnight later, speaking at Morley, Mr. Asquith added: "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." Mr. Asquith's statements take cognizance of the fact that a great divergence between the theoretical and actual composition of the House of Commons must make for instability, and his pronouncement is an emphatic reinforcement of the arguments contained in the earlier portion of this chapter. On a more important occasion, when replying to an influential deputation of members of Parliament and others,[10] Mr. Asquith, with all the responsibility which attaches to the words of a Prime Minister, made this further statement: "I have said in public before now, and am therefore only repeating an opinion which I have never ceased to hold, namely, that there can be no question in the mind of any one familiar with the actual operation of our constitutional system that it permits, and I might say that it facilitates--but it certainly permits--a minority of voters, whether in the country at large or in particular constituencies, to determine the representation--the relative representation in the one case of the whole nation, and the actual representation in the other case of the particular constituency--sometimes in defiance of the opinions and wishes of the majority of the electors. The moment you have stated that as a fact which cannot be disputed, and it cannot be contradicted by any one, you have pointed out a flaw of a most serious character, and some might say of an almost fatal character, when your constitutional and Parliamentary system appears at the bar of judgment upon the issue whether or not it does from the democratic point of view really carry out the first principles of representative government. I therefore agree that it is impossible to defend the rough and ready method which has been hitherto adopted as a proper or satisfactory explanation of the representative principle. It is not merely, as more than one speaker has pointed out, that under our existing system a minority in the country may return a majority of the House of Commons, but what more frequently happens, and what I am disposed to agree is equally injurious in its results, is that you have almost always a great disproportion in the relative size of the majority and minority in the House of Commons as compared with their relative size in the constituencies. That is the normal condition of our House of Commons. I have had experience of some of the inconveniences which result." In speaking at Burnley in support of the Parliament Bill during the electoral campaign of December 1910, Mr. Asquith again laid stress upon the need of making the House of Commons fully representative. "It is," he said, "an essential and integral feature of our policy ... that we shall go forward with the task of making the House of Commons not only the mouthpiece but the mirror of the national mind." There can be no doubt that the question of electoral methods must now occupy a prominent place in all discussions which centre around the purpose, efficiency and authority of the House of Commons. John Bright, in addressing the people of Birmingham, on the eve of an election, exhorted them to "bear in mind that you are going to make a machine more important than any that is made in the manufactories of Birmingham ... a stupendous machine whose power no man can measure." [11] Can we afford in the manufacture of such a machine to be content with rough and ready methods of election? Accuracy and precision are being demanded with ever-increasing force in all other departments of human activity; on what grounds then can we in the most delicate of all--that of government--refuse to recognize their value? The necessity of ensuring the predominance of the House of Commons in our constitutional system, the problem created by the rise of the Labour Party, the increased recognition of the need of reform, cannot but contribute to one result. The House of Commons will make itself more fully representative by the adoption of more trustworthy electoral methods, and in so doing will not only increase its stability and efficiency, but will render its constitutional position impregnable. The indispensable preliminaries to any such change are, in the first place, an analysis of the results, both direct and indirect, of existing methods and, in the second place, a careful comparison of the improvements possible. The subsequent chapters will be devoted to both these aspects of the problem, for in the elucidation of the system most suited to British conditions, the experience of those countries which, faced with the necessity for change, have already introduced new methods into their electoral systems, will be found to be of the highest value. [Footnote 1: _The Law of the Constitution_, p. 81.] [Footnote 2: Our constitution is an ever-changing one, and had the country endorsed the action of the Lords in withholding its assent to the Finance Bill of 1909, a great blow would have been dealt to the authority of the House of Commons. The Fabian Society, in its Manifesto to members, issued on the eve of the election of January 1910, put this aspect of the case very forcibly: "It may justly be claimed by the Socialists that they have steadily refused to be misled by idle talk about what is and what is not constitutional, and have recognized that the only real constitution is the sum of the powers that are effectively exercised in the country. If the House of Lords boldly refuses supply and compels a dissolution, and the country, at the election, supports the Lords, that support will make the action of the Lords constitutional in spite of all paper denunciations by the defeated party" (_Fabian News_, January 1910). The verdict of the country, as interpreted by the present mode of election, condemned the action of the Lords by a substantial majority. Yet the figures in Chap. II. p. 19, show by how small a turnover of votes that judgment might have been reversed.] [Footnote 3: 14 April 1910.] [Footnote 4: Cd. 5163, par. 126.] [Footnote 5: Manchester Reform Club, 2 February 1909.] [Footnote 6: _The Law and Custom of the Constitution,_ p. 372.] [Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 124.] [Footnote 8: _Representative Government_, Chap. VII.] [Footnote 9: _The Times_, Literary Supplement, 18 May 1906.] [Footnote 10: 10 November 1908.] [Footnote 11: Thomas Hare, _The Election of Representatives_, p. 18] CHAPTER II THE DIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS "I therefore agree that it is impossible to defend the rough and ready method which has been hitherto adopted as a proper or satisfactory explanation of the representative principle. It is not merely, as more than one speaker has pointed out, that under our existing system a minority in the country may return a majority of the House of Commons, but what more frequently happens, and what I am disposed to agree is equally injurious in its results, is that you have almost always a great disproportion in the relative size of the majority and minority in the House of Commons as compared with their relative size in the constituencies." --THE RIGHT HON. H.H. ASQUITH[1] "English writers," says Mr. Archibald E. Dobbs, in the _Irish Year Book_, 1909, "often write as if election by a bare majority was the only natural or possible mode of election, as if it was like day and night, seedtime and harvest; something fixed and in the nature of things, and not to be questioned or examined or improved." The unquestioning habit of our minds goes even farther than Mr. Dobbs suggests. For, although prior to the Redistribution Act of 1885, every great town in the United Kingdom, with the exception of London, was a parliamentary unit, yet the system of single-member constituencies made general by that Act is now regarded by many as another essential and permanent feature of the English parliamentary system. But if, as this chapter proposes to show, existing electoral methods may result, and have resulted, in a complete travesty of representation, if these methods fail in every respect to fulfil the requirements of a satisfactory electoral system, then neither single-member constituencies nor the majority method of election can be permitted to stand permanently in the way of effective improvement. _The exaggeration of majorities._ Since the Redistribution Act of 1885, when the system of single-member constituencies was made general, there have been eight General Elections, and these are amply sufficient to illustrate the working of this system. A complete analysis of these elections, prepared by Mr. J. Rooke Corbett, M.A., of the Manchester Statistical Society, appears in Appendix V.[2] It will be sufficient for present purposes if attention is directed to some of the more obvious of their lessons. The General Elections of 1895, 1900, and 1906, resulted in the return to the House of Commons of a number of representatives of the victorious party far in excess of that to which their polling strength entitled them, and this result, repeated three times in succession, has given rise to a widespread belief that this system necessarily and always yields to the victors an exaggerated majority. There is, however, no clear conception of the extent to which these exaggerated majorities diverge from the truth, and an examination of the figures is therefore desirable. Here are the totals for the General Elections of 1900 and 1906:[3]-- GENERAL ELECTION, 1900 Parties. Votes Seats Seats in Obtained. Obtained. proportion to Votes. Unionists 2,548,736 402 343 Home Rulers 2,391,319 268 327 Majorities 157,417 134 16 GENERAL ELECTION, 1906 Parties. Votes Seats Seats in Obtained. Obtained. proportion to Votes. Ministerialists 3,395,811 513 387 Unionists 2,494,794 157 283 Majorities 901,017 356 104 It will be seen that in the General Election of 1900 the Unionists obtained a majority of 134, but that if parties had been represented in proportion to their polling strength this majority would have been 16, whilst the majority of 356 obtained at the General Election of 1906 by the Ministerialists (in which term, for the purposes of comparison, all members of the Liberal, Labour and Nationalist parties are included) would, under similar conditions, have been a majority of 104 only. The very important change in public opinion disclosed by the polls at the second of these elections was not nearly sufficient to justify the enormous displacement that took place in the relative party strengths within the House of Commons. The extent of the possible displacement in representation may be more fully realised from a consideration of the figures for Great Britain, for the representation of Ireland, where parliamentary conditions have become stereotyped, is but little affected at any election. An increase in the Liberal vote from 2,073,116 to 3,093,978--an increase of 50 per cent.--resulted in a change in the number of representatives from 186 to 428, an increase of 130 per cent., whilst a decrease in the Conservative vote from 2,402,740 to 2,350,086--a decline of little more than 2 per cent.--resulted in a reduction in representation from 381 to 139 members, a decline of 63 per cent. The displacement was even more pronounced in London, where the number of Liberal members rose from 8 to 40, and the number of Conservative members fell from 52 to 20. The violence of these changes was attributed to a similar change on the part of the electors, but it was much more largely due to an electoral method that exaggerates any changes in public opinion beyond all reason. If, however, the results--not of two but of the eight General Elections, 1885-1910--are considered it will be seen that the current belief, that the single-member system invariably yields a large majority, rests on a very precarious foundation. The General Election of 1892, for example, gave to the Liberals (inclusive of the Nationalists) a majority of 44 only. In England (which, excluding Wales and Monmouth, returns 461 members) the Conservatives in 1895 and 1900 had majorities of 233 and 213; in 1906 the Liberals had a majority of 207; but in the elections of January and December 1910, the Conservatives had on each occasion a majority of 17 only. If Wales and Monmouth are included, it will be found that in the 1910 elections the Liberal majorities were 13 and 11 respectively. Single-member constituencies do not therefore guarantee large majorities. It can with greater truth be said that they guarantee wrong majorities, for, as the following table shows, there is no constant relation between the size of the majority in votes and the size of the majority in seats:-- General Election. Majority in Seats. Majority in Votes. 1885 Liberal 158 Liberal 564,391 1886 Conservative 104 Liberal 54,817 1892 Liberal 44 Liberal 190,974 1895 Conservative 150 Conservative 117,473 1900 Conservative 134 Conservative 157,417 1906 Liberal 356 Liberal 901,017 1910 (Jan.) Liberal 124 Liberal 495,683 1910 (Dec.) Liberal 126 Liberal 355,945 The majority of 44 seats which the Liberals obtained in 1892 represented a majority of 190,974 votes, whereas a much smaller Conservative majority at the polls, viz., 117,473, yielded in 1895 a majority in seats of 150. The overwhelming victory of 1895 represented the very slender majority of 117,473 votes in a total of 4,841,769, whilst at the next election, 1900, when the Conservatives increased their majority at the polls, their majority in the House of Commons was reduced. The Liberal majority in votes in the election of December 1910 was smaller than in that of the preceding January, but not the majority in seats. In 1886, the Conservatives obtained the large majority of 104 without having any majority in votes, and, if England is taken alone, it will be found that in January 1910 the Liberals had a majority of 29,877 in votes, and that in December the Conservatives had a majority of 31,744, whereas on each occasion the Conservatives obtained a majority of 17 seats. _The disfranchisement of minorities._ Politicians, to whom the one great saving merit of the single-member system is that it yields an exaggerated majority to the victors, would, if pressed, find it very difficult to defend the results referred to in the preceding paragraphs, and would be even more at a loss if asked to state to what extent they considered that national opinion should be falsified. The most ardent defenders of the system would hardly deny the right of the minority to some representation, and it is worthy of note that one of the reasons advanced by Mr. Gladstone in support of his decision to adopt it was that such a system tended to secure representation for minorities.[4] Yet, as prophesied in the debates of 1885, the minorities in the South and West of Ireland have since that date been permanently disfranchised; in the eight Parliaments, 1885-1911, they have been entirely without representation. This continued injustice is in itself sufficient to show how baseless was Mr. Gladstone's assumption that the system of single member constituencies would secure representation for minorities. This example, however, does not stand alone. In the General Election of 1906 the Unionists of Wales contested 17 constituencies, and although at the polls they numbered 52,637, they failed to secure a member; their 91,620 Liberal opponents secured the whole of the representation allotted to those constituencies. In addition the Liberals obtained the thirteen seats which the Unionists did not challenge. The minority throughout Wales, numbering 36 per cent, of the electors, had no spokesman in the House of Commons. This result shows how completely a system of single-member constituencies fails to protect minorities, and an analysis of the votes cast in Scotland in 1910, both in January and December, reveals the fact that the Unionist minority only escaped by the narrowest of margins the fate which befel the Welsh Unionists in 1906. The figures speak for themselves:-- SCOTLAND (Boroughs and Counties, January 1910) Parties. Votes. Seats Seats in Obtained. proportion to Votes. Liberal 352,334 59 38 Labour and Socialist 35,997 2 4 Unionist 255,589 9 28 Totals 643,920 70 70 Every Scottish Unionist member of Parliament represented on an average 28,400 voters, whilst a Liberal member represented less than 6000 voters. The figures repay still further examination. One of the Unionist seats--the Camlachie division of Glasgow--was only captured as the result of a split in the Ministerialist ranks. The other eight seats were won by majorities ranging from 41 to 874, amounting in the aggregate to 3156. If therefore in these constituencies some 1600 Unionist voters had changed sides, the Unionist party, though numbering more than a quarter of a million, or 40 per cent. of the electorate, might have failed to secure any representation at all. With the single-member system more than a quarter of a million of Scottish Unionists only obtained representation as it were by accident. In the same election the Liberals in the counties of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent, numbering 134,677, found themselves without a representative.[5] _The underrepresentation of majorities._ The failure of existing electoral methods to provide representation for minorities not only unduly emphasizes racial and other differences between different parts of the same country, as in Ireland, but often leads to a complete falsification of public opinion. The results in Birmingham and Manchester in the election of 1906 may serve as a text. As a result of that election these two towns were represented in Parliament as being absolutely opposed to one another--a heightened contrast which was a pure caricature of the difference disclosed by the polls. Manchester (including Salford) returned nine Ministerialists; they were elected by the votes of 51,721 citizens, whilst the votes of their 33,907 political opponents counted for nothing. Manchester was solid for Liberalism. Birmingham (with Aston Manor) was represented by eight Unionist members elected by 51,658 citizens, but here again the polls disclosed a dissentient minority of 22,938. The total number of votes in Manchester was 85,628, and in Birmingham 74,596. Manchester (with Salford) has one more member than Birmingham (with Aston Manor), because of the larger population and electorate of the former area. The Ministerialists of Manchester and Salford were equal in number to the Unionists in Birmingham, and it is interesting to observe that the former obtained additional representation because their opponents were more numerous than were the opponents of the Unionists in Birmingham. The combined results of these two districts disclose the crowning weakness of a system of single-member constituencies. Taken together the Unionists numbered 85,565, the Ministerialists 74,659, and if the net Unionist majority of 10,906 had been spread over the whole of the two areas it would have yielded in each constituency the very respectable majority of 640. If their voting power had been evenly diffused the Unionists might have won the whole of the seventeen seats, whereas they were, as a result of the election, in a minority of one. This possible inversion of the true opinion of the electorate may perhaps be more clearly understood from another example taken from the same election,--the results of the polls in the county divisions of Warwickshire. WARWICKSHIRE (ELECTION, 1906) Electoral Conservative Liberal Conservative Liberal Division Votes. Votes. Majority. Majority. Tamworth 7,561 4,842 2,719 -- Nuneaton 5,849 7,677 -- 1,828 Rugby 4,907 5,181 -- 274 Stratford-on-Avon 4,173 4,321 -- 148 ------------------------------------------- 22,490 22,021 469 The Conservatives, who were in a majority of 469, obtained one-fourth of the representation allotted to the county. Similar examples can be given from nearly every election. Thus the figures for the five divisions of Sheffield in the election of December 1910 were as follows:-- SHEFFIELD (ELECTION, DECEMBER 1910) Electoral Ministerial Unionist Ministerial Unionist Division Votes. Votes. Majority. Majority. Attercliffe 6,532 5,354 1,178 -- Brightside 5,766 3,902 1,864 -- Central 3,271 3,455 -- 184 Eccleshall 5,849 6,039 -- 190 Hallam 5,593 5,788 -- 195 ------------------------------------------- 27,011 24,538 2,473 It will be seen that the Ministerial majority in each of the Attercliffe and Brightside divisions was larger than the aggregate of the Unionist majorities in the other three divisions; yet the Unionists obtained three seats out of five. In the same election the result of the contested seats in London (including Croydon and West Ham) was as follows:-- Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained. Unionist . . . . . . 268,127 29 Ministerialist . . . . 243,722 31 The Unionists were in a majority of 24,405, but only obtained a minority of the seats. Had their majority been uniformly distributed throughout London there would have been an average majority for the Unionists of 400 in every constituency, and in that case the press would have said that London was solidly Unionist. It may be contended that the foregoing are isolated cases, but innumerable examples can be culled from electoral statistics showing how a system of single-member constituencies may fail to secure for majorities the influence and power which are rightly theirs. In the General Election of 1895 the contested elections yielded the following results:-- GENERAL ELECTION, 1895 (Contested Constituencies) Parties. Votes. Seats. Unionists . . . . . . 1,785,372 282 Home Rulers . . . . 1,823,809 202 These figures show that in a contest extending over no less than 484 constituencies the Unionists, who were in a minority of 38,437, obtained a majority of 80 seats. In this election, if an allowance is made for uncontested constituencies, it will be found that the Unionists were in a majority, but in the General Election of 1886 the figures for the whole of the United Kingdom (including an allowance for uncontested seats made on the same basis[6]) were as follows:-- GENERAL ELECTION, 1886 (All Constituencies) Parties. Votes Obtained. Seats Obtained. Home Rulers . . . . 2,103,954 283 Unionists . . . . . . 2,049,137 387 This election was regarded as a crushing defeat for Mr. Gladstone. He found himself in the House of Commons in a minority of 104, but his supporters in the country were in a majority. The results of the General Election of 1874--although the system of single-member constituencies had not then been made general--are equally instructive. The figures are as follows:-- GENERAL ELECTION, 1874 Parties. Votes Seats Seats in Obtained. Obtained. proportion to Votes. Conservative . . . . . . 1,222,000 356 300 Liberal and Home Rulers . 1,436,000 296 352 From this it appears that in 1874, while the Liberals in the United Kingdom, in the aggregate, had a majority of 214,000 votes, the Conservatives had a majority of 60 in the members elected, whereas with a rational system of representation the Liberals should have had a majority of 52.[7] Such anomalous results are not confined to this country; they are but examples of that inversion of national opinion which marks at all stages the history of elections based on the majority system. Speaking of the United States, Professor Commons says that "as a result of the district system the national House of Representatives is scarcely a representative body. In the fifty-first Congress, which enacted the McKinley Tariff Law, the majority of the representatives were elected by a minority of the voters." In the fifty-third Congress, elected in 1892, the Democrats, with 47.2 per cent, of the vote, obtained 59.8 per cent, of the representatives. The stupendous Republican victory of 1894 was equally unjustified; the Republican majority of 134 should have been a minority of 7, as against all other parties.[8] Similarly in New South Wales the supporters of Mr. Reid's government, who secured a majority of the seats at the election of 1898, were in a minority of 15,000. The figures of the New York Aldermanic election of 1906 show an equally striking contrast between the actual results of the election and the probable results under a proportional system:-- _A "game of dice."_ Parties. Seats Seats in Obtained. proportion to Votes. Republican 41 18 Democrat 26 27 Municipal Ownership Candidates 6 25 Socialist -- 2 It is unnecessary to proceed with the recital of the anomalous results of existing electoral methods. It has been abundantly shown that a General Election often issues in a gross exaggeration of prevailing opinion; that such exaggeration may at one time involve a complete suppression of the minority, whilst at another time a majority may fail to obtain its fair share of representation. M. Poincaré may well liken an election to a game of dice (he speaks of _les coups de dé du système majoritaire_,) for no one who has followed the course of elections could have failed to have observed how largely the final results have depended upon chance. This, indeed, was the most striking characteristic of the General Elections of 1910. In the January election there were 144 constituencies in which the successful member was returned by a majority of less than 500. Of these constituencies 69 seats were held by the Ministerialists and 75 by the Unionists. The majorities were in some cases as low as 8, 10, and 14. The aggregate of the majorities in the Ministerialist constituencies amounted to 16,931, and had some 8500 Liberals in these constituencies changed sides, the Ministerialist majority of 124 might have been annihilated. On the other hand, the Unionists held 75 seats by an aggregate majority of 17,389, and had fortune favoured the Ministeralists in these constituencies their majority would have been no less than 274. Such is the stability of the foundation on which the House of Commons rests; such the method to which we trust when it is necessary to consult the nation on grave national issues. _The importance of boundaries_. All these anomalies can be traced to the same cause--that with a single-member system the whole of the representation of a constituency must necessarily be to the majority of the electors, whether that majority be large or small. It directly follows that the results of elections often depend not so much upon the actual strength of political parties, as upon the manner in which that strength is distributed over the country. If that strength is evenly distributed, then the minority may be crushed in every constituency; if unevenly distributed any result is possible. In the latter case the result may be considerably influenced by the manner in which the constituencies are arranged. A slight change in the line of the boundaries of a constituency might easily make a difference of 50 votes, whilst "to carry the dividing line from North to South, instead of from East to West, would, in many localities, completely alter the character of the representation." [9] An example will make this statement clear. Take a town with 13,000 Liberal and 12,000 Conservative electors and divide it into five districts of 5000 electors each. If there is a section of the town in which the Liberals largely preponderate--and it often happens that the strength of one or other of the parties is concentrated in a particular area--the net result of the election in five districts will depend upon the way in which the boundary lines are drawn. The possible results of two different distributions may be shown in an extreme form thus:-- Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 4,000 1,000 Lib. victory. 2nd. 2,400 2,600 Cons. " 3rd. 2,300 2,700 " " 4th. 2,200 2,800 " " 5th. 2,100 2,900 " " ------ ------ 13,000 12,000 Constituency Libs. Cons. 1st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. victory. 2st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 3st. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 4th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " 5th. 2,600 2,400 Lib. " ------ ------ 13,000 12,000 _The gerrymander_. With one set of boundaries the area in which the Liberals largely preponderate might be enclosed in one constituency. The Liberals might obtain a majority of 3000 in this constituency but lose the other four seats. If, however, the boundary lines were so arranged that each constituency included a portion of this excessively Liberal area, the Liberals might obtain the whole of the five seats. In both cases the result of the election would fail to give a true presentation of the real opinions of the town. The influence of boundaries in determining the results of an election has been clearly realized in the United States for more than a century. Professor Commons states that whenever the periodical rearrangement of constituencies takes place the boundaries are "gerrymandered." "Every apportionment Act," says he, "that has been passed in this or any other country has involved inequality; and it would be absurd to ask a political party to pass such an Act, and give the advantage of the inequality to the opposite party. Consequently, every apportionment Act involves more or less of the gerrymander. The gerrymander is simply such a thoughtful construction of districts as will economize the votes of the party in power by giving it small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a small number of districts.... Many of the worst gerrymanders have been so well designed that they come close within all constitutional requirements." [10] Although the National Congress has stated that the district for congressional elections must be a compact and contiguous territory, the law is everywhere disregarded. The word "gerrymander" has found its way into English journalism. It was used by Liberals in their criticism of Mr. Balfour's abortive redistribution scheme of 1905, and has been equally used by Unionists in 1909 in their criticism of Mr. Harcourt's London Elections Bill. On neither occasion was the word used in its original meaning, and, although its history is to be found in most works on electoral methods, the story may, perhaps, be repeated with advantage:-- "The term Gerrymander dates from the year 1811, when Elbridge Gerry was Governor of Massachusetts, and the Democratic, or, as it was then termed, the Republican party, obtained a temporary ascendency in the State. In order to secure themselves in the possession of the Government, the party in power passed the famous law of 11 February 1812, providing for a new division of the State into senatorial districts, so contrived that in as many districts as possible the Federalists should be outnumbered by their opponents. To effect this all natural and customary lines were disregarded, and some parts of the State, particularly the counties of Worcester and Essex, presented similar examples of political geography. It is said that Gilbert Stuart, seeing in the office of the _Columbian Centinel_ an outline of the Essex outer district, nearly encircling the rest of the country, added with his pencil a beak to Salisbury, and claws to Salem and Marblehead, exclaiming, 'There, that will do for a salamander!' 'Salamander!' said Mr. Russell, the editor: 'I call it a Gerrymander!' The mot obtained vogue, and a rude cut of the figure published in the _Centinel_ and in the _Salem Gazette_, with the natural history of the monster duly set forth, served to fix the word in the political vocabulary of the country. So efficient was the law that at the elections of 1812, 50,164 Democratic voters elected twenty-nine senators against eleven elected by 51,766 Federalists; and Essex county, which, when voting as a single district had sent five Federalists to the Senate, was now represented in that body by three Democrats and two Federalists." [11] Mr. Balfour's scheme did not involve a political rearrangement of boundaries, and the word "gerrymandering" was thus incorrectly employed in relation to it, but so long as we retain a system of single-member constituencies a Redistribution Bill will always invite suspicion because of the possibilities of influencing the arrangement of constituencies which such a measure affords. Instructions are usually given to boundary commissioners to attach due consideration "to community or diversity of interests, means of communication, physical features, existing electoral boundaries, sparsity or density of population;" [12] but although such instructions are at once reasonable and just, they would not prevent, and indeed might be used to facilitate, a gerrymander in the American sense of the term were such a proceeding determined upon. It is quite conceivable that a mining district in which one party had a very large majority might be surrounded by an area in which the political conditions were more balanced, but in which the opposite party had a small majority. If that mining area was, in accordance with the wording of these instructions, treated as one constituency because of its community of interests and the surrounding area divided into three or more districts, the minority would in all probability obtain a majority of seats. _ The modern gerrymander_ The new constituencies required by the South Africa Act of 1909 have been arranged with the utmost care,[13] but had the delegates to the South African National Convention adhered to their original proposal to abandon single-member constituencies, they would have secured for South Africa, among other invaluable benefits, complete security from the gerrymander, any possibility of which begets suspicion and reacts in a disastrous way upon political warfare. The gerrymander is nothing more or less than a fraudulent practice. But the United States is not the only country in which such practices take place. Their counter-part in Canada was described by Sir John Macdonald as "hiving the grits," and even in England, without any change of boundaries, practices have arisen within the last few years which have had their birth in the same motives that produced the American gerrymander. In boroughs which are divided into more than one constituency there is a considerable number of voters who have qualifications in more than one division. A man may vote in any division in which he has a qualification, but in not more than one. He may make his choice. In Edinburgh for many years, on both sides of politics, there has been a constant transfer of voters from one register to another in the hopes of strengthening the party's position in one or other division. It was even alleged that the precise moment of a vacancy in West Edinburgh (May 1909) was determined by the desire to ascertain the strength of the Unionist party in that division, to discover how many Unionist votes should be transferred for the purpose of improving Unionist prospects or of defeating the designs of their opponents. This allegation may be wholly unfounded, but the single-member system encourages such a proceeding, and the statement at least indicates how the voting power of a division may be manipulated. The mere possibility of such an action arouses the suspicion that it has taken place. Similar practices have, it is stated, been pursued in Bristol. Votes have been transferred from one division, where one of the parties was in a hopeless minority, for the purpose of strengthening its position in other divisions. An examination of the figures of the election in Birmingham in 1906 shows that in one division, Birmingham East, the Unionists narrowly escaped defeat. They won by a majority of 585 only. In the other divisions the Unionists won by very large majorities. Must not the possibility of transferring surplus votes in strong constituencies to strengthen the position in weak constituencies prove an irresistible temptation to the agents responsible for the success of the party? They are entitled to make use of all the advantages at their disposal. In this way a new and more subtle form of the "gerrymander" has arisen in England, and if we are to redeem English political warfare from proceedings which approximate very closely to sharp practices, we must so amend our electoral system as to give due weight to the votes not only of the majority but of the minority as well. _The Block Vote_ The analysis of the results of majority systems would not be complete without some reference to the use of the "block" vote in the London County Council, the London Borough Council, and other elections. In the London County Council elections each constituency returns two members, and each elector can give one vote to each of two candidates. The Metropolitan boroughs are divided into wards returning from three to nine members, each elector giving one vote apiece to candidates up to the number to be returned. [14] Both in the London County and London Borough elections the majority, as in a single-member constituency, can obtain the whole of the representation. All the defects which arise from parliamentary elections again appear, and often in a more accentuated form. The figures of the two London County elections, 1904, 1907, disclose a catastrophic change in representation similar to that which characterized the General Election of 1906:-- LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION, 1904 Seats in Parties. Votes. Seats proportion Obtained. to Votes. Progressive and Labour 357,557 83 64 Moderate 287,079 34 52 Independent 12,940 1 2 Progressive majority over Moderates 70,478 49 12 LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL ELECTION, 1907 Seats in Parties. Votes. Seats proportion Obtained. to Votes. Moderate 526,700 79 67 Progressive and Labour 395,749 38 50 Independent 6,189 1 1 Moderate majority over Progressive and Labour 130,951 41 17 _The London County Council elections_. A swing of the pendulum which, measured in votes, would have transferred a majority of twelve into a minority of seventeen, had the effect of changing a majority of 49 into a minority of 41. This alternate exaggeration of the prevailing tendencies in municipal politics gives rise to a false impression of the real opinions of the elector. The citizens of London are not so unstable as the composition of their Council, but it is the more violent displacement which forms the basis of comment in the press and of municipal action. These elections, too, like the Parliamentary elections, showed with what ease the minority throughout large areas may be deprived of representation. Six adjoining suburban boroughs--Brixton, Norwood, Dulwich, Lewisham, Greenwich, Woolwich--were, before the election of 1907, represented by twelve Progressives. At that election they returned twelve Moderates; indeed on that occasion the outer western and southern boroughs, in one continuous line from Hampstead to Fulham, from Wandsworth to Woolwich, returned Moderates and Moderates only. _The election of aldermen of the L.C.C._ The London County Council elections of 1910 gave the Municipal Reform party a majority of two councillors over the Progressive and Labour parties. The transfer of a single vote in Central Finsbury would have been sufficient to have produced an exact balance. It was the duty of the new Council to elect the aldermen, the block vote being used. The majority of two was sufficient to enable the Municipal Reformers to carry the election of every one of the ten candidates nominated by them, thus depriving the minority of any voice in the election of aldermen. The object for which aldermen were instituted was entirely set at naught, and this the method of election alone made possible. The privilege of selecting aldermen was used by the party in power, not for the purpose of strengthening the Council by the addition of representative men, but for the purpose of strengthening the party position.[15] The privilege has been abused in a similar way by the English provincial boroughs. In these boroughs, prior to the Election of Aldermen Act, 1910, aldermen as well as councillors took part in the election of aldermen. In some cases a party having once obtained a predominant position has, by making full use of its power to elect aldermen in sympathy with itself, succeeded in perpetuating its predominance, although defeated at the polls. The minority of the councillors, with the assistance of the non-retiring aldermen, has not only elected further aldermen from members of the same party, but has controlled the policy of the Council. The Act referred to merely prevents aldermen in municipal councils from voting in the election of other aldermen, but does not go to the root of the evil. An alteration in the method of election is required. [Sidenote 1: _The election of Representative Peers of Scotland_.] A further example of the use of the block vote may be taken from the election of Scottish Representative Peers. At the commencement of each Parliament the Scottish Peers meet in Holyrood Palace for the purpose of electing sixteen of their number to represent the peerage of Scotland in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Unionist Peers are in a majority, and the block vote enables them to choose sixteen Unionist Peers. At the election of January 1910 Lord Torphichen, a Unionist Peer, who had voted against his party on the Finance Bill of the previous year, failed to secure re-election. Lord Torphichen was elected in the following December, but the incident shows how complete is the power conferred upon the majority by this method of election; not only political opponents but dissenting members of the same party can be excluded from representation. _The Australian Senate_. The block vote is used also in the election of members of the Australian Senate. Each State elects six senators, half of whom retire every three years. Each State is polled as a separate constituency, and each elector has three votes. At the election of 1910 the Labour Party polled the highest number of votes in each of the States, and thus succeeded in returning eighteen senators, all other parties obtaining none. The figures here given for the elections in Victoria and New South Wales show that in Victoria the successful candidates were not even supported by a majority of electors, and that in both States the excess of the successful over their leading opponents was so small that a slight turn over would have completely altered the result of the elections:-- ELECTION of AUSTRALIAN SENATORS, 1910 _Victoria._ Successful. Unsuccessful. Findley (Lab.)....217,673 Best (Fusionist) ....... 213,976 Barker (Lab.).....216,199 Trenwith (Fusionist).... 211,058 Blakey (Lab.).....215,117 M'Cay (Fusionist) ...... 195,477 Goldstein (Independent) 53,583 Ronald (Independent) ... 18,380 648,889 692,474 _New South Wales._ Successful. Unsuccessful. A.M'Dougall(Lab.) ..., 249,212 J.P. Gray (Fusionist)... 220,569 A. Gardiner (Lab.) ... 247,047 E. Pulsford (Fusionist). 214,889 A. Rae (Lab.)..........239,307 J. C. Neild (Fusionist). 212,150 J. Norton (Independ.)... 50,893 R. Mackenzie (Independ.) 13,608 J.O. Maroney (Independ.) 9,660 T. Hoare (Independ.).... 8,432 735,566 730,201 _London Borough Councils_ The London Borough Council elections yield results equally unsatisfactory. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords which, in 1907, examined the Municipal Representation Bill introduced by Lord Courtney of Penwith, sums up these results in the following paragraphs:-- "If the different wards are similar in character, the majority, even if little more than one-half, may secure all the seats. For instance, in one borough the Progressives, with 19,430 votes, obtained all the 30 seats, and the Municipal Reformers, though they polled 11,416 votes, did not obtain even one; while, on the contrary, in four other boroughs the Progressives did not secure any representation. "On the other hand, the system does not in all cases secure power to the majority. If the wards are dissimilar and the majority too much condensed in certain districts, the minority may secure a majority of seats, as in the case of one borough where 46,000 votes secured 30 seats, while 54,000 votes only obtained 24. "The system leads to violent fluctuations. If the two great parties are nearly evenly divided, it is obvious that a comparatively small change may create a revolution in the representation. In Lewisham, at the 1903 election, the Progressives had 34 seats and the Moderates only 6; in 1905, on the other hand, the Municipal Reformers obtained all the 42 seats, and the Progressives failed to secure even one."[16] One example will suffice to illustrate the findings of this Committee. Here are the results of two wards in the Borough of Battersea:-- BATTERSEA BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTION, 1906 Ward Votes Obtained. Municipal Reform Progressive Candidates. Candidates. Shaftesbury 786 905 } (six seats) 777 902 } 769 899 }all 753 895 }successful. 753 891 } 741 852 } ----- ----- Totals 4,579 5,344 St. John's 747 } 217 (three seats) 691 }all 197 686 }successful. 191 ----- ----- Totals 2,124 605 Totals for both wards 6,703 5,949 These tables disclose some curious anomalies. Each elector in the Shaftesbury ward has six votes--the ward being entitled to six Councillors--whereas each elector in the St. John's ward, which is only entitled to three Councillors, has but three votes. The additional representation is allotted to the Shaftesbury ward because of its larger electorate, but the only electors to reap any advantage from this fact are the Progressives. The presence in the ward of a large number of citizens who are Municipal Reformers has merely had the effect of increasing the amount of representation obtained by their opponents. Further, the number of Municipal Reformers in the Shaftesbury ward exceeded the number of Municipal Reformers in the St. John's ward; in the former they obtained no representation, in the latter they obtained three seats. The two wards taken together showed a net majority in votes of 754 for the Municipal Reformers who, however, only secured three seats out of nine. Taking the Borough as a whole the Municipal Reformers obtained 24 representatives with 53,910 votes, whereas the Progressives obtained 30 representatives with 46,274 votes. _Provincial Municipal Councils_. Nor are the results of the Provincial Borough elections more satisfactory. These boroughs are usually divided into wards returning three or six members each. One-third of the councillors retire each year, and each ward is called upon to elect one or two councillors, as the case may be. The figures for the Municipal elections held in November 1908, at Manchester, Bradford, and Leeds disclose a similar discrepancy between the votes polled and the seats obtained. [_See table below_.] BOROUGH COUNCIL ELECTIONS, 1908 Parties Votes Seats Seats in Polled. Obtained. proportion to Votes. _Manchester_. Conservative 25,724 14 10 Independent 11,107 3 4 Liberal 14,474 7 6 Labour and Socialist 15,963 2 6 _Bradford_. Conservative 12,809 10 6 Liberal 12,106 6 5 Socialist-Labour 11,388 0 5 Independent 1,709 1 1 _Leeds_. Conservative 18,145 8 5 Liberal 19,507 3 5 Socialist-Labour 9,615 1 2 Independent 3,046 1 1 _Summary._ The examples given in this chapter may be briefly summarised. The same defects are disclosed in Parliamentary, County Council and Municipal (both metropolitan and provincial) elections. These defects may be classified under three heads: (1) often a gross exaggeration of the strength of the victorious party; (2) sometimes a complete disfranchisement of the minority; and (3) at other times a failure of a majority of citizens to obtain their due share of representation. In addition, running through all the results, there is an element of instability due to the fact that a slight change in public opinion may produce an altogether disproportionate effect, the violence of the swing of the pendulum arising more from the electoral method than from the fickleness of the electorate. These defects all spring from the same root cause--that the representation of any constituency is awarded to the majority of the electors in that constituency irrespective of the size of the majority; that the votes of the minority count for nothing. The result of a General Election is thus often dependent not upon the relative strengths of political forces, but upon the chance way in which those forces are distributed, and in a considerable measure may be influenced by the way in which the boundaries of constituencies are drawn. Such a system invites and encourages gerrymandering, both in its original and modern forms, but this detestable practice can be made of no avail and the results of elections rendered trustworthy if we so reform present methods as to give due weight to the strength of each political party irrespective of the way in which that strength may be distributed. [Footnote 1: Reply to Deputation, House of Commons, 10 November 1908.] [Footnote 2: Mr. Corbett's analyses were accepted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as "representing the truth as nearly as circumstances will permit."--Report, p. 31.] [Footnote 3: There is a marked difference between the electoral conditions of Great Britain and Ireland, but as the Government of the day depends for support upon a majority of the representatives of all parts of the kingdom, the figures here given are those for the United Kingdom.] [Footnote 4: Mr. Gladstone, in introducing the Redistribution of Seats Bill, 1 December 1884, said: "The recommendations of this system (one-member districts) I think are these--that it is very economical, it is very simple, and it goes a very long way towards that which many gentlemen have much at heart, viz., what is roughly termed representation of minorities."--Hansard, 3rd series, vol. 294, p. 379.] [Footnote 5: Other examples are given in Appendix V. The representation of minorities varies very considerably in amount, and, as shown in the Appendix, depends not upon their size but upon the way in which they are distributed over the electoral area.] [Footnote 6: The basis of calculation, as explained by Mr. Rooke Corbett, is as follows: "It seems to me reasonable to suppose that those changes of public opinion which affected the contested constituencies affected the uncontested constituencies also, and therefore, in estimating the number of voters in an uncontested constituency, I have assumed that the strength of each party varied from one election to another in the same ratio as in the contested constituencies in the same county."--P. R. Pamphlet, No. 14. _Recent Electoral Statistics_, p. 5.] [Footnote 7: These figures are taken from an article by Robert B. Hayward in _The Nineteenth Century_, February 1884, p. 295.] [Footnote 8: _Proportional Representation_, by Professor Commons, p. 52 _et seq_. For further examples in the United States the reader should consult Chapter III. of Professor Commons' book.] [Footnote 9: _Preferential Voting_, by the Right Hon. J. Parker Smith. p. 8.] [Footnote 10: _Proportional Representation_, p. 50.] [Footnote 11: _The Machinery of Politics_, W. R. Warn, 1872.] [Footnote 12: Such instructions are contained in Clause 40 of the South African Act, signed by the South African National Convention at Bloemfontein, 11 May 1909.] [Footnote 13: See Report of Delimitation Commission.] [Footnote 14: This electoral method is known by various names. In Australia it is called the block vote, in the United States the general ticket, on the Continent the _scrutin de liste_.] [Footnote 15: The action was defended on the ground that the Municipal Reform party had obtained a majority of 39,653 votes at the polls.] [Footnote 16: _Report on Municipal Representation Bill (H.L.)_, 1907 (132), p. vi.] CHAPTER III THE INDIRECT RESULTS OF MAJORITY SYSTEMS "Nous attachons un intêrét vital, presque aussi grand, à la forme dans laquello on consulte la nation qu'au principe lui-mème du suffrage universel."--GAMBETTA _False impressions of public opinion._ The first and immediate consequence arising from present electoral methods is the growth of false impressions of the true tendencies of public opinion, impressions that are still further distorted by the exaggerations of the press. The winning of a seat is always a "brilliant victory," and a "crushing defeat" for the other side. The German General Election of 1907 affords an excellent illustration of these false impressions. The Social Democrats lost nearly 50 per cent. of their previous representation, and an outburst of delight arose in certain journals over their "crushing defeat." But the Socialists' poll showed an increase of a quarter of a million, and although their total poll had not increased in quite the same proportion as that of other parties, the figures showed that the Social Democrats were still by far the largest party in Germany. The number of seats won were no true index to the movements in political forces. Not only the press, however, but some of the most careful writers on modern tendencies in politics are also misled by these false impressions. The General Election of 1895, in which there was a majority of 117,473 for the Unionists in a total of 4,841,769 votes, is a case in point. This election has often been chosen as marking the commencement of a period of strong reaction in political thought. Writers have been misled by the overwhelming majority in seats obtained by the Unionists at that election. They have entirely ignored the figures of the polls, and these, the only safe guide to the opinions of the electors, show that the reaction was far less strong than is usually supposed. _False impressions become the basis of legislative action._ False impressions of public opinion, however, lead to an indirect effect of much greater importance. The false impression becomes the basis of action, and an apparent triumph for reaction makes a "reactionary" policy much more easy of achievement. Similarly an apparent triumph for a "progressive" policy facilitates its adoption. For the House of Commons is still the most powerful factor in determining our political destinies, and hence these false results have a very material effect in the shaping of history. If the opinion of the people had been truly represented in the Parliaments elected in 1895 and 1900, is it not almost a certainty that the legislation of those two Parliaments would have been considerably modified? Or, to go further back to the election of 1886, the result of which was universally interpreted as a crushing defeat of Mr. Gladstone's proposals in favour of Home Rule, would not a true result on that occasion have influenced subsequent developments? Over-representation, which results in the temporary triumph of a party and of partisan measures, involves the nation in a serious loss, for the time and energy of a Parliament may be largely consumed in revising and correcting, if not in reversing the partisan legislation of its predecessor. Thus, a considerable portion of the time of the Parliament of 1906-1909 was spent in attempting to reverse the policies embodied in the Education and Licensing Acts of the preceding Parliament. _Loss of prestige by the House of Commons._ Apart, however, from speculation as to the effect of false electoral methods on the development of public affairs, the serious divergences between representation and polling strength, to which attention has been directed in the previous chapter, must tend to the weakening of the authority and prestige of the House of Commons. Should a Government, misled by the composition of the "representative" House, make use of its majority in that House for the passage of measures not really desired by the country, and should the House of Lords, reformed or not, guess rightly that the decisions of the Commons were contrary to the popular will, then inevitably the position of the House of Lords would be strengthened as compared with that of the Commons. "A House of Commons which does not represent," said a leading Liberal journal, "may stand for less in the country than the House of Lords, or the Crown, and its influence will infallibly decline in proportion. One has only to take up an old volume of Bagehot to confirm one's suspicions that the imperfections of electoral machinery, combined with the changes in the character of the electorate, are already threatening to undermine the real sources of the nation's power."[1] Sir Frederick Pollock has declared that our defective electoral system may "yield a House of Commons so unrepresentative in character as to cease to command the respect and obedience of citizens."[2] _Unstable representation._ False impressions of public opinion, unstable legislation based upon such false impressions, the weakening of the foundations on which the authority of the House of Commons rests, these are results which in themselves constitute a sufficiently serious condemnation of present methods. But those upheavals in representation, those violent swings of the pendulum which have often been so pronounced a feature of elections, give an instability to the composition of our supreme legislative chamber that must still further undermine its authority. Many, indeed, imagining that this dangerous instability is the reflection of an equally unstable electorate, begin to question whether a popular franchise is in any circumstances a satisfactory basis for government. The violence of the change in representation is attributed to the character of the electors instead of to the evil effects of a defective electoral method. On the other hand, the large majorities which accompany such changes are regarded by other politicians as blessings in disguise--as being essential to the formation of a strong Government. But a Government based on a false majority will, in the long-run, find that this exaggeration of its support in the country is a source of weakness rather than of strength. Like the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the feet of such a Government are part of clay. For the extreme swing of the pendulum which brought the Government into power is usually followed by an equally violent swing in the opposite direction. When the high-water mark of success is attained at a General Election it becomes practically impossible for the party in power to gain additional seats at bye-elections, whilst an unbroken series of losses makes it difficult to prevent a feeling arising that the ministry has lost the confidence of the electors, although the actual change in public opinion may have been of the slightest. The prestige of the Government is gone, and prestige is as necessary to a Government as a majority. In brief, a large majority strengthens a Government only in so far as that majority corresponds to public opinion. _Weakened personnel_. Moreover, the extreme changes which take place at a General Election often result in a considerable weakening of the personnel of the House of Commons. In such a débâcle as that which took place in 1906, there was no process of selection by which the Unionists might have retained the services in Parliament of their ablest members. Although there were 33,907 Unionists in Manchester and Salford, Mr. Balfour, the leader of the party, experienced the mortification of being rejected by one of the divisions. This failure was paralleled by the defeat of Sir William Harcourt at Derby in 1895, whilst Mr. Gladstone, in contesting Greenwich in 1874, only succeeded in obtaining the second place, the first seat being won by a Conservative. A way is usually found by which party leaders return without delay to the House of Commons, but there are members of the highest distinction and capacity who, especially if these qualities are associated with a spirit of independence, find, it increasingly difficult to re-enter political life. Victory at the polls depends not so much upon the services which a statesman, however eminent, may have rendered to his country, as upon the ability of the party to maintain its majority in the particular constituency for which he stands. Indeed, in this matter a leader of opinion is placed at a disadvantage as compared with an ordinary member of the party; his very pre-eminence, his very activities bring him into conflict with certain sections of the electorate which, insignificant in themselves, may yet be sufficiently numerous to influence the result of an election. Statesmen, moreover, have often lost their seats merely because they have endeavoured to give electors of their very best. When Mr. John Morley (now Lord Morley of Blackburn), during the election of 1906, received a deputation of Socialists, he, with characteristic courage, explained very frankly the ground on which he could not support their principles.[3] A similar candour on his part in 1895 cost him his seat at Newcastle. Can we wonder then that there arise complaints that our statesmen are deficient both in courage and in ideas? Single-member constituencies are, as Gambetta pointed out more than twenty years ago, inimical to political thinking, and recent General Elections have afforded numerous examples in support of this statement. The courageous and forcible presentment of ideas has time after time been rewarded by exclusion from the House of Commons. _Degradation of party strife._ There is a further and equally serious charge that can be laid against the existing electoral system--it is in no small measure responsible for that increasing degradation in the methods of warfare which has characterised recent political and municipal contests. This debasement of elections cannot fail to contribute to that undermining of the authority of the House of Commons, upon which stress has already been laid. Indeed, there is abundant evidence to show that in conjunction with the imaginary instability of the electorate, the debasement of elections is weakening the faith of many in representative institutions. An efficient bureaucracy is now being advocated by a writer so distinguished as Mr. Graham Wallas, as the best safeguard against the excesses of an unstable and ignorant democracy. There is no need to undervalue the importance of competent officials, but all experience has shown the equal necessity of an adequate check upon the bureaucracy, however efficient, and such check must be found in the strengthening of representative bodies. Mr. Graham Wallas declares that "the empirical art of politics consists largely in the creation of opinion by the deliberate exploitation of subconscious non-rational inferences,"[4] and cites in support of this statement the atrocious posters and mendacious appeals of an emotional kind addressed to the electors in recent contests. It does not appear from electoral statistics that so large a proportion of voters are influenced by such appeals as Mr. Wallas thinks; his conclusions, like those of others, are based upon the false impressions arising from false results. It is, however, sufficient for the purpose of the political organizer to know that a number of the electors will succumb to such influences. The votes of this small section of the electorate can turn the scale at an election, and so long as we adhere to a system under which the whole of the representation allotted to any given constituency is awarded to the party which can secure a bare majority of votes, we must expect to see a progressive degradation of electoral contests. The successful organizer of victory has already learnt that he must not be too squeamish in the methods by which the victory is obtained, and if "the exploitation of subconscious non-rational inferences" is necessary to this end he will undoubtedly exploit them to the best of his powers. _The final rally._ Mr. Wallas gives from his personal experience an admirable illustration of the way in which elections are often lost and won. His vivid description of the close of a poll in a County Council election in a very poor district is in itself an emphatic condemnation of our electoral system. "The voters," says he, "who came in were the results of the 'final rally' of the canvassers on both sides. They entered the room in rapid but irregular succession, as if they were jerked forward by a hurried and inefficient machine. About half of them were women with broken straw hats, pallid faces, and untidy hair. All were dazed and bewildered, having been snatched away in carriages or motors from the making of match-boxes, or button-holes, or cheap furniture, or from the public-house, or, since it was Saturday evening, from bed. Most of them seemed to be trying in the unfamiliar surroundings to be sure of the name for which, as they had been reminded at the door, they were to vote. A few were drunk, and one man, who was apparently a supporter of my own, clung to my neck while he tried to tell me of some vaguely tremendous fact which just eluded his power of speech. I was very anxious to win, and inclined to think that I had won, but my chief feeling was an intense conviction that this could not be accepted as even a decently satisfactory method of creating a Government for a city of five million inhabitants, and that nothing short of a conscious and resolute facing of the whole problem of the formation of political opinion would enable us to improve it." The political "boss" has no such qualms; victory may turn upon the votes recorded at this final rally, and every effort must be made to ensure that the party's poll exceeds that of the enemy. Mr. Wallas does not propose any remedy; he merely suggests that something must be done to abolish the more sordid details of English electioneering. Why not go to the root of the evil and amend the electoral system which places so great a premium upon the success of such practices? It is indeed evident that this cannot be accepted as "a decently satisfactory method of creating a Government." But we are not compelled to continue the use of such a method. What possible justification is there for making the representation of all the other electors of a constituency depend upon the result of a final rally? _Bribery and "nursing"_ Evidence was tendered before the Worcester Election Commission[5] to the effect that there were 500 voters in the city who were amenable to the influence of a small bribe, and that the party which secured the votes of these electors won the election. Again, is there no alternative to an electoral system which makes the representation of a town depend upon the action of the least worthy of its citizens? Direct bribery has been rendered more difficult by the Corrupt Practices Act, but bribery in a much more subtle form--"nursing" the constituency--would appear to be on the increase. Mr. Ellis T. Powell, who has had a considerable electioneering experience, gives an admirable statement[6] of the expenses attending a successful candidature. "If the candidate's means," says he, "permit of a favourable response to these invitations (appeals for money), he is said to be engaged in 'nursing' the constituency in which the gifts are distributed. A great proportion of these appeals relate to funds which are for public, or quasi-public purposes, such as those of hospitals; and there is no suggestion that any direct political influence is exercised in consequence of donations or contributions made to these institutions. But what is certain is that a section of the electorate-diminishing, but still potent, section--is favourably influenced by the fact that Mr. A. has given £100 to the funds of the hospital, whereas Mr. B. has given £5, 5_s_., or nothing at all. Candidates and their agents are perfectly well aware of this, and are even known to delay the announcement of their contributions in order to ascertain their respective amounts, and so to guard themselves against giving less than others have done. Mr. A. is inclined to give £20, but waits to see if Mr. B. gives £25, in which case he will raise his intended £20 to £30. These tactics are adopted, not because either of the candidates desires to be lavish or ostentatious in his gifts, and still less from any vulgar desire for notoriety in itself. They are simply an element, almost vital under existing conditions, of a successful appeal to the electorate. They may be said to be of the psychological rather than the political order, introducing into the electoral arena forces which have no business to be there, and whose activity is wholly vicious; but forces which nevertheless no politician can ignore, unless he wishes to postpone his realisation of their exact potency until the declaration of the poll places it before his, own eyes in large and unmistakable characters.... The writer was once consulted by a gentleman who, from motives which were truly laudable, desired to represent a London constituency. The path was clear to his selection as a candidate; the only question was that of expense. The writer, after noting the number of electors, informed him of the maximum sum which he might expend at a contest, but at the same time warned him that unless he were prepared to spend from £1500 to £2000 a year from that time until the General Election (of which there was no immediate prospect) he might regard his ambition as a hopeless one. The constituency was one where money _must_ be spent. The other candidate would spend it, and his opponent must do at least as much, while his chance at the poll would be increased if he did a little more. When his opponent gave 10s. to a local cricket club, he could give no less. If he gave a guinea it might make a difference in his poll. The advice was not given in regard to electoral conditions as they ought to be, but as they are. The writer gave it with regret, and felt that he was playing almost a cynical part when he uttered the words. Yet it was in complete accord with the necessities of the existing system." Some of the practices associated with constituency-nursing can perhaps be reached by further legislation, but, if so, bribery in all probability will only take a form still more subtle. Again, why not strike at the root cause which makes these practices so highly profitable? Why continue to make the representation of all electors depend upon the votes of those who are influenced by the attentions of a rich patron? _The organization of victory._ The cumulative effect of these demoralising elements in party warfare is shown in the separation of the work of the party organizer from that of the party leader--separation which is becoming more and more complete. The work of covering hoardings with posters of a repulsive type, the task of preparing election "literature," must be carried out by men of a different character from those who are responsible for the public direction of the party; and as party agents often obtain their appointments because of their previous success in winning elections, the mere force of competition is compelling agents, sometimes against their own wishes, to resort to these questionable practices. The success of the Municipal Reform campaign in the London County Council election of 1907 was followed by a demand from many Progressives that the tactics of their opponents should be copied, that gramophone should be answered by gramophone, poster by poster. It is, however, certain that the more victory depends upon the work of the party organizer the more must his power increase, and this fact explains the unique position of the political "boss" in the United States, where ordinary electoral methods have been carried to their logical conclusion.[7] The political "boss" has become all-powerful because he has made himself the indispensable factor in successful political organization. At the London County Council elections in 1907, the leaders of the Municipal Reform Party dissociated themselves from the more extreme accusations made against the administration of the Progressives, but the conduct of the elections was apparently outside their powers of control. It may never become possible in England for a political organization such as "Tammany Hall" to succeed in planting on the register of voters a large number of fraudulent names, nor is it necessary yet for the press to issue a notice such as that which appeared in the New York _Evening Post:_ "There are a thousand 'colonizers' waiting to vote for the Tammany ticket. Vote early, so that no one can vote ahead of you in your name."[8] In New York the Citizens' Unions have at each election to spend several weeks in succession in thwarting attempts at this offence on a large scale, and though our more perfect organization of elections renders such frauds impossible, still if we are to arrest the Americanization of our electoral contests we must cease to allow the results of a "final rally," the votes of the least worthy citizens, assiduous "nursing," or suggestive posters to decide the representation of a constituency. _Party exclusiveness._ The preceding criticism of recent developments in electoral warfare must not be read as a condemnation of party organization as such. Party organization there must be, and unquestionably the success of a party is intimately bound up with the efficiency of its organization. But our defective electoral system confers upon party organization a weapon which is not an adjunct to efficiency in the true sense of the word, but a weapon which has been and can be made a serious menace to the political independence and sincerity both of electors and of Members of Parliament. During the memorable three-cornered fight in Greenwich in 1906, Lord Hugh Cecil made this statement: "The opposition to me is not to put a Tariff Reformer in, but to keep me out. ... We are face to face with an innovation in English politics, and it is a question of how far it is desirable to introduce methods which may be handled with a view to creating a party mechanism so rigid, so powerful, and so capable of being directed by a particular mind towards a single object, that it may become a formidable engine for carrying out a dangerous proposal. We do not want a system of political assassination under which any one who is in the way may be put out of the way." To realize the dangerous weapon which our present system places in the hands of party organizations, it is not necessary to give complete assent to the statement of Lord Hugh Cecil as to the character of the opposition brought against him. The power undoubtedly exists. Prior to the election of January 1910, the secret organization known as "confederates" was reported to have marked down all Unionist candidates who would not accept a course of policy approved of by this body. The action was defended on the ground that it was essential to secure Tariff Reform immediately and at all costs, but it nevertheless constituted a serious attack upon the representative character of the House of Commons. By such methods that historic House will be deprived of its rightful place in the constitution of this country. Political power will no longer be centred in the House of Commons; it will be vested in organizations outside Parliament, which will only meet to carry out their bidding. At the General Election of 1906 the mere threat of a three-cornered fight was sufficient to induce many Free Trade Unionists to retire from the contest; the purging was completed at the election of January 1910, and it would seem that in the future only those politicians who can with alacrity adopt the newest fashions or change their party allegiance can hope to take a permanent part in the political life of their country. Many of those who were so eager for Tariff Reform at all costs--the "confederates" themselves--would probably have protested most vigorously had the same policy of excluding competent men from Parliament been adopted for the attainment of political objects of which they did not approve, and the comment of _The Times_ on this exclusive policy reflects the opinion of those who value the representative character of the House of Commons more highly than an immediate party triumph:-- "Parliament ought to represent the opinion of the country as a whole, and each of the great parties ought to represent the diversities of opinion which incline to one side or the other of a dividing line which, however practically convenient, does not itself represent any hard and immutable frontier. Now the variety and elasticity of representation, which are the secret of the permanence of our institutions, are directly injured by any attempt to narrow the basis of a party. If such attempts were to succeed upon any considerable scale we should have a couple of machine-made parties confronting one another in Parliament, with no golden bridges between their irreconcilable programmes. There is some danger at the present day of an approximation to a state of things in every way to be deprecated, and it is surely not for the Unionist party to promote any movement tending in that direction."[9] This process of excluding valuable elements from our representative chamber is equally at work within the Liberal party. At the General Election of 1906 Sir William Butler, a Liberal of very high attainments, was compelled to withdraw his candidature for East Leeds on the ground that he could not fully support the Education policy of the Government. Mr. Harold Cox, during the Parliament of 1906, criticised the work of the Liberal Government from the point of view of a Liberal of the Manchester school, and the Preston Liberal Council withdrew its support. Nor does the Labour Party escape the same charge. Originally each member was required to accept in writing the constitution of the party, and this condition was rigorously enforced. In January 1911 it was decided at the Party Conference held at Leicester to dispense with the written pledge, but it would appear that a cast-iron conformity to party decisions is still insisted upon. On 10 February 1911 the party moved an amendment to the Address in favour of the Right to Work Bill, a measure as to the practicability of which there is a difference of opinion within the party. Mr. Johnson, the member for Nuneaton, voted against the amendment, and commenting on the incident the _Labour Leader_ said: "Is Mr. Johnson to be allowed to defy the Party's mandate? We invite the Labour stalwarts of Nuneaton to give their earnest consideration to this question. And there can be no doubt as to what the verdict will be." _Mechanical debates._ These repeated attempts to make members of a party conform in all respects to a specified pattern, this constant insistence that members must give up the right of criticism and support on all occasions the party to which they belong, must and does react on the composition of the House of Commons. The duty of a Member of Parliament will tend more and more to be restricted to registering his approval or disapproval of the decisions of the Government, and, as the central organization of each party is in close touch with the party whips, the free and independent electors will be more and more confined, in the election of their representatives, to a choice between the nominees of machine-made parties. Moreover, in a House of Commons so composed discussion necessarily loses its vitalizing character. The debates on Free Trade in the House of Commons in 1905 towards the close of Mr. Balfour's administration were very real and full of life, because argument could and did affect the votes of members, but if the process continues of excluding all elements save those of the machine-controlled, debates will become more and more formal. They will lose their value. As Lord Hugh Cecil has said[10]: "The present system unquestionably weakens the House of Commons by denuding it of moderate politicians not entirely in sympathy with either political party, and consequently rendering obsolete all the arts of persuasion and deliberation, and reducing parliamentary discussion to a struggle between obstruction on the one side and closure on the other. The disproportion, moreover, between the majority in the House and that in the country, which it is supposed to represent, deprives the decisions of the House of much of their moral authority. The rigid partisanship, and the essentially unrepresentative character of the House of Commons as now constituted, leave it only the credit which belongs to the instrument of a party, and deprive it of that higher authority which should be the portion of the representatives of the whole people. "Similarly Mr. Birrell, in speaking[11] of the debate on the Women's Franchise Bill (12 July 1910), stated that he rejoiced in the immunity on that occasion from the tyranny of Government programmes and the obligation to all to think alike. "To think in programmes," said he, "is Egyptian bondage, and works the sterilization of the political intellect." And the nation suffers. _The disfranchisement of minorities in bi-racial countries_ The extreme partizan who believes that political action is possible only through a well-controlled organization may be affected but little by the preceding arguments, and is, moreover, nearly always inclined to postpone the consideration of any reform which might possibly deprive his party of the advantages which he imagines it may obtain at the next General Election. Yet cases have occurred when parties have sacrificed their own advantage to the higher interests of the nation as a whole, and national interests demand a change in electoral methods. For the disfranchisement of minorities often gives rise to serious difficulties. The elections which took place in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony,[12] after the grant of self-government in 1906, show how racial divisions are unduly emphasized by such disfranchisement. Only one--Barberton--of the twenty-six country constituencies of the Transvaal returned a member who did not owe allegiance to Het Volk, although the figures of the polls showed that the minority numbered more than 25 per cent, of the electors. In Pretoria the Progressives gained but one seat, and that as the chance result of a three-cornered contest. The disfranchisement of minorities heightened the natural difference which existed between Johannesburg and the rest of the Transvaal--a difference which would have been still more pronounced had not Het Volk succeeded in obtaining six and the Nationalists five out of the total of thirty-four seats allotted to Johannesburg and the Rand. The first elections in the Orange River Colony resulted in a similar exaggerated contrast between Bloemfontein and the rest of the country. Five seats were allotted to Bloemfontein, four of which were won by members of the Constitutional party, whilst the fifth was only lost to them by the extremely narrow majority of two. Before the election _The Friend_, the organ of the Orangia Unie, stated that "if Bloemfontein ventures to vote for the Constitutionalists it will be setting itself in opposition to the whole country, and will be manifesting a spirit of distrust of the country population for which it will have to suffer afterwards." On the morrow of the election the same paper declared that "the election results of Bloemfontein will be read with deep disappointment throughout the colony, where the feeling will be that the capital has now shown itself politically an alien city." But would Bloemfontein have "shown itself politically an alien city" if the electoral method had been such that the minorities, both in Bloemfontein and in the country districts, had been able to secure representation in proportion to their strength? Had the Constitution of South Africa provided for the representation of minorities in the House of Assembly, as proposed in the original draft signed at Cape Town, the process of race unification, both in the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, would have been facilitated, and the conflicting interests of the constituent States and of town and country would not by their exaggerated expression in the United Parliament have impeded the consolidation and unification of South Africa. The problem presented by racial differences is not confined to South Africa. The United Kingdom itself presents a conspicuous example of a nation in which the process of unification is still far from complete, and the process has been retarded, and is at the present time being retarded, by the electoral method in force. Not only does Ireland still continue to chafe against the Union, but the racial divisions within Ireland itself are encouraged and fostered by the failure of our representative system to do justice to minorities. The South and West of Ireland is represented in the House of Commons by Nationalists, and Nationalists alone, and, ranged in opposition to them, the North-East is represented by a smaller but equally determined body of Unionists, while those forces in Ireland which would endeavour, and in the past have endeavoured, to bridge over the differences between the North and South are entirely unrepresented. Had the minorities in the North and South of Ireland been represented within the House, there would probably have still remained a notable contrast between the two areas, but that contrast would not have appeared in its present heightened form, and, in addition, with a true electoral system there would have come from Ireland representatives whose sole aim and purpose was to achieve its unification. The picture which Ireland would have presented within the House would have been of a different character to that presented to-day, and the perennial Irish problem would have been infinitely less difficult, because the forces which made for union would have had full play. Even the unification of England and Wales may, in some respects, be described as incomplete; but such differences as exist largely arise from the electoral system which sometimes deprives the minority in Wales of all representation in the House of Commons. When in 1906 the fortunes of the Welsh Conservatives reached their lowest ebb, the latter numbered 36 per cent. of the voters, whilst in former elections the minority sometimes exceeded 40 per cent. Had Welsh Conservatives, during the last two decades, been adequately represented in the House of Commons, would not our conception of Wales from the political point of view have been considerably modified, would not the process of political unification have been made more complete? The non-representation of minorities in Belgium accentuated the racial religious and language differences between Flanders and Wallony. Flanders was represented by Catholics only; the French-speaking districts by Liberals and Socialists. With proportional representation members of all three parties are returned in both areas, and this result has brought in its train a great national advantage, the political consolidation of Belgium. Another example of the disintegrating effects of the disfranchisement of minorities is to be seen in the American Civil War. A committee of the United States Senate unanimously reported in 1869 that this war might have been averted had the minorities in the North and South been duly represented in Congress. In the words of the report the absence of minority representation "in the States of the South when rebellion was plotted, and when open steps were taken to break the Union was unfortunate, for it would have held the Union men of those States together and have given them voice in the electoral colleges.... Dispersed, unorganized, unrepresented, without due voice and power, they could interpose no effectual resistance to secession and to civil war." _Defective representation in municipal bodies_.] False impressions of public opinion, unstable legislation, the weakening of the House of Commons, both in authority and in personnel, the degradation of party warfare, the undue exaltation of party machinery, the heightening of racial differences and of sectional interests, these are the fruits of that rough and ready system of Parliamentary elections with which hitherto we have been content. The electoral methods in force both in County Council and in Municipal elections are based on the same false principle, and in these spheres of corporate activity results almost equally disastrous are produced. The London County Council elections of 1907 presented most of the features which characterized the Parliamentary elections of 1906. Such catastrophic changes in the personnel of the County Council as took place in 1907 involves serious consequences to London ratepayers. In this election two ex-chairmen of the Council, the vice-chairman and several chairmen of committees, lost their seats. These were men who had been chosen by their colleagues because of their special fitness for their positions, and this wholesale dismissal as a result of a temporary wave of public feeling may make it more difficult to secure as candidates those who are prepared to devote the necessary time to the study of London's problems, for it is generally admitted that the position of a London County Councillor is no sinecure. The effective discharge of his duties demands unremitting attention to details. The new Council was remarkable for the number of members who had yet to win their spurs in public work, and London was the poorer for the loss of those able administrators whom thousands of voters desired as their representatives. A true electoral system would not only secure the adequate representation of all parties, but the presence in the Council of the most competent exponents of different policies. _Wasteful municipal finance._ Not only does the electoral system involve undue changes in the personnel of the Council, but it leads to an extremely wasteful expenditure of public money. Whether the London County Council was or was not justified in establishing a steamboat service, nothing can be more wasteful than that one Council should establish such a service at great cost, and that its successor should immediately reverse that policy. The steady development of a works department by one Council and its abandonment by a succeeding Council similarly involves useless expenditure. A fully representative Council would not display such violent alterations of policy, and it is of the utmost importance that the objects on which it is decided to spend public moneys should be the deliberate and considered choice of a Council on which all interests are fairly represented. _No continuity in administration_.] The Metropolitan Borough Council elections tell a similar tale. The Lewisham Borough Council consisted in 1900 of 35 Moderates and 7 Progressives; in 1903 of 34 Progressives and 8 Moderates and Independents; in 1906 of 42 Moderates, no representatives of the Progressive or Labour parties being elected. In three successive elections there was a complete change in the composition of the Council. Lewisham's experience is typical of that of several other London boroughs. Many councillors of the widest experience in municipal affairs lose their seats at the same time, and there is in consequence no security of continuity in the administration of the business of the Metropolitan boroughs. Dr. Gilbert Slater, in giving evidence before a select committee of the House of Lords, said: "I found, of course, when I came on to the Council without any previous municipal experience except by observation, that I and other members equally inexperienced had to take great responsibilities upon ourselves. For instance, I was vice-chairman of the Finance Committee, and my Chairman also had had no previous municipal experience; the Finance Committee was felt to be one of the most important of the Committees of the Council, and the fact that its Chairman and Vice-chairman were two new members itself was a weakness."[13] Dr. Slater added that it took three years' hard work before a councillor could really master the affairs of a London borough, and that being so, is it surprising that it is becoming increasingly difficult to secure the services of competent men for the work of our local bodies? There undoubtedly are, on both aides, men of marked ability and of whole-hearted devotion to public affairs, but if our electoral system is such that, in the presence of an undiscriminating swing of the pendulum, their ability and devotion count for nothing, such men tend, albeit unwillingly, to withdraw from public life. The influence of the permanent official increases; the authority of the representative assembly declines. _The root of the evil._ In parliamentary, in county, and in borough council elections alike we trace the evils of defective electoral methods. These evils constitute a complete answer to Lord Morley's criticism of Mill, that the latter laid undue stress upon the efficiency of electoral machinery. Erected on a false basis, those democratic institutions, on which so many hopes have been built and on which our future still depends, are found full of shortcomings due not only to the imperfections of human nature but to the ill-working of a defective electoral system. The evils arising from the latter cause can at least be remedied, and in remedying them we may make it possible for the electors to put more intelligence and conscience into their votes. Since Mill was, as Lord Morley says, concerned with the important task of moulding and elevating popular character, he was rightly anxious that the electoral machinery should be such as to give due weight to those who desired to take an intelligent interest in the affairs of their country. [Footnote 1: _The Manchester Guardian_, 12 February 1909.] [Footnote 2: Annual Meeting, Proportional Representation Society, 9 May 1906.] [Footnote 3: _The Times_, 8 January 1906.] [Footnote 4: _Human Nature in Politics_, pp. 241 _et seq_.] [Footnote 5: _The Times_, 22 August 1906.] [Footnote 6: _The Essentials of Self-Government,_ pp. 102 _et seq_.] [Footnote 7: It is a matter for congratulation that in so many States there is now (1911) a movement of revolt against the domination of the "boss."] [Footnote 8: _The Manchester Guardian_, 21 April 1908.] [Footnote 9: _The Times_, 22 January 1909.] [Footnote 10: Letter read at the annual meeting of the Proportional Representation Society, 24 April 1907.] [Footnote 11: Eighty Club, 25 July 1910.] [Footnote 12: Before the Union.] [Footnote 13: _Report on Municipal Representation Bill (H. L.)_, 1907 (132).] CHAPTER IV THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority that succeeds by force or fraud in carrying elections. To break off that point is to avert the danger. The common system of representation perpetuates the danger. Unequal electorates afford no security to majorities. Equal electorates give none to minorities. Thirty-five years ago it was pointed out that the remedy is proportional representation. It is profoundly democratic, for it increases the influence of thousands who would otherwise have no voice in the Government; and it brings men more near an equality by so contriving that no vote shall be wasted, and that every voter shall contribute to bring into Parliament a member of his own opinion."--LORD ACTON The disfranchisement of minorities, noted in the two previous chapters as the outcome of our electoral methods, attracted considerable attention during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and several legislative proposals were carried with the specific object of remedying the evil. Indeed every electoral reform bill, beginning with that of 1832, has been accompanied with a demand or a suggestion for an improvement in methods of election in order to secure for the House of Commons a fully representative character. For it was clearly realized that without some such improvement neither an extension of the franchise nor a redistribution of seats would necessarily make the House a mirror of the nation. These attempts to secure representation for minorities have, however, often been confounded with the movement in favour of proportional representation--the just representation of all parties--and this confusion of thought may be partly due to the eloquent plea for the representation of minorities advanced by Mill in the chapter in _Representative Government_ devoted to the advocacy of Hare's scheme of proportional representation. This confusion showed itself in the speech which the Marquis of Ripon contributed to the debate[1] on the second reading of the Municipal Representation Bill, introduced by Lord Courtney of Penwith in 1907, for the purpose of enabling municipalities to adopt a system of proportional representation. "It was a remarkable thing," Lord Ripon said, "that so far as the experiments had gone they had not succeeded, and that, he thought, should make them cautious when looking into proposals of this kind." The experiments to which Lord Ripon referred were legislative proposals for the representation of minorities, and it cannot be admitted that these experiments were failures. They did secure the representation of minorities. The machinery provided did not enable them to do more, and an analysis of the results of these experiments will show to what extent they succeeded in their object, and at the same time disclose in what respects these experiments fell short of a true electoral method. _The Limited Vote_.] The first of these experiments was known as the Limited Vote--a method of voting which involves the creation of constituencies returning several members but limits the elector in the number of his votes; the elector is only permitted to vote for a number of candidates which is less than the number of members to be elected, whilst he may not give more than one vote to any one candidate. The Limited Vote was first proposed by Mr. Mackworth Praed in Committee on the Reform Bill of 1831, and the proposal was renewed by him in the following year in the Bill which became the great Reform Act of 1832. Up to that time the constituencies of England returned two members apiece, with the exception of the City of London, which returned four, and of five boroughs each returning one member. The Reform Bill provided that a third member should be added to the representation of each of seven counties, and that certain other counties should be divided into two or more constituencies, each returning two members. Mr. Praed proposed to drop this subdivision of counties, although permitting the additional members to be given, and proposed that in constituencies returning three or four members an elector should not be allowed to vote for more than two candidates. The arguments advanced by Mr. Praed are worth quoting. "He was of opinion," said he, "that it was an error in the original construction of the Representative Assembly of this country to allow any person to have more than one vote, for, by the present system, it was frequently the case that the same persons, constituting perhaps a bare majority of the electors, returned both members.... In the present case, if large counties were not divided each freeholder would have four votes. He wished to restrict them to two, and he thought that this object might be attained even without the division of counties by allowing each freeholder to vote only for two members although four was to be the number returned. Some measure should be taken to make the vote and views of a large minority known in the legislature." This form of voting was proposed by Lord Aberdeen's Government in the Parliamentary Representation Bill of 1854. In this Bill it was proposed to give a third member to 38 counties and divisions of counties (in addition to the seven counties which already possessed that privilege), and also to eight boroughs. Lord John Russell, in introducing the measure, made a powerful plea on behalf of the representation of minorities in each of these constituencies, but the Crimean War rendered further consideration of the Bill impossible. The system was, however, applied to thirteen constituencies by the Representation of the People Act of 1867. It was not provided for in the Bill as submitted by the Government, nor was it supported by the leader of the Opposition. Its introduction was due to the action of Lord Cairns, who, on 30 July 1867, carried in the House of Lords, with the support of Lord Russell and Lord Spencer, the following amendment:-- "At a contested election for any county or borough represented by three members, no person shall vote for more than two candidates." A further amendment applicable to the City of London, which returned four members, was also carried. The system remained in force until the Redistribution Act of 1885, when three-member constituencies were abolished. "There is nothing," said Lord Cairns, in the course of a memorable speech, "so irksome to those who form the minority of one of these large constituencies as to find that from the mere force of numbers they are virtually excluded from the exercise of any political power, that it is in vain for them to attempt to take any part in public affairs, that the election must always go in one direction, and that they have no political power whatever." The following table will show that Lord Cairns' proposal secured the object which he had in view--the representation of minorities:-- 1868. 1874. 1880. Constituency. Actual Probable Actual Probable Actual Probable results results results results results results with without with without with without Limited Limited Limited Limited Limited Limited Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. L. C. L. C. L. C. L. C. L. C. L. C Berkshire 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 Birmingham 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 3 0 Buckinghamshire 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 Cambridgeshire 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 Dorsetshire 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 Glasgow 3 0 3 0 2 1 3 0 3 0 3 0 Herefordshire 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 2 1 3 0 Hertfordshire 2 1 3 0 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 Leeds 2 1 3 0 1 2 3 0 2 1 3 0 Liverpool 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 1 2 0 3 London (City) 3 1 4 0 1 3 0 4 1 3 0 4 Manchester 2 1 3 0 1 2 0 3 2 1 3 0 Oxfordshire 1 2 0 3 1 2 3 0 1 2 0 3 Totals 22 18 19 21 16 24 9 31 20 20 15 25 The actual results show the relative strength of the two great political parties in each constituency; the probable results are based on the hypothesis that if each voter could have given one vote to each of three candidates, each of the parties would have nominated three candidates, and that as the electors would for the most part have voted on party lines, the larger body would have secured all three seats. In Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Dorsetshire, Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, Liverpool and London, the Liberal minorities each obtained a representative, whilst the Conservative minorities in Herefordshire, Leeds, and Manchester also obtained representatives. There were only two constituencies--Birmingham and Glasgow--where the minority failed to obtain representation, and this was due to the fact that the minorities in these particular constituencies were comparatively small. A consideration in detail of the election in Birmingham in 1880 will show why the minority sometimes failed to obtain representation, and will, at the same time, direct attention to the defects of the system. The figures of this election were as follows:-- H. Muntz (Liberal) 22,969 John Bright (Liberal) 20,079 Joseph Chamberlain (Liberal) 19,544 62,592 Major F. Burnaby (Con.) 15,735 Hon. A. C. G. Calthorpe (Con.) 14,208 29,943 It will be seen that the Liberals obtained 62,592 votes and the Conservatives 29,943 votes, and that the latter therefore numbered slightly less than a third of the constituency. If the Liberal votes had not been distributed as evenly as they were over their three candidates, it might have resulted that the lowest candidate on the poll, Joseph Chamberlain, would have received less votes than Major Burnaby, who was the highest of the two Conservative candidates. In order to obtain the full advantage of their numerical superiority it was necessary for the Liberal organization to make an extensive canvass of their supporters, to ascertain as accurately as possible their strength, and to issue precise instructions to the voters in each district as to the manner in which they should record their votes. The memorable cry associated with these elections--"Vote as you are told and we'll carry you through "--was fit accompaniment of these efforts of the Birmingham caucus.[2] But had there been a mistake in the calculations of the Liberal organization, had the polls disclosed a larger number of Conservatives, disaster would have followed the nomination of three Liberal candidates. If for example the votes had been as follows:-- Muintz Liberal)...... 21,000 Bright (Liberal)..... 20,000 Chamberlain (Liberal) 20,000 61,000 Burnaby (Conservative). 22,000 Calthorpe (Conservative). 21,000 43,000 the Conservatives would have returned two members, and the Liberals, although in a majority, would have returned only one. In brief, the party organizers had to be quite sure that their supporters numbered more than 60 per cent. of the electorate, and that these supporters would vote faithfully as ordered before they could recommend the nomination of three candidates. The attempt to obtain all three seats at Leeds, in the General Election of 1874, failed, with the result that the minority got the larger share of the representation. The poll on this occasion was as follows:-- M. Carter (Liberal)..... 15,390 E. Baines (Liberal) .... 11,850 Dr. F. R. Lees (Liberal). 5,945 33,185 W.St.J.Wheelhouse (Con.) 14,864 R. Tenant (Con.) . . .....13,192 28,056 In this election the total Liberal vote amounted to 33,185, and the total Conservative vote amounted to 28,056, but the Conservatives obtained two seats out of three. The practical working of the Limited Vote has therefore shown that the representation of a minority in a three-member constituency was always secured whenever that minority numbered not less than two-fifths of the electors, and as, in the majority of constituencies, the minority exceeded this proportion the minority was able to return one of the members. The system, however, possesses no elasticity. No party can put forward a complete list of candidates without incurring considerable risk, and even if the party has an ascertained strength of more than three-fifths complete victory is only possible if the members of the party are willing to carry out implicitly the instructions of the party organization. It should be noted, in connexion with this system of voting, that the more limited the vote the greater is the opportunity afforded to the minority to obtain representation. When in a four-member constituency each elector has three votes the minority must number three-sevenths before it can obtain a representative; if, however, each elector is limited to two votes a smaller minority, namely, a minority which exceeds one-third of the electors, can make sure of returning a member.[3] _The Cumulative Vote_.] The Cumulative Vote, the second of the experiments referred to by Lord Ripen, although by no means free from serious defects, has also secured the object for which it was designed--the representation of minorities. With this system the member has as many votes as there are members to be elected, and is permitted to distribute them amongst candidates, or to cumulate them among one or more candidates according to his own discretion. It was warmly advocated for the first time under the name of the Cumulative Vote by James Garth Marshall in an open letter entitled "Minorities and Majorities: their Relative Rights," addressed by him in 1853 to Lord John Russell. But three years earlier, in 1850, it was recommended[4] by the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations, and adopted by Earl Grey in the draft Constitution proposed for the Cape of Good Hope. The Legislative Council of Cape Colony continued to be elected under this system until the Council disappeared under the new Constitution of United South Africa. The Cumulative Vote secured the representation of minorities in the Legislative Council of Cape Colony, and a striking testimony to its value, from this point of view, was given by Lord Milner when speaking in the House of Lords on 31 July 1906, on the announcement of the terms of the new Transvaal Constitution:-- "I hope," said Lord Milner, "that when the time for making the Second Chamber elective comes, this matter may be reconsidered, for it is certainly very remarkable how much more fairly the system of proportional representation works out in the Cape Colony than the system, not of single members there, but of double-member representation. Take only a single instance. In the Cape Colony, take the bulk of the country districts; you have, roughly speaking, about two Boers to every one white man who is not a Boer. On the system which prevails for the Lower House the representation of these districts is exclusively Boer, for one-third of the population is absolutely excluded from any representation whatever. Under the system which prevails in the election to the Upper House, as nearly as possible one-third of the representatives of those districts are British. Inversely, in the case of the Cape Peninsula, where there is an enormously preponderant British population, but still a considerable Dutch population also, you get in the Lower House no single Dutch representative, whereas in the Upper House there are three representatives, one of whom represents the Dutch section. You could not have a more curious illustration of the great difference in fairness between the two principles as applied to the practical conditions of South Africa. And I cannot help hoping that between this time and the time when the Constitution of the projected Upper House comes to be decided, there may be such a development of opinion as will enable and justify the Government of that day adopting the far sounder principle for the elections to the Upper Chamber. It certainly has a great bearing upon that development of better feeling between the two great races of South Africa whom we are all agreed in desiring to see ultimately amalgamated and fused." The Cape Assembly was elected by constituencies returning one or more members, and when more than one each voter could give a single vote to as many candidates as there were members to be elected, with the consequence that the majority in every constituency commanded the whole of its representation. The Council was elected by larger areas with the cumulative vote. Lord Milner in his speech refers to the cumulative vote as proportional voting, but it cannot, strictly speaking, be so described. Nevertheless his testimony clearly shows that the cumulative vote secured the representation of minorities--the great need of which has been recognized by all impartial students of South African political conditions. Mr. Robert Lowe endeavoured to introduce this form of voting into the Electoral Reform Bill of 1867, but failed, and the only practical application of the system within the United Kingdom has been in connexion with School Board elections. It was introduced into the Education Act of 1870 on the motion of a private member, Lord Frederick Cavendish, whose proposition, supported as it was by W.E. Forster, Vice-President of the Council for Education, by W.H. Smith and by Henry Fawcett, was carried without a division. Under this Act London was divided into eleven electoral areas, returning from four to seven members each; whilst the large towns, such as Manchester, Birmingham, and others, each constituted an electoral area itself, electing a Board of some fifteen members. The Education Act for Scotland which followed in the same Parliament embodied the same principle in the-same manner. The figures of any School Board election will show that the object aimed at--the representation of minorities--was undoubtedly achieved. The last election of the School Board for London, that of 1900, will serve for purposes of illustration. The figures are as follows:-- Votes Obtained. Members Returned. Constituency. Mode- Pro- Inde- Mode- Pro- Inde- rate. gressive. pendent. rate. gressive. pendent. City 4,572 2,183 3 1 Chelsea 7,831 5,408 2,144 3 2 Finsbury 7,573 7,239 837 3 3 1 Greenwich 6,706 6,008 3,375 2 1 Hackney 5,438 9,130 1,579 2 3 Lambeth, E 4,370 9,913 1,313 1 3 Lambeth, W. 8,709 14,156 54 2 4 Marylebone 9,450 7,047 536 4 3 Southwark 2,636 3,430 2,328 1 2 1 Tower Hamlets 6,199 7,437 5,495 1 3 1 Westminster 4,829 2,354 3 2 Totals 68,313 74,305 17,661 25 27 3 In each constituency the minority was enabled to obtain some representation, and although in the majority of cases the representation was still confined to the two main parties, yet it was possible for an independent candidate, as in the Tower Hamlets, or a Roman Catholic candidate, as in Southwark, to succeed in their respective candidatures. The Cumulative Vote not only secured the representation of minorities, but in so doing facilitated very considerably the working of the Education Act. Mr. Patrick Cumin, at that time permanent secretary of the Education Department, in giving evidence before a select committee of the House of Commons, stated that "it would not have been possible to carry the Act into effect, and certainly there would have been more friction if the cumulative vote had not been in existence; for instance, he did not believe that the bye-laws could possibly have been carried into effect without co-operation." The Right Hon. W.E. Forster and Sir Francis Sandford bore similar testimony, and the Royal Commission on the Elementary Education Acts, in the Report issued in 1888, strongly advised the retention of a system of minority representation. The Cumulative Vote was also adopted by the State of Illinois for the elections to the State House of Representatives. Each constituency returns three members, and the elector may cumulate or divide his votes, giving one vote to each candidate, or one and a half votes to each of two candidates, or three votes to one candidate. "As a result," says Professor Commons, "both parties have representatives from every part of the State instead of from the strongholds only, and there are no hopeless minorities of the two main parties. Every citizen who has business before the Legislature has some member of his own party to transact that business." Constituencies returning three members are, however, not sufficiently large to do justice to this method of voting. The Cumulative Vote, whilst securing representation to the minority, does not necessarily secure the representation of majorities and minorities in their true proportions. As with the Limited Vote, the party organizations, if they desire to make use of their polling strength to the fullest advantage, must make as accurate an estimate as possible of the numbers of their supporters, and must issue explicit directions as to the way in which votes should be recorded. To nominate more candidates than the party can carry may end in disaster. In the first School Board elections in Birmingham the Liberal organization endeavoured to obtain the whole of the representation, and nominated fifteen candidates. The party polled a majority of the votes, but as these votes were distributed over too many candidates, the Liberals succeeded in returning only a minority of representatives. It is not easy to understand how the Birmingham National League came to imagine that, with the Cumulative Vote, they would still be able to elect a Board composed of members entirely of their own side, and Mr. Forster banteringly suggested that the League should obtain the assistance of a well-taught elementary schoolboy who would be able to show them that it was impossible to get the return which they supposed they might obtain. While there was little excuse for the mistake made by the Birmingham National League, it must be remembered that with the Cumulative Vote it is easy to fall into the opposite error of nominating too few candidates. Every School Board election furnishes examples of an excessive concentration of votes upon individual candidates. The Glasgow School Board election of 1909 resulted as follows:-- Elected----James Barr 81,109 Canon Dyer 58,711 John Shaughnessy 54,310 Charles Byrne 54,236 Rev. James Brisby 51,357 W. Rounsfell Brown 35,739 R. S. Allan 24,017 Rev. J. Fraser Grahame 23,806 Dr. Henry Dyer 23,422 Mrs. Mary Mason 22,929 W. Martin Haddow 21,880 Rev. Robert Pryde 21,692 Miss K. V. Bannatyne 18,864 Mrs. Agnes Hardie 18,794 J. Leiper Gemmil 18,619 Unelected--Rev. J. A. Robertson 18,534 James Welsh 13,951 Dr. Sloan 13,114 S. M. Lipschitz 12,680 Dr. Charles Workman 7,405 James Laidlaw 4,869 Patrick Gallagher 2,478 ------- 602,516 It will be seen that the candidate at the head of the list, Mr. Barr, obtained over 81,000 votes, and the highest of the unsuccessful candidates 18,534 votes. The total number of votes polled was 602,516, and one-fifteenth of this number, viz. 40,167, would have been amply sufficient to secure the return of any one candidate. The votes given to Mr. Barr in excess of this number were wasted, and thus, although with the cumulative vote minorities can secure representation, neither majorities nor minorities secure with any degree of certainty representation in their true proportions. _The Single Vote_.] Japan, keenly alive to the evils of a defective electoral system, abandoned, after a short trial, the system adopted when the Japanese Constitution was promulgated in 1889. The administrative areas (with some exceptions) were then divided into single-member constituencies, but it was soon found how unsatisfactorily this system works. It would appear from a memorandum prepared by Mr. Kametaro Hayashida, Chief Secretary of the Japanese House of Representatives--a memorandum which is printed in full in Appendix I.--that in certain of the administrative areas a minority of the voters often obtained a majority of the members elected. It was almost impossible for political parties to obtain representation in proportion to the strength of their supporters. In 1900 a new election law was adopted. The administrative areas, irrespective of size, were made parliamentary constituencies returning a number of members varying from one to twelve according to the population of the area, but the voter in any area was permitted only one vote. He can vote for one candidate and no more. Under this system minorities can and do get a share of representation whenever the area returns two or more members. A secondary advantage of considerable importance was secured by making the administrative areas conterminous with the parliamentary constituencies. Future redistributions of seats would leave the boundaries of these areas untouched; they would merely consist of a re-arrangement of the number of members to be returned by each area. The new system secured not only the representation of minorities, but also the representation of the chief parties in reasonable proportion to their voting strength. Further, to men of independent mind and character the new system offered a greater opportunity of maintaining their position in the House of Representatives. As will be seen from Mr. Hayashida's memorandum, both Mr. Ozaki, the Mayor of Tokio, and Mr. S. Shimada, have never lost their seats in Parliament, although they have stood as independent candidates. At the General Election of 1908 they were returned for their native prefecture or town with a great number of votes. These are results of no mean value which are certainly not possible with our Parliamentary system of single-member constituencies, or with the block vote as used in the London municipal elections. Yet, in spite of the marked superiority of the Japanese system, it falls short of a true system of representation; it lacks the elasticity and adaptability which should characterize such a system. Like the limited vote and the cumulative vote, the Japanese system of the single vote demands exact calculations on the part of party organizations, which otherwise may fail to secure for their party the maximum number of representatives. The number of candidates nominated must depend upon a careful estimate of probable support, and when the nominations have taken place efforts must be made by the party organizations to allot this support to their candidates in such a way that not one of them is in danger of defeat. Moreover, as the nomination of too large a number of candidates would, as with the limited vote, be disastrous, parties have in some constituencies been unwilling to nominate more than the number of candidates who were successful at the previous election. _The need of minority representation_.] It cannot be maintained then, as was suggested by Lord Ripon, that the experiments made for the purpose of securing the representation of minorities have failed. All the methods tried--the limited, the cumulative, and the single vote--have without question accomplished their purpose. They have done even more. The cumulative vote facilitated the smooth working of the Elementary Education Act, the single vote has secured for Japan a House of Representatives which reflects in reasonable proportions the political forces of the country. The problem for the future is not the abandonment of the principle of minority representation, but the adoption of such improvements in voting mechanism as will do justice to majorities and to minorities alike. For the need of minority representation is becoming more and not less urgent. A brief reference to the more important Parliamentary Bills of recent years will show that the most difficult problems which our administrators have had to face in the framing of those Bills have centred round the problem of representation--and that problem will recur with greater frequency in the future. Mr. Birrell, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, considered it essential that some special provision for the representation of minorities should be embodied in the Irish Administrative Council Bill introduced into the House of Commons in May 1907. But the method proposed--that the Council should consist of eighty-two elected members and twenty-four nominated members--was essentially undemocratic. The nominated members, even if they were representative of the minority, would never have had the same authority or influence as they would have had as members duly elected by the votes of the minority; and even if we admit the special difficulties attending the representation of minorities in Ireland the solution proposed by Mr. Birrell was in every sense of the term unsatisfactory, and obviously of a temporary character. The first step towards the solution of Irish problems will have been taken when due provision has been made by popular election for the representation of minorities. Lord Morley of Blackburn, in preparing his great scheme of Indian reforms, found himself face to face with the same problem--the representation of minorities. He had, moreover, been advised by the Indian Government that "in most provinces the Muhammadans are in favour of election, and regard nomination as an inferior method of obtaining admission to the Legislative Council."[5] Lord Morley, willingly or unwillingly, was compelled to brush aside the English electoral methods as inapplicable to India, and to provide for the representation on the proposed Provincial Legislative Councils of Hindus and Muhammadans in proportion to their strength. The method proposed was an arbitrary one, and can be best described by quoting the terms of Lord Morley's preliminary despatch. "Let it be supposed that the total population of the Province is twenty millions, of whom fifteen millions are Hindus and five millions Muhammadans, and the number of members to be elected twelve. Then since the Hindus are to Muhammadans as three to one, nine Hindus should be elected to three Muhammadans. In order to obtain these members, divide the Province into three electoral areas, in each of which three Hindus and one Muhammadan are to be returned. Then, in each of these areas, constitute an electoral college, consisting of, let us say, a hundred members. In order to preserve the proportion between the two religions, seventy-five of these should be Hindus and twenty-five Muhammadans. This electoral college should be obtained by calling upon the various electorates ... to return to it such candidates as they desired, a definite number being allotted to each electorate. Out of those offering themselves and obtaining votes, the seventy-five Hindus who obtained the majority of votes should be declared members of the College, and the twenty-five Musalmans who obtained the majority should similarly be declared elected. If the Musalmans returned did not provide twenty-five members for the Electoral College, the deficiency would be made good by nomination. Having thus obtained an Electoral College containing seventy-five Hindus and twenty-five Musalmans, that body would be called upon to elect three representatives for the Hindus and one for the Muhammadans; each member of the College would have only one vote, and could vote for only one candidate. In this way it is evident that it would be in the power of each section of the population to return a member in the proportion corresponding to its own proportion to the total population."[6] Lord Morley proceeded to explain that "in this manner minorities would be protected against exclusion by majorities, and all large and important sections of the population would have the opportunity of returning members in proportion to their ratio to the total population. Their choice would in that event be exercised in the best possible way, that, namely, of popular election, instead of requiring Government to supply deficiencies by the dubious method of nomination." The system of nomination, considered by Mr. Birrell as an adequate solution of this problem in Ireland, was summarily rejected, and rightly so, by Lord Morley as being inferior to popular election, inferior even to the arbitrary method proposed by himself. The plan finally adopted by Lord Morley was a modification of the proposal here outlined, and its working, as the working of all arbitrary schemes must, has evoked criticism on the ground that it does not hold the scales even as between the two sections to be represented. The Select Committee appointed by the House of Lords "to consider the suggestions made from time to time for increasing the efficiency of that House," was compelled to propose a method of election by which the Liberal minority might retain some representation in that House. In the election of Representative Peers for Scotland the majority method of election is followed, with the result that none but Unionists are chosen. It was obvious that no proposal for the reform of the House of Lords which embodied an electoral method so unjust could possibly be entertained, and therefore this Select Committee, following in this all previous proposals for the reform of the Upper House, reported that the representation of the minority was essential. A new Second Chamber is now advocated both by Liberals and Unionists. Again, Mr. Asquith's Government experienced a very distinct rebuff in its attempt to abolish the cumulative vote in the elections of Scottish School Boards without making any alternative provision for the representation of minorities. The Government proposed to substitute the block vote for the cumulative vote. The block vote would have enabled the majority of the electors to have secured the whole of the representation on the Board. The deletion of the Government's proposal was proposed in the Scottish Grand Committee, but was defeated. A further amendment by Mr. Phipson Beale in favour of the principle of proportional representation was, in spite of the strong opposition of the Secretary for Scotland, defeated only by twenty-two votes to eighteen. The Government finally withdrew their proposal to abolish the cumulative vote, and it has been made abundantly clear that, while the cumulative vote is far from satisfactory, it can only be dispensed with by the introduction of a better and more scientific way of securing the representation of minorities. In framing the Port of London Bill, Mr. Lloyd George had to make some provision for the representation of the various interests concerned, and so far as possible, in due proportion. It was impossible to entrust the control of the new Port to the largest interest only, and accordingly he proposed that "in prescribing the manner in which votes are to be recorded, the Board of Trade shall have regard to the desirability of votes being so recorded, whether by allowing the voter to record a vote for a number of candidates in order of preference or otherwise, as to secure that so far as possible the several interests concerned shall be adequately represented on the Port Authority."[7] The reports of the Poor Law Commission also raise in an acute form the problem of minority representation. If the far-reaching suggestions of these reports are to become law, and especially if the powers of County and County Borough Councils are to be still further increased, the constitution of these bodies will have to be closely examined. Are minorities to be excluded altogether from the new authorities; are they to secure representation through the processes of co-option and nomination; or are they to obtain a hearing by a system of election that will provide them with representation in their own right? While these and other matters are bringing into greater prominence the need of minority representation, a new problem--one with which the Continent has long been familiar--has arisen in connexion with English parliamentary elections. In an increasing number of contests three or more candidates have taken the field, and the candidate obtaining the highest number of votes has been elected although he may have received less than half the votes recorded. A member so chosen obviously represents only a minority of the electors in the constituency for which he has been returned. Such results have come as a shock to those who have hitherto accepted with composure the more glaring anomalies of our electoral system, and so the growing frequency of three-cornered fights will assist those other forces which are making for a complete readjustment of our electoral methods. The new problem is, however, quite distinct from that of minority representation, and is of sufficient importance to warrant consideration in a separate chapter. [Footnote 1: 30 April 1907.] [Footnote 2: "One ward voted for A and B, another for A and C, a third for B and C, a fourth for A and B, &c. The voter who had left the selection of the three candidates to the general committee was also to renounce the privilege of selecting from them the two which he preferred. 'Vote as you are told' was the pass word."--Ostrogorski, _Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties_, vol. i. p. 162.] [Footnote 3: If in a four-member constituency the number of voters is 21,000 and the parties are in the ratio of 12,000 to 9000, the larger party would, if each elector had three votes, have 36,000 votes in all and the smaller party would have 27,000. No candidate of the smaller party could obtain more than 9000 votes, whilst the 36,000 votes of the larger party carefully divided among four candidates would also allow each candidate to receive 9000 votes. If then the larger party had slightly more than 12,000 supporters out of a total of 21,000, the larger party would obtain all four seats, as each of its candidates would, if the votes were carefully distributed, receive more than 9000 votes each.] [Footnote 4: "If it is desired that the body should not be a representation of a single interest and a single class of opinions, some means must be adopted to guard against its falling entirely into the hands of the dominant party. With this view we would recommend that, in the election of the council, each elector should have as many votes as there might be members to be chosen, and should be entitled to give all these votes to a single candidate, or to distribute them among several. By this arrangement a monopoly of power in the Legislative Council by any one party, or any one district of the Colony, would be prevented, since a minority of the electors, by giving all their votes to a single candidate, would be enabled to secure his return."--Earl Grey, _The Colonial Policy of the Administration of Lord John Russell_, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 362.] [Footnote 5: _East India_ (Advisory and Legislative Councils, &c.) (Cd. 4426), p. 14.] [Footnote 6: _East India_ (Advisory and Legislative Councils, &c.) (Cd. 4426), p. 45.] [Footnote 7: Port of London Act, 1908, Schedule I., Part IV. (1).] CHAPTER V THE SECOND BALLOT AND THE TRANSFERABLE VOTE IN SINGLE-MEMBER CONSTITUENCIES "Le député, au lieu de représenter la majorité des électeurs, devient prisonnier de la minorité qui lui a donné l'appoint nécessaire pour son élection." --YVES GUYOT " ... every fool knows that a man represents Not the fellers that sent him, but them on the fence." --J. RUSSELL LOWELL _Three-cornered contests._ It was stated in the first chapter that the rise of the Labour Party as a political force, with an organization wholly independent of those of the older parties, would make a change in our voting system imperative. Both prior and subsequent to the appointment of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems political organizations have shown themselves keenly alive to the necessity of such a change. At the meeting of the General Committee of the National Liberal Federation at Leicester, on 21 February 1908, a resolution in favour of the early adoption of the second ballot was carried unanimously. The Trades Union Congress, at its meeting in September 1908, less eager to pronounce in favour of a reform of such doubtful value, passed a resolution in favour of an authoritative "inquiry into proportional representation, preference or second ballots, so that the most effective means of securing the true representation of the electors may be embodied in the new Reform Bill." The spokesman of a deputation from the Manchester Liberal Federation, which waited upon Mr. Winston Churchill on 22 May 1909, said: "The point on which we wish to speak to you to-day is the reform of the present system of voting, which we hold to be out of date, archaic, and in great need of reform." Mr. Churchill's reply was a significant reinforcement of Mr. Asquith's previous declaration, that "it was impossible to defend the present rough and ready methods." "I think," said Mr. Churchill, "the present system has clearly broken down. The results produced are not fair to any party, nor to any section of the community. In many cases they do not secure majority representation, nor do they secure an intelligent representation of minorities. All they secure is fluke representation, freak representation, capricious representation." The figures of two bye-elections--those of the Jarrow Division of Durham and the Attercliffe Division of Sheffield--will show how completely Mr. Churchill's language is justified. The figures are as follows:-- JARROW ELECTION, 4 July 1907 Curran (Labour) 4,698 Rose-Innes (Conservative) 3,930 Hughes (Liberal) 3,474 O'Hanlon (Nationalist) 2,124 ___ 14,226 ATTERCLIFFE ELECTION, 4 May 1909 Pointer (Labour) . . . . 3,531 King-Farrow (Unionist) . . . 3,380 Lambert (Liberal) . . . . 3,175 Wilson (Ind. Unionist) . . . 2,803 ___ 12,889 In the case of Jarrow the successful candidate obtained just less than one-third of the votes polled, and in the case of Attercliffe the member returned represented a little more than a quarter of the electors. The representation which results from elections of this kind is without doubt most capricious and uncertain in character. A House of Commons so built up could have no claim to be representative of the nation, and its composition would be so unstable as seriously to impair its efficiency. Nor can we afford to regard such elections as being a mere temporary feature of our parliamentary system. The General Election of 1906 showed a notable increase in the number of three-cornered fights over previous general elections, and the bye-elections during the four years 1906--1909 were marked by a still further increase. The Report submitted by the Executive Committee of the Labour Party to the Portsmouth Conference in January 1909 foreshadowed a very large addition to the number of Labour candidates. Some thirty-eight candidates, in addition to the then existing Labour members in Parliament, had been formally approved by the Executive Committee of the Labour Party after due election by the Labour organizations to which the candidates belonged, and although constituencies were not found for all of these new candidates, the number of three-cornered contests in the election of Jan. 1910, in which Liberal, Unionist, Labour (or Socialist) took part, was no less than forty-one, and this number would have been greater had not several Liberal candidates withdrawn. Owing to the desire on the part of the Liberal and Labour parties to avoid the risk of losing seats there were in the elections of December 1910 fewer three-cornered fights. But the Labour party, the permanence of which is no longer open to question, will not be content to remain with its present share of representation. It can however gain additional seats only at the expense of the older parties, and although the Liberal party, as in the Mid-Derby bye-election of May 1908, may sometimes yield seats to Labour nominees, it is not to be expected that the Liberal organizations will always be willing to give way. At the Mid-Glamorgan bye-election in May 1910 the local organization, against the advice of the chief Liberal Whip, nominated a Liberal candidate, and succeeded in retaining the seat although it had been "ear-marked" by the Labour Party. In Scotland, where Liberalism is less complaisant than in England, no seat has been surrendered to the Labour Party without a fight, and when a Labour candidature was threatened in December 1910, in the Bridgeton division of Glasgow, the Liberals retaliated by threatening to place a Liberal candidate in the Blackfriars division where Mr. Barnes, the Labour representative was again standing. These facts should dispel any illusion, if such still exist, that the problem of three-cornered fights is a transitory phenomenon which can safely be ignored. The political organizations, with a true instinct, have realized the importance and urgency of this problem, and increasing pressure will doubtless be brought to bear upon the Government to introduce a system of second ballots, or some other electoral method, that will give effect to what Mr. Churchill has described as "the broad democratic principle, that a majority of voters in any electoral unit, acting together, shall be able to return their man." The advocates of the second ballot and cognate methods of reform seek a solution of this one problem only. They desire to maintain the essential characteristic of the present system--the exclusive representation of the majority in each constituency--and make no attempt to remedy any of the other evils associated with single-member constituencies. But the question at once arises whether the problem of three-cornered contests can be solved by attempts to preserve the distinctive feature of the present system--the representation of the majority only. A little reflection must convince the reader that such a solution deals with the form of the problem rather than with its essence. For the new problem arises from the fact that three parties instead of two are now seeking representation in Parliament, and no remedy can be regarded as effective which does not provide for the realization of the legitimate aspirations of all three parties. This the system of second ballots has completely failed to do; indeed its results only reinforce the arguments of previous chapters, that so long as we compel the electors of any one district, whatever their divisions of opinion, to be all represented by one man, their real representation will be impossible. An examination of the effects of the second ballot in those countries in which the system has been tried fully justifies these statements, and fortunately the body of experience now available is so considerable that the conclusions to be drawn therefrom have an authoritative character. _The second ballot._ The Reports furnished by His Majesty's representatives abroad show that the second ballot, in one form or another, is, or has been, in force in the majority of continental countries. The forms differ in detail, but reference need only be made to the three chief types. In Germany the two candidates highest at the first poll proceed to a second election. It was this form of the second ballot that was introduced into New Zealand in 1908. In France all candidates in the original election and even fresh candidates may stand at the second election. At this second poll a relative--not an absolute--majority of votes is sufficient to secure the election of a candidate. As a rule only the two candidates highest at the first election take part in the second ballot, and therefore in practice the German and French methods closely approximate to one another. The third type concerns the application of the second ballot to the _scrutin de liste_ or block vote in multi-member constituencies. It was formerly used in the Belgian parliamentary elections, and is still employed in the election for the Belgian Provincial Councils. The candidates who receive the support of an absolute majority of the electors voting at the first ballot are at once declared elected; the candidates next highest on the poll, but only so many as are equal to double the number of vacancies remaining to be filled, take part in a second ballot. The object of the second ballot--to ensure that every elected candidate should finally have obtained the support of a majority of the electors voting in the constituency for which he has been returned--has, generally speaking, been achieved. But that does not solve the problem of the representation of three parties; a general election based on such a system yields results which are far from satisfactory. The party which is unsuccessful in one constituency may suffer the same fate in the majority of the constituencies, and this is the fatal flaw in all forms of the second ballot. Moreover experience has shown, and it is evident _a priori_, that with this system the representation of any section of political opinion depends not upon the number of its supporters, but very largely upon the attitude taken towards it by other parties. For, at a second ballot, the result is determined by the action of those smaller minorities which were at the bottom of the poll at the first ballot. No party can be certain of securing representation unless in its own strength it can obtain an absolute majority in at least some of the constituencies. The largest party in the State, if its voting strength is evenly distributed, may be at the mercy of hostile combinations at the second ballots, unless it is so large as to command a majority of votes throughout the country, and when three parties have entered the political arena it rarely happens that any one of them is in this favourable position. That being so, the new element of uncertainty associated with the system of second ballots may yield results which are further removed from the true representation of the whole electorate than the results of the first ballots. _Experience in Germany._ Continental experience has shown that the coalitions at the second ballots are of two types. One party may incur the hostility of all other parties, and if so, the second ballots will tend uniformly to the suppression of that party. The combination of parties whose aims and purposes are to some degree allied may be regarded as legitimate, but the cumulative effect of such combinations over a large area is most unfair to the party adversely affected. No defence at all can be urged in palliation of the evils of certain other coalitions also characteristic of second ballots--the coalitions of extreme and opposed parties which temporarily combine for the purpose of wrecking a third party in the hope of snatching some advantage from the resulting political situation. Sometimes such coalitions are merely the expression of resentment by an advanced party at the action of a party somewhat less advanced than itself. But, whatever the cause, the coalitions at the second ballots do not result in the creation of a fully representative legislative chamber; on the contrary, they tend to take away all sincerity from the parliamentary system. Illustrations of the first type of coalitions abound. The German general elections afford numerous examples, but as a special note on the working of the second ballots in Germany is to be found in Appendix II., it will suffice to quote some of the results of the election of 1907. The Social Democrats were engaged at the second ballots in ninety constituencies. At the first ballots they were at the head of the poll in forty-four of these constituencies, but at the second ballots they only succeeded in retaining that position in eleven. In the forty-six constituencies in which they were second at the poll they were only able to improve their condition in three cases. These figures show how the German Social Democrats suffered from hostile combinations. It was with the utmost difficulty that they obtained representation in constituencies other than those in which at the first elections they were in an absolute majority. No wonder that one of the planks of the platform of the Social Democratic party is proportional representation. _Austria._ The Social Democrats of Austria suffered in the General Election of 1907 in the same way. Professor Kedlich,[1] in an article entitled "The Working of Universal Suffrage in Austria," wrote as follows: "The Christian Socialists have ninety-six seats in the new House, the Social Democrats eighty-six ... The number of seats won by them weighs still heavier in the balance when we reflect that in many second ballots the majority of the opponents of social democracy joined their forces against them. Not less instructive are the relative numbers of the votes recorded for each of the parties. Over a million votes were given to the Social Democrats as against 531,000 for the Christian Socialists." Such results destroy the representative character of legislative bodies. The same lesson on a smaller scale is to be gathered from the Italian elections. Speaking of the General Election of 1904, the Rome correspondent of _The Morning Post_ pointed out that, in not a few constituencies, like the second division of Rome, a rally of Clericals at the second ballots enabled the Conservative Monarchists to triumph over the Socialists. _Belgium._ The combinations of allied parties against a third party, as in the examples already given, may be defended, but the coalitions at second ballots, as has been pointed out, are not always of this character. Should parties, angered and embittered by being deprived of representation, use their power at the second ballots to render a stable Government impossible, then the results are disastrous. Such were the conditions which obtained in Belgium before the abandonment of second ballots. "The system," says Sir Arthur Hardinge, "answered well enough so long as only two parties contested an election; but the moment the Socialist Party formed a distinct third party, after the establishment of universal suffrage in 1894, it began to act in a manner which produced unsatisfactory results.... The overwhelming victory of the Clerical party in 1894 was largely due to the fact that in every second ballot between Catholics and Socialists the Liberals voted for the former, whilst in every second ballot between Catholics and Liberals, with the single exception of the Thuin Division, the Socialists preferred the Catholics as the creators of universal suffrage and as, in some respects, a more genuinely democratic party, to the Liberals, whom the Labour leaders regarded with peculiar hatred as the apostles of free competition and individualism. In 1896 the Socialists were in their turn the victims, as the Liberals had been in 1894, of the working of the system of second ballots. Liberal electors at these elections voted everywhere at the second ballots for Clerical against Labour candidates, with the result that the Clericals won every one of the eighteen seats for Brussels, although the total number of Clerical electors in a total electorate of 202,000 was only 89,000, as against 40,000 Liberals and 73,000 ultra-Radicals and Labour men. Two years later the Liberals swung round to an alliance with the Socialists against the Clericals, and in several constituencies, owing to the system of second ballots, the Socialists, although actually in a minority, won all the seats with the help of the Liberals, who on the first ballot had voted unsuccessfully for Liberal as against both Catholic and Labour candidates. It was the practical experience of conditions such as these which gradually convinced all the Belgian parties that, given a three-cornered fight in every, or nearly every, constituency, the only way of preventing a minority from turning the scales and excluding from all representation the views of nearly half the electorate was to adopt the system of proportional representation."[2] Count Goblet d'Alviella furnishes an excellent example of the working of the second ballots at Verviers in the General Election of 1898, the last parliamentary election in Belgium, at which second ballots were used. In the election for Senators the Socialists spoiled the chances of the Liberals by voting for the Clericals, whilst, in the election for the Chamber, the Liberals, not to be outdone, spoiled the chances of the Socialists by also supporting the Clericals. The Clericals thus obtained all the seats both in the Senate and in the Chamber with the assistance of the Socialists and of the Liberals in turn. The absurdities of the General Election of 1898 were so flagrant that on the day after the election so determined an opponent of proportional representation as _La Chronique_ exclaimed, "Can anything be more absurd than the working of the second ballots in this country? ... What becomes of the moral force of an election in which parties are obliged, if they wish to win, to implore the support of electors who yesterday were their enemies? Such support is never obtained without conditions, and these conditions are either promises which it is not intended to keep or a surrender of principles--in either case a proceeding utterly immoral."[3] _France_.] French elections also furnish examples of the use of the second ballots for the purpose of fostering dissension between opponents. At the General Election in 1906 it was stated that the Conservatives in the South of France, despairing of obtaining representation themselves, intended to support the Socialists at the second ballot in the hope of obtaining an advantage by accentuating the difference between the Socialists and the Radicals. M. Jaurès indignantly denied that there was any understanding between the Socialists and the Conservatives, and took advantage of the accusation to write in _L'Humanité_ a powerful plea for proportional representation. "This reform," he declared, "would make such unnatural alliances impossible. Each party would be induced and, indeed, it would be to each party's advantage to fight its own battle, for every group would have an opportunity of obtaining its full share of representation. There would no longer be any question of doubtful manoeuvres, of confused issues; Socialism would have its advocates, Radicalism its exponents, Conservatism its leaders, and there would be a magnificent propaganda of principles which would inevitably result in the political education of the electorate. Every movement would be assured of representation in proportion to its real strength in the country; every party, freed from the necessity of entering into alliances which invariably beget suspicion, would be able to formulate quite clearly its essential principles; governmental and administrative corruption would be reduced to a minimum; the real wishes of the people would find expression; and if parties still continued to dispute for power, it would be to enable them to promote the more effectually the measures for which they stood." In spite, however, of this eloquent disclaimer on the part of M. Jaurès, the Conservatives have at the bye-elections continued their policy of supporting the Socialists. The bye election of Charolles in December 1908 is a case in point. At the first ballot the figures were as follows:-- M. Sarrien fils (Radical) 5,770 votes M. Duoarouge (Socialist) 4,367 " M. Magnien (Conservative) 3,968 " At the second ballot-- M. Ducarouge (Socialist) 6,841 " Elected M. Sarrien fils (Radical) 5,339 " M. Magnien (Conservative) 301 " It should be explained that the Conservative candidate, although his name still appeared upon the ballot paper, retired before the second election, and it is evident that the votes of many of his supporters were given to the Socialist candidate. In the following April (1909) several further instances occurred. At Uzès a vacancy was caused by the death of a Radical Socialist member who, at the General Election of 1906, had beaten the Duc d'Uzès, a Reactionary, the Socialist candidate on that occasion being at the bottom of the poll. In the bye-election the Socialist was returned at the head of the poll, but so obvious was the fact that the Socialist owed his victory to Conservative support, that he was received in the Chamber by the Radicals with the cry of "M. le duc d'Uzès." Uzès was typical of other elections and, as the Paris correspondent of _The Morning Post_ remarked, "the successes of the Unified Socialists in the recent series of bye-elections are in part to be attributed to the votes of the Reactionaries, who voted for the Unified candidates as being enemies of the Republic." This abuse of the purpose of second ballots--an abuse engendered by the failure of the minority to obtain direct representation--destroys the last semblance of sincerity in the representation of a constituency, and must hasten the abolition of the second ballots in France in the same way as combinations of a similar nature rendered imperative the introduction of a more rational system of election in Belgium. The foregoing facts are sufficient to show that a system of second ballots does not necessarily result in the formation of a legislative chamber fully representative of the electorate. In Germany the largest party has had its representation ruthlessly cut down by the operation of the second ballots. Indeed, were it not for the overwhelming predominance of this party in certain areas it might not have obtained any representation whatever. In Belgium the effect of the second ballots was to deprive the middle party, the Liberals, of their fair share of representation. In 1896, owing to the coalitions of Socialists and Catholics at the polls, the Liberals had only eleven representatives in the popular chamber. All their leaders had been driven from Parliament, their electoral associations had become completely disorganized save in some large towns, and in many constituencies they had ceased to take part in elections. Yet the results of the very first elections (1900) after the establishment of proportional representation, showed that the Liberals were the second largest party in the State, and that it was a party which still responded to the needs and still gave voice to the views of large numbers of citizens. _The bargainings at the second ballots in France_.] The system of second ballots not only deprives large sections of the electorate of representation, but the very coalitions which produce this result bring parliamentary institutions into still further disrepute. These coalitions are condemned in unequivocal terms by Continental writers and statesmen of widely differing schools of thought. The scathing language of M. Jaures has already been quoted, and we find his views endorsed by politicians of the type of M. Deschanel, an ex-President of the Chamber of Deputies, who declared that these coalitions entirely falsify the character of the popular verdict. Again, M. Yves Guyot, an ex-Minister, asserts that "the second ballots give rise to detestable bargainings which obliterate all political sense in the electors." M. Raymond Poincare, a Senator and a former Minister, condemns the system of second ballots in equally forcible language. "It will be of no use," he says, "to replace one kind of constituency by another if we do not, at the same time, suppress the gamble of the majority system and the jobbery of the second ballots." These expressions of opinion on the part of individual French politicians could be multiplied, but it will be sufficient to add to them the more formal and official declaration of the Commission du Suffrage Universel, a Parliamentary Committee appointed by the Chamber of Deputies. In the Report issued by this Committee in 1907, it is declared that "the abolition of the second ballots with the bargainings to which they give rise will not be the least of the advantages of the new system [proportional representation]." _The "Kuh-Handel" in Germany._ It would appear that the German second ballots are also characterized by this same evil of bargaining. Karl Blind, writing in _The Nineteenth Century_, March 1907, stated that "in this last election the oddest combinations have taken place for the ballots in the various parts of the Empire and within different States. There was no uniformity of action as to coming to a compromise between Conservative and Liberal, or Liberal and Social Democrat, or Centre and any other party, as against some supposed common enemy who was to be ousted from his insufficient majority by a subsequent alliance between otherwise discordant groups, or who wanted to have his insufficient majority increased to an absolute one by the addition of the vote of one of the defeated candidates whose friends finally choose the 'lesser evil'.... "To some extent these necessary, but sometimes rather sordid, transactions are made all the more difficult through the very existence of separate States with 'Home Rule' legislatures of their own. Political development has in them gone so far in a centrifugal sense that the nation has been sadly split up and the public mind too much divided into merely local concerns and issues.... "Irrespective of this baneful influence of a so-called 'Home Rule' state of things on the life of the nation at large, I must confess that the huckstering at the second ballots does not strike me as an ideal institution. It generally goes, in Germany, under the name of _Kuh-Handel_ (cow-bargain). It often brings out the worst symptoms of intrigue and political immorality.... Those who dabble in the _Kuh-Handel_ either lead their own contingent as allies into an enemy's camp from spite against another adversary, or they induce their own men to desist from voting at all at a second ballot, so as to give a chance to another candidate, whom they really detest with all their heart, but whom they wish to use as a means of spiting one still more deeply hated." _The position of a deputy elected at a second ballot_.] The separate experiences, therefore, of France, Belgium, and Germany all yield convincing and corroborative testimony to the demoralizing influence on political life which results from the coalitions at the second ballots. Insufficient attention, however, has been directed to one aspect of this influence, its pernicious effect upon the inner working of parliamentary institutions. The deputy who is elected as the result of a coalition of forces at the second ballot finds himself in an extremely difficult and unstable position. Instead of being the representative of the majority of the electors he too often becomes, in the apt phrase of M. Yves Guyot, "the prisoner of the minority," and, whilst in Parliament, he is being continually reminded of the power of that minority to make or unmake him at the next election. The persistent pressure of that minority explains those contradictory votes in the French Chamber which, to a foreigner, are often incomprehensible. The deputy will usually act in accordance with the opinion of the group to which he belongs and vote accordingly, but at a subsequent sitting he will find it necessary to vote in such a way as will give satisfaction to that minority whose support assured his success at the previous election, and without whose support he cannot hope for re-election when the time comes for a fresh appeal to the country. The pressure which such a minority can exert must often be intolerable, and must, in any case, render it impossible for any deputy either to do justice to himself or to the legislative chamber to which he belongs.[3] _The alternative vote._ The shortcomings of the system of the second ballot are so pronounced and are so generally recognized that there now exists but little, if any, demand for its introduction into this country, and more attention has therefore been given to the mechanism of the alternative vote as affording a means of securing the object of the second ballot whilst avoiding many of its inconveniences. Under this suggested plan the voter is invited to mark his preferences against the names of the candidates on the voting paper by putting the figure "1" against his first favourite; the figure "2" against the man he next prefers, and so on through as many names as he may choose to mark. At the end of the poll the number of papers in which each candidate's name is marked "1" is ascertained, and if one of them is found to have secured the first preferences of an absolute majority of all the persons voting, he is declared elected; but if no candidate has obtained such a majority the papers of the candidate who has obtained the least number of first preferences are examined and transferred one by one to the candidate marked "2" upon them. In this transfer, the papers on which only one preference had been marked would be ignored, the preferences, to use the current phrase, being "exhausted." If, as the result of this transfer, any candidate has secured the support of an absolute majority of the number of effective preferences he is declared duly elected; but if there is still no candidate with an absolute majority the process is repeated by distributing the papers of the candidate who is left with the lowest number of votes, and so on until some candidate has got an absolute majority of effective preferences. The alternative vote undoubtedly possesses many and valuable advantages as compared with the second ballot. In the first place, its introduction into the English electoral system would keep English voters in touch with Colonial rather than with Continental practice. Preferential voting[4] has been in use in Queensland since 1892; it was adopted in 1907 by the West Australian Parliament, and was proposed in a Bill submitted by Mr. Deakin to the Australian Commonwealth Parliament in 1906. Moreover, the alternative vote enables the election to be completed in a single ballot; and the fortnight that is wasted between the first and second ballots on the Continent would be saved. There has also been claimed for this method of voting this further advantage, that it would prepare the way (perhaps by rendering it inevitable) for the more complete reform--proportional representation. The principle of the alternative vote is extremely simple. It is embodied in two Bills which were introduced into the House of Commons in 1908 by Mr. John M. Robertson and by Mr. Dundas White; and also in a modified form in a Bill introduced in 1907 by Mr. A.E. Dunn. Its purpose and mechanism is set forth in the memorandum of Mr. Robertson's Bill as follows:-- "The object is to ensure that in a parliamentary election effect shall be given as far as possible to the wishes of the majority of electors voting. Under the present system when there are more than two candidates for one seat it is possible that the member elected may be chosen by a minority of the voters. "The Bill proposes to allow electors to indicate on their ballot papers to what candidate they would wish their votes to be transferred if the candidate of their first choice is third or lower on the poll and no candidate has an absolute majority. It thus seeks to accomplish by one operation the effect of a second ballot." Mr. Robertson's Bill, as originally introduced in 1906, was applicable to single-member constituencies only; but the amended form in which the Bill was re-introduced provided for the use of the transferable vote in double-member constituencies as well, but, in doing so, still maintained the essential characteristic of the existing system of voting--that each member returned should have obtained the support of a majority of the electors voting. Mr. Dundas White, however, in applying the alternative vote to double-member constituencies, made a departure from this principle, and proposed to render it possible for a candidate to be returned who had obtained the support of less than one-half but more than one-third of the voters.[5] The effect of Mr. Robertson's Bill would have been that it would still be possible in double-member constituencies for the party finally victorious to secure both seats; whilst with Mr. Dundas White's provisions the two largest parties would in all probability have obtained one seat each.[6] The difference between the two measures is, however, of no great consequence; the number of double-member constituencies is not very large, and their number may be still further reduced in any future scheme of redistribution of seats. It will, therefore, be sufficient to consider what effect the alternative vote would have in single-member areas. Let us take the Jarrow election, in which there were four candidates, and apply to that election the possible working of the alternative vote. The figures for the election may be repeated:-- Curran(Labour) . . . . 4,698 Rose-limes (Unionist). . . 3,930 Hughes (Liberal) . . . . 3,474 O'Hanlon (Nationalist) . . 2,122 The electors would, with the alternative vote, have numbered the candidates on the ballot papers in the order of their choice, and, as none of the candidates had obtained an absolute majority, the votes of the lowest candidate on the poll would be transferred to the second preferences marked by his supporters. If, for purposes of illustration, it is assumed that every one of the 2122 supporters of Mr. O'Hanlon had indicated a second preference, that 1000 had chosen Mr. Curran, 1000 had chosen Mr. Hughes, and 122 had chosen Mr. Rose-Innes, then the following table will show the effect of the transfer:-- Candidate. First Count. Transfer of O'Hanlou's Votes. Result. Curran (Labour) 4,698 +1,000 5,698 Rose-Innes (Unionist) 3,930 + 122 4,052 Hughes (Liberal) 3,474 +1,000 4,474 O'Hanlon (Nationalist) 2,122 -2,112 -- Total 14,224 -- 14,224 Only three candidates now remain for consideration, and their position on the poll as the result of the transfer is as follows:-- Curran . . . . . . 5,698 Hughes . . . . . . 4,474 Rose-Innes . . . . . 4,052 As neither has as yet obtained a majority of the total votes polled, it becomes necessary that the votes given for Mr. Rose-Innes, who is now lowest on the poll, should be transferred in accordance with the next preferences of his supporters. It is conceivable that the larger proportion of these preferences would have been given for the Liberal candidate, Mr. Hughes, rather than for Mr. Curran, and, if so, the final result might easily have been the election of Mr. Hughes as member for Jarrow. _The alternative or contingent vote in Queensland_.] Before considering the value of the transferable vote in single-member constituencies as a means of securing a true expression of the national will, it may perhaps be pointed out that the procedure prescribed by the Queensland Act differs from that contained in the English Bills. The regulations of the Queensland Act are as follows:-- "When one member only is to be returned at the election, if there is no candidate who receives an absolute majority of votes, all the candidates except those two who receive the greatest number of votes shall be deemed defeated candidates. "When two members are to be returned, and there are more than four candidates, if there is no candidate who receives an absolute majority of votes, all the candidates except those four who receive the greatest number of votes shall be deemed defeated candidates." It will be seen that the system here prescribed approximates to the German form of the second ballot, according to which only the two candidates highest on the poll may stand again. Were the Queensland form of preferential voting applied to the Jarrow election, both Mr. Hughes and Mr. O'Hanlon would be declared defeated candidates, and only the further preferences recorded by their supporters would be taken into account in determining the relative position of the two highest candidates, Curran and Rose-Innes. The provisions of the West Australian Act of 1907, and of Mr. Deakin's Bill of 1906, followed the more elastic and undoubtedly superior method embodied in the English proposals. Sir J.G. Ward, in introducing the Second Ballot Bill into the New Zealand Parliament in 1908, defended the selection of this electoral method on the ground that the system of preferential voting introduced into Queensland had been a partial failure. He stated that the privilege of marking preferences had not been extensively used, and quoted the opinion of Mr. Kidston, a former Queensland Premier, that the marking of preferences should be made compulsory. As explained in the course of the New Zealand debates, part of the alleged failure of the Queensland system was due to the unnecessarily cumbrous nature of the regulations. The Queensland Electoral Acts still retain the old method of voting--that of striking out from the ballot paper the names of such candidates as the elector does not intend to vote for. The confusion produced in the mind of the elector may readily be imagined when he is instructed to strike out the names of candidates for whom he does not intend to vote in the first instance, and then to mark such candidates in the order of his choice. Moreover, the provisions, as detailed above, for giving effect to preferences are so defective that only a proportion of the preferences marked can be taken into account. Even so, preferential voting in Queensland sometimes has a decisive influence upon the result of the election, as the following example, taken from the elections of 1908, will show:-- WOOLLOONGABBA ELECTION _First Count_. Votes. 1st Candidate . . . 1,605 2nd " . . . 1,366 3rd " . . . 788 ----- Total . . . 3,759 The votes recorded for the third candidate were then distributed according to the preferences marked, which were as follows:-- 1st Candidate . . . 15 2nd ,, . . . 379 No preferences . . . 394 --- 788 The result of the distribution brought the second candidate to the top of the poll, the final figures being as follows:-- 2nd Candidate . . . 1,745 1st ,, . . . 1,620 _West Australia_ Where the more simple and straightforward instructions have been adopted, as in West Australia, it has been found that a larger percentage of the electors make use of the privilege of marking preferences. Here are the figures for the constituency of Claremont in the elections of 1908:-- _First Count._ Foulkes . . . . 1,427 Briggs . . . . 825 Stuart . . . . 630 ----- Total . . . 2,888 When the votes recorded for the candidate lowest on the poll were distributed it was found that nearly 75 per cent, of his papers were marked with additional preferences. The numbers were as follows:-- Briggs . . . . . 297 Foulkes . . . . 174 No preferences . . . 165 --- Total . . . 636 The final figures were as follows:-- Foulkes . . . . 1,601 Briggs . . . . 1,122 These figures doubtless show that even in West Australia, when the transferable vote is applied to single-member constituencies, a considerable number of the electors will not indicate a preference for any candidate other than for that of their own party, but similar abstentions occur at the second ballots in France, where it is found that a considerable percentage of the electors usually refrain from going to the poll on the second occasion. The Labour Party in Queensland has sometimes issued instructions to its supporters to abstain from marking preferences for the purpose of keeping the party solid and absolutely separate from other parties. Such action necessarily increases the percentage of abstentions. Nor can any remedy for action of this kind be found in making the marking of preferences compulsory. Even in Belgium, where "compulsory voting" is in force, the compulsion only extends to an enforced attendance at the polling place. The act of voting is not compulsory, for a blank unmarked ballot paper may be dropped into the voting urn. The compulsory marking of preferences when the elector has none may still further vitiate the results of elections in a most undesirable way, whilst abstention from preference marking merely deprives those abstaining of a privilege which they might exercise if they chose. It is quite conceivable that an elector after voting for the candidate of his choice may be indifferent to the fate of the remaining candidates and, if so, an enforced expression of opinion on his part would not be of any real value, and should not be counted in determining the result of an election. _Mr. Deakin's failure to carry the alternative vote._ Does then the alternative, or contingent vote, as used in West Australia, solve the problem of three-cornered fights--the problem of three distinct parties seeking representation in Parliament? When a single seat is being contested it is doubtless sufficient if the member elected represents the average views of his constituents, but a General Election based on such a system would yield results no more satisfactory than those of the second ballots. Neither the second ballot nor the contingent vote are acceptable after their true effects are understood, a fact which explains the failure of Mr. Deakin's Government to carry their Preferential Ballot Bill in 1906. Several of the seats held by the Australian Labour Party--as in the elections of Jarrow, Colne Valley, and Attercliffe--were won by a minority vote; the _Melbourne Age_ published the following list of seven constituencies in Victoria where Labour members represented only a minority of the voters:-- Non-Labour Labour Constituencies. Votes. Votes Geelong . . . . 1,704 1,153 Ballarat West . . . 2,038 1,034 Jika Jika . . . . 1,366 1,183 Williamstown . . . 1,931 1,494 Bendigo West . . . 1,654 1,248 Grenville . . . . 1,457 1,268 Maryborough . . . 1,929 1,263 Totals . . . 12,079 8,643 Preferential voting would have placed these seats at the mercy of a combination of the other parties, and, somewhat alarmed by the too eager advocacy of the measure on the part of the _Age_, the Labour Party, which had voted for the second reading of the Bill, procured its defeat on the first division in committee. It is impossible to defend the present system by which the Labour Party, which numbered two-fifths of the voters in these seven constituencies, obtained all seven seats, but, on the other hand, it cannot be alleged that a system of preferential voting, which would have enabled the other parties to have deprived these electors of all representation, was a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. In neither case would justice be done to the claims of three parties to representation. _Probable effect of the alternative vote in England._ A consideration of the possible results of the introduction into the English electoral system of second ballots or the transferable vote in single-member constituencies will show that neither reform will solve the problem presented by the rise of a new party. It is obvious that the Labour Party could by a combination of Conservative and Liberal voters be deprived of representation in all constituencies save those in which they had the support of an absolute majority of the electorate. Nor would the conditions remain the same as they are to-day. In many constituencies in which the Liberals have allowed a straight fight to take place between Tariff Reform and Labour candidates, the Liberal Party would intervene; and should combinations at the polls result in the defeat of Labour candidates, what would be the effect upon the temper and spirit of Labour voters who found themselves under an "improved" voting system less able than before to secure representation in Parliament? Would there not possibly arise a disposition on the part of the disfranchised minority to pursue on the next occasion a wrecking policy such as has distinguished the second ballots both in Belgium and in France? Even apart from precipitate action which might arise as the result of ill-feeling, the alternative vote would afford an opportunity for a predetermined policy on the part of a minority to create dissension between the opponents. The manipulation of the alternative vote would be easily understood. An angry minority of electors could be instructed beforehand to use it, as we know from experience they _have_ used the second ballot on the Continent. Would politicians, following an exclusive electoral policy, hesitate to avail themselves of the weapon which the alternative vote would place in their hands for the purpose of annihilating any section they especially disliked, in the same way as the Liberal Party in Belgium was destroyed by Catholic and Socialist combinations at the second ballots? We cannot escape the conclusion which all experience yields, that both these electoral methods place the representation of any party at the mercy of either temporary or permanent coalitions of other parties. To an even greater degree than under the existing régime, the result of a General Election would fail to reflect public opinion. The advocates of the alternative vote assume, with but little justification, that this method will be free from the bargainings that have distinguished the second ballots on the Continent. The bargainings naturally take place between the first and second ballots, because that is the most suitable time for the striking of bargains, for the strength of parties is definitely known. With the alternative vote such transactions would take place before the election, upon the basis of the probable position of parties as ascertained by the party agents. Even if experience should show that the transferable vote did not lend itself so easily as the second ballot to the perpetration of those bargains which are detested by all Continental statesmen, yet it is probable that the successful candidate would, like the deputy elected under the system of second ballots, become "the prisoner of the minority." The figures of the election would disclose to what extent the member returned had owed his success to the smallest minority. This minority would be only too conscious that it held the key of the situation, and the member would doubtless be exposed to the same intolerable pressure as has been brought to bear upon members of the French Chamber of Deputies. In any case the position of the elected member would be most unsatisfactory. Were a Labour member returned with the assistance of Tariff Reform votes, would not the parliamentary relations between the various parties become as embittered as when the Unified Socialist candidate at Uzès was enabled by Reactionary votes to capture a Radical seat? What recriminations would accompany the election of a Conservative candidate whose victory was due to Labour votes given to him as an expression of resentment at the action of Liberals in other constituencies? What would be the relations between the Liberal and Labour parties if in a constituency now represented by a Labour member, a Liberal candidate, with the aid of Conservative votes, displaced him? These strained relations would not only exist within the House of Commons itself, but also and perhaps in a more pronounced form in the constituencies themselves. Such conditions would not only invite the sarcasm of all critics of democracy, they would produce the much more serious effect of crippling the successful working of parliamentary institutions. _The alternative vote not a solution of the problem of three-cornered contests_.] Neither second ballots nor preferential voting can solve the problem of three parties seeking representation. They may preserve the outward form of the distinguishing characteristic of the present system--that each successful candidate should secure the support of the majority of the electors voting--but this apparent conformity to the requirements of majority representation is only secured at the cost of destroying the sincerity of the parliamentary system and of rendering the composition of the House of Commons still more unstable than it is to-day. In England the competition of the three parties is most pronounced in the industrial areas, and Mr. Winston Churchill, apparently recognizing the futility of the alternative vote as a solution of the new difficulty, had good grounds for his suggestion that electoral reformers should concentrate their minds upon the proportional representation of the great cities.[7] For proportional representation attacks the new problem on entirely different lines. It provides for the realization of the essentially democratic principle, that the various sections of political' opinion are entitled to representation in proportion to their respective strengths, and that such representation should be independent of the action of other parties. Once this democratic principle is admitted we are in view of the only effective solution of the problem of three-cornered fights--a solution which not only solves this particular difficulty, but meets those serious defects of our electoral system to which attention has been directed in the two preceding chapters. "The theory of Government by party," says Professor Nanson of Melbourne, "is to find the popular mind by the issue of a number of contests between the 'ins' and the 'outs.' But owing to the multiplicity of political issues, this theory is now no more tenable than is the theory that every question can be answered by a plain 'yes' or 'no.' ... We require a system capable of finding the mind of the people on more than one issue. With such a system all the difficulties caused at present by the existence of three parties disappear. Instead of being a hindrance three parties will be a help. For each will help to organize public opinion, and so enable the mind of the public on important issues to be more definitely and clearly ascertained." [Footnote 1: _The Albany Review_, October 1907.] [Footnote 2: Reports on the Second Ballot at Elections in Foreign Countries. Miscellaneous. No. 2. 1908. (Cd. 3875.)] [Footnote 2: _La Representation Proportionnelle en Belgique_, p. 7.] [Footnote 3: An illuminating passage occurs in M. Guyot's article on "The French Senate and Chamber of Deputies," in _The Contemporary Review_, February 1910:-- "A deputy is only elected for four years, and almost on the morrow he becomes again a candidate. If he has been elected at the second ballot, with a rallying of the minority of electors, who have only voted for him as better than nothing, and who can desert him at the next elections, his position is very uncertain. Universal suffrage results in many constituencies in great instability, and it is threatening especially for the men who having had power have been obliged to act, and in acting have dispersed certain illusions which they had perhaps entertained when candidates, and have thus given offence.... Though one be an ex-Minister one is none the less a man. The greater number of men--not only ex-Ministers but men who have any reputation in Parliament--have sought to migrate from the Palais Bourbon to the Luxemburg. The result is that the Chamber of Deputies has not ceased to suffer from a species of inverse selection. No body could retain its vigour under such a system. The most experienced men have left; the composition of the Chamber of Deputies has grown steadily weaker and weaker."] [Footnote 4: In Australia the system is known as the contingent or preferentinal vote. In recent years the phrase "alternative vote" has been employed in England, and was adopted by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems as a means of distinguishing the use of the transferable vote in single-member constituencies from its use in multi-member constituencies for the purpose of securing proportional representation.] [Footnote 5: The regulations as to counting the votes contained in the Schedule to the Bill were based upon those in Lord Courtney's Municipal Representation Bill (see Appendix VI.), the practical application of which is described in Chapter VII.] [Footnote 6: Mr. Crawshay-Williams introduced a further Bill (based on that of Mr. Robertson) in 1910. This Bill, in its final form, was made applicable, in accordance with the recommendation of the Royal Commissions on Electoral Systems, to single-member constituencies only.] [Footnote 7: Reply to deputation of Manchester Liberal Federation, 23 May 1909.] CHAPTER VI PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION "Celui-ci tuera celui-là. Voilà la formula du scrutin d'arrondissement. "Ceux-ci tueront ceux-là. Voilà la formule du serutin de liste sans la representation proportionnelle. "Ceux-ci et ceux-là auront leur juste part. Voila la formule du scrutin de liste avec la representation proportionnelle."--J. JAURES It cannot be a matter for surprise that the methods of election adopted in the early stages of representative institutions fail to respond to the needs of the more complex political conditions of highly civilized communities. The movement in favour of improved electoral methods is in keeping with the advances made in all other human institutions. We no longer travel by stage-coach nor read by rush-light. We cross the Atlantic with a certainty and an ease unknown and undreamt of a little while ago. Means of intercommunication, the press, the mail, the telegraph, the telephone have developed marvellously in response to modern requirements. This continuous adaptation is the law of existence and, in view of modern political conditions we cannot permanently refuse to adapt our electoral methods to the more perfect organization of a progressive democracy. By cumulative pressure the evils set forth in the preceding chapters can have but one result; they will compel English statesmen, as they have compelled or are compelling Continental statesmen, to devise an effective remedy; and although individual politicians may resist and retard the advent of reformed methods, the demand for better representative institutions will in the end overcome all such resistance. _The essential features of a sound electoral method_.] What then are the requirements of a satisfactory electoral method? The evils to be remedied must yield the clue. Our present system--exclusive majority representation--has often, as we have seen, resulted in a gross exaggeration of the majority, sometimes in the total suppression of the minority; and, on other occasions, in the return of a majority of representatives by a minority of the electors. These evils have happened when only two parties have been seeking representation; when a third party enters the political arena the system completely breaks down, and all efforts to restore "majority" representation by a system of second ballots have proved an absolute failure. The attempts made in the past to secure the special representation of minorities, though most successful in many respects, have been of an empirical character, and have dealt with the problem in a very partial way. Yet it is not difficult to find a solution for all these problems which is at the same time satisfactory and effective. It is only necessary to return to the first principles of democracy, to keep steadily in view the meaning of that self-government which we desire to achieve through representative institutions. Self-government can only be realized when every section of the community through its own representatives can give expression to its needs in the assembly which is representative of the nation and which derives all its authority from the fact that it is so representative. This assembly acts in the name of the nation; its decisions are said to embody the national will. But if any considerable section of the nation is deprived, from whatever cause, of representation in the House of Commons, in what sense can it be said that its decisions give expression to the national will? The new electoral conditions force us, willingly or unwillingly, to the conclusion that no satisfactory solution can be reached until effect is given to Mill's fundamental principle of democracy--that the various sections of political opinion should be represented in the legislative chamber in proportion to their strength. Only in the fulfilment of that condition can we escape from the evils of the existing system and at the same time do justice to the claims of three organized parties to representation within the House of Commons. _Constituencies returning several members._ It is now no longer possible to accept Mill's declaration as theoretically perfect and then to dismiss it as wholly impracticable. If the political conditions are such that the proportionate representation of parties is the only satisfactory solution of our electoral difficulties, it becomes the duty of statesmen to find some way by which practical effect can be given to Mill's formula. There was doubtless some excuse for the cry of impracticability when, in launching in 1857 his proposals for proportional representation, Thomas Hare suggested that the whole kingdom should form a single constituency. This suggestion raised a barrier of prejudice against all proposals for proportional representation, which only to-day is being broken down, and led to a refusal to consider seriously any attempt to secure an amelioration of existing methods along more modest lines. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the first step in the direction of realizing true representation must be the enlargement of our present electoral areas. So long as single-member constituencies are retained elections must necessarily take the form of a struggle for the whole of the representation allotted to the constituency. There is but one prize--a prize which is indivisible--and the proportional distribution of that prize is impossible. For a system of proportional representation the first requirement is the formation of constituencies returning several members. These electoral areas need not be formed in an arbitrary manner. Familiar divisions of the country, such as large towns, counties or parts of counties, may be treated as single constituencies. Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds would form constituencies in themselves. Counties which are large enough to return at least five members might also be treated as electoral areas, whilst the smallest counties would be grouped and the larger counties, if necessary, subdivided. _The proportional representation of the electors._ With such constituencies it would be possible to approximate to a true representation of the electors. Birmingham, which may be taken for purposes of illustration, returns seven members to the House of Commons, one for each of its seven divisions. The Unionists being in a majority in each of these seven divisions, are enabled to secure the whole of the representation allotted to the city, although there is a large minority of non-Unionists. If Birmingham were treated as a single constituency, and if the electors were divided as follows: Unionists, 40,000; Liberals, 20,000; Labour, 10,000, then it is obvious that any just system of representation would enable the Unionists, Liberal and Labour electors to obtain four, two, and one members respectively. Birmingham would then be represented accurately and fairly within the House of Commons; and if each large area was so represented we should, in this way, be able to build up a House of Commons which would reflect in true proportions the political opinions of the country. The undoubted fairness of such a system of representation will appeal with even more force if consideration is given to the grounds on which seven representatives are now allotted to a town of the size of Birmingham. Did Birmingham contain only 40,000 electors, all of whom were Unionists, it would only be entitled to four representatives in Parliament. The presence of a large number of electors who are not Unionists brings, however, the total electorate to 70,000, and Birmingham is granted representation on the basis of this total. Thus the additional representation, granted because of the presence of a large minority of non-Unionist electors, takes the form of additional Unionist members. The minority under the present system is not only disfranchised but penalised; the representation which is due to them is given to their opponents. But it is not difficult to devise a scheme of proportional representation which should ensure that the electors of Birmingham and other large towns, and also of the various counties, should be truly represented within the House of Commons. Of this fact the recent history of electoral legislation on the Continent and in the Colonies furnishes incontrovertible proofs. Proportional representation has been embodied in the laws of several countries, and these laws work with perfect smoothness. _Experience in Denmark._ The first application of the principle took place in Denmark so long ago as 1855, two years before the publication of Mr. Hare's scheme, when M. Andrae, a Danish Minister of great eminence and ability, introduced it into the new Constitution promulgated in that year. The system of proportional representation was retained through the constitutional changes of 1863 and 1866, though, it should be added, the extent of its application was limited to the election of members of the Upper House. The citizens of each constituency, voting in two classes, choose by the ordinary method of voting an equal number of representatives. These representatives constitute an electoral college, the members of which proceed to the election of representatives of the constituency according to the method of proportional representation. This limited application of proportional representation still remains in force, and in recent years the principle has received further and increasing recognition. Parliamentary committees and committees of the municipalities of Copenhagen are chosen by a proportional method. The principle was applied in 1903 to the elections of the Congregational councils, but its most notable extension was effected in 1908, when the system was applied to all municipal elections, the first elections taking place in March 1909. _Switzerland_ It will be seen that even in Denmark there was a considerable lapse of time between the limited application adopted in 1855 and its extension to elections of a more popular kind in recent years; and outside Denmark, although societies advocating the new principles were founded in England, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, proportional representation did not succeed in finding its way very readily to the statute book. It was not until 1890 that the first step was taken which has resulted in so rapid an extension of the system. The evils arising from the majority method of election had become so acute in the Swiss canton of Ticino[1] that proportional representation was adopted as a means of pacification. The elections in March 1889 resulted in the return of seventy-seven Conservative deputies by 12,783 votes, whilst the Liberals, with 12,166 votes, were only able to obtain thirty-five representatives. The Liberals alleged that this unfair result was due to a gerrymandering of the constituencies, and demanded a revision of the Constitution. The Conservative Government declining to take the necessary steps for this purpose, a revolution broke out in Bellinzona, in the course of which one of the members of the Government was killed and his colleagues arrested and imprisoned. The Federal Council intervened and sent its representative, Colonel Künzli, who recommended the adoption of proportional representation. After some hesitancy the party leaders agreed, and the Cantonal Council passed a law (5 December 1890), providing for the election by a system of proportional representation of a Constituent Assembly for the purpose of revising the Constitution. The suspicions of the Liberals were not, however, fully allayed and, thinking that they were again being duped, they decided on the eve of the election of the Assembly to abstain. This decision was adhered to, and as a result the first assembly in Ticino elected under the proportional system consisted of Conservatives only. The Conservatives remained faithful to the agreement entered into with the Liberals and voted the law of 9 February 1891, introducing proportional representation into the cantonal constitution and applying it to the elections for the Cantonal Council, Constituent Assemblies and municipalities. The law was approved by popular vote in the following March, and the system has since retained its place in the constitution of the canton[2]. The immediate object in view--the pacification of the canton--was completely attained and its success has led to its adoption in other cantons. It is now in force in Neuchâtel, Geneva, Solothurn, Zug, Schwyz, Bâle City, Lucerne and St. Gall, and also (for municipal elections) in Berne, Fribourg, and Valais, whilst there is an active and growing demand for its application to the Federal elections. The progress of public opinion in this respect has been tested by means of the Referendum in 1900 and 1910. On the first occasion 169,000 voters supported the extension to Federal elections, and 247,000 opposed it. In 1910 the number of voters in favour of the proposal had increased by 70,000, while the opposition had increased by only 15,000, and the adoption of proportional representation for Federal elections was defeated by the narrow margin of 23,000 votes in a total poll of half a million. At the same time twelve out of the twenty-two cantons approved of the extension, and it is generally agreed that the ultimate triumph of the proportional principle cannot long be delayed. The need for proportional representation was particularly felt in the canton of Geneva, where religious differences often form the dividing line between parties. The canton is divided into three constituencies; one for the town of Geneva, one for that part of the canton on the right bank, and one for that on the left bank of the Lake and of the Rhone. With the _scrutin de liste_ (the former method of election) the minority in each constituency was completely crushed. The Protestants of the right bank were deprived of all representation; the Catholics of the town obtained a few deputies as an act of grace on the part of the majority. In 1872, when the affairs of the Catholic church were being discussed, the Radicals and Independents succeeded in excluding from the Council all who were most directly affected by the question of the day. The proportional system was introduced in 1892, and as the election of members of the Federal Council was still conducted according to the old system the working of the two methods could be readily compared. "The elections for the cantonal councils in November 1892," wrote M. Naville, "were keenly fought, but calm; no recriminations followed, and political life pursued a normal course.... On the other hand, the Federal elections in October 1893 were riotous, blows being exchanged. Exclusive majority representation artificially creates disturbances.... Proportional representation introduces a pacifying element into all political struggles." _Belgium._ The introduction of a complete scheme of proportional representation into Belgium was also rendered necessary by the intolerable position arising from the former methods of election. The rapid growth of the Socialist Party with a distinct organization created a situation which, as already explained, was in no way relieved by the system of second ballots in force. Indeed, the coalitions at the second ballots not only discredited the system but greatly embittered the relations between the various parties. "In 1899," says Count Goblet d'Alviella, "Belgium was on the eve of a revolution--a revolution which was only avoided by the immediate and complete introduction of proportional representation into parliamentary elections." This, however, was not the first trial of proportional representation in Belgium, for Belgium, like Switzerland, affords an example of the gradual but certain extension of the new method of election. In 1894 proportional representation had been applied partially and tentatively to the larger municipal councils, and although this application was of a partial character it achieved a considerable measure of success. M. Braun, the Burgomaster of Ghent, speaking in May 1899, described its results in the following terms:-- "During the four years that proportional representation has been applied to the communal elections of Ghent, every one has been able to appreciate the happy effects of the reform. Everybody recognizes that, far from being endangered, the material prosperity of the city has increased, and that the ameliorating and pacifying effects of the altered electoral method have even exceeded the expectations and hopes of its advocates." [3] The system of proportional representation adopted for the parliamentary elections was much more complete, and so great has been its success that there has arisen a strong demand for its introduction into the elections for the provincial councils in which the old majority system, with second ballots, is still used. The parliamentary elections in May 1908 were followed by the provincial elections in the ensuing month, and thus a favourable opportunity was presented of contrasting the working of the two systems. The grossly unfair results of the provincial elections drew forth from many journals most caustic criticism. _Le Peuple_ expressed the hope that these provincial elections would be the last instance of the use of the majority system in Belgium. "Is it not," it proceeded, "absurd, stupid, detestable that the provincial councils are alone excluded from the system of proportional representation? Once for all we must have done with this jumble of confusion, dishonesty, and corruption." The _Etoile Belge_ declared that "One thing is certain, the provincial electoral system can no longer be maintained without exposing us to the laughter of Europe. To apply one system of proportional representation to the parliamentary elections, another to municipal elections, and to maintain the majority system for the provincial elections, is really too absurd. For once we agree with _Le Peuple_ and join our hopes and wishes to theirs." That these comments were fully justified a few examples will show. In the province of Limbourg the forty-eight seats on the provincial council were all obtained by the Catholics, whereas in the parliamentary elections of the previous month the Liberals, owing to the proportional system, were able to obtain two seats out of six. In the "Agglomération Bruxelloise" no Catholic and only five Socialists were elected, although the Liberals numbered but a few more than a third of the voters. The provincial elections of former years afford further illustration. In 1898 at Ghent the Liberals of the first canton defeated the Socialists at the second ballots with the help of the Catholics, in the second canton they defeated the Catholics with the help of the Socialists, while in the third canton they were themselves defeated by the Catholics, who were assisted by the Socialists. In the same year at Brussels, where a second ballot took place in each of the five cantons, the Liberal minority captured every one of the forty-four seats. Sir Arthur Hardinge pointed out in his Report on the working of the Second Ballots in Belgium, that it was the failure of this electoral method that rendered a proportional system in parliamentary elections an absolute necessity; its failure in the provincial elections will result in its abolition from these also. No more convincing evidence of the satisfactory working of the proportional system can be given than this demand for its extension, the latest example of which in Belgium is its application by a new law passed in 1909 to the election of the _Conseils de Prud'hommes._ _German States._ Whilst the adoption of proportional representation in Switzerland and in Belgium was due to the pressure of particular circumstances, the marked success of the new method has not only resulted in its extension in those countries, it has also had a pronounced influence upon public opinion in neighbouring countries. The kingdoms of Southern Germany are following the example of the Swiss cantons. Würtemberg, in the new constitution adopted in 1906, decided that the seats set free by the removal of the "privileged" members of the Lower House should be filled by proportional representation. Legislative proposals have since been discussed in Saxony, and in May 1910 a vigorous debate took place in the Bavarian Parliament, in the course of which Dr. Müller declared that the advocates of the reform would not rest "until this unjust electoral system, this bulwark of short-sighted injustice and ill-omened party spirit, is set aside in the higher interests of justice and of civil and religious freedom." The principle has received a recognition even more general in character, for a ministerial decree issued in June 1901, relative to the associated committees of employers and workmen, enabled these bodies, if they so chose, to elect their members in accordance with the principle of proportional representation. Some sixteen towns, including Frankfort-On-Main, Munich, Carlsruhe, Fribourg, Mannheim, &c., availed themselves of the privilege, and the results have been most satisfactory. Much greater interest has been taken in the elections. In Carlsruhe, for instance, the number of voters increased from 1103 in 1897 to 3546 in 1903. _France_ Similarly, the great success of the Belgian legislation gave birth to a fresh and more powerful movement in France. Founded in 1901, under the presidency of M. Yves Guyot, the _Ligue pour la Représentation Proportionnelle_ enlisted the support of deputies drawn from all political parties. The Electoral Reform group within the Chamber of Deputies during the Parliament 1906-10 consisted of over two hundred members, and, under the auspices of this group large and enthusiastic meetings were held in the great towns. The reform has the support of many leading newspapers, and the authoritative reports of the French Parliamentary Committee, _la Commission du Suffrage Universel_, contain strong recommendations in favour of the adoption of proportional representation. The first of these reports prepared in 1905 by M. Chas. Benoist[4] contains an admirable statement of the case for the reform, a plea which is powerfully reinforced in the report prepared two years later by M. Etienne Flandin.[5] The Bill recommended in this latter report was discussed in the French Chamber of Deputies in October 1909. The first clause of the Bill read as follows: "The members of the Chamber of Deputies shall be elected by the _scrutin de liste_ according to the rules for proportional representation." The first portion of this clause--the members of the Chamber of Deputies shall be elected by _scrutin de liste_--was carried by 379 votes against 142, or a majority of 237. The second portion--according to the rules for proportional representation--was carried by 281 votes to 235, or a majority of 46. The Prime Minister, M. Briand, urged by many of his Radical supporters, who were unwilling to forego the advantages which they obtained from the existing system, then made the question one of confidence in the Government, and the whole clause, when put to the final vote, was defeated by 291 votes to 225. A noteworthy feature of these divisions was the size of the majority by which the system of single-member constituencies was condemned. At the General Election in April 1910 no fewer than 315 Deputies were returned pledged to the reform. M. Briand at once introduced a Bill which, however, did not fully meet the demands of the reformers, and the _Commission du Suffrage Universel_ made important modifications in it with a view to securing more completely the proportional representation of all political parties within the country. On the fall of M. Briand in February 1911, the government of M. Monis announced its intention of supporting the amended scheme. The success of the movement, commenced in 1901 is now, after a decade of active effort, no longer open to doubt. _Holland_ Holland, too, has felt the influence of the legislation of its neighbour. A constitutional commission, appointed by the Dutch Government, reported in favour of amending the fundamental law so as to render possible the adoption of proportional representation. The recommendations of this Commission were embodied by the Government in Bills presented to the States General in 1907, and although the proposals were subsequently withdrawn, the reform has the support of many of the leading statesmen, and a favourable report is anticipated from the new Commission to which the question of reform has been referred. _Finland._ In the North of Europe an equally successful and, in some respects, an independent movement in favour of true representation has taken place. In an excellent little pamphlet, published at Helsingfors,[6] it is stated that during those calamitous years between the _coup d'état_ of 1899 and the restoration of the constitution in 1906, there arose in Finland the conviction that only a democratic reform of its political institutions would afford a sufficient guarantee for the maintenance of its internal independence. The fruits of that conviction were seen in the draft of the new constitution for the Diet prepared by a committee appointed by the Finnish Government. Provision was made for the adoption both of universal suffrage and proportional representation. The report adds that the four Estates of the Diet, satisfied that proportional representation would ensure the just representation of all parties, willingly accepted the proposals for universal suffrage, and also agreed that henceforth the Diet should consist of but one chamber. Finland thus found herself, when the new constitution was granted, in the possession of an electoral system as democratic as any in the world.[7] _Sweden._ In Sweden a long and arduous struggle took place over the reform of the franchise. The Liberals and Socialists demanded that less weight should be given to the possession of property. The Conservatives resisted the demand. The adoption of proportional representation as a possible way out was proposed in 1902, and from that date the fight assumed another aspect. "The method of voting," wrote Major von Heidenstam, part author of the proposals embodied in the new law, "took from the beginning a very prominent place, strange to say the most prominent down to the last few months before the chief battle. We who went in for proportional representation had a very hard struggle for the first five years, but we won at last." The victory was complete; proportional representation was accepted for both Chambers of the Riksdag, for the committees selected by these Chambers, for County Councils and for Town Councils. When the final adoption of the reform Bills was voted in 1909 they were carried by very large majorities; in the first Chamber only 19 out of 141, and in the second Chamber only 53 out of 225, recorded an adverse vote.[8] _Australasia._ In this remarkable outburst in favour of proportional representation English-speaking countries are taking their part. Inspired by the late Catherine Helen Spence, an untiring advocate of the reform, the Effective Voting League has carried on an active campaign in Australasia. Legislative proposals for proportional representation have been discussed in recent years by the Commonwealth Parliament, and also by the Parliaments of Victoria, South Australia and West Australia. Although these measures have not become law, the work of Miss Spence and her colleagues has gained considerable support. Mr. Deakin has openly acknowledged his approval, whilst the results of recent elections, and more particularly that of the election in 1910 for the Commonwealth Senate, have increased the demand for reform. Proportional representation, too, is meeting with increasing sympathy in New Zealand where the system of second ballots, adopted in 1908, has failed to give satisfaction. In Tasmania the movement has made much greater headway. An Act was passed in 1896 applying proportional representation to the urban districts of Hobart and Launceston, but although this Act was an acknowledged success so far as the representation of these two towns were concerned, the differentiation between the voting methods applied to the town and country districts gave rise to dissatisfaction, and the measure was withdrawn in 1901. But when once the benefits of proportional representation had been felt its re-introduction in a more complete form was not long delayed. In 1907 a new Act was passed applying equally to town or country. The State is now divided into five electoral districts, and the six members allotted to each district are elected by the proportional method. The first elections under the new law took place in April 1909, and the result has met with general approval. _South Africa._ In South Africa proportional representation has, with astonishing rapidity, gained the adherence of its foremost public men, and although the delegates to the South African National Convention abandoned the proposal for the use of the proportional method in the elections to the legislative Assembly of United South Africa, yet the adoption of this principle for the election of members of the Senate and of the committees of the Provincial Councils, as finally agreed to, marks an advance which a few years ago would have been thought impossible. Nor is this the only forward step taken in South Africa. The Transvaal Municipal Commission recommended the adoption of proportional representation in municipal elections, and the Government embodied this recommendation in an Act passed in June 1909. The first elections under this Act took place with complete success on 27 October 1909, in Johannesburg and Pretoria, each of these towns being polled as a single constituency. _Canada._ In Canada, although the movement has not taken so active a form as elsewhere, the Government consented in March 1909, on the motion of Mr. F.D. Monk, K.C., to the appointment of a committee of the House of Commons for the purpose of investigating methods of proportional representation. Further, the Trades and Labour Congress, the chief organization of this kind in Canada, the Toronto District Labour Council, and the Winnipeg District Trades Council, employ the proportional method in the election of their committees. _Oregon._ In the fight for the more popular control of politics in the United States proportional representation will apparently play no mean part. The object of the People's Power League of Oregon is to free the representative assemblies of the State from the domination of political bosses, and an amendment to the constitution, providing for the adoption of proportional representation was, on the initiative of this League, submitted to the electorate in 1908 and carried with a large majority. The Oregon Legislature, which met in January 1909, was bitterly opposed to the change, and refused to pass the Representation Bill which was required to give effect to the decision of the electorate. A new proportional representation amendment, which was self-enactive, was submitted to the popular vote in November 1910, in conjunction with other proposed constitutional changes, but failed to meet with approval owing to the unpopularity of the measures with which it was combined, the most striking of which was a six-year term for the legislature. There may be a long struggle for supremacy between the "machine" and the reformers, but in that revival of interest which is being taken throughout the United States in the conduct and working of representative institutions it can be confidently predicted that the reform of the existing methods of election will take a prominent place. _The United Kingdom._ In the United Kingdom the Proportional Representation Society, founded in 1884, was revived in 1905, and since its revival has secured the adherence of a considerable number of members of Parliament. The Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, appointed in December 1908, was the outcome of its activity and, although this Commission did not recommend the immediate application of proportional representation to the House of Commons, its Report marks a very considerable advance in the history of the movement in this country.[9] The Commission reported that there would be much to be said in favour of proportional representation as a method for the constitution of an elective Second Chamber, and intimated its approval of this method of election for municipalities. The views taken by the Commission in respect of an elective Second Chamber and municipalities have found expression elsewhere. The Select Committee on the Reform of the House of Lords, presided over by Lord Rosebery, recommended that the election of Lords of Parliament to represent the hereditary Peerage should be by the cumulative vote or any other scheme of proportionate election,[10] and since this Report was issued all proposals for the introduction of an elected element into the House of Lords have recognized the need for an adequate representation of minorities.[11] The Municipal Representation Bill, introduced by Lord Courtney of Penwith, was passed by the House of Lords in 1908 after careful examination by a select Committee of that House, whilst a motion, moved by Mr. Aneurin Williams, on 30 March 1910, in the House of Commons, in favour of applying the system to municipal elections was carried without opposition. _The success of proportional representation in practice._ The movement in favour of more accurate methods of election is becoming world-wide in its scope, and the brief summary[12] already given of the progress made in recent years furnishes in itself abundant proof of the practicability of proportional representation. In every country in which the new methods have been introduced fears were expressed that it would be impossible for the average elector to fulfil the new duties required of him, and that returning officers would collapse under the weight of their new responsibilities. The same apprehension still exists in England, and it may therefore be desirable to refer in greater detail to the experience of those countries in which the new methods have been put to the test of popular elections. Nowhere do we find that the new systems of voting have presented any serious difficulty to the electors, and although the task imposed upon the returning officers has been in some cases unnecessarily severe, yet they have not only carried out their new duties with credit, but have made the introduction of the new system a brilliant success. After the first elections in Geneva, in November 1892, the journal _Le Génevois_, which had fought desperately against the introduction of the reform, stated that the counting of the votes had been quickly and correctly carried out. "We readily acknowledge," it added, "that in this matter we were greatly deceived." "From the point of view of practicability," wrote the _Journal de Genève_, "the new system has been a brilliant success." _La Suisse_ declared that the outstanding triumph of the day was proportional voting. The first elections in the canton of Bale-town were equally successful. "The elections," said the late Professor Hagenbach-Bischoff, "took place on 26 June 1905; the polling places were open till 2 P.M., the counting was finished at 7 P.M., so that the newspapers were able to publish the results the same evening. Everything went off well, and the journals have acknowledged the great success of proportional representation." Six General Elections have taken place in Belgium since the law of 1899, and now no one in the country speaks of the impracticability of proportional representation. Count Goblet d'Alviella states that "all the objections that were brought against the system before its introduction have been set at naught. The proportional method instead of complicating, as was foretold, both the voting and the counting, has worked with greater ease than the old one. The electors understood at once what they were to do, and the counters made fewer mistakes than before." Wurtemberg furnishes another instance of the ease with which the new system can be introduced. _Der Beobachter_, a leading journal of Stuttgart, stated that: "The new electoral system, which only a short time ago was unknown to the electors, worked without a hitch in the whole country, just as it worked a few weeks ago in Stuttgart. The first feeling is one of surprise. The number of votes was enormous; the candidates were numerous, the ballot papers from the different districts were in various forms, and yet the whole machine, from the district officials to the employees of the Government office, who collected the results, worked with promptitude and ease. The next feeling is one of pleasure at the complete success of this first experiment in proportional representation on a large scale in the German Empire." The success of the first elections in Finland, in which more than half the voters exercised the franchise for the first time, was equally complete. According to the account of a Finnish journalist[13]: "The first election under the new system took place on 15 and 16 March 1907. The total electorate amounts to some 1,300,000 people, or 47 per cent, of the whole population. Of these about 887,000, or nearly 64 per cent., polled. In the more thickly-populated electoral divisions the percentage was much higher: thus, in the Nyland division, which comprises Helsingfors, it was 74.2 per cent.; in several polling districts as many as 95 and even 98 per cent, came to the polling station. The often-used argument against proportional representation, that the system is too involved to be understood by the average voter, was in Finland completely refuted. The number of spoilt ballot papers in the whole country probably is less than 1 per cent.; in the Nyland division, the largest of all, returning twenty-three members, the ballot paper contained ninety-five candidates, and yet only 0.59 per cent, were spoilt." Small as this number is, the official returns for the succeeding elections show a still smaller percentage. In November 1910 the number of spoilt papers throughout the country amounted to .25 per cent, of the whole. The first elections in Sweden were equally successful. There was only one spoilt paper in the elections witnessed by the author at Carlskrona in May 1910. Nor have English-speaking peoples shown themselves less able to adapt themselves to new voting methods. An official report presented by the chief returning officer of Tasmania to the Senate of the Australian Commonwealth[14] contains convincing evidence as to the practicability of the single transferable vote for the purpose of parliamentary elections. The report deals with the election of members of the Commonwealth Senate and House of Representatives in 1901 by means of the single transferable vote. For this purpose the State of Tasmania was treated as a single constituency. The percentage of spoilt papers due to the new system of voting was 1.44 in the Senate elections and 1.80 in the election of the House of Representatives, but the returning officer adds that "this would have been much less had it not been that the old defective system previously in force in Tasmania required the actual scoring out of every rejected candidate instead of, as in most countries, the marking of a cross or sign only against those candidates who were selected. Had this better form of marking been in practice in Tasmania previous to the introduction of the Hare system of voting, it is probable that there would be very few invalid papers due to the Hare system of marking with preference numbers." Professor Jethro Brown, in describing these first elections, states that "the work of the returning officer, whilst less simple than that of the elector, demands no exceptional qualifications; he need display the industry of an average clerk--scarcely more."[15] The more recent elections in Tasmania, those of 1909, were carried out with equal ease. The percentage of spoilt ballot papers due to all causes was 2.86, and this percentage compared favourably with the number of spoilt papers in the election of 1906, in which the majority system of voting was used.[16] The Transvaal municipal elections also afford excellent evidence of the ease with which the new system of voting can be introduced. Most of the electors made their first acquaintance with the system during the electoral campaign. In Pretoria the number of spoilt papers due to all causes amounted to 38 out of a total of 2852, or 1.33 per cent., while the number of spoilt papers which could be attributed to the new system was only 27, or less than 1 per cent. The percentage of spoilt papers at Johannesburg was larger, but it must be remembered that the electorate in this town is perhaps as cosmopolitan as any in the world. At some of the public meetings addresses were given in English, Dutch, and Yiddish, and the task of instructing the electors in their new duties was considerably more difficult than in a more homogeneous constituency. Nevertheless the number of spoilt papers due to all causes was only 367 out of a total number of 12,155, or 3 per cent., whilst the number of spoilt papers attributable to the new system was 285, or 2.35 per cent. Moreover, the returning officer was very strict in his decisions as to the validity of papers, so that the number of spoilt papers attributable to the new system included all those in which voters had in any way departed from the letter of the instructions. The press bore striking testimony to the success of the elections. The _Transvaal Leader_ declared that "the consensus of competent opinion is that the system is a perfect success, considered as electoral machinery.... The municipal elections have demonstrated that every section can secure that amount of representation which it can justly claim." The _Rand Daily Mail_ expressed the view that "...Both here, and in Pretoria, it may claim to have proved a success. The ten councillors elected under it here may fairly claim to be representative of every shade of public opinion.... We should like to see it extended to all municipalities, and ultimately to parliamentary elections." The _Johannesburg Star_ stated that "The authors may fairly congratulate themselves that they have proved it practicable in working and fair in results. The business of counting the votes and allotting the preferences was sure to be a slow one at the first time of asking, but there was no hesitation and no confusion. The proceedings in the Wanderer's Hall went forward with the steady certainty of clockwork.... The whole trial was a high one in a town like this with a considerable element of illiterate voters; but taking it all through we have no hesitation in saying that the working of the new system was a conspicuous and unqualified success." _An election by miners_.] After such a mass of testimony as to the satisfactory working of proportional methods in parliamentary elections, it is perhaps hardly necessary to refer to the success of those model elections carried out from time to time by the Proportional Representation Society in England.[17] Yet it may be as well to recall the novel and entirely successful experiment, organized in 1885, by Mr. Albert Grey, M.P. (now Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada). "Mr. Grey," according to the account in _The Times_[18], "was returning officer, and was assisted in the count by thirty miners--a body of utterly untrained men whose hands, accustomed by daily usage to the contact of pickaxe and shovel, were new and strange to the somewhat delicate task of fingering and separating flimsy ballot papers. They had received no instructions before they were assembled in the room as to the duties they would be required to transact, and the expedition, good-humour, and correctness with which they got through the several stages of the count justly earned for them the admiration of those who had come from a distance, as well as the compliment which Mr. Grey deservedly paid them at the conclusion of the day's proceedings." On this occasion some 6645 papers were counted, the number of spoilt votes being 44, considerably less than 1 per cent. The election is of interest as the members of Northumberland Miners' Association have ever since that date used the transferable vote in the election of their agents. To demonstrate the practicability of proportional representation does not, however, dispose of all of the objections which have been urged against the system, but before dealing with these objections it will perhaps be useful to outline those schemes which have emerged so successfully from the test of popular elections. These methods, although they vary in detail, range themselves under two heads--the single transferable vote and the system of lists. The first of these systems--the single transferable vote--bases representation upon electors who may, if they so desire, group themselves into parties, whereas the list systems base representation upon parties as such. And as the single transferable vote, in basing representation upon electors follows English traditions, we will begin with the consideration of this system. [Footnote 1: The story of the introduction of proportional representation into the Canton of Ticino is told in full by Professor Galland in _La Démocratie Tessinoise et la Représentation Proportionnelle_ (Grenoble, 1909).] [Footnote 2: The application was extended in 1892, 1895, and 1898 to the election of the Executive Council, of jurors and of Communal Councils. In 1904, however, when the Liberals were in a majority, a change was made in the election of the Executive Council. The proportional system, which had given them only three seats out of five, was replaced (for the election of Executive Councils) by the limited vote. Under the new system, which is less favourable to the minority, the Liberals obtained four out of five seats.] [Footnote 3: Goblet d'Alviella, _La Représentation Proportionnelle en Belgique_, p. 92.] [Footnote 4: No. 2376, _Chambre des Députés, Huitième Législature_, 1905.] [Footnote 5: No. 883, _Chambre des Deputes, Neuvième Legislature_, 1907. (See App. X.)] [Footnote 6: _The Finnish Reform Bill of_ 1906. The new method of voting is described in Appendix IV.] [Footnote 7: The Russian Duma has since passed a law (1910) by which the powers the Finnish Diet have been considerably curtailed.] [Footnote 8: The Swedish system is described in Appendix III.] [Footnote 9: Report of Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, 1910 (Cd. 5163).] [Footnote 10: House of Lords Report, 1908 (234), par. 18.] [Footnote 11: In the article, "Two Chambers or One," in _The Quarterly Review,_ July 1910, the writer recommends that elected members, if introduced into the House of Lords, should be chosen in large constituencies by a system of proportional representation. Professor Ramsay Muir in _Peers and Bureaucrats_ advocates the formation of a new Upper House, wholly elected under a proportional system.] [Footnote 12: This summary is necessarily incomplete; the list of countries is continually lengthening. Uruguay has adopted a form of minority representation (1910); Lisbon and Oporto, under the electoral scheme of the new Portuguese government, will choose representatives by a proportional system (1911); a new movement, under the leadership of Prince Teano, has arisen in Italy.] [Footnote 13: _The Daily Chronicle_ 1 June 1907.] [Footnote 14: Reprinted in Report on Municipal Representation Bill, House of Lords, 1907 (132), p. 125.] [Footnote 15: _The New Democracy_, p. 47.] [Footnote 16: The percentage in the Federal Senate election of 1906 was 4.48; in the election of the House of Representatives, 3.94. A full report on the General Election of 30 April 1909 has been published by the Tasmanian Government--Tasmania, 1909, No. 34.] [Footnote 17: See Chapter VII.] [Footnote 18: _The Times_, 26 January 1885.] CHAPTER VII THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE "The law regulating the form of voting may be thus expressed. Every vote shall be given on a document setting forth the name of the candidate for whom it is given; and if the vote be intended, in the events provided for by this Act, to be transferred to any other candidate, or candidates, then the names of such other candidate, or candidates, must be added in numerical order."--Thomas Hare, _The Election of Representatives_ (Fourth edition, 1873) The single transferable vote was the distinguishing characteristic of the scheme of electoral reform proposed by Hare in 1857, but it was associated with the proposal to treat the whole kingdom as a single constituency. The later advocates of this new method of voting have recommended its application to constituencies of more moderate size, such as counties and large towns, and in this form the system has found a more ready acceptance and has been used with success in parliamentary elections. _Its present application_.] The first application of the single transferable vote took place in Denmark[1] in 1855, and it is still being used under the Constitution of 1867 in the election of members of the Danish Upper House. It is also used, as provided by the South Africa Act of 1909, in the elections of the Senate of the United Parliament and in the election of the Executive Committees of the Provincial Councils. In each of these cases the electorates are small, and the electors possess special qualifications. The Danish Upper House is elected in two stages, the transferable vote being used only in the final stage in which electors of the second degree alone take part. In South Africa the members of the first Senate were elected by members of the local parliaments of the several Colonies,[2] and the Executive Committees of the Provincial Councils by members of the Councils. The system has, however, been subjected to the test of popular parliamentary elections in Tasmania and of municipal elections in Pretoria and Johannesburg. Ever since the publication of Hare's scheme, proposals for proportional representation have been associated in English-speaking countries with the idea of a transferable vote. Hare's proposals were warmly endorsed by John Stuart Mill first in _Representative Government_, and again in a memorable speech delivered in the House of Commons on 30 May 1867, when he moved an amendment to the Electoral Reform Bill.[3] Mill's amendment was defeated, but he retained to the full his faith in the great value and need of the improved method of voting, as the following passage from his _Autobiography_ shows: "This great discovery," said he, "for it is no less, in the political art, inspired me, as I believe it has inspired all thoughtful persons who have adopted it, with new and more sanguine hopes respecting the prospects of human Society, by freeing the form of political institutions towards which the whole civilized world is manifestly and irresistibly tending from the chief part of what seemed to qualify and render doubtful its ultimate benefits. ... I can understand that persons, otherwise intelligent, should, for want of sufficient examination, be repelled from Mr. Hare's plan by what they think the complex nature of its machinery. But any one who does not feel the want which the scheme is intended to supply; any one who throws it over as a mere theoretical subtlety or crochet, tending to no valuable purpose and unworthy of the attention of practical men, may be pronounced an incompetent statesman, unequal to the politics of the future."[4] _An English movement_.] The English advocates of proportional representation who have succeeded Mill have equally favoured the single transferable vote. This system was embodied in the Bill introduced into the House of Commons in 1872 by Mr. Walter Morrison, Mr. Auberon Herbert, Mr. Henry Fawcett, and Mr. Thomas Hughes; it was advocated in the important debates which took place in the House of Commons in 1878 and 1879; and the Proportional Representation Society, founded in 1884 in view of the Electoral Reform Bill of that year, created, under the leadership of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Leonard Courtney, a strong movement in its favour. Owing to the agreement between the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative parties in favour of single-member constituencies this movement had no immediate result. Since its revival in 1905 the Proportional Representation Society has continued to press the claims of the single transferable vote, and with some success. The practicability of the system was admitted by the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to examine the Municipal Representation Bill introduced into that House by Lord Courtney in 1907; the model elections organized by the Society in 1906, 1908, and 1910,[5] have to some extent familiarized the British public with its details; it found, as already mentioned, a place in the South African Constitution of 1909, whilst the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems reported in 1910 that "of schemes for producing proportional representation we think that the transferable vote would have the best chance of ultimate acceptance." _The system in brief_.] What then is the single transferable vote, and how does it help to secure a true representation of the electors? Its mechanism and advantages will best be understood by a comparison with the existing system. The city of Birmingham is at present divided into seven single-member constituencies, with the result that the majority in each of these constituencies secures a representative, while the minority in each case is unrepresented. Suppose there were in Birmingham 40,000 Unionist, 20,000 Liberal, and 10,000 Labour voters: it might easily happen that the Unionists would be in a majority in each of the seven divisions and, if so, the 40,000 Unionist electors would obtain the seven seats and the remaining 30,000 voters none. The transferable vote, as will presently appear, would enable these 70,000 citizens to group themselves into seven sections of equal size, each returning one member, so that there would be four Unionist groups returning four members, two Liberal groups returning two members and one Labour group returning one member; and this is the ideal representation of such a community. _Large constituencies_.] In order to achieve this result several changes in electoral mechanism are required. In the first place, Birmingham, instead of being divided into seven constituencies, must be polled as one constituency, otherwise the necessary grouping could not take place. This change is not in itself sufficient, because if Birmingham were polled as one constituency electing seven members, and if each elector could give, as with the "block" vote, one vote apiece to seven candidates, then the seven nominees of the majority would all receive a higher number of votes than the seven nominees of the minority. In the numerical case cited above, each Unionist candidate would command 40,000 votes, each Liberal 20,000, and each Labour candidate 10,000, and the largest party would win all the seats. _The single vote_.] It is therefore necessary, however many may be the number of members to be elected, to limit the voting power of each elector to one vote--hence the name "the single vote." An obvious result of this limitation is that if a group numbering 10,000 electors concentrates its support upon one man, then the group is certain of returning that candidate, because not more than six equally large groups can be formed out of the remaining electors. With open voting the grouping of electors could be arranged with comparative ease, for if more electors than were sufficient to constitute his group desired to vote for a particular candidate, those who arrived late at the poll could be asked to give their votes to another candidate, and so help to build up another group of the requisite size. Or, if a candidate was receiving so little support that he had no chance of election, the small group that had gathered round him could be disbanded and these electors, instead of having their votes wasted, could make their selection from among the other candidates available. In this way seven groups could be formed, each of which would obtain a representative.[6] _The vote made transferable_.] As, however, the ballot is secret and the result of the voting is not known until the close of the poll, some provision must be made to facilitate the equal grouping of the electors upon which fair representation depends. This will be made clear by an example. Were Mr. Joseph Chamberlain one of the Unionist candidates for Birmingham, the group of voters who would record their votes for him would probably considerably exceed the number required for his election. His Unionist colleagues might, in consequence, find themselves left without adequate support, and the party might fail to secure its fair share of the representation. In order to prevent a mischance of this kind the very simple device has been adopted of making the vote transferable. By this means the necessary accuracy in grouping is secured automatically. _How votes are transferred_.] The transferable vote enables the elector to instruct the returning officer to whom his vote is to be transferred in the event of his first favourite _either_ receiving more support than he requires _or_ receiving so little as to have no chance of election. Continuing the example already given, an elector who desired to vote for Mr. Chamberlain would place on the ballot paper the figure 1 against his name. If, in addition, he placed the figures 2, 3, &c. against the names of other candidates in the order of his choice, these figures would instruct the returning officer, in the event of Mr. Chamberlain obtaining more votes than were necessary to secure his election, as to whom the vote was to be transferred. The votes given to Mr. Chamberlain in excess of the number required for his election would thus be rendered effective. They would be used and not wasted. If, on the other hand, an elector had recorded his vote for a candidate who, after all excess votes had been transferred, was found to be at the bottom of the poll, the returning officer would similarly give effect to the wishes of the elector as recorded on the ballot paper by transferring the vote to the elector's second choice. Again the vote would not be wasted, but would be used in building up a group sufficiently large to merit representation. The ideas which have led up to the single transferable vote are, therefore, of a simple character. Constituencies returning several members are formed. A representative is given to every group of electors which attains to a definite proportion of the whole, the proportion depending upon the number of members to be returned. If a candidate receives more votes than are sufficient, _i.e._ if too large a group is formed, the surplus votes are transferred. If, after all surplus votes have been transferred, there still remain more candidates than there are vacancies, the lowest candidate on the poll is eliminated from the contest, _i.e._ the smallest group is disbanded. The transfer of surplus votes and of votes recorded for the candidates lowest on the poll are all carried out in accordance with the wishes of the electors as indicated by them on the ballot paper at the time of the poll. The proportionate representation of all the electors is secured; each party obtains the number of members to which it is entitled. _The Quota._ A few questions will at once occur to the reader as to the application of these simple rules. How is the number of votes required for success to be determined? In what way are the surplus votes to be distributed? What is the order in which the elimination of unsuccessful candidates shall proceed? The number of votes necessary to secure the election of a candidate is called the "quota." At first sight it would seem that this number should be ascertained, as suggested in the preceding paragraphs, by dividing the number of votes by the number of vacancies. But a smaller proportion is sufficient. Thus, in a single-member constituency a candidate has no need to poll all the votes; it is evident that if he polls more than a half he must be elected. No other candidate can equal him; the quota in this case is, therefore, one more than a half. So, in a two-member constituency the quota is one more than a third, for not more than two candidates can poll so much; in a three-member constituency, one more than a fourth, and so on. In a seven-member constituency, like that of Birmingham, the quota would be one more than an eighth. In general terms the quota is ascertained by dividing the votes polled by one more than the number of seats to be filled and adding one to the result.[7] _A simple case._ The processes involved in distributing the votes are described at some length in the account which appears further on in this chapter of the model election organized by the Proportional Representation Society in 1908, but the method of transferring votes and deciding the result of an election may be more easily understood from a simple case. Let us imagine there are six candidates for three seats, of whom A, B, C belong to one party and X, Y, Z to another. On the conclusion of the poll the ballot papers would be sorted into heaps, or files, corresponding to the names against which the figure 1 had been marked, and in this way the number of votes recorded for each candidate would be ascertained. Let us assume that the result of the sorting is as follows:-- A is marked 1 upon 1801 papers, and therefore has 1801 votes B " 1 " 350 " " 350 " C " 1 " 300 " " 300 " X " 1 " 820 " " 820 " Y " 1 " 500 " " 500 " Z " 1 " 229 " " 229 " ---- ---- Total number of papers 4000 Total number of Votes 4000 As there are three seats the quota is one more than a fourth of the total of the votes polled. The total in this case is 4000, and the quota is therefore 1001. A, having obtained more than the necessary quota of votes, is declared elected. _The transfer of surplus votes._ It will be seen that A has obtained nearly two quotas of votes, and his supporters, in the absence of any provision for the use of his surplus votes, would not obtain the full share of representation to which they are entitled. The next step is therefore to transfer A's surplus votes in accordance with the wishes of his supporters. These have indicated on the ballot papers to whom they desire their vote to be transferred. The different methods in which the transfer of votes can be carried out will be described, but for the present it may be assumed that the result of the operation was to transfer: 648 of the 800 surplus votes to B (a member of the same party as A) 132 " 800 " C (also a member of A's party) 20 " 800 " Z The votes transferred to the several candidates are added to those already obtained by them as follows:-- Original Votes. Transferred Votes. Total. B 350 + 648 = 998 C 300 + 132 = 432 X 820 nil = 820 Y 500 nil = 500 Z 229 + 20 = 249 _The elimination of the lowest unelected candidate_.] Had any candidate, as a result of the transfer of A's surplus votes, been raised above the quota he would have been declared elected and his surplus distributed in the manner just described. In this case no candidate, as the result of the transfer, has obtained the quota, and there are, therefore, no further surplus votes to distribute. There are, however, two vacancies still remaining unfilled, and the next operation is to distribute the voting papers of Z, who, being the lowest on the poll, is clearly out of the running. Z's papers are sorted, as in the previous process, according to the candidates who are marked by the voters as their next preferences, and it may be supposed that the result is as follows:-- B is marked as next preference on 20 papers X " " 200 " Y " " 29 " These papers are then added to the heaps of the respective candidates, B, X, and Y, and, with these additions, the votes credited to each candidate may be shown thus:-- Previous Transfer of Total. Z's Votes. Total. B 998 + 20 = 1018 C 432 + nil. = 432 X 820 + 200 = 1020 Y 500 + 29 = 529 Since B and X, as a result of the distribution, each obtain a quota of votes, they are declared elected, and all the vacant seats now being filled, the election is at an end. _The result._ The candidates elected, A, B, and X, each represent a "quota" of voters. Each considerable section of the constituency is thus able to choose a representative, whilst the party to whom both A and B belong return two members, these candidates taken together having secured the support of two quotas of voters. The voters who failed to secure a representative, namely the supporters of C and Y, number less than a quota. _Different methods of transferring surplus votes.--The Hare Method_.] There are several methods by which surplus votes may be transferred. In the case imagined the simplest way to distribute A's surplus votes is to take the 800 papers last filed and to sort these papers according to the second preferences indicated thereon. This method, which was recommended by the advocates of proportional representation in the movement of 1884-85, is based upon that contained in Mr. Hare's proposals. It has, however, been objected that if some other 800 voting papers are taken the result may be different, and that in this way an element of chance is introduced. This objection is considered in detail in Appendix VI., and it will be sufficient to state here that, when large numbers of votes are dealt with and the papers are well mixed, this element of chance is negligible. But small as it is it can be eliminated by adopting more accurate methods of transferring the votes. _The Hare-Clark method_ One of these more accurate methods was embodied in the Tasmanian Act of 1896, and also in the Municipal Representation Bill approved by the Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1907. It is known as the Hare-Clark system, its inception being due to Mr. Justice Clark, of Tasmania. With this method the surplus votes of any successful candidate are transferred to the unelected candidates in such a way that each unelected candidate marked as the voter's next preference on the successful candidate's papers receives a proportionate share of the surplus. Continuing with the illustration already given, the returning officer, instead of taking from A's heap the 800 papers last filed, takes the whole of A's heap and sorts all these papers according to the next preferences. Assume that the result is as follows:-- B is marked 2 on..... .................. ..1296 papers C " 2 on......... .............. .. 264 " Z " 2 on............. .......... .. 40 " Total papers showing second preferences .. 1600 Papers on which no further preferences are shown ...201 Total of A's papers.................... ...1801 In this case there are 800 surplus votes, whilst there are in all 1600 papers on which next preferences have been marked. It is therefore clear that each of the candidates B, C, Z is entitled to receive one-half the papers on which his name has been marked as the next preference. Each of the three bundles of papers showing next preferences for B, C, Z are divided into two portions. One portion is transferred to the next preference, the other is retained for the purpose of constituting A's quota, in which is included the papers on which A's name is alone marked. The complete operation is shown below:-- Candidate indicated as Number Number of Number of next Preference. of next Papers Transferred Papers Preferences. to the next Retained for Preference. A's Quota. B 1290 648 648 C 264 132 132 Z 40 20 20 ---- --- --- Total of next preferences 1600 800 800 Papers showing no further preference 201 -- 201 ---- --- ---- Totals 1801 800 1001 In this way each of the candidates B, C, and Z obtains in strict proportion that share of A's surplus to which he is entitled, and, so far as this operation is concerned, the element of chance is wholly eliminated.[8] The papers selected for transfer, however, are those last filed in the process of sorting, and should it become necessary to transfer these papers a second time there would enter in this further distribution an element of chance which, as explained in the Appendix already referred to, is so trifling as to have no practical effect upon the result unless the number of electors is small as compared with the number of members to be elected. _The Gregory Method._ A third method, in which the element of chance is eliminated from every transfer, has been embodied in the Tasmanian Act of 1907. Whenever it is necessary to transfer surplus votes, the whole of the successful candidate's papers on which preferences are marked are transferred, but at a reduced value. In the example given the whole of A's papers on which next preferences had been marked for B, C, and Z would be carried forward to those candidates, but each paper would be transferred at the value of one-half, the remaining portion of the value of each paper having been used for the purpose of electing A. This method is known as the fractional, or Gregory, method of transfer, having been first suggested by Mr. J. B. Gregory of Melbourne, in 1880. The regulations for the conduct of elections contained in the Tasmanian Act are given in Appendix VIII. The committee which investigated the working of this system as applied to the Tasmanian General Election of 1909, made a very valuable comparison between the rules contained in the Municipal Representation Bill[9] and the more exact rules of the Tasmanian Act. A fresh scrutiny, based on the rules of the Municipal Representation Bill, was made of all the ballot papers used in that election. It was found that in each district the same candidates were excluded in the same order and the same candidates returned as at the actual election. The same results would, therefore, have been attained and much labour saved if the rules of the Municipal Representation Bill had been used. This committee, however, in view of the fact that the more exact method had already been established in Tasmania, and that the ascertainment of the results only involved an expenditure of a few hours more time, and that there were no data available to show the frequency of close contests in which a small change in the distribution of votes might possibly affect the result, recommended that no change should be made in the law. Still it would seem that the rules of the Municipal Representation Bill are sufficiently exact for all practical purposes except where the number of electors is small. The fractional transfer is of course the most perfect from the mathematical point of view, but the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, after a careful examination of its working, report that "we agree with the Proportional Representation Society in regarding the additional labour involved as greater than it is worth."[10] Where the number of electors is small, however, it is not only desirable to carry out the transfers with the exactness prescribed by the Tasmanian rules, but in important elections, such as those of the Senators in South Africa, it is desirable to introduce a further modification. In transferring the votes in ordinary elections fractions of votes are ignored, because such fractions do not affect the result. Where, however, there are only a few electors such fractions may become important, and, for this reason, the regulations (see Appendix IX.) adopted by the South African Government for the election of Senators provided that each ballot paper should be treated as of the value of 100, or, in other words, that fractions should be taken into account as far as two places of decimals. The application of these regulations presented no difficulty; the counting of the votes in each of the four Colonies proceeded without the slightest hitch. _The Gove or Dobbs Method._ The methods of transfer hitherto described all enable the voter to maintain complete power over the disposal his vote. It has, however, been suggested that the candidate for whom the vote is recorded should have the privilege of deciding to whom it should be transferred. The suggestion was first made by Mr. Archibald E. Dobbs, who, in 1872, in a pamphlet entitled _General Representation_, made the proposal that before the date of the election each candidate should publish a schedule of the names of any of the other candidates to whom he desired his vote to be transferred. This method of transfer by schedule is usually known as the "Gove" method, and was contained in the Bill submitted by Mr. W. H. Gove to the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1891. Section 7 of this Bill reads as follows: "Votes shall be transferred according to the request of the candidate for whom they were originally cast to a person named in the list furnished by said candidate before the date of the election." With this method the elector in recording his vote for any one candidate would have no independent power of indicating to whom the vote should be transferred, and Mr. Dobbs, in a later pamphlet[11] has suggested that the elector should be given the option of accepting the schedule of preferences published by the candidate, or of indicating his own. Mr. Dobbs thus gets rid of the compulsory acceptance of a schedule of preferences, a proposal to which most English-speaking electors would have an instinctive dislike. But even to an optional schedule certain objections remain. The system has lost in simplicity, and the order of the candidates in the particular schedules would be determined in most cases by the party organizations. The _transferability_ of votes is the connecting link between all these systems; it is the essential feature upon which depends the proportionate representation of the contending parties, and the mode of transfer is properly regarded as a matter upon which different views may be held. As regards the second and third systems of transfer outlined above--which so far are the only ones which have been put into practice--experience confirms the theoretical conclusions of mathematicians that, save in the case of small electorates, both methods yield the same result. The second method was that used by the Proportional Representation Society for the purpose of its model elections, and is now applied in the election of Municipal Councils in Johannesburg and Pretoria. A description of the Model Election of 1908 will serve to illustrate the various processes involved in the sorting and counting of votes. _The model election of 1908._ In this election it was assumed that the voters in a constituency returning five members were asked to make their choice among twelve candidates. These candidates were all well-known political men, and were chosen with an attempt at impartiality from the Liberal, the Unionist, and the Independent Labour parties. As no Irish newspaper was publishing the ballot paper, no Nationalist was included.[12] This ballot paper, a copy of which appears on page 147, was sent, accompanied by a short explanatory article, for publication to, and appeared in, the following newspapers: _The Times, The Morning Post, The Spectator, The Nation, The Daily News, The Financial News, The Manchester Guardian, The Yorkshire Post, The Yorkshire Daily Observer, The Western Morning News, The Western Daily Mercury, The Glasgow Herald, The Dundee Advertiser, The Woolwich Pioneer_, and _The Labour Leader_. Readers of the newspapers were asked to cut out the ballot paper, mark it and return it to Caxton Hall by the first post on the morning of Tuesday, 1 December 1908. Ballot papers were also circulated independently among members of the Proportional Representation Society and their friends. About 18,000 papers were returned by newspaper readers, and about 3700 by members of the Society and their friends. In all a constituency of 21,690 electors was formed, a number whose votes were enough, but not too many, for counting in a single evening. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ELECTION, 1908 BALLOT PAPER PLEASE VOTE In this Illustrative Election FIVE members are to be elected for a single constituency, such as Leeds. The following TWELVE Candidates are supposed to have been nominated. Order of Preference. Names of Candidates ........... ASQUITH, The Rt. Hon. H. H. ........... BALFOUR, The Rt. Hon. A. J. ........... BURT, The Rt. Hon. Thomas ........... CECIL, Lord Hugh ........... HENDERSON, Arthur ........... JONES, Leif ........... JOYNSON-HICKS, W. ........... LLOYD GEORGE, The Rt. Hon. D. ........... LONG, The Rt. Hon. Walter H. ........... MACDONALD, J. Ramsay ........... SHACKLETON, David ........... SMITH, F.E. INSTRUCTIONS TO VOTERS A. _Each Elector has one vote_, and one vote only. B. _The Elector votes_ (a) By placing the figure 1 opposite the name of the candidate _he likes best_. He is also invited to place (b) The figure 2 opposite the name of his _second choice_. (c) The figure 3 opposite the name of his _third choice_, and so on, numbering as many candidates as he pleases in the order of his preference. _N.B._--The vote will be spoilt if the figure 1 is placed opposite the name of more than one candidate. * * * * * This Ballot Paper should be filled in and returned not later than _Tuesday_, first post, 1 _December_ 1908, in open envelope (halfpenny stamp), addressed to THE RT. HON. LORD AVEBURY, Caxton Hall, Westminster, S.W. _The counting of the votes. General Arrangements_. The votes were counted at the Caxton Hall, Westminster, on the evening of Thursday, 3 December. Unfortunately, it was not found possible for all the newspapers to reproduce the ballot paper in its exact dimensions, and the unevenness in the sizes of the papers, which would not occur in a real election, caused some trouble to the counters. The method on which the room was arranged may best be gathered from the plan shown on next page. [Illustration: ILLUSTRATIVE ELECTION, DECEMBER 3RD, 1908 PLAN OF ROOM] In the centre of the room was the sorting table, where the votes were in imagination discharged from the ballot boxes. At this table were stationed a number of helpers, chiefly Post Office sorters, who through Mr. G. H. Stuart, of the Postmen's Federation, and Mr. A. Jones, of the Fawcett Association, had kindly volunteered their services. Here also were a dozen sets of pigeon-holes, each set having twelve compartments, and each compartment being labelled with the name of a candidate. As soon as the count began, the sorters started sorting the ballot papers according to the names marked 1, placing in each candidate's compartment the papers in which his name was so marked, and setting aside spoilt or doubtful papers. Printed instructions to the sorters had been issued, thus:-- 1. Sort the ballot papers according to the names marked 1. 2. Place spoiled or doubtful papers on top of the case (right-hand side). As the papers were sorted the two assistants supervising these processes took them to the small tables (checking and counting tables) ranged on either side of the sorting table. These tables were appropriated to the various candidates, and when it was expected that a candidate would poll a large number of votes--_e.g.,_ in the cases of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour--several tables were allotted to him. At each of these tables sat two counters who acted in accordance with the following instructions:-- 1. Count the papers into bundles of fifty. 2. See that the figure 1 appears against the name of the candidate whose papers are being counted. 3. Place mis-sorts at the side of the table. 4. Count each bundle twice. 5. Place on the top of each bundle a coloured slip bearing the candidate's name (already printed). 6. Note the final bundle with the number of papers therein contained. The counters thus checked the accuracy of the sorters' work, and labelled the bundles of each candidate's votes with a card of a distinctive colour bearing his name. These bundles of votes were then taken to the returning officer's table, where there awaited them a row of twelve deep, three-sided open boxes, each labelled with the name of a candidate. The returning officer's assistants at this table made up the bundles of 50 into parcels of 500, and ascertained the total number of votes for each candidate, carefully keeping each candidate's papers in his own allotted box. Lastly, the results as ascertained were shown on large blackboards. If and whenever any doubt arose as to the validity of a vote, it was taken to the returning officer by the supervisors and adjudicated upon by him. The accuracy of the sorting may be judged by the fact that when the 9043 votes attributed to Mr. Asquith on the first count were subsequently analyzed, it was found that only one paper was wrongly placed to his credit, a Liberal vote which should have gone first to Mr. Lloyd George. As to these arrangements, one suggestion may be made for the guidance of future returning officers: it was found in practice that the work at the returning officer's table was too heavy for the two assistants to keep pace with the rapidity with which the votes were sorted and counted. Two assistants are required for the purpose of keeping a record of the various processes; two others for receiving and distributing the ballot papers. _The first count._ The first duty of the returning officer, as already explained, was to ascertain the total number of votes polled by each candidate, each ballot paper being a vote for the candidate marked 1 thereon. This was a simple task, which took about an hour and a quarter, and yielded the following result:-- Asquith (Liberal) 9,042 Balfour (Unionist) 4,478 Lloyd George (Liberal) 2,751 Macdonald (Labour) 2,124 Henderson (Labour) 1,038 Long (Unionist) 672 Hugh Cecil (Unionist Free Trader) 460 Shackleton (Labour) 398 Burt (Liberal) 260 Leif Jones (Liberal) 191 Smith (Unionist) 164 Joynson-Hicks (Unionist) 94 ------ Total 21,672 _The Quota._ It will be seen that, with this method of election, the general result, showing the relative strength of the parties, can be quickly ascertained, but, some time elapses before the definitive result, with the names of all the successful candidates, can be published. The first step necessary in determining which candidates were successful was to ascertain the _quota_, and this, in accordance with the rule above stated,[13] was found by dividing the total number of votes by six and adding one to the result. The number was found to be 3613, and the table given above shows that on the first count Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour had each polled more than a quota of votes. Both these candidates were, in accordance with the rules, declared elected, and, as some misapprehension prevails on this point, it should be stated that the order of seniority of members elected under this system would be determined by the order in which they were declared elected. In this case Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour would be the senior members in the order named. _The transfer of surplus votes._ The peculiar feature of the single transferable vote now came into play. Both Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour had polled more votes than were sufficient to ensure their election, and in order that these excess votes should not be wasted and a result produced such as that already shown to be possible where the votes are not transferable, it was the duty of the returning officer to transfer these surplus votes, and in doing so to carry out strictly the wishes of the electors as indicated on their ballot papers. The largest surplus, that of Mr. Asquith, was first dealt with, and the transfer of votes, as already mentioned, was effected in accordance with the provisions of Lord Courtney's Municipal Representation Bill. All the votes recorded for Mr. Asquith were re-examined, all the ballot papers contained in his box being taken to the central table and re-sorted according to the next available preferences indicated by the electors. For this purpose the names of the elected candidates were removed from their former pigeon-holes, and one of the compartments vacated was marked "exhausted" and used as a receptacle for those papers which contained no available next preference. The instructions to sorters were:-- 1. Sort the ballot papers according to the highest available preference. 2. When no further preference is indicated, place the ballot paper in the compartment marked "exhausted." The term "next available preferences" needs definition. As a rule the next preference was the candidate marked with the figure 2; but if any supporter of Mr. Asquith had indicated Mr. Balfour (already elected) as his second choice, then the elector's third choice became the "next available preference." The papers for each next preference were made into bundles of 50, but, instead of a coloured card with the name of the candidate, a white "transfer" card was placed with each bundle. The transfer card was marked with the name of the candidate whose papers were being re-sorted and also with the name of the candidate who had been indicated as the next available preference. The instructions issued to the counters were as follows:-- _(a)_1. Check the sorting of the papers, _i.e.,_ see that the candidate whose papers are being counted is the highest available preference. 2. Place mis-sorts at the side of the table. _(b)_ 1. Count the papers into bundles of fifty. 2. Count each bundle twice. 3. Place on the top of each bundle a "transfer card" showing from and to whom the votes are being transferred. 4. Note each bundle with the number of papers therein contained. These bundles were placed in a second series of open boxes on the returning officer's table, each box being labelled with the name of a candidate and being smaller in size than the boxes containing the first preferences. The number of next available preferences for each candidate was then ascertained. It was, of course, not the duty of the returning officer to transfer all the re-sorted papers; it was necessary to retain a "quota" for Mr. Asquith; and an operation which requires some care now took place. The papers contained in each of the second series of boxes were divided into two portions, bearing in each case the same proportion to one another. One portion was transferred to the candidate who had been indicated as the next preference, and the other was placed in Mr. Asquith's box, the portions reserved for him constituting his quota; the actual papers transferred to each next preference were those last placed in the box bearing his name. The details of this process are set forth in the table overleaf. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ELECTION, 1908 TRANSFER SHEET Distribution of the Rt. Hon. H. H. ASQUITH's surplus. Surplus Votes 5429 No. of Papers showing a next preference 9009 Surplus 5429 Proportion to be transferred = ------------------------- = ---- Total of next preferences 9009 Column Headings: A. Names of Candidates indicated as next preference. I. No. of papers on which Candidate is marked as next preference. II. No. of Votes transferred to next preference. (Fractions ignored.) III. No. of Votes retained for Mr. Asquith's Quota. A. I. II. III. Balfour, The Rt. Hon. A. J. -- -- -- Burt, The Rt, Hon. Thomas 468 282 186 Cecil, Lord Hugh 132 79 53 Henderson, Arthur 261 157 104 Jones, Leif 176 106 70 Joynson-Hicks, W. 17 10 7 Lloyd George, The Rt. Hon. D. 7,807 4,704 3,103 Long, The Rt. Hon. Walter H. 46 27 19 Madonald, J. Ramsay 51 30 21 Shackleton, David 35 21 14 Smith, F. B. 16 9 7 ----- ----- ----- Total of next preferences 9,009 5,425 3,584 Preferences exhausted . . 33 -- 33 ----- ----- ----- Total 9,042 5,425 3,617[14] This table needs, perhaps, a further word of explanation. The first column shows the result of the re-sorting of Mr. Asquith's papers, Mr. Burt having been indicated as the next preference on 468 papers, Lord Hugh Cecil on 132 papers, and so on. The papers for each next preference were, as already staked, divided into two portions, and the second and third columns show the result of this division. The division is carried out in a strictly proportional manner, according to the following principle. If 5429 surplus votes are to be transferred from a total of 9009 unexhausted voting papers, what portion should be transferred from 468, from 132, and so on. The proper numbers, which are given in the second column, are found by a simple rule of three process; each of the numbers in the second column is obtained from the corresponding number in the first column by multiplying by the fraction 5429/9009, that being the fraction which represents the proportion of unexhausted papers to be transferred. The figures in column III., which are the votes retained in each case to make up Mr. Asquith's quota, are obtained by subtracting the corresponding numbers in column II. from those in column I. Ten separate calculations were thus necessary, and for this part of the election it is desirable that the returning officer should have two assistants who are accustomed to figures. These should check one another's work. In Belgium the returning officer is assisted by two "professional calculators." The ballot papers with the votes constituting Mr. Asquith's quota were replaced in his original box and never touched again. The ballot papers transferred were placed in each case on the top of the papers already contained in the box of the candidate to whom the transfer was made. As the result of the transfer of Mr. Asquith's surplus it was found that the total of Mr. Lloyd George's votes amounted to 7455, and as this number exceeded the quota, Mr. Lloyd George was declared elected, he being the third member chosen. Mr. Balfour's surplus was then distributed in a similar manner. The number of votes transferred is shown in the result sheet, pp. 160-61. As Mr. Lloyd George's total exceeded the quota, it was also necessary to dispose of his surplus. In the latter case only the papers transferred to Mr. Lloyd George, and not his original votes, were re-examined, as his surplus consisted of votes originally given to Mr. Asquith. The poll now stood:-- Asquith (Liberal) 3,613 \ Balfour (Unionist) 3,613 > Elected Lloyd George (Liberal) 3,613 / Macdonald (Labour) 2,387 Henderson (Labour) 2,032 Burt (Liberal) 1,793 L. Jones (Liberal) 1,396 Long (Unionist) 1,282 Cecil (Unionist Free Trade) 822 Shackleton (Labour) 683 Smith (Unionist) 258 Joynson-Hicks (Unionist) 167 Votes lost through neglect of fractions 13 It will readily be seen that these transfers have been in accordance with what might have been assumed to be the general political preferences of the electors. The Liberal surplus votes from Mr. Asquith naturally went on chiefly to Mr. Lloyd George, and the overflow from Mr. Lloyd George, after filling up his quota, went on to Mr. Burt and Mr. Leif Jones, whose positions were greatly improved in consequence, though neither obtained the quota. At the same time a formidable addition of 834 votes was given to Mr. Henderson, the votes doubtless of Liberal sympathisers with Labour; and Lord Hugh Cecil received 88 votes, presumably from moderate Liberals who lay chief stress on Free Trade. On the other hand, Mr. Balfour's smaller Unionist surplus was divided mainly between Mr. Walter Long, who received 526 additional votes, and Lord Hugh Cecil, who received 195. _The elimination of unsuccessful candidates_.] After the transfer of all surplus votes had been completed, the work of the returning officer again became very simple. Three members only had been elected, two more were required, and there remained in the running nine candidates, none of whom obtained a quota of votes. Another process now began, namely the elimination of candidates at the bottom of the poll, beginning with the lowest and working upwards. The group of electors who have recorded their votes for the candidate lowest on the poll are evidently not sufficiently numerous to have a direct representative of their own. The process of elimination allows these electors to re-combine with other groups until they become part of a body large enough to be so entitled. The supporters of the lowest candidate are treated as being asked (and answering, if they care to do so, by their next preferences) the question: "The candidate of your first choice having no chance of election, to whom now of the candidates still in the running do you prefer your vote to go?" By this process, first the two candidates, Mr. Smith and Mr. Joynson-Hicks, who at this stage were at the bottom of the poll and whose combined votes were less than those of the third lowest candidate, were eliminated and their votes transferred to the next preferences of their supporters. No one was elected as a result of this operation, and accordingly the votes of Mr. Shackleton and Lord Hugh Cecil, now lowest on the poll, were transferred in the order named. These and all other eliminations were of the same character. _All_ the papers of the eliminated candidates which showed an available next preference were transferred, and no calculations such as were required in the case of the transfer of surplus votes were needed. It will be sufficient if the details of one process--the transfer of Mr. Shackleton's votes--are given; for the details of all other similar transfers the full table on pp. 160-61 should be consulted. The votes of Mr. Shackleton were disposed of as follows:-- TRANSFER OF MR. SHACKLETON'S VOTES Names of Candidates Number of Papers indicated as next for each next preference. preference. Burt 89 Cecil 18 Henderson 233 Jones 57 Long 8 Macdonald 252 Preferences exhausted 45 --- Total 702 The transfers of the votes both of Mr. Shackleton and of Lord Hugh Cecil were completed, but still no fresh candidate had the quota, and Mr. Lief Jones's 1500 votes came next for distribution. These 1500 votes might have been expected to go to Mr. Burt, the sole remaining unelected Liberal, who had already 2025 votes, and make his election practically secure. But here came a surprise; Mr. Leif Jones's supporters (who had, of course, in most instances, come to him from Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George) had in some cases marked no further preferences, so that their votes were no longer transferable, and in many other cases had marked Mr. Henderson or Mr. Macdonald as their next preference; thus at the conclusion of this operation the result of the election was still doubtful. Two places had still to be filled, and the poll stood:-- Asquith (Liberal) 3,613 \ Balfour (Unionist) 3,613 > Elected Lloyd George (Liberal) 3,613 / Macdonald (Labour) 2,851 Henderson (Labour) 2,829 Burt (Liberal) 2,683 Long (Unionist) 2,035 Mr. Long's votes had now to be distributed; the majority of his supporters were Unionists who had not marked any preference for either of the two remaining Labour candidates or for the remaining Liberal candidate, and their votes consequently were not capable of being transferred. But some 370 of Mr. Long's supporters had shown a preference for Mr. Burt (presumably as being reckoned not so Socialistic as his competitors) as against some 27 for Mr. Macdonald and 80 for Mr. Henderson, so that the poll stood:-- Asquith (Liberal) 3,613 \ Balfour (Unionist) 3,613 > Elected Lloyd George (Liberal) 3,613 / Burt (Liberal) 3,053 Macdonald (Labour) 2,938 Henderson (Labour) 2,910 Mr. Henderson, being at the bottom of the poll, was then eliminated, but it was unnecessary to proceed with the transfer of his votes as, after his elimination, there were only five candidates remaining, and five was the number of members to be elected. The work of the returning officer was at an end, the following candidates being elected:-- Asquith (Liberal) Bafour (Unionist) Lloyd George (Liberal) Burt (Liberal) Macdonald (Labour) The whole process of the election is shown by the returning officers' full result sheet. _The fairness of the result._ The fairness of this method of voting is at once apparent. Each group of electors as large as a quota secured a representative. The Liberals were in a very large majority, and with the block system and probably with the single-member system would have nominated five candidates and have obtained all five seats. In this election the two smaller groups, the Unionist and Labour parties, each returned one member. The voters did not, in recording their preferences, restrict themselves to candidates of one party, but nevertheless, it will be of interest to compare the seats gained with the strength of parties as indicated by the first preferences. The party vote disclosed in the first count was as follows:-- Votes polled. Liberal 12,244 Unionist 6,868 Labour 3,660 ------ Total 21,672 The quota was 3613, and these totals show that the Liberals obtained 3 quotas with 1405 votes over and gained 3 seats. Unionists obtained 1 quota with 2265 votes over and gained 1 seat. Labour obtained 1 quota less 53 votes and gained 1 seat. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION ELECTION, 1908--RESULT SHEET No. of Votes,--21,672. No. of Seats--5. Quota = (21,672/6) + 1 = 3613 Col 1: First Count Col 2: Transfer of surplus votes (Asquith's) Col 3: Result Col 4: Transfer of Surplus Votes (Bafour) Col 5: Result Col 6: Transfer of Surplus Votes (Lloyd George) Col 7: Result Names of Candidates. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Asquith, The Rt.Hon.H.H. 9,042-5,429 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 Balfour, The Rt.Hon.A.J. 4,478 -- 4,478-865 3,613 -- 3,613 Burl, The Rt. Hon. Thomas. 260 +282 542 +12 554+1,239 1,793 Cecil, Lord Hugh 400 +79 539+195 734 +88 822 Henderson, Arthur 1,038 +157 1,195 +3 1,198 +834 2,032 Jone, Leif 191 +157 297 +2 299+1,097 1,396 Joynson-Hicks, W. 94 +10 104 +52 156 +11 167 Lloyd George, The Rt.Hon.D. 2,751+4,704 7,455 -- 7,455-3,842 3,613 Long, The Rt.Hon. Walter H. 672 +27 699+520 1,225 +57 1,282 Macdonald, J. Ramsay 2,124 +30 2,154 +5 2,159 +228 2,387 Shackleton, David 398 +21 419 +2 421 +202 683 Smith, F.E. 184 +9 173 +65 238 +20 258 Votes lost through neglect of fractions - +4 4 +3 7 +6 13 Preferences Exhausted - - - - -- -- -- Totals 21,072 - 21,672 -- 21,672 -- 21,672 Col 8: Transfer of votes (J Hicks and Smiths) Col 9: Result Col 10: Transfer of Votes Shackleston's) Col 11: Result Col 12: Transfer of Votes (cecil's) Col 13: Result Col 14: Transfer of Votes (L.Jones) Col 15: Results Col 16: Transfer of Votes (Long's) Col 17: Final Result. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. Asquith -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 E Balfour -- 3,013 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 E Burl. +21 1,814 +89 1,903+122 2,025 +658 2,683 +370 3,053 E Cecil +88 908 +18 923-926 -- -- -- -- -- Henderson +14 2,046+233 2,270 +49 2,328 +501 2,829 +81 2,910 Jone +12 1,408 +57 1,465 +35 1,500-1,500 -- -- -- Joynson-Hicks 167 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Lloyd George -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 -- 3,613 E Long +233 1,505 +8 1,513+490 2,003 +32 2,035-2,035 -- Macdonald +21 2,408+252 2,680 +48 2,708 +143 2,851 +87 2,938 E Shackleton +19 702-702 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Smith -258 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Votes lost -- 13 -- 13 -- 13 -- 13 -- 13 Exhausted +29 29 +45 74+182 256 +166 422+1,497 1,919 Totals -- 21,672 -- 21,672 -- 21,672 -- 21,672 --21,672 This result is as fair as is possible, and would have been equally attained if, as would probably be the case in a real election, there had been but little cross voting. The total results in the Tasmanian General Election, 1909 (six-member constituencies) showed an exact proportion between the votes polled and the seats gained by the respective parties.[15] _Improved arrangements in the Transvaal elections._ The arrangements made at the model election were adopted by the Chief Electoral Officer of Tasmania,[16] and were also adopted by the returning officers of Pretoria and Johannesburg. Experience has shown that some improvements in details can be made. Both at Pretoria and Johannesburg less work was done at the returning officer's table. The counters were placed more directly arrangements under the superintendence of the returning officer's assistants, and the final totals of each operation were ascertained at the counters' tables. When the ballot boxes were brought in by the presiding officers of the polling stations with a return of the votes they contained, the returning officer handed them one by one to superintendents who took them to that section of the counting force over which they had charge. The counters ascertained the number of papers in each ballot box. The superintendents reported the total number to the returning officer, and if this number agreed with the presiding officer's return the ballot box and contents were handed back to the returning officer. After the contents of all the ballot boxes had been verified and the grand total of votes ascertained, all the papers were emptied into one box and were well mixed. The papers were then sorted at a central table, as in the election already described; the superintendent took the papers to the counters, each of whom ascertained the number of votes for that candidate whose papers he had been deputed to count. The superintendents brought a statement of the totals for each candidate to the returning officer, and if the aggregate of these figures did not agree with the number of ballot papers distributed to the sorters a fresh count was ordered. The elections at Johannesburg and Pretoria demonstrated that the requisite accuracy in counting could be easily attained. The operations were characterized with remarkable precision. There was no error in the counting of the votes at Pretoria during the whole of the operations, and the same remark holds good of Johannesburg, save that one ballot paper which had been accidentally torn was omitted to be counted. The two pieces had been pinned together, and the paper, which in consequence had been rendered shorter than the others, was overlooked. The omission was quickly discovered, and no other error took place during the whole of the proceedings. The various counting processes check one another. Any errors occurring in the earlier operations are thrown out in the course of the subsequent proceedings, for the totals of the votes at the conclusion of each operation must agree with the total shown at the commencement of the count. In another feature the organization of the Transvaal elections might be copied. All spoilt or doubtful papers were brought to the returning officer's table by his assistants, and were not examined until the conclusion of the first count. The whole of these papers were then gone through by the returning officer, who decided the question of their validity in the presence of the candidates or their representatives. The returning officer also examined all papers which were treated as "exhausted," but this work might have been deputed to the assistant returning officer.[17] _Criticisms of the single transferable vote._ After reviewing the whole of the evidence submitted to them, the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems reported that "of schemes for producing proportional representation we think that the transferable vote will have the best chance of ultimate acceptance," but the Report contains some criticisms of its mechanism which demand consideration. These criticisms are directed to two points: (1) the effect of later preferences in deciding the result of an election; (2) the process of eliminating candidates at the bottom of the poll. _Effect of late preferences._ The Royal Commission express the opinion that late preferences may have an undue weight in deciding the result of an election. But the Commissioners seem to have been unnecessarily alarmed in this matter. A careful analysis of the preferences recorded in the Tasmanian elections was made by a Committee appointed for the purpose by the Tasmanian Government. This Committee ascertained that the comparative values of the various preferences in determining the result of the election were as follows:-- 1st preference .739 2nd .140 3rd .051 4th .029 5th .014 6th .008 7th .009 8th .008 9th .003 In other words 73.9 per cent, first preferences became effective votes, 14.0 per cent, second preferences became effective votes, and so on. These figures show the great superiority in value of the earlier preferences, and this superiority was also seen in the Transvaal elections. In Pretoria 68 per cent, of the first preferences were directly effective in returning candidates, in Johannesburg 67.5 per cent. Second preferences primarily come into play in favour of candidates of similar complexion to the candidates first chosen, and when, as is possible in the last resort, a vote is passed on in support of a candidate of a different party, this is no more than the Commissioners themselves approve and recommend for adoption in the case of three or more candidates standing for a single seat. The difference between the effect of the final transfers under a system of proportional representation and of transfers under the system recommended by the Commission is that in the first case they might determine the character of one out of five or more members representing a constituency, in the other they might affect the representation of each of the five or more divisions into which the constituency would be divided. _The elimination of candidates from the bottom of the poll._ The second criticism concerns the elimination of candidates. It is sometimes contended that it is unfair to eliminate the candidate at the bottom of the poll, because had he remained longer in the contest he might have received at the next stage a considerable amount of support. Taking an extreme case, the candidate at the bottom of the poll may have been so generally popular as to have been the second choice of the majority of the electors. This is theoretically conceivable, but it does not conform to the facts of elections. The principle of eliminating a candidate at the bottom of the poll is not peculiar to the single transferable vote. When a constituency returns but one member and there are three candidates, and it is desired by means of the second ballot to ensure the election of the candidate who commands the support of the majority of the electors, the candidate lowest on the poll is eliminated and a second ballot is held to decide between the claims of the remaining two candidates. In such a case it is conceivable that the candidate lowest on the poll may have been more acceptable to the majority of the electors than the candidate finally selected. But the system of the single transferable vote with constituencies returning several members diminishes very considerably any such possibility. In the first place, the candidate to be successful need only obtain a much smaller proportion of the total number of votes than in a single-member constituency. In the latter he must poll just over one-half before he is safe from defeat; in a seven-member constituency if he polls one-eighth he will escape this fate. The candidate who has a reasonable proportion of support, therefore, stands less chance of being excluded. In the second place no candidate is excluded until after the transfer of all surplus votes has been completed. If, in a constituency returning several members, a candidate, after the transfer of all surplus votes, is still at the bottom of the poll, the facts would seem to indicate that he was not even the second favourite of any considerable number of electors. The preferences actually given in elections show how little force this criticism possesses. The table below was prepared by the Committee appointed by the Tasmanian Government. It shows the result of an examination of all the votes cast in the district of Wilmot for the election of five members of the Tasmanian House of Assembly in April 1909. The names of the candidates are given with the numbers of the various preferences recorded for each candidate. The total number of second preferences recorded for Waterworth, the first candidate to be excluded, was 141. Similar tables for the other four districts show that no injustice arose from the exclusion of the lowest candidate. The only occasion on which the criticism has any force is when, in filling the last seats, the conditions are analogous to those which obtain in a three-cornered fight in a single-member constituency. Yet in the latter case the Royal Commission did not hesitate to recommend the exclusion of the lowest candidate. DISTRICT OF WILMOT: NUMBERS OF VARIOUS PREFERENCES Name. Preferences. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Best 935 690 596 609 615 550 23 2 7 5 Dumbleton 518 537 603 632 819 650 24 4 3 5 Field 930 699 692 619 555 585 21 9 4 5 Hope 1,232 1,302 1,077 551 229 159 13 6 2 5 Jensen 1,955 894 1,087 132 58 58 13 19 7 36 Kean 599 1,521 1,370 118 53 50 11 28 38 15 Lee 822 750 902 618 512 488 27 4 7 1 Lyons 1,079 1,444 1,329 93 76 65 21 29 32 12 Murray 572 885 972 848 625 395 14 6 7 1 Waterworth 221 141 236 590 198 254 141 21 6 9 ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- --- --- --- -- 8,863 8,863 8,863 4,810 3,740 3,254 308 128 113 94 The elimination of candidates has been criticized from another point of view. The Royal Commission, while careful not to endorse this criticism, and referring to it with reluctance, "because doubts about the absolute reliability of the mechanism of the system may arouse prejudices disproportionate to the importance of the subject, which is very small in comparison with the other considerations involved," review the evidence which had been submitted to them as follows: "The element of chance involved in the order of elimination is exceedingly difficult to determine. It would appear that the element is perceptible in certain contingencies, but the rarity or frequency with which these would occur in actual practice is a matter of pure speculation, as it apparently depends on the amount of cross-voting which voters permit themselves in the use of their later preferences, a point only to be decided by experience. 'Chance' in this connexion has not quite the same meaning as when used in respect of the method of transfer. In the case of the latter we were dealing with mathematical probabilities; the chance which is said to be involved in the process of elimination consists in the fact that the results of the election may vary according to the strength of quite irrelevant factors. Thus, a case was put to us to show that with certain dispositions on the part of the electors the representation of a party might be so much at the mercy of the order of elimination that while it would only obtain one seat with 19,000 votes of its own it would obtain two with 18,000, because in the latter case the order of elimination of two candidates would be reversed."[18] It is here suggested that the results may depend upon the amount of cross-voting which voters would permit themselves in the use of their later preferences. The whole paragraph abounds in obscurities, and the word "cross-voting" is used in such a context as to make it quite uncertain whether the Commission mean by it inter- or intra-party voting, or both. It is somewhat difficult to make a definite answer to a charge so indistinctly formulated. Cross-voting, in the ordinary sense, may certainly affect the result. If the supporters of a Radical candidate prefer to give their second preferences to a Labour candidate rather than to a moderate Liberal, such cross-voting obviously may determine whether the Labour candidate or the moderate Liberal will be successful. There is no element of chance involved. The object of the system is the true representation of the electors, and the returning officer must give effect to their wishes. The numerical case cited by the Commissioners can only occur when so-called supporters of the party in question are so indifferent to its fate as to refrain from recording any preferences for any members of the party other than their own favoured candidate. Such voters can hardly be called "members of a party" for the purpose of contrasting its strength with that of another party.[19] Even such cases, supposing them at all probable in practice, could be provided against, as has been suggested by Mr. Rooke Corbett of the Manchester Statistical Society, by determining a new quota whenever any votes have to be set aside as exhausted. But the elections in which the system has been tried show how little these cases accord with the facts. The large number of exhausted papers which occur in the model election described in this chapter, which was organized through the press, perhaps accounts for much of this criticism. In real elections the percentage of exhausted papers is much less. Thus in Johannesburg, where one rigidly organized party, another party more loosely organized, and ten independent candidates took the field, the electors made good use of their privilege of marking preferences. Some 11,788 votes were polled. At the conclusion of the tenth transfer only 104 votes had been treated as exhausted. In Pretoria, where there were 2814 votes, the total number of exhausted votes at the end of the election was only 63. This happened on the occasion of the first trial of the system in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and further experience will lead to an even fuller exercise of the privilege of marking preferences. There is no case for a criticism based on such a hypothetical example as that hinted at by the Commission. _Quota Representation on the basis of the system._ Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, in criticizing this method of voting, complains that its advocates "assume, quite erroneously, that a second preference should carry the same political value as a first preference." But it would be obviously unfair to penalize an elector by depriving him of any part of the value of his vote because he failed to secure his first choice as his representative. In making this criticism Mr. Macdonald has lost sight of the reason for which the vote is made transferable. Every elector has but one vote, and unless this vote retains its full value when transferred, the proportionate representation of the electors cannot be achieved. Thus it is conceivable that in a constituency returning several members Mr. Macdonald might poll two quotas of Labour votes, and if his excess votes were not transferred to the second preferences of his supporters at their full value, the representation of the party would suffer. Each quota of electors is entitled to a member, and the transferring of votes enables the electors to group themselves into quotas of equal size. In a critical analysis of the regulations adopted in the Transvaal, Mr. Howard Pim, President of the Statistical Society, South Africa, stated that: "However defective these regulations may be, the system of election introduced by this Act is a great advance upon any previously in existence in this Colony, for by it a minority which can command a number of votes equal to or exceeding a number equal to the quota can elect its candidate. This advantage far outweighs any defects that exist in the regulations, and I trust that this principle of the quota will never be surrendered, even if the Second Schedule of the Act be modified."[20] Representation by quota has always been recognized by advocates of the single transferable vote as being the great reform accomplished by the new method of voting. The Government Statistician of Tasmania, Mr. R. M. Johnston, declared that "those who ignore this keystone, or foundation of the Hare system, and restrict their attention entirely to peddling or unimportant details--such as the element of chance involved in quota-excess-transfer-votes--fail altogether to comprehend the grandeur and perfection of the cardinal features of the system, which secures just and equitable representation of all forces, whether of majorities or minorities." In attempting to give effect to this great principle it is unnecessary to impose more work upon the returning officers than is absolutely essential for the purpose, and such experience as is available shows that the rules contained in the Municipal Representation Bill[21] accomplish this end. [Footnote 1: Denmark was thus the first country to make use of a system of proportional representation. An excellent account of its introduction is given in _La Représentation Proportionelle_, published in 1888 by the French Society for the Study of Proportional Representation.] [Footnote 2: In addition to the eight members elected by each Parliament, the Senate includes eight nominated members appointed by the Governor in Council. In future elections, unless otherwise determined by the Union Parliament, eight Senators for each province will be elected at a joint session of the members of the Provincial Council and the members of the Union House of Assembly elected for the province.] [Footnote 3: The first section of the amendment was as follows: "From and after the passing of the present Bill, every local constituency shall, subject to the provisions hereinafter contained, return one member for every quota of its registered electors actually voting at that election, such quota being a number equal to the quotient obtained by dividing by 658 the total number of votes polled throughout the kingdom at the same election, and if such quotient be fractional, the integral number nest less. Provided always, that where the number of votes given by the constituency shall not be equal to such quota, the quota may be completed by means of votes given by persons duly qualified as electors in any part of the United Kingdom; and the candidate who shall have obtained such quota may, notwithstanding, be returned as a member for the said constituency if he shall have obtained a majority of the votes given therein as hereinafter mentioned."] [Footnote 4: _Autobiography_, 1873, p. 259.] [Footnote 5: The election of 1910, which was held in Glasgow, was organized by the Scottish Branch of the Society.] [Footnote 6: This mode of voting is simple and effective where the electing body is small and where there is no need or desire to avoid full publicity. It is in use in the municipality of Toronto for the election of committees, and was proposed for use in the election of a number of Lords of Parliament from the whole body of peers in a memorandum submitted by Lord Courtney of Penwith to the Select Committee on the Reform of the House of Lords. See Report of this Committee [(234) [(234) 1908] ] [Footnote 7: This rule for ascertaining the quota was first suggested by Mr. H.R. Droop in a paper read by him before the Statistical Society in April 1881. Both Mr. Hare and M. Andrae proposed that the quota should be ascertained by dividing the number of votes cast by the number of members to be elected. Mr. Droop pointed out that such a quota might, with constituencies returning from three to eight representatives each, yield on some occasions an incorrect result. "Suppose, for instance," says he, "that the election is a contest between two parties of which one commands 360 votes and the other 340, and that each party runs four candidates for seven seats; then M. Andrae's quota will be (360 + 340) / 7 = 700 / 7 = 100, while mine will be: 700 / 8 + 1 = 88. Consequently, if the 360 voters should divide their first votes so as to give originally to each of three candidates 100, or more, votes, say 110, 104, and 100, their fourth candidate will originally have only 46 votes, and will obtain by transfer with M. Andrae's quota only 14 additional votes, and thus he will not get altogether more than 60 votes, and therefore if the 340 can by organization arrange to divide their first votes so that each of their four candidates has originally more than 60 votes (which would not be difficult, as an equal division would give each of them 85 votes) they will carry the odd candidate. On the other hand, with my quota, the fourth candidate will get by transfer (however the votes may be originally distributed) 360 - (3 x 88) = 360 - 264 = 96 votes, and it will be impossible for the 340 to place all their four candidates ahead of those of the 360. Therefore, with my quota nothing can be gained by dividing the votes equally, or lost by dividing them unequally, while with M. Andrae's and Mr. Hare's quota there will always be a possibility of gaining by this, and therefore it may be worth while in an important election to organize and ascertain how many candidates the party's votes can carry, and arrange for such votes being divided equally between these candidates, the very thing which preferential voting is intended to render unnecessary."] [Footnote 8: The proportion will not in practice be so simple as in this example--one-half. In every case the proportion is that which the number of next preferences marked for any one unelected candidate bears to the total number of preferences marked for all unelected candidates. _Cf._ p. 164.] [Footnote 9: _Vide_ Appendix VII.] [Footnote 10: Report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems (Cd. 5163), Par. 65.] [Footnote 11: _Real Representation for Great Britain and Ireland_, 1910, p. 23.] [Footnote 12: In the model election held in Glasgow, 1910, the list contained the name of a Nationalist candidate (see _Representation_, No. 19, November 1910).] [Footnote 13: See page 137.] [Footnote 14: This total slightly exceeds the quota, 3613, owing to the neglect of fractions in the second column. The loss of votes due to neglect of fractions will be found separately recorded in the result sheet, p. 160-61. This loss of votes can be avoided by treating the largest fractions as unity.] [Footnote 15: See page 257.] [Footnote 16: It was at first intended to adopt the arrangement of staff and method of recording preferences used at the election of 1897. These arrangements were after a test abandoned in favour of the much more convenient method used at the Proportional Representation Society's model election held December 1908.--_Report on the Tasmanian General Election_, 1909, par. 8.] [Footnote 17: For full details of these elections, see Report presented to both Houses of the Transvaal Parliament.--T.G. 5--'10.] [Footnote 18: _Report of Royal Commission on Electoral Systems_, par. 76.] [Footnote 19: A simple example will explain. Let it be assumed that P and Q are members of party A, and poll 18,000 votes, that R and S and T are members of party B, polling in all 19,000 votes, and that the following table records the votes given and the details of the transfers made in arriving at the final result:-- Quota = (37,000/4) + 1 = 9251 Transfer Transfer 1st of R's of T's Candidates. Count. Surplus. Result. Votes. Result. P 9,050 9,050 9,050 (Elected). Party A. Q 8,950 8,950 8,950 (Elected). R 10,000 -749 9,251 9,251 (Elected). Party B. S 6,000 +500 6,500 +2,400 8,900 T 3,000 +249 3,249 -3,249 Exhausted +849 849 ------ ------ ------ 37,000 37,000 37,000 The members of the two parties recorded their votes as follows:-- Party A. Party B. P. 9,050 R. 10,000 Q. 8,950 S. 6,000 T. 3,000 The total number of votes polled is 37,000, and the quota, therefore, is 9251. Candidate R, having received more than a quota would be declared elected, and his surplus of 749 votes carried forward. It may be assumed that candidates S and T, who are of the same party, received 500 and 249 as their shares of this surplus. The result of this transfer is shown in the table. T, the lowest candidate on the poll, would then be eliminated. Now, if the contingent of voters Supporting T are not fully loyal to their party, and as many as 849 have recorded no preference save for T, then 2400 would be available for transfer to S, whose total would be only 8900. S would be eliminated, and the three candidates elected would be P and Q of party A, and R of party B, although R and S between them represented 18,151 voters. This case can be met by providing that whenever votes are exhausted the quota should be counted afresh. The votes in play, ignoring those exhausted, would be in all 36,151, the new quota would be 9038, while an additional number of votes, viz. 213, would be available for transfer from R to S, with the result that the position of these candidates would be as follows:-- R 9,038 S 9,113 P 9,050 Q 8,950 Party B would obtain two seats, the party A only one seat.] [Footnote 20: Address delivered on 6 September 1909.] [Footnote 22: See Appendix VII.] CHAPTER VIII LIST SYSTEMS OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION "'One man, one vote; one party, one candidate'--thus runs the cry."--COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA List systems of proportional representation are based upon the block vote or _scrutin de liste_--the method of election generally used on the Continent of Europe and in the United States of America when several members are to be elected for the same constituency. With the _scrutin de liste_, lists of candidates are nominated by the various political organizations or groups of electors; each elector has as many votes as there are members to be elected, but he may not give more than one vote to any one candidate. The party which can obtain the support of a majority of the electors can carry its list to the exclusion of all others; minorities are crushed even more completely than with the system of single-member constituencies. But as constituencies returning several members are an essential requirement of any scheme of proportional representation, the _scrutin de liste_ facilitates the introduction of a proportional system, for the only great change involved is the allotment of seats to the respective lists in proportion to the totals of votes obtained by each. But this change brings in its train a change in the nature of the vote. It remains no longer a vote only for candidates as individuals; it obtains a twofold significance, and becomes what is termed the double simultaneous vote (_le double vote simultanée_). In the first place it is a vote for the party list as such, and is used for determining the proportion of seats to be allotted to the lists; and, in the second place, it is a vote for a particular candidate or order of candidates for the purpose of ascertaining which of the candidates included in a list shall be declared successful. This double function of the vote is characteristic of all list systems of proportional representation. Other changes of a subsidiary character, which experience has shown to be advisable, have been adopted in different countries so that the various systems differ in detail in the methods both by which seats are apportioned among the competing lists and by which the successful candidates are chosen. _The Belgian electoral system_.] List systems are in operation for parliamentary purposes in Switzerland, Belgium, Würtemberg, Sweden, and Finland. The simplest of these is that adopted by Belgium, and the description of a Belgian election may serve as an introduction to the study of other systems. Through the courtesy of M. Steyeart, the President of the Tribunal of First Instance and Chief Electoral Officer for the constituency of Ghent-Eecloo, the author was enabled to watch the elections in May 1908 in that constituency. Proportional representation is, however, only one of the points in which the Belgian and English electoral systems differ, and in order to obtain a true estimate of the working of the Belgian law it is necessary to distinguish between results which are due to the franchise qualifications and those which are due to the system of proportional representation. The effects arising from these two separate features of the electoral system have sometimes been confused, and it is therefore desirable to give a brief outline of the conditions which govern a Belgian election. In the first place, Belgium has manhood suffrage modified by a system of graduated voting. Secondly, each elector is compelled to vote or, at least, to present himself at the polling place. Thirdly, both the Chambers are elective, and, although provision exists for the dissolution and the election of Parliament as a whole, only one-half of each Chamber is, in the ordinary course, elected at a time, each Senator being elected for a fixed period of eight years, and each member of the House of Representatives for a period of four years. _The franchise._ The unique franchise system embodied in the Belgian constitution in 1893 was adopted only after months had been spent in discussing the schemes of rival parties. All attempts at compromise failed until attention was seriously directed to the suggestions of M. Albert Nyssens, Professor of the University of Louvain, contained in his pamphlet _Le Suffrage Universel Tempéré_. His proposals had the merit of recognizing the validity of the arguments advanced by all the political parties. Conservatives desired the introduction of a system based on occupation coupled with the payment of taxes; many Liberals were anxious to secure special recognition for electors of admitted capacity--in short, an educational qualification; the Radicals inside and Socialists outside Parliament demonstrated continually in favour of universal, direct and equal suffrage. The claim for universal suffrage was recognized by granting to every male Belgian who had attained the age of twenty-five years the right to vote, but a counterpoise to so democratic a suffrage was sought in the granting of additional votes to electors possessing specified qualifications. A supplementary vote was awarded to every married man who had attained the age of thirty-five years and paid five francs in taxes on his dwelling. An additional vote was given to every owner of land or house property of the value of two thousand francs, or to the possessor of an income of a hundred francs derived from Belgian public funds. Thus were met the demands of the Catholics for the representation of property, whilst the Liberal advocacy of the claims of the educated voter were met in a similar way. Two additional votes were awarded to those who had obtained a diploma of higher education; to those who filled, or had filled, a public position; or to those engaged in a profession which implied the possession of a good education. The highest number of votes awarded to any elector, for parliamentary purposes, whatever qualifications he might possess, was three. _Compulsory voting_. The exercise of the franchise is regarded in Belgium as a duty which each citizen owes to the State, and the obligatory vote is therefore universally accepted without demur. The elector must attend at the polling place, take his ballot paper and deposit it in the ballot box. If he places the ballot paper in the urn without voting there are no means of ascertaining the fact; but unless he forwards to the Electoral Officer an explanation, in due form, of his absence from the polling booth he is liable to prosecution. The percentage of abstentions is thus very low, but, in addition to this result, the obligatory vote has had a considerable indirect effect upon the character of electoral contests. Voting has become an official matter. Formerly, as here, it rested with the political organizations to persuade and exhort electors to vote; now, each elector receives from the Returning Officer an official command to attend at the polling place. _Partial renewal of chamber_. The third difference--the partial renewal of the Chambers--dates from the constitution of 1831, and the reason for its adoption was the same as that which underlies the partial renewal of English municipal councils--the desire to ensure continuity in the composition and proceedings of Parliament. There was some justification for this practice under the old voting methods, for then the result of elections largely depended, as is the case in England to-day, upon the chance distribution of party strength. The composition of the Chamber of Representatives was liable to violent oscillations and changes, and the partial renewal of the Chambers moderated the violence of these changes. But whilst the partial renewal may be defended on these grounds, it has two distinct disadvantages. When only one-half of the Chamber is to be elected (as in the renewal of only one-third of our municipal Councils) a considerable diminution takes place in the amount of public interest evoked by an election. There is, moreover, a further and even more serious drawback that, when the election turns upon a question of vital importance, such for instance as the annexation of the Congo, the verdict of _only one-half_ the people is obtained. In 1908 elections took place in four provinces only--East Flanders, Hainaut, Liege, and Limbourg--and so, whilst the citizens of Ghent and Liège were expressing their opinion upon the policy of the Government, the citizens of Brussels were reduced to the position of spectators of a fight in which doubtless many would have liked to have taken a part. The introduction of proportional representation has rendered this particular feature of the Belgian electoral system quite unnecessary. Electors are not so fickle as an irrational method of voting made them appear to be. _The presentation of lists_. For the purpose of parliamentary elections each of the nine provinces of Belgium is divided into large constituencies returning several members; Brussels returns twenty-one members, Ghent eleven, but several of the smaller constituencies return as few as three representatives. Fifteen days before the date of the election lists of candidates which, before presentation, must have received the support of at least one hundred electors, are sent to the returning officer. After verification, each list is given an official number and the lists are then published, no official title other than the number being given to the lists. In the copy of the ballot paper used at Ghent, shown on the opposite page, list No. 1 was presented by the Catholics; No. 2 by the Liberals; No. 3 by those Socialists who were dissatisfied with their party's list; No. 4 by the small tradesmen; No. 5 by the official Socialists; whilst No. 6 contains the name of a candidate standing as an independent. It will be observed that each of the first five lists is divided into two parts separated by the word "Suppléants." The candidates so described are not taken into account in the actual election of representatives; they are, however, voted for in the same way and at the same time as the other candidates, and are called upon (in the order determined by the result of the election) to fill any vacancy occasioned by the retirement or death of a duly-elected representative belonging to the same list. This arrangement obviates the necessity for bye-elections, and the relative strength of parties remains the same from the time of one election to the next. The order in which the names of the candidates appear upon the lists is arranged by the organizations responsible for their presentation. It should, however, be stated that this provision, about which public opinion is much divided, is not an essential feature of a proportional system. It was not a part of the original proposals of M. Beernaert, and it certainly strengthens the hands of political organizations, although, as will be shown subsequently, proportional representation considerably modifies, if it does not altogether prevent, abuse of the power conceded to political bodies. [Illustration: List Ballot paper] _The act of voting._ The work of the elector is simplicity itself. He can select one list or one candidate in a list but not more for each of the votes to which he may be entitled. His choice can be recorded in four different ways. In each case the act of voting consists in pencilling one or other of the white spots contained in the black squares at the head of the lists or against the names of individual candidates. In the first place, the elector may vote by blackening the spot at the head of the list. The significance of such a vote is that the elector votes for the list, and, at the same time, approves of the order in which the candidates have been arranged by the party organization. Naturally all the party organizations and journals advise their supporters to vote in this way. Secondly, the elector may vote by blackening the white spot against the name of one of the "effective" candidates on one of the lists. Such a vote implies that the elector votes for the list on which the candidate's name appears, but that, instead of approving of the order in which the candidates have been arranged, he prefers the particular candidate he has marked. The third and fourth methods are but variations of the second. The elector can indicate a preference for one of the supplementary candidates, or he can indicate preferences for an effective and also for a supplementary candidate. In brief, the elector votes for one of the lists, and either approves of the list as arranged or indicates the change he desires. _The allotment of seats to parties._ The number of representatives awarded to each party is determined by the method formulated by M. Victor d'Hondt, a professor of the University of Ghent. Its working may best be shown by an illustration. Let it be assumed that three lists have been presented; that they have obtained 8000, 7500, and 4500 votes respectively, and that there are five vacancies to be filled. The total number of votes for each list is divided successively by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on, and the resulting numbers are arranged thus:-- List No. 1. List No. 2. List No. 3. 8,000 7,500 4,500 4,000 3,750 2,250 2,666 2,500 1,500 The five highest numbers (five being the number of vacancies to be filled) are then arranged in order of magnitude as follows:-- 8,000 7,500 4,500 4,000 3,750 The lowest of these numbers, 3750, is called the "common divisor"[1] or the "electoral quotient," and forms the basis for the allotment of seats. The number of votes obtained by each of the lists is divided by the "common divisor" thus:-- 8,000 divided by 3,750 = 2 with a remainder of 500. 7,500 " 3,750 = 2 4,500 " 3,750 = 1 with a remainder of 750. The first list contains the "electoral quotient" twice, the second twice, and the third once, and the five seats are allotted accordingly. Each party obtains one representative for every quota of voters which it can rally to its support, all fractions of "quotas" being disregarded. The method of determining the electoral quotient may appear at first sight rather empirical, but the rule is merely the arithmetical expression, in a form convenient for returning officers, of the following train of reasoning. The three lists with 8000, 7500, and 4500 supporters are competing for seats. The first seat has to be allotted; to which list is it to go? Plainly to the list with 8000 supporters. Then the second seat has to be disposed of; to which list is it to go? If it is given to the first list, then the supporters of the first list will have two members in all, or one member for each 4000 votes. This would be unfair while 7500 supporters of the second list are unrepresented, therefore the second seat is allotted to the list with 7500 supporters. Similar reasoning will give the third seat to the list with 4500 supporters, the fourth to the list with 8000 supporters, which now will rightly have one representative for each 4000, and the fifth to the list with 7500. The question in each case is to what list must the seat be allotted in such a way that no one group of unrepresented electors is larger than a represented group. The separate allotment of seats one by one in accordance with the foregoing reasoning may be shown thus:-- 8,000 (List No. 1) 7,500 ( " No. 2) 4,500 ( " No. 3) 4,000 ( " No. 1) 3,750 ( " No. 2) This result of course agrees with that obtained by the official process of dividing the total of each list by the electoral quotient. _The selection of successful candidates._ The seats having been apportioned to the respective lists it becomes necessary to ascertain which of the candidates on the respective lists are to be declared elected. In this second process it will be seen now great an advantage is obtained by the candidates at the top of each list.[2] A11 the votes marked in the space at the top of a list, _i.e.,_ list votes, form a pool from which the candidates of the list draw in succession as many votes as are necessary to make their individual total equal to the electoral quotient, the process continuing until the pool is exhausted. In the example already given, assume that List No. 1 consists of three candidates, A, B, and C, arranged in the order named, and that the 8000 supporters of the list have given their votes as follows:-- Votes at the head of the List 4,000 Preferential votes for A 600 " " B 500 " " C 3,000 ----- Total 8,000 Candidate A, being the first in order on the list, has the first claim on the votes recorded for the list. The electoral quotient is 3750, and A's total 500 is raised to this number by the addition of 3250 votes taken from those recorded for the list. This secures his election, and there remain 750 list votes which are attributed to candidate B, this candidate being the second in order on the list. B, however, also had 500 votes recorded against his name, and his total poll therefore amounts to 1250. But candidate C has obtained 3000 votes, all recorded for himself personally, and as this total exceeds B's total of 1250, C would be declared elected. The two candidates chosen from List No. 1 would, in this case, be A and C. The successful supplementary candidates are ascertained in the same way. _A Belgian election. Ghent, 1908: the poll._ In a Belgian election the polling proceeds very smoothly and quietly. This is largely due to the fact that the law for compulsory voting has relieved the party organizations of the necessity of whipping up their supporters to the poll. At the election of Ghent, which the author was privileged to witness, the candidates for the Chamber of Representatives were as given in the ballot paper on page 177. It will be seen that six lists of candidates were presented, but in the election of Senators only the three chief organizations took part. There were eleven members of the House of Representatives and five Senators to be elected. The constituency was divided into 350 polling districts, the maximum number of electors for a district being 500. To each district was assigned a polling place in charge of a presiding officer, appointed by the returning officer of the district; the presiding officer was assisted by four citizens, each of whom was required to be in possession of the maximum number of votes, and to be at least forty years of age. In addition, the party organizations sent duly accredited witnesses to watch against possible fraud, and to assure themselves of the absolute regularity of the proceedings. The poll opened at 8 A.M. Each elector had to present his official "summons" to vote, and received from the presiding officer one, two, or three ballot papers according to the number of votes to which he was entitled. The elector took the papers to a private compartment, as in an English election, marked them, placed them in the ballot box and received back his official letter, now stamped--evidence, if need be, that he had carried out the obligation imposed upon him by law. At 1 P.M. the poll was closed; the ballot boxes were opened and the ballot papers counted in the presence of the assessors and party witnesses for the purpose of ascertaining that all papers in the possession of the presiding officer at the opening of the poll had been duly accounted for. _The counting of the votes_.] In order to maintain as far as possible, not only the secrecy of the individual vote, but the secrecy of the vote of any locality, the votes of three polling places were counted together, the grouping of polling places for this purpose having been previously determined by lot. Thus the votes counted at the town hall (polling district No. 1) were those recorded in the districts Nos. 1, 112, and 94. The proceedings were directed by the presiding officer of the first polling place, assisted by the presiding officers of the other two. The only other persons present were witnesses representing the three chief parties. The counting commenced soon after 3 P.M., and was completed, both for the Senate and Chamber, by 7 P.M. The papers were sorted according to the votes given for each list, subsidiary heaps being made for those candidates who had received individual votes of preference. A separate heap was made of spoiled and blank voting papers, but it was evident from the very commencement of the proceedings that the method of voting had presented no difficulty to the elector. Of the 1370 votes recorded in this division for candidates for the Chamber there were but twenty-six spoiled papers; of these thirteen were blank, indicating that the voters, although attending the poll, did not wish to record any opinion. The thirteen other papers showed in nearly every case some confusion in the mind of the elector with the elections for the communal councils, when the elector can give several votes of preference. The official returns, after endorsement, were forwarded by post to the returning officer, whose duty it was to prepare the returns for the whole constituency. The figures for each district were given to the press at the close of the count, and special editions of the journals, containing the probable result of the election, were issued the same evening. _The final process._ The compilation of the returns for the whole constituency took place on the following day. The returning officer presided, and was assisted by four assessors, a secretary and three witnesses, who attended on behalf of the chief parties. In addition there were two professional calculators, who were responsible for the accuracy of the arithmetical processes. The proceedings, in brief, consisted in extracting the details of the returns furnished by the 120 counting places. The final sheet for each list showed not only the total number of votes obtained by the party, but the number of votes of preference recorded for each candidate. The votes for each list were as follows:-- List No.1. List No.2. List No.3. List No.4. List No.5. List No.6. 78,868 39,788 913 1,094 23,118 271 The process of allotting the seats to the respective parties then commenced. The totals for each list were divided by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on, and arranged thus:-- List List List List List List No. 1. No. 2. No. 3. No. 4. No. 5. No. 6 78,865 39,788 913 1,094 23,118 271 39,432 19,894 11,559 26,288 13,262 19,716 9,947 15,773 13,144 11,266 The eleven highest figures thus obtained were then arranged in order of magnitude, and the seats allotted accordingly:-- 1st Seat 78,865 (List No. 1--Catholic) 2nd " 39,783 ( " No. 2--Liberal) 3rd " 39,432 ( " No. 1--Catholic) 4th " 26,288 ( " No. 1--Catholic) 5th " 23,118 ( " No. 5--Socialist) 6th " 19,894 ( " No. 2--Liberal) 7th " 19,716 ( " No. 1--Catholic) 8th " 15,773 ( " No. 1--Catholic) 9th " 13,262 ( " No. 2--Liberal) 10th " 13,144 ( " No. 1--Catholic) 11th " 11,559 ( " No. 5--Socialist) Thus the Catholics, Liberals, and Socialists obtained six, three, and ten seats respectively. It will be noticed that the eleventh figure, 11,559, which is the "common divisor," or "electoral quotient," is contained six times in the Catholic total, with a remainder of 9511; three times in the Liberal total, with a remainder of 5000; and twice in the Socialist total. The highest number of preferences recorded for any individual candidate (although placards had been posted inviting votes of preference for M. Buysse, the candidate fourth on the Liberal list, and for M. Cambier, the candidate third on the Socialist list) were 1914 and 1635, much too small to effect any change in the order of the candidates as arranged by the associations. It remains to add that the task was accomplished with perfect regularity and despatch; the figures were checked at each stage, but as the number of votes polled in the double election (for the Senate and for the Chamber) amounted to no less than 270,892, it is not surprising that the compilation of the final figures was not completed until midnight. _Public opinion favorable to the system._ This was the fifth parliamentary election[3] in which the system of proportional representation has been put to the test; its practicability, both from the point of view of the elector and of the returning officer, is now no longer open to question. Interviews on the effects of the system with Catholic leaders like M. Beernaert or M. Van den Heuvel, with Liberals like Count Goblet d'Alviella, or M. Gustave Abel, the editor of _La Flandre Liberale_, or with Socialists like M. Anseele, revealed the fact that there is no party in Belgium which desires to return to the former electoral system. The Liberals and Socialists are hostile to plural voting, but their attitude to proportional representation may be summed up in the desire to make the system more perfect.[4] Constituencies returning three or four members are not sufficiently large to do complete justice to a system of proportional representation, and many, among whom must be included M. Vandervelde, desire the grouping of these smaller constituencies into larger ones. The general trend of public opinion is in complete agreement with the views of party leaders, and found forcible expression in the press comments on the elections in 1908 for the provincial councils. _The relation of the Belgian to other list systems._ The Belgian list method, although simple in form, is based upon a very careful examination of earlier list systems, and represents an attempt to avoid the defects and inconveniences of those systems. As already stated, the vote in a "list" system has two aspects. Indeed, in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland each elector is invited, first, to record his vote for a list as a separate act, and secondly, to vote for the particular candidate he prefers. In tracing the growth of the Belgian system it will be best to consider these two aspects separately, and, in the first place, the vote in so far as it affects the fortunes of the list. The object in view--the allotment of the seats in proportion to the total number of votes obtained by the respective lists--would seem quite simple of attainment, and would be so were the totals obtained by each list such that it was possible to divide the seats among them in exact proportion. Voters do not, however, group themselves in exact proportion, and it becomes necessary therefore to devise a rule of distribution that shall approximate to the desired end as closely as possible. _The different methods of apportioning seats to lists._ The first rule--a very simple one--was adopted because, in the words of Ernest Naville, "it seemed most intelligible to the general public." The grand total of votes polled by the different lists was divided by the total number of seats, and the distribution of seats was based upon the quotient, or "quota" thus obtained. The total of each list was divided by the quota for the purpose of ascertaining the number of seats to which it was entitled. The answers, as will be seen from the following example, usually contained fractions. Assume that seven seats are to be distributed among three lists, A, B, C; that the grand total of votes is 7000, and that the respective lists have polled as follows:-- List A 2,850 votes " B 2,650 " " C 1,500 " ----- Total 7,000 The quotient in this case is 1000. The totals of the lists A, B, and C contain the quotient twice, twice and once respectively, but in each case with a remainder, and it is the remainder that constitutes the difficulty. According to the earliest list schemes the remaining seats were allotted to the lists having the largest remainders, and, in the example given, lists A and B would each receive an additional seat. Party organizers were not slow to perceive that it was advisable to obtain as many of the largest remainders as they could, and considerable dissatisfaction arose in Ticino from the action of the Conservatives, who very skilfully divided their forces into two groups, thereby obtaining additional seats. A simple example will explain. Assume that three deputies are to be elected, that the grand total of votes is 3000, and that the party votes are as follows:-- Party A 1,600 votes " B 1,400 " ----- Total 3,000 The quota would be 1000 votes. Party A, having the larger remainder, would obtain two seats, and party B only one seat; but if party B should present two lists and arrange for the division of its voting force, the following result might ensue:-- Party A 1,600 votes " B1 700 " " B2 700 " ----- Total 3,000 The quota would still be 1000 votes, but party A would only obtain one seat, whereas party B would obtain two, because each of its two lists would show a remainder larger than A's remainder. This possibility led to a modification of the rule, and the seats remaining after the first distribution were allotted to the largest parties. But this was also far from satisfactory, as will be seen from the following example taken from a Ticino election:[5]-- Conservatives 614 votes Radicals 399 " ----- Total 1,013 The constituency to which the figures refer returned five members; the quotient therefore was 202, and the Conservatives obtained three seats on the first distribution, and the Radicals one. As, under the rule, the remaining seat was allotted to the largest party, the Conservatives obtained four seats out of the five when, obviously, the true proportion was three to two. The rule subsequently devised aimed at reducing the importance of remainders in the allotment of seats. The total of each list was divided by the number of seats plus one. This method yielded a smaller quota than the original rule and enabled more seats to be allotted at the first distribution. The final improvement, however, took the form of devising a rule which should so allot the seats to different parties that after the first distribution there should be no seats remaining unallotted. This is the great merit of the Belgian or d'Hondt rule, which has already been fully described. _Criticism of d'Hondt Rule_. The d'Hondt rule certainly accomplishes its purpose; it furnishes a measuring rod by which to measure off the number of seats won by each list.[6] But the rule is not without its critics.[7] As in the earlier Swiss methods objection was taken to the undue favouring of certain remainders, so in Belgium objection is taken to the fact that remainders are not taken into account at all. The Belgian rule works to the advantage of the largest party, a fact that many may consider as a point in its favour. A further simple example will explain how the larger parties gain. Assume that eleven seats are being contested by three parties, whose votes are as follows:-- Party A 6,000 votes " B 4,800 " " C 1,900 " ------ Total 12,700 Arrange these numbers in a line, and divide successively by 1, 2, 3, and so on, thus:-- Party A. Party B. Party C. 6,000 4,800 1,900 3,000 2,400 960 2,000 1,600 1,500 1,200 1,200 960 1,000 The eleventh highest number, which constitutes the measuring rod, will be found to be 1000; the largest party obtains six seats, the second party obtains four seats, with a remainder of 800 votes, and the third only one seat, with a remainder of 900 votes. The two smaller parties taken together poll 6700 votes but only obtain five seats, as compared with the six seats obtained by the larger party with 6000 votes; the two remainders of 800 and 900 votes, which together constitute more than a quota, having no influence on the result of the election. Even if, in the allotment of seats, the largest party has a remainder of votes not utilized, yet this remainder necessarily bears a smaller proportion to the total of the votes polled than is the case with a smaller party. Thus the system works steadily in favour of the larger party. The question of remainders, or votes not utilized in the distribution of seats, is of minor importance when the constituencies return a large number of members. When, for example, as in the city of Brussels, there are twenty-one members to be elected, the votes not utilized bear a small proportion to those that have been taken into account in the allotment of seats. In Belgium, however, there are several constituencies returning as few as three members, and there is naturally a demand that these constituencies should be united so that the method of distribution should yield more accurate results. If the d'Hondt rule, like every other method of distribution, is open to criticism from the point of view of theoretical perfection, it must be admitted that in practice it yields excellent results. The election at Ghent resulted in the return of six Catholics, three Liberals and two Socialists; it would have been impossible to have allotted the seats more fairly. Under the old non-proportional method the Catholics would have obtained eleven representatives and the Liberals and Socialists none. The immeasurable improvement effected by every true proportional method is apt to be overlooked in the critical examination of the working of these methods in those extreme cases which rarely occur in practice. _The formation of "cartels."_ The steady working of the d'Hondt rule in favour of the larger parties has, however, not escaped the attention of advocates of proportional representation. The late Professor Hagenbach-Bischoff has formulated the proposal that parties should be allowed to put forward combined lists, and that in the first allotment of seats the totals of the combined lists should be taken as the basis of distribution. The need of some such provision may be shown by an example used in illustration of the d'Hondt system, at a meeting held under the auspices of the French Proportional Representation League.[8] A constituency with eleven members was taken; four lists, A, B, C, and D, received 6498, 2502, 1499, and 501 votes respectively; the d'Hondt rule made 834 the measuring rod, and gave A seven members, B three, C one, and D none. The question was asked why provision was not made for the transfer of the votes from list D to list C, so that if, for example, these lists were put forward by Radical-Socialists and by Socialists respectively, the parties might obtain the additional seat to which their combined totals entitled them. It will be seen that lists C and D, with a total of 2000 votes (more than twice 834), obtained but one representative, while list A, with 6498 votes, obtained seven representatives.[9] Professor Hagenbach-Bischoffs proposal, which would meet this difficulty, has not been embodied in the Belgian law, but "cartels" (arrangements for the presentation of a common list) are formed between the Liberals and Socialists so as to lessen their loss of representation due to the working of the d'Hondt rule. The "cartels," however, do not give satisfaction, as experience shows that many Liberals who would vote for a Liberal list decline to vote for a "cartel" of Liberals and Socialists; whilst, on the other hand, extreme Socialists decline to support a Liberal-Socialist coalition. In the Finnish system, however, provision is made for the combination of lists in accordance with Professor Hagenbach-Bischoff's suggestion. Indeed, as the Finnish law forbids any list to contain more than three names, some such provision was necessary in order to allow each separate party to nominate a full list of candidates. The experience of the Belgian "cartels" would seem to show that, even where party organization and discipline are highly developed, many electors resent the disposal of their votes by a bargain between the organizations concerned. The single transferable vote, by allowing each elector to indicate his second choice in the way in which he himself prefers, would enable smaller parties to obtain their share of representation without involving a preliminary compact between party organizations. A list system seems to establish a rigid division between parties, whilst there is no such corresponding rigid division in the minds of many electors. The model elections conducted by the Proportional Representation Society cannot perhaps be accepted as a conclusive guide to the action of voters at a real election, yet the number of Liberals who, in the last of these elections, gave an effective preference to a representative of the Independent Labour Party, in the person of Mr. Henderson, was very noteworthy. In the Belgian system no such fluidity is possible; the Liberal electors would be shut off from any relation with the supporters of Mr. Henderson, who could figure only upon the Labour Party's list. _The different methods of selecting successful candidates_. It will be seen that the problem of allotting seats to lists has been solved in several different ways. Similarly, different methods have been tried for the purpose of selecting the successful candidates from the respective lists. The instructions to voters vary accordingly. The earlier schemes (and the practice obtains in several Swiss cantons to-day) provided that each elector should have as many votes as there were members to be elected, and that he might distribute (without the privilege of cumulating) his votes over the whole of the candidates nominated, selecting, if he desired, some names from one list, some from another, and some from another. After the number of seats secured by each list had been ascertained those candidates were declared elected who, in the respective lists, had obtained the highest number of individual votes. _Panachage_. The practice of voting for candidates belonging to different lists--_panachage_, as it is called--has evoked considerable discussion, and still gives rise to differences of opinion among the advocates of proportional representation on the Continent. At first sight there would appear to be nothing to discuss, and that there was no possible reason why the elector should not be allowed to exercise his choice in the freest manner. It has, however, been found that this privilege can be used in an unfair way. When each elector has as many votes as there are candidates, and is not permitted to cumulate his votes on any one, it usually happens that the votes obtained by individual candidates in any given list vary but little in number. When in some elections it was realized that the party could only obtain a certain number of seats, but that it had a few hundred votes to spare, some extreme partisans used these votes for the purpose of voting for the least competent men of their opponents' list, and their action sometimes resulted in the election of those men in preference to the more competent men of the party. The danger from this cause would appear to be exaggerated, but although success has seldom attended the abuse of _panachage_, the fear of a successful attempt has a disturbing influence. The later Swiss laws allow electors to cumulate three votes, but not more, upon any one candidate, so that the success of popular candidates is assured. _The single vote and the case de tête_. The Belgian parliamentary system suppresses _panachage_, and that in a most effective way. In this system each elector has but one vote, and therefore can only vote for one candidate. In addition, the Belgian system confers upon the organization presenting a list the right to arrange the order in which the candidates shall appear upon the list, and, further, it provides that the voter may approve of this arrangement by voting at the head of the list in the space provided for that purpose and which is known as the _case de tête_. Party organizations naturally advise their supporters to vote in this way. Public opinion is divided on this feature of the Belgian system, but M. Van den Heuvel, formerly Minister of Justice, who took a responsible part in the passing of the law, and with whom the author discussed this provision, defended it most vigorously, on the ground that the party as a whole had a right to determine which of its members should be elected. In the absence of the provision referred to it might happen that some candidate would be elected in preference to one who was more generally approved of by the party. This may be made clear by an example given by M. Van den Heuvel himself. A, B, C and D are candidates. Suppose that the party is strong enough to return three candidates, but no more, and that five-sixths of the party are in favour of candidates A, B and C, whilst the minority, one-sixth, are ardently in favour of candidate D. It will be necessary that the majority of the party (the five-sixths) should cleverly divide their votes equally between the candidates A, B and C in order to prevent the possibility of candidate D being elected by a small minority of the party. A little reflection will show that in the absence of any such provision the popular candidate of the majority, say A, might attract too large a proportion of the votes, thereby allowing D to pass B or C. Each provision of the Belgian system has been most carefully thought out, and, if it strengthens the hands of party organizations, it does so in order to secure the representation of the party by the candidates most generally approved. It may, however, be pointed out that had the single transferable vote been used, the candidates A, B and C, who, in M. Van den Heuvel's example, were supported by five-sixths of the party, would have been sure of election; there would have been no need to have conferred a special privilege upon the party organizations. _The limited and cumulative vote_. The French Proportional Representation League, which, impressed with the simplicity of the Belgian system, desired to introduce it into France, refrained from advocating the adoption of the _case de tête_, and suggested that the order in which candidates should be declared elected on each list should be determined by the votes of the electors. The French League in its first proposal recommended that each elector should, as in Belgium, have but one vote. It was soon realized that the popular candidate of the party might attract a large majority of the votes, and that, in consequence, candidates might be elected who were the nominees of only a small section of the party. The League in its second proposal recommended the use of the limited vote, each elector having two votes when six deputies were to be elected, and three in larger constituencies. The League, however, followed the Belgian practice in confining the choice of the elector to candidates on one list. This proposition was examined in 1905 by the _Commission du Suffrage Universel_, which, in the Report, declared that it was impossible to approve of such a limitation of the elector's freedom. "Nous ne pouvons," runs the Report, "laisser si étroitment enchainer, garrotter, ligotter l'electeur proclamé souverain et qui doit en tout cas être libre." The Committee recommended the use of the limited vote without the restriction recommended by the League. In a further Report, issued in 1907, this Committee again emphasized the necessity of leaving the elector quite free in the choice of candidates, and a new Bill, drafted by the Committee, provided that each elector should have as many votes as there were deputies to be elected, and that he should be allowed to cumulate the whole, or several of his votes, upon any one candidate. Where, however, the cumulative vote has been introduced into recent Swiss laws, as in that of the Canton of Bâle City, the elector is not permitted to cumulate more than three votes upon any one candidate. It will thus be seen that the single vote, the multiple vote without the privilege of cumulating, the limited vote, and the cumulative vote, have all been proposed or adopted as methods of determining which candidates shall be declared elected. _Special characteristics of Swedish and Finnish systems_. This summary of the different methods used in solving the double problem of a list system--the allotment of seats to parties and the selection of successful candidates--is not fully complete.[10] Special features have been incorporated in the Swedish and Finnish systems for the purpose of securing as much freedom of action as possible to electors, and these systems are described in Appendices Nos. III. and IV. The differences between the various list systems are, however, not so great as those between a list system and the single transferable vote, but the consideration of these must be reserved for the next chapter. [Footnote 1: The text of the Belgian law (Art. 263 of the Electoral Code) runs as follows: "Le bureau principal divise successivement par 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, &c. le chiftre électoral de chacune des listes et range les quotients dans l'ordre de leur importance jusqu'à concurrence d'un nombre total de quotients égal à celui des membres à élire. Le dernier quotient sert de diviseur électoral. "La répartition entre les listes s'opère en attribuant à chacune d'elles autant de sièges que son chiffre électoral comprend de fois ce diviseur."] [Footnote 2: The order in which the names appear is arranged by the party presenting the lists.] [Footnote 3: A further election (the sixth) took place in 1910.] [Footnote 4: See _La Representation Proportionnelle intégrale_, 1910. Felix Goblet d'Alviella (fils).] [Footnote 5: _Rapport de la Commission du Suffrage Universel_, 1905, p. 45.] [Footnote 6: Professor Hagenbach-Bischoff, of Bâle, formulated a different rule which is finding favour in Swiss cantons. The quota which will ensure the apportionment of all the seats among the lists without remainder is ascertained by trial. In practice the same results are obtained as with the d'Hondt rule. Full directions for applying the rule are contained in Clause XIII. of the law adopted for the canton of Bale Town.--Appendix IX.] [Footnote 7: For recent French criticism, see page 202.] [Footnote 8: At Lille, December 1906.] [Footnote 9: The new French Bill (_see_ Appendix X.) provides for the presentation of combined lists (_apparentement_).] [Footnote 10: Cf. _La Repésentation Proportionelle en France et en Belgique_, M. Georges Lachapelle (1911) and the new report of the Commission du Suffrage Universel (No. 826, Chambre des Députés, 1911). M. Lachapelle recommends a new proposal, _le système du nombre unique_. The electoral quotient for all constituencies would be fixed by law at, say, 15,000 votes. The number of deputies chosen at each election would be allowed to vary. Each list in each constituency would receive as many seats as its total contained the quotient. The constituencies would be grouped into divisions. The votes remaining over after the allotment of seats in each constituency would be added together, and further seats would then be allotted to the respective lists.] CHAPTER IX A COMPARISON OF LIST SYSTEMS WITH THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE "Les partis sont une institution de la vie politiquo actuelle. Ils sont une partie, non écrite, de la Constitution."--P. G. LA CHESNAIS _Influence of previous conditions_.] List methods of proportional representation have been favoured on the Continent, the transferable vote in English-speaking countries, and the question naturally arises, whence this difference? It would appear from the history of proportional representation that advocates of the reform have always kept in mind local customs, and have adapted their proposals to them. Thus a list system of proportional representation was adopted in Switzerland because such a system was more easily grafted upon previous electoral conditions. This is the explanation given by Ernest Naville, who for more than forty years was the leading advocate of electoral reform in Switzerland, in a letter[1] addressed to the late Miss Spence of Adelaide, South Australia. "The Swiss Cantons," said he, "have adopted the system of competing lists. I do not think the system is the best, but, as it involved the least departure from customary practices, it was the system for which acceptance could be more easily obtained. My ideal is a system which leaves the electors face to face with the candidates without the intervention of lists presented by parties; that is to say, that the method of voting indicated at the end of the pamphlet[2] forwarded by you has my preference. It is the system which I, inspired by the works of Mr. Hare, first proposed in Geneva, but, in order to obtain a practical result, account has to be taken of the habits and prejudices of the public to which the appeal is made, and the best must often be renounced in order to obtain what is possible in certain given circumstances." In a further letter Professor Naville was even more emphatic. "I consider," said he, "the Hare system preferable to that of competing lists. I have always thought so. I have always said so. But our Swiss people are so accustomed to the _scrutin de liste_, or multiple vote, that we could not obtain from them the profound modification which would have been necessary to pass to the Hare-Spence system." _Partly the basis of representation in a list system._ The long familiarity of the Belgian electors with the _scrutin de liste_ also paved the way for the adoption of the list system of proportional representation, but there is an additional reason why list systems have found favour on the Continent. Some continental writers consider that parties as such are alone entitled to representation in Parliament, and are not enamoured of any scheme which makes personal representation possible. This view is also taken by Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, who, speaking of the Belgian scheme, says that "it makes party grouping the most important consideration in forming the legislative order, and is therefore much truer to the facts of Government than any other proportional representation scheme."[3] The Royal Commission on Electoral Systems also seems to have accepted the continental theory, that "in political elections it is the balance of parties which is of primary importance." In England, however, representation has never theoretically been based upon party. The limited vote, the cumulative vote, the double vote in double-member constituencies, have all allowed the elector complete freedom of action to follow party instructions, or to act independently. The electoral method has not been chosen to suit the convenience of party organizations; parties have had to adapt themselves to the system of voting. The single transferable vote in accordance with these traditions bases representation upon electors, and preserves to them freedom to vote as they please. So much is this the case that some critics consider it unsuitable for a system of proportional representation, and although Mill evidently regarded the Hare scheme not only as a system of personal representation, but as a plan for securing the representation of majorities and minorities in due proportion, the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems took the view that the transferable vote "was not originally invented as a system of proportional representation, but as a system of personal representation to secure the return of men as men, not as party units." Again, Professor Commons says that "the Hare system is advocated by those who, in a too doctrinaire fashion, wish to abolish political parties."[4] But in making this statement Professor Commons himself supplies the answer. "They apparently do not realize," says he, "the impossibility of acting in politics without large groups of individuals, nor do they perceive that the Hare system itself, though apparently a system of personal representation, would nevertheless result in party representation." The more complete organization of parties is a direct consequence of the more democratic franchise now existing. Political action in modern times without organization is impossible. The Johannesburg municipal elections in November 1909, despite the success of two independent candidates, showed that the most effective way of conducting elections with the transferable vote is that of organizations presenting lists of candidates. Indeed, so great a part does organization take in the political life of to-day that it is desirable, if possible, to have some counteracting influence. The transferable vote supplies this by securing for the elector the utmost measure of freedom of action. This freedom of action is greatly appreciated by electors. A voter, asked after the Johannesburg elections to give his impressions of the new method of voting, stated that "the new system had put him on his mettle. He had never experienced so much pleasure in the act of voting; he had had to use his intelligence in discriminating between the claims of the various candidates." Voting with the single transferable vote ceases to be a purely mechanical operation, the voter becomes conscious of the fact that in voting he is selecting a representative. It is of little value to ask electors to exercise their intelligence if on the day of the poll they have no means of doing so. There was some complaint in Sweden after the first proportional representation elections because the new system compelled an elector, if he wished to use his vote with effect, to act rigidly with his party. With the transferable vote party action has sufficient play. Electors can freely combine and vote as parties, and effective organization will reap its legitimate reward. But the elector will not be constrained to act against his wishes. He will play an effective part in the election. In view of the great freedom conferred by the single transferable vote on electors, it is not surprising that the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems reported that the "Belgian system is foredoomed to rejection by English public opinion," and Mr. J. R. Macdonald states that "the British mind would not submit to this (the Belgian) simplest and most efficient form of proportional representation." _The freedom of the elector within the party._ Even when representation is based, as in the list systems, upon parties as such, it becomes necessary to determine the degree of liberty that shall be allowed to the individual elector in the exercise of the franchise. If a party has obtained five seats and the party has nominated seven candidates, how are the five successful ones to be selected, and what part is the elector to take in the selection? There is considerable dissatisfaction in Belgium with that part of the system which enables the party organizations to arrange the order in which the names shall appear upon the ballot paper, although this order may have been arrived at by a preliminary election among members of the party. In the election of 1910 there was a considerable increase in the number of voters who exercised their right of giving a vote of preference to individual candidates. The extensive use of this right resulted at Brussels in the alteration of the order of election as determined by the party organizations, and Count Goblet d'Alviella points out that this will demand the consideration of the political parties.[5] Some device such as that of making the vote transferable within the list will be required in order to ensure that the majority within the party shall obtain its full share of the representation. As stated in the previous chapter, the French Parliamentary Committee felt it necessary to provide for the elector a greater freedom of action than is possible under the Belgian system. In the report issued by this Committee in 1905 the use of the limited vote was recommended; in the report of 1907 the cumulative vote, which confers still greater freedom upon the elector, was proposed. In the Swedish system electors not only have full power to strike out, to add to or to vary the order in which candidates' names appear upon the ballot papers issued by the party organizations, but they have the opportunity of presenting a non-party list. The Finnish electoral law was deliberately framed so as not to interfere with or to check the liberty of the voter in making up the lists.[6] This law not only allows the names of candidates to figure on more than one list, but permits the voter to prepare a list of his own composed of any three of the candidates who have been duly nominated. In a list system two problems, the allotment of seats to parties and the selection of the successful candidates, have to be solved and the solution must in each case respect the personal freedom of the elector. With the single transferable vote the same mechanism solves both problems; it gives to each party its due proportion of seats, it determines in the most satisfactory way which of the candidates nominated by a party shall be declared elected, and it does not encroach in any way upon the elector's freedom of action. There is one point in which the single transferable vote differs essentially from the list systems. With the former the vote never passes out of the control of the voter, and the returning officer can only transfer the vote to some candidate whom the elector has named. With the list systems adopted in Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland, or with that recommended by the French Parliamentary Committee, a vote given for any one candidate is also a vote for the party which has nominated the candidate, and the vote may contribute to the success of some candidate of this party whose election the voter did not desire to advance. This fact explains the difficulties which have been associated with the formation of cartels in Belgium. A cartel is an agreement between two parties to present a common list, and if, as has taken place in some of the Belgian constituencies, Socialists and Liberals present a combined list, a Liberal by voting for one of the Liberal candidates of the cartel may contribute to the success of one of the Socialist candidates. The Socialist voter may, on the other hand, contribute to the return of a Liberal candidate. For this reason some Liberals and some Socialists refuse to support cartels. In Sweden it is possible that the elector's vote may, if he make use of a party ticket, contribute to the return of some candidate whom he may have struck off the list. If two parties agree to place the same motto at the head of their respective lists, which may be quite distinct, a member of one party may help to elect an additional candidate of the other party. Yet a list system affords no way by which votes can be transferred from one party to an allied party save by a cartel; if transferred at all they must be transferred _en bloc_ from one party to another party, and not from one candidate to another candidate, in accordance with the expressed wishes of the elector. Mr. J. R. Macdonald states that "proportional representation seeks to prevent the intermingling of opinion on the margins of parties and sections of parties which is essential to ordered and organic social progress." The statement is in no sense true of the single transferable vote which affords every facility for the intermingling of opinion on the margins of parties and sections of parties, whilst even in Belgium groups within a party have always presented a common list. _Comparative accuracy._ Considerable discussion has taken place as to which of the list systems yield the most accurate results. It is obvious that as electors do not divide themselves into groups which are exactly one-fourth, one-fifth, or one-sixth of the whole, the utmost that a system of proportional representation can do in the allotment of seats is to approximate as closely as possible to the proportions in which the electors are divided. There is very little difference in the results obtained by the various list systems and by the single transferable vote. The Belgian (d'Hondt) rule slightly favours the larger party; this rule allots seats to parties according to the number of times the party total contains the common divisor, the votes remaining over being ignored. For this reason other advocates of list systems prefer the simple rule-of-three or _méthode rationelle._[7] With this system the total number of votes polled is divided by the number of seats. The totals gained by the respective lists are then divided by the quotient thus obtained and the seats allotted to the lists accordingly. If after the allotment of seats to the different lists there remain some seats not allotted, these are awarded to the lists with the largest numbers of votes not utilized. The transferable vote in practice, if not in theory, also awards seats to the various parties according to the number of times the party total contains the quota. If there is a seat not allotted it does not necessarily fall to the party having the largest number of votes not utilized. All the votes not utilized are taken into consideration, and the smaller remainders may, by combination, win the odd seat. For example, suppose that in a six-member constituency five seats have been allotted and three candidates remain in competition for the last seat with votes as follows:-- Candidate A 4,000 " B 3,000 " C 2,000 Then if the supporters of candidate C prefer B to A and have indicated this fact on the ballot papers, the votes given to C would be transferred to B, who would be elected to fill the last seat. With the d'Hondt rule remainders are ignored; with the "rational method" the largest remainders are favoured; with the single transferable vote the last seat is awarded to the majority of the electors not otherwise represented. The transferable vote therefore gives a result at least as accurate as any of the rules devised in connexion with the list systems. But in the majority of cases all three rules will yield the same result. _Panachage._ In the previous chapter reference has been made to the possible abuse of _panachage_. In order to prevent such practice the Belgian system provides that the elector shall vote for a member on one list only. In Switzerland the elector is permitted to vote for members of more than one list, and any abuse of this privilege is prevented by allowing the elector to cumulate as many as three votes upon any of his favourite candidates. This provision assures the return of the favourite candidates of each party. The problem hardly arises with the single transferable vote; the favourites of each party will doubtless always receive more votes than are sufficient to ensure their election. The elector who desires to advance the interests of his own party as much as possible must indicate his preferences among all the members of his own party before recording any preference for a candidate of another. _Applicability to non-political elections._ The single transferable vote possesses another advantage over list systems. It is not only applicable to political elections, but to all elections in which it is desired that the elected body should be representative in character, but in which party lists are undesirable. The British Medical Association has decided to conduct all its elections so far as possible by the transferable vote; Trades Unions have made use of it in the election of their committees; it has been used in Australia by the Labour party for the selection of parliamentary candidates by members of the party before the date of election. Thus the single transferable vote would produce a much to be desired uniformity in method in different elections. _Bye-elections._ The list systems have an advantage over the transferable vote in the simplicity of their solution of the problem of bye-elections. Under list systems bye-elections are abolished. But the preliminary question, whether it is desirable that they should be abolished, needs consideration. The Report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems says: "Neither the single transferable vote nor list systems provide for a solution of the problem of bye-elections which is both fitted to English ideas and practically satisfactory." The Report continues: "Bye-elections are generally regarded as valuable, if rough, tests of public approval or disapproval of the proceedings of the Government, and useful indications of the trend of political feeling. A system, therefore, which would abolish or seriously hamper them is bound to excite opposition."[8] If bye-elections are desirable because of the indications which they give of the trend of political feeling, then the large constituencies which the proportional system demands would add to their value. The opinion of a larger number of electors would be obtained. Wherever the single transferable vote has been adopted bye-elections have been retained. In Tasmania, whenever a vacancy occurs the whole constituency is polled; the Transvaal Municipal Act allows single vacancies to remain unfilled, but provides for bye-elections when two or more seats become vacant. The Proportional Representation Society, in view of the demand for the retention of bye-elections, suggests that single vacancies should be immediately filled by a bye-election when they occur in a three-membered constituency, but that in larger areas no bye-election should be held until two seats are vacated. But is not the importance of bye-elections overrated? In many respects they are the least satisfactory feature of English elections, and it is noticeable that the change of opinion registered in a bye-election has often not been maintained when the same constituency is polled at a General Election. A considerable proportion of bye-elections are consequent upon the taking of office by members of Parliament, and it is generally agreed that such bye-elections are not necessary. Further, the House of Commons has already resolved that it is desirable to reduce the length of parliaments to five years, which in practice would mean a working life of four years. The shortening of parliaments would destroy what little value bye-elections possess. With a system of proportional representation bye-elections may produce results which are unfair to the minority. If, for example, at a General Election a constituency returned four Conservatives, two Liberals, and one Socialist, and the Socialist member died or retired during the lifetime of the parliament, the largest party would at a bye-election be able to gain another member at the expense of the smallest party in the constituency. This possible injustice is avoided in the list systems by the abolition of bye-elections. Supplementary members are chosen at the time of the General Election, and these are called upon to fill vacancies in the order of their election. The party character of representation remains unchanged from one election to another. When the cumulative vote was used for School Board elections casual vacancies were filled by co-option, and the party in whose ranks the vacancy occurred was usually allowed to nominate his successor by consent of the whole Board. Doubtless were bye-elections abolished there would be a similar willingness to act fairly towards the smaller parties, but if it was felt desirable to bring the transferable vote into agreement with the practice followed in the list systems the necessary arrangements could be made. On the death or retirement of a member the quota of ballot papers by which he was elected, kept meanwhile under official seal, could be re-examined, and the candidate who had secured a majority of the highest preferences recorded on the papers could be called upon to fill the vacancy. _Relative simplicity of scrutiny._ Experience shows conclusively that proportional systems, even the most complex, present no great difficulty to the voter, and therefore there is little to choose between them. The work thrown upon the returning officer varies considerably, but in every country the returning officers have proved equal to their task. The author has been present at Belgian elections and at Swedish elections; he has conducted model elections in England, and has been present at elections in the Transvaal, and has therefore had some opportunity of judging different systems from the point of view of facility in the counting of votes. The conclusion arrived at is that the different schemes may be arranged in the following order:-- 1. The single transferable vote when the surplus votes are taken from the top of the successful candidate's heap; 2. The Belgian list system with its single vote; 3. The single transferable vote with the surplus votes distributed proportionately to the next preferences, as prescribed in the Schedule of Lord Courtney's Municipal Representation Bill. 4. List systems in which more than one vote is recorded. With these, the counting increases in difficulty with the complexity of the scheme. The reasons for this conclusion are briefly these: Whenever the ballot paper (as in the Belgian system and with the single transferable vote) represents but one vote only, the process of counting consists of sorting papers according to the votes given, and then in counting the heaps of papers so formed. Whenever there is more than one vote recorded upon a ballot paper it becomes necessary to extract the particulars of each paper upon recording sheets. This is the case in the London Borough Council elections, when the _scrutin de liste_ in its simple form is used, and when, as in the list system proposed by the committee of the French Chamber, the elector may cumulate or distribute his votes as he pleases, selecting candidates from any or all the lists, this process of extracting the details of the ballot papers must involve considerable labour. By comparison, the process of sorting and counting ballot papers is extremely simple. The Belgian law makes provision for the employment of two "professional calculators," who are responsible for the accuracy of the arithmetical calculations, and if the more accurate form of the single transferable vote is adopted, it will be desirable that the returning officer should have two assistants whose special duty it should be to verify the accuracy of each stage of the process. In any comparison between the two main systems of proportional representation there is no need to understate the advantages of either. The results which have followed from the adoption of list systems on the continent have shown how immeasurably superior these are to ordinary electoral methods. Even in the most rigid of these systems--the Belgian--there is within each party considerable freedom of opinion in respect of all political questions which do not spring directly from the principles on which the party is based. It is claimed, however, for the single transferable vote that it is more elastic than the most complex of list systems, that it more freely adapts itself to new political conditions, and that in small constituencies returning, say, five or seven members, it yields better results. Moreover, this system, based as it is upon the direct representation of the electors, has appealed with greater force to English-speaking peoples; it has its advocates in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, as well as in England, and as a common electoral method for the British Empire is a desideratum in itself, the balance of advantage, at least for English-speaking peoples, would appear to be with the single transferable vote. [Footnote 1: October 1894.] [Footnote 2: An address given by Miss Spence at River House, Chelsea, London.] [Footnote 3: _Socialism and Government_, vol. i. p. 146.] [Footnote 4: _Proportional Representation_, New Edition, p. 104.] [Footnote 5: "Il serait désirable que nos associations politiques se prononcent plus explicitement sur sa légitimité, si l'on ne veut pas que ce genre de propagande reste une duperie pour les candidats les plus scrupuleux." --_Nos Partis Politiques au lendemain du 22 Mai 1910_, p. 10.] [Footnote 6: _Cf_. pamphlet, _The Finnish Reform Bill_, Helsingfors, 1906.] [Footnote 7: Readers who desire to follow the discussion as to the comparative merits of the d'Hondt rule and the _méthode rationelle_, should consult the following works:-- _Examen Critique des Divers Precédés de Répartition Proportionnelle en Matière Electorale_, par M. E. Macquart; _Revue Scientifique_, 28 October 1905. _La Représentation Proportionnelle et les Partis Politiques_, par M. P.G. la Chesnais. _La Vraie Représentation Proportionnelle_, par M. Gaston Moch.] [Footnote 8: Ibid., par. 83.] CHAPTER X PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND PARTY GOVERNMENT "Parties form and re-form themselves; they come together, dissolve, and again come together; but in this flux and reflux a stability reigns such as we observe amid similar phenomena in the course of nature; and indeed it is the course of nature, only working in the world of politics instead of the world of physics."--LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH "To think in programmes is Egyptian bondage, and works the sterilization of the political intellect."--AUGUSTINE BIRRELL Hitherto the objection most often urged against proportional representation has been that it is impracticable; the successful working, however, of the single transferable vote in Tasmania, in the elections of the South African Senate and in the Transvaal Municipal elections, and of list systems in Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Würtemberg and Finland has furnished a complete answer to this objection. Manhood suffrage obtains in Belgium, adult suffrage in Tasmania and Finland, and if, in countries possessing a franchise so democratic, proportional systems have proved successful, it is no longer possible to declare that proportional representation is impracticable. Indeed, the practicability of proportional representation is now generally admitted, and its critics prefer to lay stress upon objections of another character. They even complain, as does Professor Jenks, that "the supporters of the movement appear to be concentrating all their arguments on the feasibility of their project, quietly assuming that its desirability is axiomatic."[1] It does seem axiomatic that it is desirable that representative institutions should reflect the views of those represented, but it is now alleged that the representative principle is merely "a means of getting things done," that the chief function of the House of Commons is to provide the country with a strong Government, and that proportional representation would render these things impossible "because there would be no permanent majority strong enough to get its own way." _Proportional representation and the two-party system._ This fear of a weakened executive doubtless explains why many others who admit the justice and practicability of proportional representation, still hesitate to support a reform the effects of which may greatly modify existing parliamentary conditions. "We have still," said _The Westminster Gazette,_[2] "to be convinced that we shall do well to make still more difficult the maintenance of the two-party system, and that it seems to us would almost certainly be the effect of proportional representation." Ten years ago some professed supporters of proportional representation took up the extraordinary position of allowing it only in respect of two great parties within a State,[3] and quoted in support of their views the words of Professor Paul Reinsch in his work on _World Politics:_ "It is still as true as when Burke wrote his famous defence of party, in his _Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents_, that, for the realization of political freedom, the organization of the electorate into regular and permanent parties is necessary. Parliamentary government has attained its highest success only in those countries where political power is held alternately by two great national parties." Is no allowance to be made for the fluidity of progressive democracy? Is it imagined that active political thought can be compelled to follow stereotyped channels? Too profound a respect for a system designed to meet former conditions led the Royal Commission on Electoral Methods to the conclusion that, "reviewing the whole of the evidence, and duly considering the gravity of the change involved, we are unable to report that a case has been made out before us for the adoption of the transferable vote here and now for elections to the House of Commons."[4] The Commission proceed "to emphasize the exact nature and limitations of this conclusion," which ultimately amounts to no more than a suggestion for the postponement of an inevitable change.[5] But the fact remains that the Royal Commission accepted the theory of government placed before it by those who desire to maintain the existing party system and who are of opinion that that system can only be maintained by single-member constituencies and the majority method of election. "On the question," says the Commission, "whether the representation of all parties in proportion to their voting strength is in itself desirable, we may point out that it is not a fair argument against the present system that it fails to produce such a result, because it does not profess to do so. A General Election is, in fact, considered by a large portion of the electorate of this country as practically a referendum on the question which of two governments shall be returned to power."[6] " ... The case of those who hold that the transferable vote is not capable of application in this country rests only to a very slight extent on its mechanical difficulties.... The most potent arguments are a theory of representation on the one hand and a theory of government on the other."[7] It is evident that the most important objection which advocates of proportional representation have to meet concerns its probable effect upon party organization and upon party government, and it is therefore necessary to consider this objection in detail. _Burke's view of party and party discipline._ In the first place, can Burke's definition of party be used in defence of modern party organization and discipline? The character of these has fundamentally changed since Burke's time. His conception of national parties and also, perhaps, of the probable influence of a system of proportional representation upon their formation may be gathered from his own words. "Party," says Burke, "is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed. For my part I find it impossible to conceive that any one believes in his own politics, or thinks them to be of any weight, who refuses to adopt the means of having them reduced into practice. It is the business of the speculative philosopher to mark the proper ends of government. It is the business of the politician, who is the philosopher in action, to find out proper means towards those ends, and to employ them with effect. Therefore every honourable connexion will avow it is their first purpose to pursue every just method to put the men who hold their opinions into such a condition as may enable them to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the state." No advocate of proportional representation would in the least quarrel with Burke's definition of party or deny that sustained effort and efficient organization are absolutely essential if practical effect is to be given to political principles. Burke, however, did not contemplate a party system in which complete submission to the programme of the party was considered an essential condition of membership. Burke's definition of party must be read in conjunction with his own interpretation of the term. "In order," says he, "to throw an odium on political connexion, these politicians suppose it a necessary incident to it that you are blindly to follow the opinions of your party, when in direct opposition to your own clear ideas; a degree of servitude that no worthy man could bear the thought of submitting to; and such as, I believe, no connexions (except some court factions) ever could be so senselessly tyrannical as to impose. Men thinking freely will, in particular instances, think differently. But still as the greater part of the measures which arise in the course of public business are related to, or depend on, some great leading general principles in government, a man must be peculiarly unfortunate in the choice of his political company, if he does not agree with them at least nine times in ten. If he does not concur in these general principles upon which the party is founded, and which necessarily draw on a concurrence in their application, he ought from the beginning to have chosen some other, more conformable to his opinions."[8] Burke does not limit the number of parties to two, and if his authority is to be invoked in support of the maintenance of the two-party system, it can only be invoked in support of the maintenance of two parties which are based on such leading general principles as will cover the whole field of politics, and the organization of which is such as to leave to members of the party a considerable measure of freedom in respect of individual questions. "We may be confident," says Lord Courtney of Penwith, "that the two main divisions will survive, the one pressing forward and the other cautiously holding back,"[9] and in so far as it corresponds to the two main tendencies in human thought the two-party system will doubtless survive any change in voting method. But with the spread of political intelligence it cannot possibly survive the rigidity of modern discipline--a rigidity which Burke would have been the first to repudiate--nor can it survive the modern tendency towards the formation of parties for the purpose of carrying specific reforms. _Narrow basis fatal to a large party._ The complete transformation of the Conservative Party into a Tariff Reform Party would considerably narrow its basis, and any narrowing of the basis of one party must help to break down the two-party system. For although Tariff Reform is a matter of great national interest, having very far-reaching effects, it obviously does not cover the whole field of politics. There is no fundamental and necessary relation between Tariff Reform and Home Rule, the constitutional position of the House of Lords, or the special problem of the place of religion in national education. Nor does it necessarily or even naturally attract those cautious intellects which are the typical supporters of Conservatism. The strenuous efforts which have been made in recent years to exclude from the Unionist Party all who are unwilling to accept the policy of Tariff Reform have, it is true, been crowned with considerable success, but there is a limit to the process of unification. Should the advocates of this fiscal change, for example, have desired to make terms with the Nationalist party for the purpose of carrying their policy, any attempt to impose those terms upon all members of the party would have resulted in a further and probably a more serious split. In such circumstances parties necessarily give place to groups, and the fissiparous tendency is most apparent where party discipline is most rigid. The solidarity of the German Social Democratic Party will only be maintained by according liberty of action in local matters to the South German Socialists.[10] The formation of the French Unified Socialist Party was a work of considerable difficulty, and its maintenance will only be possible if its constituent parts can tolerate differences of opinion. The two sections of the English Labour Party have been able to work together by concentrating their efforts on reforms which are advocated by both, whilst the troubles which have arisen within the smaller group, the Independent Labour Party, have sprung from attempts to insist upon a narrow interpretation of the term Independent. The narrower the basis on which the parties are formed and the more rigid the discipline employed, the more difficult will become the maintenance of the two-party system. If, then, it is considered essential to the successful working of parliamentary government that there should be but two parties, these parties must be based on broad leading principles and must be so organized as to allow for differences of opinion on minor matters. With the increase in the number of questions of first-class importance it will, however, be difficult to maintain even the semblance of the two-party system, and in the absence of those more elastic political conditions which a system of proportional representation provides, absolutely impossible. _Proportional representation and party discipline._ The argument in the preceding paragraphs can be illustrated from the effect of proportional systems on party organization in those countries in which they are at present in force. In Belgium the prophecy was repeatedly made that the new law would result in the splitting of parties into petty factions, rendering parliamentary government impossible. Its real effect has been, if anything, of the contrary character. There are still but three Belgian parties--Catholic, Liberal, and Socialist. Their principles have tended to become more clearly defined, but within each party there has arisen a considerable freedom of opinion in respect to all political questions which do not spring directly from the principles on which the parties are based. This was clearly shown in the discussion on the proposals for the annexation of the Congo. At the conference of Liberals held before the General Election of 1908 it was decided that the annexation of the Congo should be treated as a _question libre_. M. Vandervelde, at the same time, expressed opinions on this subject which were contrary to those held by the majority of Socialists, whilst several Catholics, who disapproved of the terms on which the Congo was offered to the nation, did not hesitate to say so. None of these expressions of opinion involved ostracism from the party, and, although party discipline is strict, there is but little doubt that this freedom of movement in respect to non-party questions will continue to grow. The annexation of the Congo was voted in due course, but the original draft of the Treaty received important modifications which were due largely to the action and criticism of the more independent Conservatives. The question of free trade or protection does not, at the present time, occupy a prominent place in Belgian politics, but should it do so, there is no reason to assume that opinions either for or against free trade would involve, as here, ostracism from any party. Such conditions admit of a much more genuine discussion of public and of economic questions. In England, with the system of single-member constituencies, Unionist Free Traders have had the alternative placed before them of submitting to the opinions of the majority of the party or of retiring from all active participation in public life. In Belgium, on the other hand, proportional representation has induced parties, while adhering to their fundamental principles, to make their lists of candidates as inclusive as possible. The list presented by the Catholics at Ghent in 1908 contained not only a free trader and a protectionist, but representatives of different classes of interests within the constituency, of agriculture, of landed proprietors, of workmen and of masters of industry. Stress was laid upon the comprehensive character of their list in the election address issued by the Catholics, and each party endeavoured to make its list representative of the forces within the party. Special efforts indeed are taken to accomplish this end; in the preparation of the Liberal list members of the organization took part in the preliminary selection of candidates, the final choice being determined by a formal election. In reporting that the Belgian system of proportional representation "is not favourable to small independent parties, or, what is of greater interest to many observers in this country, to small sections or wings of large parties," the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems misinterpreted the working of the Belgian system. It is true that the Christian Democrats form the only small party in Belgium which has obtained direct representation, but the Belgian system has certainly given representation to the wings of large parties. Count Goblet d'Alviella, who was examined by the Commission, has kindly furnished some observations upon the Commission's statement. "Whenever there is room," he writes, "that is, where the seats are numerous enough, the leaders take the greatest care to choose representatives of the principal shades of opinion within their party lines. At Brussels in 1910 the Catholics placed on their list not only M. Colfs, who upset their order of precedence in the previous election, but also M. Theodor, who, for the last three times, headed--unsuccessfully--a separate list of the so-called Independent Party. The Liberal list at Brussels has been formed by the joint action of Moderates (Ligue libérale) and Radicals (Association libérale), each of these two organizations trying to give satisfaction to their own subdivisions (Flemish and Walloon, rural and urban, &c.). At Antwerp the Liberal list has been formed by five Liberal organizations, each one choosing its own representative." The M. Colfs referred to in Count Goblet d'Alviella's letter strongly opposed the military proposals of the Belgian Government, but he was, nevertheless, placed by the party organization on the official list. Thus, in Belgium wings of parties undoubtedly obtain their legitimate influence, and this renders the formation of independent small parties superfluous. The number of broad general principles on which political parties can be based is strictly limited, and this explains why neither the Belgian nor any other system of proportional representation will produce innumerable parties. _"Free Questions" in Japan._ The electoral system in Japan, giving as it does great freedom for the expression of political opinion, has resulted, as in Belgium, in the separation of political questions into two types--party and free. According to Mr. Kametaro Hayashida, the Secretary of the Japanese House of Representatives, the measures before parliament are duly considered at party meetings; after deliberation a decision is taken as to whether the measure under discussion should be treated as a party question, or whether freedom of action should be permitted to the individual members of the party, and a communication, embodying the result of the party meeting, is then sent to every member. Here then we get additional evidence of the amelioration of party spirit, which follows the adoption of a more elastic system of representation. Political debate must become in such cases not only more real but infinitely more valuable. The number of questions left to the discretion of the individual member is by no means inconsiderable, as will be seen from the following figures showing the attitude taken by the various parties towards public questions in 1908:-- (1)--Laws Party . . . . . Constitutionalist Progressive Conservative Radical Party questions . 105 75 66 -- Free questions. . 2 32 41 107 (2)--Petitions 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." _The formation of an executive_. Changes will doubtless take place in the method of carrying on the King's government, but they will take place very gradually, and will be evolved out of present conditions. It would be essential, as now, that the government should possess the confidence of the House of Commons and of the country, and, in order to obtain this confidence it would not be sufficient to secure a majority by means of bargainings between groups which involved important sacrifices of principle. Even with such rigid party discipline as now obtains it would be difficult and perhaps impossible to effect an alliance between Unionist Tariff Reformers and Nationalists for the purpose of carrying out a double policy of Tariff Reform and Home Rule. It is certain that under a system of proportional representation such an arrangement would be useless as a basis for a stable executive, for with the lessened rigidity in discipline party leaders would have no means of enforcing the terms of such bargains upon their followers. The composition of the House itself would give a clear indication of the main policies which would meet with the approval of the House and also of the Government which would command its confidence. It is perhaps unwise to attempt to map out in any detail the probable course of events, but there are some who are unwilling to take this step forward in the perfecting of democratic institutions without some clear conception of the way in which a good government might be formed under the new conditions. Professor Nanson of Melbourne has endeavoured to satisfy this anxiety by attempting to forecast the probable effect which a system of proportional representation would have upon the formation of governments in Australia, showing how such a system would enable a really stable executive to be formed. "To bring the matter vividly before us," says he, "consider the two vital issues now before the Australian public. These are Protection and the Labour platform. Every elector and every candidate at once falls into one of four groups. For every one is either Protectionist or anti-Protectionist, and every one is either Labour or non-Labour. Every person is therefore either Protectionist and Labour, or Protectionist and non-Labour, or anti-Protectionist and Labour, or anti-Protectionist and non-Labour. Using the letters P, A, L, N to denote Protectionist, Anti-protectionist, Labour, Non-labour, we have four groups which we may denote by PL, PN, AL, AN. "It is clear that if we can find out the number of voters in each group we can at once declare the verdict of the country for or against Protection, and for or against the Labour platform. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the percentage of voters are: Non-labour Protectionist, 32; Non-labour Anti-protectionist, 28; Labour Protectionist, 24; Labour Anti-protectionist, 16; as shown in the following table:-- P A N .... 32 28 60 L .... 24 16 40 _ _ __ 56 44 100 "Then it is clear that there is a majority of 60 per cent, to 40 per cent, against the Labour platform, and a majority of 56 per cent, to 44 per cent, in favour of protection. Under such circumstances the distribution of members in a House of 75 would be as follows:-- P A N .... 24 21 45 L .... 18 12 30 _ _ _ 42 33 75 "In such a House there would be a majority of 45 to 30 against the Labour platform, and a majority of 42 to 33 in favour of Protection. In such a House the only possible Ministry would be a Non-labour Protectionist. There would be a straight out Ministerial party of 24. There would be a right Ministerial Labour Protectionist wing of 18 bound to support the Ministry in its Protectionist policy. There would be a left Ministerial Anti-protectionist Non-labour wing of 21 bound to support the Ministry in its Non-labour policy. The straight out Opposition would be 12. Such a House might well be left to elect a Ministry. Every minister would, with a proper method of election, if necessary, be a Non-labour Protectionist. For there would be an absolute majority of the House against every Labour man and against every Anti-protectionist. Every Minister would be heart and soul with the Ministerial policy. There could then be no possibility of dirt eating or of voting against one's convictions, as is alleged to be the case at present."[15] The divisions between English political parties may not be so clearly cut nor the composition of the Executive so homogeneous as outlined in this forecast of Professor Nanson, but a proportional system would certainly yield a true indication of the mind of the nation on at least three, and probably more, of the important matters under discussion in England--Tariff Reform, Home Rule, and the constitutional position of the House of Lords. A clear expression of national opinion on these issues would determine the policy which an executive resting for authority upon the House of Commons would have to pursue, but, in addition, the improved electoral methods would yield unmistakable indications of the attitude of the nation towards those Labour and Social questions which will more and more claim the attention of Parliament. In brief, so far from proportional representation creating conditions unfavourable to the formation of a strong executive, it will furnish the only means by which in the future stable executives can be formed. It will place within the hands of governments a new and more delicate instrument with which to gauge public opinion, and it is on the accurate interpretation of public opinion that the continued existence of a government depends. _A check on partisan legislation._ But those who, with Professor Jenks, regard the representative principle as being merely a means of getting things done, will perhaps want some indication of the possibility, not only of forming an Executive under a proportional regime but of carrying legislation. There are obviously two aspects to this question. The power of initiating and of controlling legislation is now so largely in the hands of the executive authority that means are required not only of getting things done but of ensuring that the privileged position possessed by the executive authority is not abused. The present system enables a ministry in command of an overwhelming but false majority to impose upon the nation legislation with which the nation is not in accord. It is more than doubtful whether the Education and Licensing measures carried by Mr. Balfour's administration (1902-5) would have been acceptable to a House of Commons which was truly representative, and as Mr. Balfour's government dominated the House of Lords as completely as it controlled the House of Commons, the only check which existed upon the action of the Ministry was the fear of defeat when the time came for the inevitable appeal to the country. Such a check has proved to be inadequate to prevent the passage of partisan legislation, and the failure of the House of Commons to protect the nation against legislation of an arbitrary nature has given rise to the demand for checks of another character. _Unlike the referendum, proportional representation will strengthen the House of Commons._ Thus, it is now urged that the nation should, by means of the referendum, be afforded the opportunity of exercising that control over the executive which the House of Commons has lost. "Formerly," says Professor Dicey, "when the King was the real and effective sovereign of the country, and was responsible for its government, it was right that he should have a veto. The nation is now the sovereign, and what I propose is to place a veto in the hands of the nation.[16] Now, although proportional representation is not inconsistent with the referendum, yet these two reforms endeavour to cure the defects of representative institutions in different ways. The referendum, by transferring responsibility and authority from the House of Commons to the nation, will tend to diminish the importance of the representative chamber. Proportional representation, on the other hand, aims at strengthening the House by making it more fully representative, and in consequence more competent to discharge its true functions. Moreover, there are some practical objections to the referendum. There must always be considerable difficulty in framing the form in which a legislative proposal should be submitted to the country. To be permitted to say 'yes' or 'no' to a complicated measure is not sufficient. It would have been extremely difficult for most of the electors to have stated, without any qualification, whether they approved of Mr. Asquith's Licensing Bill of 1908. This measure was far too comprehensive to submit as a whole, and an unfavourable verdict would have given no clear indication as to the nation's wishes, and would have been open to serious misinterpretation. The new licensing duties and the new land taxes contained in the Finance Bill of 1909 had nothing in common, and it would have been necessary to have submitted a Bill of this nature in sections. Further, every time a measure which had passed the House of Commons was rejected by the nation, the prestige of the House would be impaired, and the conclusion is unavoidable that, were the referendum adopted, the House could only retain an authoritative position by introducing a system of proportional representation so as to bring it as closely as possible into agreement with the nation. It is, moreover, generally agreed that Finance Bills should not be the subject of a referendum, but in a modern state these are of as much importance as other legislation. The work of legislation demands special qualifications. When we select a doctor or a lawyer, or any other agent, we wish him to do his special work. The elector desires to have an effective choice in the selection of his representative in parliament, but having chosen a legislator with whom he is in sympathy entrusts the details of legislation to him. Proportional representation would give the elector this effective choice, and by restoring to members of Parliament a greater measure of freedom would enable the House of Commons to resume its proper function of controlling legislation. The need for the referendum would disappear. _Proportional Representation facilitates legislation desired by the nation._ It may be said, however, that there is here no indication of the means of getting things done, only of a check upon partisan action. But proportional representation, in rendering more difficult the passing of legislation conceived in a partisan spirit, will save the time and energy of Parliament for legislation which is more in accordance with the nation's will. The history of the numerous Education and Licensing Bills which have been presented to Parliament during the two decades 1890-1910 furnish an excellent example of the way in which a rigid party system results in the waste of parliamentary time. No wonder that the legislative machine has broken down. Efforts are now being made to increase the working capacity of the House of Commons, but if these are to be permanently successful, there must be such an abatement of partisan feeling as a system of proportional representation encourages. The changes which have been introduced in recent years into the procedure of the House of Commons are of a far-reaching character. According to the rules adopted in 1907, all Bills, other than money Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders, are referred, after the passing of the second reading, to Standing Committees of the House, unless a resolution to the contrary is moved immediately and carried. There is a growing opinion in favour of these committees, the value of which is largely due to the greater sincerity in discussion which takes place in them. When Mr. Asquith moved the resolution allocating the time to be allowed for discussion on the Housing and Town Planning Bill, Lord Robert Cecil expressed the opinion that the system of guillotining debate was destructive of the legislative efficiency and the dignity of the House of Commons.[17] "Personally he thought some remedy might possibly be found in an extension of the Grand Committee system. He began with a violent prejudice against them. He had now sat on several of them, and he had come to the belief that, on the whole, they were by far the best instrument they now possessed, inferior though it was to a full and free discussion in the whole House for the consideration of legislation. The most important characteristic of them was that only those decided who heard the arguments. They did not have the disgusting farce that went on in that Chamber of members trooping in from outside who had not the slightest knowledge of the subject which had been discussed, who had not taken the slightest interest in it, and who merely asked the Whips at the door, 'Which side are we to-day?' and voted 'Aye' or 'No' as they were told. The Prime Minister recognized that the independence and dignity of the House were invaluable assets to the country, and had shown on many occasions a genuine desire to preserve the dignity of members of Parliament, and the self-respect of the House." Mr. Asquith, in reply to this statement, also expressed his opinion that by a larger and more elastic use of the system of Committees it would be possible to avoid some of the evils arising from the growing congestion of parliamentary business. "The Housing and Town Planning Bill was," said he, "a very good illustration of the useful purpose served by the Grand Committee. It was there for twenty-three days; it was discussed under almost ideal conditions; the closure was never moved from beginning to end; the Government Whips never sought to exert their authority in any one of the divisions which took place; and the discussion was conducted by men who were obliged to listen to the arguments of those who were opposed to them. As regards Bills of this character, it was perfectly certain that they got a much more accurate discussion, and decisions were arrived at far less under the stress of party prepossession than when a Bill was discussed in Committee of the whole House." Thus it seems that a lessening of party discipline and a greater freedom and sincerity in discussion result in an acceleration of the rate of legislation, and as a proportional system favours these conditions it would materially assist the process of getting things done. _Proportional Representation in Standing Committees._ But this important change in the procedure of the House of Commons--the discussion of the details of legislation in Grand Committees instead of committees of the whole House--furnishes from another point of view cogent reasons for the adoption of a system of proportional representation. In the composition of these committees strict care is taken to allot representation to the various parties within the House in proportion to their strength. Otherwise these committees would not possess the confidence of the House. But if the composition of committees on a proportionate basis is a condition of their success, would not their work be even more successful if in the first instance the strength of parties within the House corresponded to the number of their supporters in the country? The House of Commons would enjoy the confidence of the nation, and its standing committees would acquire greater authority because they, in turn, would be fully representative. One of the most important of these committees is the Scottish Grand Committee, to which all Scottish Bills are referred. All Scottish members are appointed to this committee, but in order that its composition should conform to the rule--that committees should reflect the strength of parties within the House--it has been found necessary to add thereto a number of English Conservatives who often, if not usually, have not the special qualifications necessary for dealing with the details of Scottish questions. If the purpose for which the Scottish Grand Committees have been constituted is to be fulfilled, it will be necessary that the different political forces within each part of the Kingdom should be represented in the House proportionately and that the membership of the committees should be confined to Scottish members. It is quite possible, under the present electoral system, that there might be an overwhelming Conservative majority in England and a large Liberal majority in Scotland. In such conditions the Scottish Grand Committee would fail to work. It would be necessary to add so large a number of English Conservatives that the Committee would lose its distinctively Scottish character. There is often very little difference between Scottish representatives on Scottish questions. A good instance of this was shown in the discussion on the report stage of the House Letting Bill (1909). The measure was opposed by the English Conservative members of the Committee, whilst the Scottish Conservatives voted for it. If the Scottish Conservatives were fully represented in the House of Commons they would obtain adequate representation on the Committee; a large addition of English Conservatives would not be necessary, and an agreement between the members of the Committee would often be much more quickly reached. Not only so, but a system of proportional representation would greatly strengthen the personnel of the Committee. Both the Scottish Law Officers of Mr. Balfour's Administration were defeated in the General Election of 1906, and in consequence the Scottish Conservatives, in their deliberations in Committee, were deprived of the expert advice which these officers could have afforded. Obviously, Scottish legislation can be dealt with best in a Scottish Grand Committee, but the successful working of this Committee requires the true representation thereon of the different sections of political opinion in Scotland, and, in addition, the presentation of those opinions by their most capable exponents. Similarly, all members representing constituencies in Wales and Monmouth are to be appointed to the Committee dealing with Bills relating exclusively to that part of the country. Such Bills are not so numerous as Bills relating to Scotland, but nevertheless it is most desirable that in the discussion of a Welsh Bill minorities in Wales should be represented not by members sitting for English constituencies, but by representatives chosen by themselves who would be fully conversant with Welsh conditions. In the absence of such representation there will always remain the feeling that the minority has been unfairly treated, and it is this sense of unfairness that so often calls forth opposition of a partizan character, and such opposition is fatal to progress in legislation. Perhaps the South African National Convention affords the most striking example of the capacity of a fully representative body to achieve results of a satisfactory character and with little delay. Had this Convention been packed either in the Boer or the British interest the great task of South African Union would never have been accomplished. The scrupulous care with which the rights of the minorities were respected is the secret of the wonderful rapidity with which the enormous difficulties involved in the task were overcome. Not only were minorities awarded full representation on this Convention, but every facility was afforded them in the choice of their delegates. The sense of justice and the spirit of reasonableness go always hand in hand, and the spirit of reasonableness alone makes possible the smooth and efficient working of the legislative machine. _Taking off the Whips._ Proportional representation will therefore not only facilitate the formation of a stable executive in the new political conditions, but it will be of very great value in creating the atmosphere in which legislation can most easily be passed. Even with the present system of false representation progress might often be more rapid if debate was less partisan in character. The executive might easily refrain from driving so hard the members of the party on which it rests for support. All political questions are not of the same importance, and a step in the direction of freer and less partizan conditions would be taken if opportunities were more often given to members to vote in accordance with their own judgment. The experiment of taking off the official Whips more frequently might yield valuable results. Sir Courtenay Ilbert says, however, that "open questions are not popular; they compel a member to think for himself, which is always troublesome."[18] But the advantage which would arise from the increase of the spirit of reasonableness would far outweigh such disadvantages as might befall the less politically minded members of the House. Far less importance too need be attached to snap divisions, and, as Sir William Anson has suggested, it should be generally understood that the results of such divisions need not entail the resignation of a government. _New political conditions._ Must then the practical politician still reject proportional representation? Sir Charles Dilke, in evidence before the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems,[19] attached great importance to the views of political leaders upon the party system, and doubtless practical politicians are guided by their views. The recent utterances, however, of two great party leaders show that the new political conditions and their consequences are fully recognized and appreciated by them. Mr. Balfour, in a speech before the Scottish Conservative Club,[20] emphasized the importance of having every shade of opinion represented in the House of Commons: "There is a section," he said, "an important section of Socialist opinion in the country, and it is quite right that they should find voice in the House of Commons if their numbers in the country render that desirable. We cannot, we do not, lose by having Socialist members in the House of Commons, if there are many Socialists in the country. We do not lose, we gain by it." Does this utterance of a great Conservative leader indicate any belief that the two-party system is the final and unchangeable expression of national feeling. Mr. Asquith has said that "the rude and crude divisions which used to correspond more or less accurately with the fact of a representative assembly of two parties only, the Whig and the Tory, the Right and the Left, or by whatever other names they may have been called, with strictly drawn lines of demarcation with no debatable or intermediate territory, that perhaps has become everywhere, more or less, a thing of the past." Such opinions so freely expressed must prepare the way for the more serious consideration of proportional representation by the practical politicians. It will in no sense involve the abandonment of party organization, but it will render those organizations, to use Mr. Asquith's words once more, "elastic, flexible, always adapting itself to shifting conditions." Party organization of such a character is undoubtedly a fundamental condition of the smooth working of the parliamentary machine, but another condition equally fundamental is that the strength of parties within the House should bear a direct and true relation to the strength of parties in the country. Both these requirements are supplied by a system of proportional representation. [Footnote 1: "Doubts of Proportional Representation," _The Albany Review,_ November 1907.] [Footnote 2: 12 September 1908.] [Footnote 3: T. R. and H. P. C. Ashworth, _Proportional Representation applied to Party Government_, 1901, p. 195.] [Footnote 4: _Report of Royal Commission on Electoral Systems_ (Cd. 5163) par. 133.] [Footnote 5: Ibid., par. 126.] [Footnote 6: Ibid., par. 134.] [Footnote 7: Ibid., par. 88.] [Footnote 8: Burke, _Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents_.] [Footnote 9: "The Regeneration of Parliaments," _Contemporary Review_, June 1905.] [Footnote 10: The Baden Socialists voted for the estimates in the Baden Diet, and shortly after at the German Socialist Congress, Magdeburg, 21 September 1910, a motion was carried excluding from the party _ipso facto_ any member who in future voted for the estimates. The South German Socialists left the Congress House.--_Times_, 23 September 1910.] [Footnote 11: T.R. and H.P.C. Ashworth, _Proportional Representation Applied to Party Government: A New Electoral System_, 1901, p. 210.] [Footnote 12: Address to members of the Russian Duma, House of Commons, 22 June 1909.] [Footnote 13: _The Times_, 13 June 1910.] [Footnote 14: M. Ostrogorski, _Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties_. (Translation by F. Clarke, M.A.), vol. ii. p. 713.] [Footnote 15: The Australian _Review of Reviews_, January 1906.] [Footnote 16: _The Times_, 16 March 1909.] [Footnote 17: _The Times_, 16 June 1909.] [Footnote 18: Preface to _Parliamentary Procedure of the House of Commons_, by Josef Redlich, p. xvii.] [Footnote 19: _Minutes of Evidence of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems_ (Cd. 5152), Q. 1492.] [Footnote 20: Glasgow, 22 October 1910.] CHAPTER XI OBJECTIONS TO PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION "The party agents and political men opposed to the very last the introduction of a system of proportional representation."--COUNT GOBLET D'ALVIELLA _The question of practicality._ Although the fear lest proportional representation should weaken the party system is now the most serious obstacle in the way of its acceptance by the practical politician, yet there are others who warmly approve of the principle, who regard proportional representation as the ideal, but still entertain some doubts as to its practicability, and therefore shrink from a whole-hearted advocacy of the reform. Nor are these doubts entirely removed by the conclusion arrived at by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems--that the three systems of proportional representation examined by the Commission are quite feasible. The sceptics need to be convinced that the intelligence of the ordinary English elector and the capacity of the English returning officer are equal to the requirements of the new system; its practicability has in fact to be demonstrated afresh. It is granted that the more complete adaptation of the machinery of elections to the true representation of the electors must involve some departure from the simplicity of present methods, and in order to gauge the value of the objection that the change proposed is so great as to render its introduction impracticable, it will be well to consider once more the character of the tasks which the new system will throw upon the elector and the returning officer. _The elector's task._ In criticizing the mechanism of the single transferable vote a Member of Parliament, at a public meeting in his constituency, declared that the act of voting ought to be made so simple as to be intelligible to a child of the second standard in a public elementary school. The reply might very well be made that such children are capable of indicating a choice amongst those things in which they are interested. But this assertion raises the question whether the method of voting for the purpose of selecting the members of an assembly, to which the affairs of an empire, a nation or a city, are to be entrusted, can only be regarded as practicable if it is adapted to the capacity of the least intelligent of the electors. Must a nation continue to suffer all the evils which arise from an imperfect electoral system because some of its citizens may be so unintelligent as to be unable to make use of an improved method? A secretary of the Liberal Unionist Association has declared that in some constituencies hundreds of electors are so ignorant as not to know the name of the Prime Minister, and has even advanced this fact in order to show that it is unnecessary to trouble about the true representation of the electors. Even were this statement not exaggerated it would but furnish an additional argument in favour of proportional representation. The votes of such ignorant electors, not being given for political reasons, are far too easily bought by that indirect corruption which takes the form of subscriptions, charitable donations, gifts of coals and of blankets; and yet, with the present system, these votes may decide the result of an election and completely nullify the votes of intelligent citizens. With the single transferable vote all that an elector is asked to do is to number candidates in the order of his preference. He need do no more than place the figure 1 against the name of his first choice. It is desirable that, he should proceed further, but abundant assistance, if he needs it, will be forthcoming from the party organizations and the press. But is there any considerable section of the English electorate that cannot perform this new duty? When being examined before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Municipal Representation Bill, Mr. J. J. Stephenson, a member of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, was asked, "Do you think that the system of voting proposed in the Bill would offer any difficulties to working men?" His reply was emphatic. "No. I have had some experience of working men, and I have never found them any slower in intelligence than any other part of the community--there are few working men who could not tell in order of merit the men they wanted to vote for. That is my personal experience gained after some years of work." Apart from this expression of opinion, we have this convincing testimony to the capacity of working men electors that they have been among the first to put improved electoral methods into practice. The Northumberland miners and Canadian Trades Unions are familiar with the use of the single transferable vote in the election of their officers; the Labour Party in Victoria has made use of preferential voting in the selection of its parliamentary candidates. Moreover, the daily work of artizans enables them readily and quickly to grasp the fundamental idea of proportional representation--the representation of parties in _proportion_ to their strength--and the discussions on this question in Labour organizations have been at least as keen as, if not keener than, those in other political associations. The doubts entertained as to the capacity of the electorate are not shared by those who have been officially responsible for the conduct of elections. Mr. S. R. Ginn, Clerk of the Peace for Cambridgeshire, in giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, declared that "after one or two elections proportional representation ought to work as easily as the ballot. When the county electors got the extended franchise we had some difficulty with the ballot, but now it is simple, and proportional representation would be much the same." Speaking of the elaborate precautions taken in the organization of elections he expressed the opinion that the voters were more to be trusted than our machinery trusts them. It is difficult in the face of such evidence to understand on what grounds the English electors should be regarded as so greatly inferior to the electors of other countries that they cannot be trusted to make proper use of an improved electoral method. The charge of incapacity can only apply to the least intelligent section of the electorate, and it is astonishing that those who are so anxious to preserve the electoral privileges of the unintelligent voters should be supremely indifferent to the representation of the abler sections of the electorate. At present at every election the votes of thousands of intelligent citizens count for nothing. The electors who voted for Conservative candidates in Wales at the General Election in 1906 might have saved themselves the trouble. Their voting papers, although not spoiled in the technical sense, had no value. Proportional representation would have given a value to all these votes, and even if its introduction should result in an increase in the number of spoiled papers, this would be as nothing compared with the number of votes to which, for the first time, a value would be given. The Australian advocates of proportional representation aptly describe the reform as "effective voting." The elector knows that his vote will count, and thus every inducement is offered to him to take part in the choice of a representative. The vote becomes a more valuable possession to the elector under proportional representation than under the single-member system. _The returning officer's task._ With regard to the duties of returning officers, which in England fall upon the sheriffs of counties and the mayors of boroughs, it should be remembered that in the performance of these duties they are invariably assisted by an expert staff, and in judging of the difficulties which would attend the introduction of a new system, the fact that this expert staff would be available for the purpose of carrying out the details of an election must be taken into consideration. There would probably be no more difficulty in the introduction of a system of proportional representation than was experienced in introducing the greater change associated with the Ballot Act. On that occasion instructions as to their new duties were issued to returning officers, and similar instructions would no doubt be issued as to the practical organization of elections under a system of proportional representation. In Belgium a department of the Ministry of the Interior is set apart for the administration of electoral affairs. Complete instructions are issued from this department to the returning officers throughout the country, and the supervision which the department exercises over the conduct of elections doubtless contributes to the facility with which returning officers have carried out their duties under the proportional system. The fears expressed lest returning officers should not be equal to the duties which would fall upon them under the system of the single transferable vote are not shared by the returning officers themselves. Mr. H. R. Poole, Under Sheriff for Somerset, who has had thirty years' experience in the conduct of elections, stated, in evidence before the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, that were Somersetshire treated as a single constituency under the system of the single transferable vote he would be able to make the necessary arrangements for the counting of the votes with a staff of the same class of men as had assisted him hitherto. Speaking on behalf of the Under Sheriffs' Association, he added that "they saw no difficulty in carrying out any new electoral law which might be passed, and that they would always be glad to give their assistance and work as loyally as they could in support of anything which might be done." The officials of urban constituencies are not less competent. Perhaps the largest urban constituency which would be formed under a system of proportional representation would be that of Glasgow, and Mr. Alexander Walker, the Assessor of that city, who for twenty-four years was intimately associated with the organization of elections, has, after a careful examination of the details of the single transferable vote, stated that there are no practical difficulties in the way of applying the system to a constituency of the size of Glasgow. The doubts as to the capacity of returning officers spring from an inadequate acquaintance with the difficulties which they already overcome in the conduct of elections. The duties which would devolve upon these officers under the single transferable vote system are not greater than have been undertaken and are undertaken in Great Britain to-day in connexion with the use of the cumulative vote. The Scottish School Boards are still elected under the latter system, and the following particulars of the elections in Glasgow on 2 April 1909, illustrate the admirable manner in which returning officers in this country, as elsewhere, carry out the tasks assigned to them. The whole city was polled as one constituency; fifteen members were to be elected, and each elector had fifteen votes, which he could distribute or cumulate as he pleased upon any of the twenty-one candidates nominated. There were on the roll 157,194 electors, of whom 40,778 took part in the election. The returning officer, in this case the Treasurer of the Glasgow School Board, had therefore to deal with over 600,000 votes, but he had to make provision for counting a much larger number of votes. Yet he had no difficulty in accomplishing successfully and expeditiously this gigantic task. He enlisted the services of over 250 clerks, and the whole process of extracting the details of the ballot papers was completed in the course of about five hours. Had the single transferable vote been employed the number of votes to be dealt with would have been 40,778 only, and although the papers would have had to be counted more than once, the task would not have been so large as that entailed by the cumulative vote, nor would it have been necessary to have engaged so large a staff. It is sometimes forgotten that returning officers take a pride in the perfecting of their arrangements for counting the votes. In introducing new methods into the counting of votes in the Glasgow Municipal elections, Mr. Walker prepared and issued very complete instructions to his staff, and took pains to see that the staff were fully prepared for its work, and there is not the least doubt that the town clerks and under-sheriffs would meet any changes in electoral methods with the determination to carry out their part of the work as successfully as possible. The first elections in Tasmania and the Transvaal with the single transferable vote proceeded with perfect smoothness, and this was due to the excellent preparations made by the returning officers. _Time required for counting votes._ One of the minor objections urged against proportional representation is that a considerable time must elapse between the close of the poll and the declaration of the result. It will not be possible to announce the figures on the day of the election. It is doubtless desirable that the result of an election should be ascertained without unnecessary delay, but it is far better to wait a day in order to obtain a true result than to adhere to an electoral system which gives a false result, and on which a government may have to be based for a period of five years. With most proportional systems only one day's delay occurs. The Under Sheriff of Somerset has estimated that it might take him two days before he could complete the return for that county, as it would probably take half the first day to verify the contents of the ballot boxes. On this point the verdict of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems is as follows: "On the whole it is probably safe to say that in a constituency where 60,000 or 70,000 votes are cast, such as would have to be contemplated in this country, the results should be declared with efficient arrangements in the course of the second day after the poll. Where the constituency was compact, _e.g.,_ in the case of a large town like Birmingham or Manchester, the count of first votes could be finished on the night of the election, and the remaining operations of elimination and transfer completed in a long day's work on the following day; but a longer time would have to be allowed in the case of extensive rural districts."[1] It has also been alleged that there may be a greater number of petitions for the recounting of votes under the transferable vote system. But neither Tasmanian nor South African experience gives any ground for this statement, and as the Tasmanian Agent-General has pointed out, there is as much difference between the counting of votes under the improved system and under the existing rough and ready method as there is between book-keeping by single and book-keeping by double entry; the sorting of the votes is carefully checked at each operation, and all errors in the counting of votes must be rectified before any new stage in the process can be entered upon. _ Fads and sectional interests._ The objection that a proportional system is too complex for English electors and returning officers thus completely breaks down. But it remains to consider whether the other objections which have been raised against proportional representation are of sufficient weight as to render its introduction undesirable. It is repeatedly asserted that proportional representation will encourage the undue representation of faddists and of sectional interests. For example, Professor Edward Jenks alleges that, "If we had such a vast constituency as Manchester, or Liverpool, under the proportional system we should certainly have a member for teetotalism, a member for vegetarianism and the like, and each of these, in all probability, would be instructed rigidly to oppose everything inconsistent with the special ideal of its constituents."[2] Now under a system of proportional representation a candidate in any constituency, were it Liverpool, Manchester or Glasgow, would have to secure about 10,000 votes before he could be sure of being returned, and it is incredible that in any of these constituencies so large a number of voters would support candidatures such as those described by Professor Jenks, or that political feeling is so weak that Liberal, Conservative, and Labour candidates would be set aside in favour of candidates standing for a single interest only. The character of the objection shows that the true working of a system of proportional representation is completely misunderstood, for a proportional system reduces fads and sectional interests to their proper proportions; it is the existing system of single-member constituencies which confers excessive power upon insignificant sections of the whole. Were there 10,000 electors in Manchester who, as suggested, would regard vegetarianism as of greater importance than any other political question, and were these electors scattered throughout the city, then there would be an average of more than 1500 such electors in each of the existing divisions. A body of 1500 voters in a division of Manchester prepared to place their particular fad above all other political questions have now the power of determining the result of the election in that division; the 10,000 electors similarly minded would have the power of extracting a pledge in support of their proposals, and probably an effective pledge from the successful candidate in each division. Under a system of proportional representation they might possibly secure a few seats, but under the present system they can affect the election in every constituency. It is well known that a large number of members of Parliament pledge themselves at election time to the support of movements with which they are not fully in accord. Probably their seat depended upon the answer which they gave to the leaders of some small body of electors holding the balance in the constituency. Mr. Henry Vivian, M.P., thus refers to the pressure which small groups of voters bring to bear upon parliamentary candidates: "One serious evil which he hoped might be abolished by a change of system was the ragging of constituencies by a comparatively small number of busybodies interested in some particular fad. A large number of members of Parliament really had to bend to some two or three hundred electors, although there might be 20,000 in the whole constituency. He had the misfortune to be elected by only a gross. It was strictly true that in many cases a candidate was compelled to consent to support something that he felt strongly against, merely because a certain percentage of the electors insisted upon it. He was not suggesting that proportional representation would entirely get rid of this evil, but he was satisfied that proportional representation rested on a larger basis--that they would have larger constituencies and a number of men from whom the elector might make selection; and therefore there would be a possibility of their lessening, if not altogether getting rid of, this most intolerable evil. He was not at all sure that he would not at times rather be out of political life than in it; it became so threatening that he absolutely refused to reply to the letters at all, or to be dictated to, in the way that these people attempted to do. He would venture to say that with a system of proportional representation they would be able to get rid of some at least, if not of most, of the objectionable features of the present system."[3] The same feature of our electoral system has been condemned in the strongest terms by Mr. Balfour. "Everybody," said he, "who has watched the actual course of a contested election in a constituency where parties were fairly evenly balanced, knows perfectly well the monstrous power which is given to a very small minority to exact a pledge from the candidate, not that he should support this or that great policy, but that he should help their small and particular interest. I know nothing which is more corrupting, both to the electors or to the elected, than that process; and although I have fully seen the difficulties which attach to what is commonly known as minority representation, it surely is an extraordinary criticism upon our existing system that, while a small handful of interested people can turn an election one way or the other on their own personal issue, huge minorities, like the minority of the Unionists in Scotland, are utterly and grossly unrepresented. We give every privilege to the little knot of people in the individual constituencies; we ignore the great mass who under our existing system find no representation at all comparable either to their numerical strength or to their public spirit, or to any other quality which makes them useful, able and independent citizens."[4] The organizations of different branches of the Civil Service have, in furtherance of their interests, sought to bring pressure to bear upon members of Parliament, and in consequence of this action it has been suggested that civil servants should be disfranchised. In other words, it is proposed to meet an evil encouraged by defective electoral methods by inflicting a gross injustice upon a large body of citizens, the majority of whom, like other citizens, consider political problems purely from the point of view of national advantage. The true remedy for the unfair pressure of small sections must be sought in such a change in the method of election as will allow the country to appraise them at their true value. Direct representation, by means of which sectional interests can, if necessary, be defended or advanced within the House of Commons, is far less injurious to the State than a system which allows such interests to bring unfair pressure to bear upon a considerable number of members of Parliament, or to enforce their demands upon the nation by linking themselves to a national party. There is, however, but little danger of any large number of members being returned in support of single interests only. The results under systems of proportional representation show that the members elected are returned upon political grounds, and when any question has attained such importance as to command the support of 10,000 votes in any constituency, doubtless that question has become ripe for discussion in Parliament, and can no longer fairly be described as a fad. It is, however, said that the direct representation of sectional interests will enable these to exercise in Parliament the same pressure that they at present exercise in the constituencies. This statement also is based upon a misconception of the changed conditions which would result from a system of proportional representation. A small body of electors can at present exercise pressure in the constituency, because the result of the election is in their hands. A small group of members could only exercise the same influence in the House of Commons if the large parties were willing to bid for their support and were, at the same time, able to enforce upon their followers the observance of any agreement entered into. The great difference in the new conditions of party discipline will here come into play. Members of a party who have been able to win elections in spite of the opposition of sectional interests, would be able to withstand pressure in Parliament. They would know that they could appeal with confidence to their supporters in the constituency to endorse their action, and, indeed, they would much more likely lose their seat if they acted contrary to the wishes of those who had returned them. Any sacrifice of principle by a party for the sake of conciliating a small faction would cause a loss of support greater than the gain. When proportional representation is established such grouping as may take place within the House of Commons will be based upon political affinities. _The representation of localities._ Another objection which is often brought against proportional representation is that it will destroy the intimate relation which exists at present between a constituency and its representative in Parliament. Here the arguments used are not only as a rule self-destructive, but they are obviously in conflict with the suggestion that proportional representation would give undue weight to sectional interests. "Parliament," said Burke, "is a deliberate assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where not local purpose, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed, but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament. If the local constituent should have interest, or should form a hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far as any other from any endeavour to give it effect."[5] Were the primary duty of a member for any constituency to consider the special needs of that constituency, local considerations would outweigh national interests. Yet Burke's declaration is not intended to relieve the representative of a constituency from the duty of attending to its administrative necessities. "Only members of Parliament," said Mr. Gulland, M.P., "appreciate how largely their time is taken up with local matters. They have to approach the different Government Departments upon an endless variety of topics." But Mr. Gulland proceeds: "These matters as a rule have no reference to existing Parliamentary divisions, and in a city it would be very much better if a man were member for the whole city rather than for a division. And in the case of a county, including burghs, it would be better that the general interests of the county should be attended to by members representing the county as a whole than by a member who is only the representative of the burgh."[6] It is also possible that the interests of some division of the city or county might be opposed to the interests of the city as a whole, and this is an additional reason against the subdivision of such constituencies for the purpose of parliamentary representation. An admirable illustration occurs in a speech made in the Canadian House of Commons by Mr. F. D. Monk, K.C. "In a very large constituency," said he, "say of the size of the entire island of Montreal, it would be impossible to resort to the promise of a great many small public works, which by the admission of everybody are not at present advantageous, when we have such large problems to solve in connexion, for instance, with the problem of transportation. Nobody in a constituency such as I have just indicated could advocate the construction of a small wharf or a small public building, but would be obliged to consider the relation of such a large territory as the island and city of Montreal to the all-important question of transportation. He would be obliged to lay before the electors, not promises of small and very often useless, though comparatively costly improvements, but the necessity of carrying out such a plan of transportation as was laid before the country and the Government some years ago by a commission composed of very experienced men, who after considerable labour had in my opinion solved that very vital question in every part of the country."[7] If local representation is necessary it would therefore appear to be most desirable that the representatives should be able to speak in the name of the whole of the town or of the county, as the case may be, and that is the kind of local representation which a system of proportional representation provides. The members for the larger area can and do take a wider view than the member for the smaller electorate. But what kind of local representation does a system of single-member constituencies provide? A large number of constituencies are represented by members who have no connexion with the locality other than that of being its spokesman in Parliament. Mr. Winston Churchill, defeated in a division of Manchester, is elected member for Dundee, a Scottish constituency. In what sense is the local representation of Dundee preserved? What were the special qualifications possessed by Mr. Churchill for giving utterance to the needs of a Scottish constituency? Doubtless Mr. Churchill made every effort to become acquainted with the local conditions of Dundee, and the necessity of doing so must have made considerable demands upon his time and energy. Yet it is more than doubtful whether Mr. Churchill can ever be an ideal representative from the standpoint of locality of a constituency to whose local life he is a stranger. Mr. Churchill's experience is in no sense singular. Mr. Gladstone found it necessary to leave Greenwich for Midlothian; Lord Morley to leave Newcastle for Forfarshire; Sir William Harcourt to leave Derby for Monmouthshire; Mr. Balfour to leave Manchester for the City of London, and, however honoured the new constituencies might be by the distinction of their members, it cannot be said that the intimate relation between the representative and the constituency was maintained. Under proportional representation the representation of localities becomes much more real. Excellent examples can be seen in the working of the system in Belgium. Before the introduction of the new methods leaders of political parties in Belgium were compelled, as in England, to leave the towns with which they were identified and to seek election for constituencies, in which, comparatively speaking, they were unknown. Here the cause was not the subdivision of constituencies but the absence of any provision for the representation of minorities. M. Anseele, the leader of the Socialists in Ghent, and intimately acquainted with the life of that city, had to seek entrance into the Chamber of Deputies as one of the Socialist representatives of Liège. Similarly, M. Vandervelde, whose activities had always been identified with Brussels, had to proceed to Charleroi in order to secure election. But on the introduction of the proportional system, M. Vandervelde returned to Brussels and was immediately elected as one of the Socialist members of the constituency, of whose special requirements he could, if need be, speak with effect in Parliament. M. Anseele returned to Ghent and was elected as one of the members for the city with which the whole of his life had been associated. He was relieved from the double burden of continuing his work in Ghent and of acting as the representative of a constituency in another part of the country. It is abundantly clear, if it is desired to maintain the local character of representation, that a proportional system secures such representation in its most efficient form. So flimsy and contradictory are some of the arguments brought against proportional representation that it is not surprising that certain critics, impressed by such facts as are recorded in the previous paragraph, have alleged that the system will so favour the representation of localities that no one but a local candidate will ever have any chance of success. The conclusion is drawn that proportional representation will militate against the return of eminent politicians, and is, for this reason, undesirable. But the facts cited as to Belgium bear no such interpretation. It is true that under all electoral systems the local candidate has, other things being equal, an advantage, and rightly so, over candidates who are not directly connected with the constituency, but it is also true that under all systems local candidates give way, if necessary, to distinguished statesmen. In Belgium the Socialists of Liège and Charleroi willingly accepted as their representatives M. Anseele and M. Vandervelde when these failed to secure representation in their own towns. So welcome are eminent politicians that there can be no ground for supposing that they will suffer from a proportional system. Indeed, large constituencies returning several members give to these a much surer foothold in Parliament than they can possibly secure with single-member areas. The distinguished candidate can appeal almost with certainty of success for the "quota" of votes which is sufficient to secure his election. The only change that will be made by the proportional system is that he will be able to retain his seat in the constituency with which he is really identified; he will no longer be compelled to wander from place to place with every swing of the pendulum. _The member and his constituents._ There is perhaps one other aspect of the representation of localities which deserves attention. The fictions are still maintained that a member of Parliament represents and is intimately associated with all his constituents. As regards the latter, it is obvious that only in a very small constituency can a member become personally acquainted with the electors. This might have been feasible in the days of the restricted franchise prior to 1867, but in modern constituencies which, on an average, contain some 11,000 voters it is impossible. Further, in respect of representation, since votes, save those of ignorant and corrupt electors, are given more and more on political grounds, an elector can derive but little consolation from the fact that he is "represented" in Parliament by the candidate whom he did his best to defeat, nor does such an elector, should he take a considerable interest in political work, care to approach the member in any cause; he prefers to seek help of a member of his own party who is the representative of another constituency. If a member of Parliament is elected to defend Free Trade he cannot possibly represent the political convictions of constituents who believe that Free Trade is disastrous to the country. But under a proportional system Free Traders and Tariff Reformers would each have their own representatives, and whilst all the members would be able to speak for the constituency when its local interests were concerned, the various parties within the constituency would find expression given to their views when the question of Free Trade or of Tariff Reform was under discussion. So far as modern conditions permit, the relations between the member and his constituents would be of an intimate character, and at least there would be that bond of sympathy which springs from identity of purpose and of political faith. _Objections of party agents._ Count Goblet d'Alviella has stated that the most strenuous and persistent opposition to the introduction of proportional representation in Belgium came from party agents and from the political men, that is, from the extreme partizans. It is perhaps only natural to expect that party agents should object to a system which would introduce a considerable change in the method of party organization and in the conduct of elections, but a good many of their fears are based upon misapprehensions. It is true that political organizations might not control nominations as much as they do now, but the work of organizers would perhaps be even in greater demand than now. Thus, in Belgium, before the introduction of proportional representation, many constituencies were uncontested, some not for twenty years, and the political organizations of the minority in these constituencies fell into decay, in many places being completely abandoned. Similarly in England, it is often extremely difficult to maintain political organizations in those constituencies in which the position of the minority is hopeless. The new electoral methods have been followed in Belgium with a great increase of political activity; no constituency is now uncontested, and each of the parties maintains an active organization in every district. The objections generally advanced by party agents are the increased inconvenience and cost which would result from the enlargement of the constituencies. It is alleged that it would be impossible for candidates in country areas to make themselves known to the electors. But to what extent does this objection hold good? Prior to 1885 many of the constituencies were much larger than they are to-day. The county of Northumberland, which is now divided into six divisions, was then divided into two. With the more rapid means of communications and of transit now available a candidate can cover a county constituency with much more ease than was possible a generation ago. The decrease in the size of constituencies since 1885 has not given any greater leisure to the candidates during the period of his candidature. Every moment of his time is filled up and, indeed, there is often an unnecessary expenditure of time and energy upon public meetings, the number of which, owing to an insane competition, has been multiplied to an absurd degree. Candidates are now expected to address meetings at the breakfast hour, meetings at the luncheon hour, and meetings in the evening; if constituencies were enlarged the time of the candidate would doubtless be carefully mapped out to meet the new conditions. Moreover, the constituencies required by a system of proportional representation in the United Kingdom would still be small compared with the constituencies in the Colonies, and even though large electoral areas may have some disadvantages the benefits to be gained from a true system of representation completely outweigh them. _Alleged difficulties in the organization of elections._ Some valuable lessons were learned during the course of the Johannesburg municipal elections in 1909, as to the organization of contests under the system of the single transferable vote. There was no previous experience to guide either the candidate or their agents. The methods pursued differed according to the rigidity of the discipline existing within the party. A committee representative of commercial and other interests, presided over by the Hon. W. A. Martin, M.L.C., selected the names of ten candidates--there were ten vacancies--and this committee asked the citizens of Johannesburg to vote for the candidates whose names figured upon this ticket--the "ticket of the ten good men," as it was called. The committee did not attempt to instruct the electors as to the order in which preferences should be expressed for these candidates. The electors were asked to place them in such order as they pleased.[8] The candidature of the ticket, as such, was in some respects also loosely organized. The various candidates gave separate and special attention to the districts with which they were most closely identified, but they also appeared in twos and threes on the same platform at public meetings. In every district the names of all ten candidates appeared upon the posters, but special prominence was given to the name of some one candidate--the candidate associated with the district. The final appeal to the public, in the form of a specimen ballot paper, had all the ten names printed in bold type. In this way the committee was enabled to appeal to the town to support the ticket as a whole, whilst the individual members of the ticket were free to solicit first preferences in the districts and circles in which they were best known. Such an arrangement shows how easily the difficulties of candidature under the new system can be overcome. If the arrangements outlined above were adopted by party organizers the difficulties of an electoral campaign would be no greater than with a system of single-member constituencies. Each candidate on the ticket would canvass a portion of the constituency--which would be no larger than a single-member area--whilst at convenient centres the members of the ticket would appear upon a common platform. The campaign of the Labour Party was more rigidly organized. The leaders nominated a ticket of three candidates, but instead of leaving their supporters free, instructed them to vote for the candidates on the ticket in a definite order, although this order was varied in different wards. In the official instructions the elector is asked to vote by placing the figure 1 opposite the name of the candidate he likes best, and some risk is run by an organization which advises its supporters to express their first preference for some candidate who is not the party's true first choice. It is sufficient for organizers to advise their supporters to record preferences for all the candidates of the party, leaving the elector free to decide the order in which those preferences should be given. _Alleged increase of cost._ These elections threw some light on another difficulty urged against proportional representation by party agents, namely, the increased expenditure involved. Considerable sums of money were certainly spent in the prosecution of the candidature of the "ten good men," but these elections proved conclusively that excessive expenditure had much less influence in determining the result than in our parliamentary and municipal elections. The total expenses of the three Labour candidates in Johannesburg were returned at £18, 5s., and even if there is added thereto the expenditure incurred by the Labour Representation Committee, amounting to £34, 3s. 6d., the total sum cannot be said to be excessive. Two of these three candidates were successful. The expenditure of the successful Labour candidate in Pretoria was practically nil. Further, the Mayor of Johannesburg, who, relying upon his record of past work, personally took no action beyond the issue of a manifesto to the electors, was returned at the head of the poll. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald also objects to proportional representation because of the cost involved in contesting large areas.[9] Johannesburg, for the purpose of its municipal election, was polled as one constituency, and the evidence furnished by this election is, therefore, of considerable value. Further, this evidence is confirmed by the experience of Socialist parties in Belgium, in Finland and elsewhere, which apparently find no difficulty in fighting large constituencies. The electoral conditions in these countries doubtless differ from those in England, but an analysis of the expenses incurred by Labour candidates at home show that single-member constituencies and small expenditure do not go together. The cost of these candidatures, even apart from returning officers' expenses, usually exceeds £500, and sometimes £1000. Such sums could be spent to much greater advantage in large areas in bringing all the adherents of a party to the poll. It has already been shown that the practice of "nursing" a constituency is one of the indirect results of the single-member system. Indeed, no system gives so great an advantage to the candidate with a long purse; he can more easily influence those non-political electors whose votes may decide the issue. A consideration of the working of the new system will show that the cost of elections will in all probability be greatly diminished. At present in a city returning seven members a party must find seven candidates each with his separate organization and separate expenses; with proportional representation there will be but one organization for all candidates of the same party, and as no party can hope to monopolize the representation, it is unlikely that any will run as many as seven candidates. A well-organized party will get its due share of representation without subscribing to clubs and flower shows. The illegitimate power of money will be weakened, and the total amount spent considerably reduced. _The accuracy of representation._ A final criticism made against proportional systems of voting is that they do not secure the exact representation of all the electors in a country. Thus the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, whilst admitting that the new method would generally produce more accurate results, mathematically at least, than the existing method, qualified their statement by saying that their success "in producing in Parliament the 'scale map of the country,' which they held up as the ideal, can be only partial"; and in another paragraph the Report contains this remarkable statement: "On the assumption, however, that proportional representation is desirable, can any system yet invented be guaranteed or reasonably expected to ensure it? In our opinion, only in a limited and generally unascertainable degree." No responsible advocate of proportional representation has contended that proportional systems, save when the country is treated as one constituency, will result in a mathematically accurate representation of opinion. But the close approximation to accuracy obtained in the practical application of proportional systems is so pronounced that the statement of the Commission is wholly misleading. The following figures of the Belgian election of 1910 will show to what extent accuracy is obtained by a proportional system, even when, as in this case, the mechanism slightly favours the larger party: BELGIAN ELECTION, 1910 Seats Seats in Parties Votes. Actually Proportion Obtained. to Votes. Catholics . . . . . 676,939 49 47.0 Liberals and Socialists . 561,052 36 37.5 Christian Democrats . . 16,170 ---- 1.0 Independents . . . . 20,428 ---- 1.5 In Finland, where another system of proportional representation is in operation, the result of the election of 1909 was as follows:-- FINLAND ELECTION, 1909 Seats Seats in Parties Votes. Actually Proportion Obtained. to Votes. Social Democrat . . . . 337,685 84 80 Old Finn . . . . . . 199,920 48 47 Young Finn . . . . . 122,770 28 29 Swedish . . . . . . 104,191 25 25 Agrarian . . . . . . 56,943 14 13 Christian Labourers . . 23,259 1 6 The single transferable vote has yielded results which are remarkably accurate. It has been used in Tasmania, with adult suffrage, in the Transvaal, with the municipal franchise, and in the election of the Senate for United South Africa, by members of Parliament. Each of the five constituencies in Tasmania returned six members, and the total result was as follows:-- TASMANIAN ELECTION, 1909 Seats Seats in Parties Votes. Actually Proportion Obtained. to Votes. Labour . . . . . . 19,067 12 11.7 Non-Labour . . . . . 29,893 18 18.3 These figures speak for themselves. In the municipal elections in the Transvaal each of the parties obtained its fair share of representation. In Johannesburg the elections were fought by a commercial ticket of ten candidates, a Labour ticket of three candidates, and ten Independent candidates; the number of valid votes was 11,788, and the quota--that is, the proportion of votes which would ensure the election of a representative--amounted to 1072. The ticket of "ten good men" polled in all some 6185 votes, or 247 votes short of six quotas, and the ticket succeeded in returning six members. This result was strictly fair, for the deficiency in votes was made up by those supporters of independent candidates who, having failed to return their first choice, had indicated members of this ticket as their next choice. The three Labour candidates polled in all 2126 votes, or 18 votes short of two full quotas, and the Labour Party was successful in securing two representatives. The remaining two seats fell to two Independent candidates, each of whom had a considerable personal following. In the third test, the election of South African Senators, each of the parties obtained representation in proportion to their force in the Parliaments of the respective colonies. The details of the voting have not been published,[10] but the returning officers have all borne testimony to the satisfactory working of the system and absolute fairness of the results. In the light of these facts, what meaning can be attached to the statement that proportional systems only secure proportional representation in a limited and generally unascertainable degree? The results of proportional systems are seen in a still more favourable light if contrasted with the working of non-proportional methods. Thus the Liberals of Surrey, Sussex, and Kent were without representation in the Parliament of 1910. The Unionists of Wales were in the same plight in the previous one. In the election of the Australian Senate (1910) the Labour Party obtained eighteen seats, all other parties none. In the same year, the Municipal Reformers elected all the aldermen of the London County Council, the Progressives none. In the election of Representative Peers of Scotland no Liberal peer is ever chosen. _Summary of objections._ The various objections which have been raised from time to time against proportional representation have been almost wholly disproved. Before it was put into operation it was said to be impracticable; wherever the new methods have been introduced the proceedings have in every case passed off without a hitch. Proportional representation, it was said, would result in unstable governments; now complaint is made that it has been difficult in Belgium under the new system to effect a change of government, the majority of the electors apparently being content with things as they are. It was alleged that faddists would obtain undue representation; it is now complained, under some misapprehension, that independent political thought will fail to secure an adequate hearing. Objections of a minor character are also raised; that proportional representation will increase the difficulties of electioneering; that it will increase the cost of elections--a conclusion not in accordance with the experience of countries in which it has been applied; or that it will destroy the sporting element in politics, as if the pursuit of politics by itself was lacking in interest. Yet all the time the demand for electoral reform is increasing, and whilst the figures in the foregoing paragraphs show to what extent proportional systems secure accuracy in representation, it can also be shown that proportional representation will facilitate the solution of those other electoral reforms which are also demanded upon the ground that they will add to the representative character of the House of Commons. [Footnote 1: _Report of the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems_ (Cd. 5163), par. 81.] [Footnote 2: _The Albany Review_, October 1907.] [Footnote 3: Annual Meeting of the Proportional Representation Society, June 1910.--_Representation_, vol. iii. p. 79.] [Footnote 4: Scottish Conservative Club, Glasgow, 5 October 1910.] [Footnote 5: Speech to the Electors of Bristol, 3 November 1774.] [Footnote 6: Minutes of Evidence: _Royal Commission on Electoral Systems_ (Cd. 5352), p. 118.] [Footnote 7: 15 March 1909.] [Footnote 8: The following is taken from a letter sent to the press by the Chairman of the Committee: "I am aware that many people are opposed to the principle of a ticket on the ground that it savours of 'dictation,' &c. &c. We are exceedingly anxious that every voter should be in a position to exercise his privilege of choice to the fullest extent.... It is not reasonable to expect him, without advice, to express an order of preference in the case of men he does not know. This is exactly one of the strongest justifications for a representative committee to come forward as we do, to say: 'We have carefully inquired as to the character, capacity, and ability of all the candidates, and having taken everything into consideration we recommend you to vote for the ten whose names are on our ticket, _placing them in such order of preference as you please_.'"] [Footnote 9: Labour Party Conference, Leicester, February 1911.] [Footnote 10: Owing to the small numbers taking part in the election, the publication of the details might possibly have furnished a clue to the votes of individual members of Parliament. For this reason the returning officers and the scrutineers were pledged to secrecy. The fairness of the results were fully recognized by the press, as the following extracts show: "The result has demonstrated the absolute fairness of the single transferable vote."--_Bloemfontein Friend_. "The system proved in practice as simple and accurate as it was scrupulously fair in character."--_Bloemfontein Post_.] CHAPTER XII THE KEY TO ELECTORAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM "De la manière de régler le suffrage dépend la ruine ou le salut des Etats."--MONTESQUIEU _Electoral problems awaiting solution._ The Liberal, Conservative, and Labour parties are all agreed that a large measure of electoral reform is long overdue, but hitherto the various parties have contended only for such reforms as would strengthen their own parliamentary position. Liberal and Labour politicians, looking at the inequality in the voting power of electors, have demanded a reform of the franchise; they urge that every man should have one vote and no more. The Conservative party, looking at the inequalities in the size of constituencies, have demanded a redistribution of seats on the ground that all votes should be of equal value. Liberals, again, feeling the difficulties which have attended the emergence of third-party candidatures in the constituencies, ask for a reform in the method of voting so as to ensure that the member elected for any constituency shall represent a majority of the citizens. Apart from the question of the enfranchisement of women, which involves considerations of a different order, these are the three electoral problems with which public opinion has been chiefly concerned. The efforts of parties to give effect to the reforms in which they have been more particularly interested have so far ended in failure. In 1905 Mr. Balfour introduced a Bill for the redistribution of seats, unaccompanied by any reform of the franchise. The measure was met with the cry of "gerrymander!" and its disappearance with the fall of the Government was regretted by few. In 1907 the Liberal Government attempted to deal with the franchise problem, apart from any scheme of redistribution. It endeavoured in Mr. Harcourt's Plural Voting Bill, a highly complex measure, to give effect to the principle of "one man, one vote." This Bill was strongly opposed on the ground that the reform was partial in character. If, said the opponents of the measure, it is unfair that one elector should have twelve votes whilst another elector has but one, it is equally unfair that the vote of an elector in one constituency should be twelve times as valuable as the vote of an elector in another constituency. The justice of the argument must be admitted, and explains why the rejection of the Plural Voting Bill by the House of Lords aroused comparatively little public feeling. Yet the rejection of this Bill has focussed attention upon the deficiencies of our franchise laws, and the eyes of all politicians are turning towards that more comprehensive measure of electoral reform which cannot be indefinitely postponed. Such a measure has been categorically promised by Mr. Asquith on more than one occasion. So far back as 1908, soon after his accession to the Premiership,[1] he made the following public declaration: "I regard it as a duty, and indeed as a binding obligation on the part of the Government, that before this Parliament comes to an end they should submit a really effective scheme for the reform of our electoral system." _The simplification of the franchise._ What are the lines on which a really effective scheme can be framed? The fate of the partial measures already referred to is at least an indication of the difficulties which will attend any attempt to carry an incomplete scheme. It may be assumed that an effective scheme must deal with the three problems named: franchise (including registration), redistribution, and three-cornered contests. Each of these factors must be dealt with as simply as a due recognition of the problem to be solved will allow. The complexity of Mr. Harcourt's Plural Voting Bill was due to the fact that we possess no less than twenty[2] different franchises. But the remedy is easy. "If," said the late Sir Charles Dilke, "they wanted to cheapen the cost, to remove the disgrace from this country of having registration more full of fraud and error than anywhere else, they could only do so by some simple franchise. All registration reform was condemned to failure until they made up their minds on a simple and easy basis for the franchise, sufficiently wide to enable them to absorb all existing franchises." Such a simple franchise is to be found in manhood suffrage, which would admit of the easy transfer of electors' names from the register of one electoral division to another. The chief objection to this solution, which arises from the fear that the most numerous class in the country may monopolise representation, may be met by linking the adoption of a simple franchise with a system of election which shall give due representation to minorities. _Redistribution._ Redistribution must be treated with like boldness, but before considering the principle on which this reform must be based, it would be well to give some indication of its urgency. Here are the figures of four of the largest and four of the smallest English constituencies as given in the Parliamentary Return of 1911:-- *** Constituency. Electors. Constituency. Electors. Romford (Essex) 55,951 Durham. 2,698 Walthamstow (Essex) 42,029 Bury St. Edmunds 2,878 Wandsworth 39,821 Whitehaven 2,989 Harrow (Middlesex) 38,865 St. George's, Tower Hamlets 3,252 _Should be automatic._ It will be observed that an elector in Durham has twenty times the political power of an elector in the Romford Division of Essex. Nor are these discrepancies confined to England. There are great divergencies between the electorates of individual constituencies in Scotland and Ireland, and any measure of redistribution which attempted to deal effectively with these would necessarily have to be of a far-reaching character. Even were it possible to effect a readjustment by the creation of parliamentary areas containing an equal number of electors, so rapid are the changes in the electorate that the scheme would be out of date almost before it came into force. Mr. Ellis T. Powell has published a valuable table entitled "the process of electoral evolution,"[3] in which he has arranged the constituencies in the order of their size as measured by the number of electors who were on the registers in 1886, and again in 1906. The table shows how remarkable has been the change in their relative importance. The rapidity of the change is still further indicated by a comparison based upon the 1908 register. Any one who has the curiosity to count the number of constituencies which retained the same position on the list both in 1906 and 1908 will find this to be the case in nineteen constituencies only out of a total of 481. So great, indeed, has been the change since 1901, the date of the last census, that no satisfactory scheme of redistribution could be framed upon the population figures of that year. It would seem that the only satisfactory principle upon which the problem can be solved is that of an automatic redistribution of seats on the completion of every census, but the difficulties associated with such a solution, if the present system of single-member constituencies is retained, are so overwhelming as to render it almost inadmissible. True, the South African Constitution provides for the automatic redistribution of seats after every quinquennial census,[4] and the Canadian Constitution contains a similar provision, but the inconveniences attaching to a rearrangement of boundaries are not so great in new countries as those which obtain in an established country. Moreover, as time goes on, the inconveniences associated with rapid changes in boundaries will be felt more and more both in Canada and in South Africa. For local authorities[5] rightly complain of the difficulties which arise from the creation of different areas for different purposes and the consequent overlapping of boundaries, and these difficulties would increase were fresh parliamentary divisions created every ten years. The problem which would be involved in the creation of new parliamentary divisions for London is such as to render a satisfactory scheme almost impossible. Apart, however, from these considerations, the difficulties of another kind attendant upon the creation of new constituencies are so great that it is quite easy to understand the unwillingness of the leaders of both political parties to embark upon schemes of redistribution. The influence of boundaries upon the political fortunes of parties is so well known that any rearrangement, whether in the metropolis or in the large towns, would probably be looked upon with very grave suspicion, and the more so that in several towns party organizations have already endeavoured to obtain the maximum of party advantage under existing conditions. _Secures neither one vote, one value nor true representation._ Further, it has been proved beyond question that a redistribution of seats will, if single-member constituencies are retained, fail to accomplish the end which its advocates have in view, namely, one vote one value. For redistribution can only secure equality in the size of electoral districts, and this is not the same as equality in the value of votes. With equal electoral districts it would still be possible in two adjoining constituencies for one member to be returned by a large majority and the other by a small majority. In Wales it might still happen that a Conservative vote would be valueless for the purpose of obtaining representation. Equality in vote value is only secured when the votes of electors of all parties are equally effective. This can only happen when the representation of parties is brought into agreement with their voting strength. The Royal Commission on Electoral Systems entered very carefully into the probable effect of redistribution upon the representation of parties within the House of Commons, and came to the conclusion that, so far "as facts can be adduced to test it, the theory that the varying size of constituencies accounts for the exaggeration of majorities falls to the ground." This conclusion--and the Commission could hardly have come to any other--is in agreement with the opinions expressed both by Mr. S. Rosenbaum, of the Royal Statistical Society,[6] and by Mr. J. Rooke Corbett, of the Manchester Statistical Society.[7] The following summary of the results of Mr. Corbett's analyses of the eight General Elections 1885-1910 shows conclusively that redistribution would fail to remedy the inequalities in representation arising from a system of single-member constituencies: GENERAL ELECTIONS, 1885-1910 Majority Majority Year of of seats under system Majority under Election Party. actually of equal a proportional gained. electorates. system. 1885 Liberal 158 178 86 Liberal 1886 Conservative 104 102 8 Liberal 1892 Liberal 44 46 34 Liberal 1895 Conservative 150 172 12 Conservative 1900 Conservative 134 150 16 Conservative 1906 Liberal 356 362 104 Liberal 1910(Jan.) Liberal 124 136 66 Liberal 1910(Dec.) Liberal 126 122 38 Liberal "It is sometimes said," states Mr. Corbett, "that if the single-member constituencies were made equal in size these inequalities of representation would disappear. It is difficult to understand how any one with even the most elementary knowledge of the facts can support such a proposition. An examination of the foregoing summary will show that no readjustment of the electoral constituencies would do much to remedy the enormous inequalities which occur at present. In fact strict equalization of the constituencies would be as likely to make matters worse as to make them better. Thus, in the year 1885 the Liberal majority of 158, which under a proportional system would have been 86, by a system of equal electorates would have been transformed into a majority of 178; in the following year a Conservative majority of 104, which, with a proportional system, would have been a Liberal majority of 8, would under a system of equal electorates have been transformed into a Conservative majority of 102." Mr. Rosenbaum states: "I am firmly persuaded that it is not possible for redistribution alone to effect those particular reforms which the advocates of proportional representation urge.... Proportional representation would secure in the House of Commons a representation of each party in strict arithmetical proportion to the number of its supporters in the country. Redistribution can remove anomalies due to over-representation in one part and under-representation in another part of the country. So far as the over-representation in one area is accompanied by an excessive proportion of members of one party, and the under-representation in another area is accompanied by a deficiency of members of the opposite party, redistribution might have some counterbalancing results. There is, however, no real security that redistribution by itself might not aggravate rather than mitigate this particular trouble." _The problem simplified by proportional representation._ It will have been observed that the difficulties of redistribution arise from the system of single-member constituencies, and it is this which also renders all schemes useless for the purpose of securing equality in the value of votes. An effective and simple solution of all difficulties is available. Abandon the system of single-member constituencies with their ever-changing boundaries, and treat the natural divisions of the country (its counties, large towns, &c.) as permanent constituencies with representation varying with the rise or fall of their population. This is the scheme of redistribution required by a system of proportional representation, and its adoption would simplify the most difficult of all the problems of electoral reform. It would make possible that automatic redistribution of seats, which must be an essential feature of any satisfactory scheme of redistribution, without involving these alterations of boundaries which, in addition to their other disadvantages and even dangers, interfere so seriously with administrative efficiency. With such a system the areas for local or parliamentary purposes might easily be brought into agreement. Already "we have strong county patriotism fostered by tradition, by ecclesiastical and judicial affairs, county council government, county territorial organization, and even county cricket and football; to have, therefore, county electoral areas would be at once popular and intelligible to all; besides, it would be a reversion to an old tradition";[8] and if the large towns were made parliamentary constituencies this also would be a reversion to the conditions which existed before 1885. It would be infinitely easier to add representatives to or take them away from such electoral areas than it would be to redivide the boroughs and counties for the purpose of creating new constituencies. Commenting on the work of the Delimitation Commission, to which was entrusted the duty of creating the new constituencies for the South African Assembly and Provincial Councils, the Secretary, in a letter to the author, says: "The task set the Commission proved exceedingly difficult. While it was, so to speak, imperative to give due consideration to all the principles enjoined by the Act, the great object naturally was the framing of constituencies both for the Union Assembly and for the Provincial Councils which would be able to send representatives who, in turn, would reflect the will of the various sections of the people. The conditions enjoined by the Act made it very difficult to produce schemes which could on all hands be considered entirely satisfactory.... Good as the result is, there is no question that had the first recommendation of the South African Convention in favour of proportional representation been adopted, the work of the Commission would not only have been much simplified, but the chances of framing constituencies with representatives forming a true mirror of the various sections of the people would have been increased by more than fifty per cent.... If there had been any doubt in my mind my work on this Commission has removed that doubt, and proved to me that the only remedy for our various electoral ills is a system of proportional representation." This considered testimony, from one who has been immersed in the practical details of redistribution, is of great value, but it can occasion no surprise, for proportional representation admits of automatic redistribution of seats, provides for the permanence of boundaries, renders gerrymandering impossible, and, above all, secures equality in the value of votes. _The case of Ireland._ There is one special difficulty,[9] however, which must be faced in the consideration of any scheme of redistribution for the United Kingdom--the number of representatives to be allotted to Ireland. The permanent over-representation of any one part of a kingdom united for common purposes cannot easily be defended, but the South African Constitution furnishes an example of a larger representation being accorded temporarily to the smaller states for the purpose of facilitating the union of all; whilst in South Africa, Australia, and the United States the separate states or provinces have equal representation, irrespective of size, in the Senate. If the continued over-representation of Ireland would in any way facilitate the process of the unification of the United Kingdom, that in itself would be a very powerful and sufficient reason for maintaining the number of Irish members at its present level. A system of proportional representation might simplify the solution of this particular difficulty, for the over-representation of Ireland would not have the same disturbing effect upon the composition of the House of Commons if the different divisions of political opinions within Ireland obtained their fair share of representation. For proportional representation would produce a very important modification of the electoral conditions within Ireland. According to Mr. J. Rooke Corbett, the Irish Unionists who, at the General Election of 1906, obtained 18 representatives, were entitled to 34. But that is not the only change that would take place. There would result a softening of those racial divisions which are now the chief characteristic of Irish representation. Moderate opinion would be encouraged to take a more active part in elections and to seek representation. Nor can it be said that the political conditions of Ireland are such as to render proportional representation within Ireland either impracticable or nugatory in its effect. Mr. Archibald E. Dobbs, High Sheriff of county Antrim, has framed a scheme with special reference to Irish conditions[10], and Lord MacDonnell, who was intimately associated with the details of the Irish Council Bill of 1907, has said: "He made the subject the matter of as close a study as he could at the time, and everything he read more fully satisfied him of the great desirability of the system. He felt that it was more needed in Ireland than in any other part of the British Empire, because, although for the purpose of general politics the division into Nationalists and Unionists could be defended, for the purpose he had in view--the internal administration of Ireland--it was essential that all views, not only the Nationalists and the Unionists, but the great political school of thought under the name of the old Whigs should also be represented. The results of his labours perhaps it would not be discreet for him to disclose, but he was quite satisfied of the practicability in Ireland of a scheme of proportional representation[11]." _Three-cornered contests._ But even if the Electoral Reform Bill provided for a simplification of the franchise and a redistribution of seats, yet such a measure could not be described as a complete and effective scheme of reform. The Bill must provide a solution for the further problem arising from three-cornered contests, which have greatly increased in number in recent elections. On what principle is this difficulty to be solved? Formerly there was a strong demand for the second ballot, but its defects have been so constantly exposed that the remedy more generally advocated is the one recommended by the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, viz., the adoption of the alternative vote (the transferable vote in single-member constituencies). This proposal, however, ignores the real difficulty, which is found in the fact that three parties, and not two, are now seeking representation. Three-cornered contests have, so far, affected adversely the fortunes of the Liberal Party; and the alternative vote, whilst tending, at least temporarily, to redress the situation, does so without providing any adequate guarantee for the fair representation of other parties. Were this remedy adopted it may be assumed that Liberal candidates would be nominated in those constituencies which are now represented by members of the Labour Party, and at least there would be a cessation of the process of withdrawing Liberal candidates from other constituencies ear-marked by the Labour Party. Were all these constituencies contested by the three parties it might easily happen that the smallest party would obtain no representation whatever. Conservative electors might record their second choice for the Liberal candidate, and in this way secure in each case the defeat of the Labour candidates. On the other hand, an alliance between Labour and Conservatives might procure the defeat of the Liberal candidates. The representation of any one party would depend upon the action taken by members of other parties. As the probable effects of the alternative vote becomes more fully understood its inadequacy as a remedy will be more clearly realized, and this proposal, instead of facilitating, may hinder the passage of a comprehensive measure of reform. On the contrary, the wider reform of proportional representation, providing as it would for the just and fair representation of three parties (and this is the problem for which a solution has to be found), has far greater claims to the consideration of practical politicians. It simplifies the problem of redistribution; it is the way by which equality in the value of votes can be secured; it provides for the fair representation of three parties, and, in guaranteeing the adequate representation of minorities, facilitates the adoption of a simple franchise. Proportional representation is, as it were, the master key which unlocks the difficulties associated with a comprehensive measure of electoral reform. Based on a broad simple principle, the justice of which is apparent to all, it provides the means by which each of the separate parts of such a measure can be most easily and effectively dealt with. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive on what other principle any permanent solution of the electoral problem can be based, or by what other means the difficulties inherent in a comprehensive measure of reform can be successfully overcome. _Partial adoption of proportional representation not desirable_ Some who recognize the great merits of proportional representation have suggested its application to urban constituencies by way of experiment. Thus, Mr. Winston Churchill has expressed the opinion that "the proportional representation of great cities was a point upon which electoral reformers ought to concentrate their minds."[12] A partial application of the reform might be of value as further evidence of its practicability, but there is no need for this further evidence. The full benefits of the system cannot be expected from such experiments, and although a partial measure is apparently working satisfactorily in Würtemberg, the history of the movement shows that such schemes usually arouse fierce opposition. An attempt to introduce a partial scheme in Belgium provoked a storm of indignation and had to be withdrawn, and the amendment to the original draft of the South African Constitution, carried in the Cape Parliament, limiting the proposed application of proportional representation to the towns, resulted in its complete abandonment for the elections for the House of Assembly. All partial applications of proportional representation are apt to work unfairly. In Belgium, the Catholics were stronger in the rural districts than in the towns and the proportional representation of the towns alone would have strengthened the political position of the Catholics. Similarly the limitation of proportional representation to the towns in South Africa would have strengthened the political position of the Dutch in those constituencies without giving a corresponding advantage to the minorities in the country areas. Were a partial application attempted in Great Britain it would be necessary to overcome the initial difficulty of selecting the constituencies to which the experiment should be applied, and in the absence of an agreement between the parties, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to escape the fatal charge of partisan selection. _Proportional representation and democratic principles._ What hinders the adoption of a complete scheme of proportional representation? Is it not primarily a lack of courage and of trust in the principle of democracy? But does it need a greater courage, a greater belief in the value of the democratic principle than the grant of self-government to the Transvaal and to the Orange River Colony within a few years of the Boer War? The courage and faith in the latter case have been abundantly justified, and were statesmen actuated by a similar courage and belief in democracy to propose a system of proportional representation there would undoubtedly be a public response which would astonish them; for reforms which are obviously based upon justice are quickly and gladly accepted. Democracy cannot be carried to its highest pitch of perfection if the electoral methods by which representative institutions are brought into being are fundamentally defective. "By proportional representation," said Mr. James Gibb, "if electors were enabled to put more intelligence and conscience into their votes, the nation would be the gainer. The character of the electorate is of paramount importance, one outcome of it being the character of the House of Commons. The electors have not yet had a fair chance of showing what they can do in the making of a House of Commons. The question put to them is in such a form that they can hardly give an intelligible reply. The single-member system seems to imply a belief that the elector's liberty of choice must be narrow. We have now arrived at a point when another step is due in the evolution of the people's liberties, when an individual elector should obtain a greater freedom of choice and therefore a more intimate relation to national affairs.[13] Further, the smooth working of democratic institutions requires that no section of the electors should be permanently divorced from the governing body. Such separation begets a feeling of hostility towards the institutions of the country. Thus, Lord Dunraven has referred to Ireland as a country in the government of which some of its best citizens are not allowed to take part. Similarly, many British settlers in the Orange Free State, although resident for several years, never had any representative in the State Assembly. The natural feeling arose that the government of the country was a matter which did not concern them, and they never attended the meetings addressed by the member of the Assembly for the district. It may be true that minorities must suffer, but there is no reason why they should suffer needlessly. Here justice and expediency go hand in hand. It is to the advantage of the country that all should be associated with the representative body which speaks in the name of the whole, whether that body be a town council, a county council, or a House of Commons. _Constitutional reform._ As pointed out in the opening chapter, the question of electoral reform is intimately associated with the constitutional problem which has occupied Parliament since 1906. This problem contains two factors--the relation between the two Houses of Parliament, and the constitution of the House of Lords. The House of Commons claims greater power in legislation on the ground that it is the expression of the national will. This demand has called forth a movement for reforming the House of Lords in order that it may fulfil more adequately its duties as a Second Chamber. The Unionist leaders have proposed that the peers should delegate their powers to a small number and that the House should be strengthened by the introduction of nominated and elected elements. With regard to the suggestion that a certain number of Lords of Parliament should be nominated by the Crown, all evidence points to the fact that such nominations invariably become party in character. No Government can afford to ignore the claims of the party which supports it, or to miss the opportunity of strengthening its position in one of the Houses of Parliament. The Canadian Senate, which is a nominated body, fails to give satisfaction, and there is a strong demand for its reform. At the conclusion of Sir John Macdonald's long lease of power the Senate consisted nearly wholly of Conservatives. Now that the Liberal Government has been in office for a good many years, the Senate is nearly wholly Liberal. Obviously, the introduction of a nominated element will not provide a Second Chamber that will command public confidence. The elected element might be chosen indirectly by the County Councils or by the House of Commons, or the much bolder course of direct popular election, advocated by Sir Edward Grey, might be adopted. Direct election is distinctly preferable to indirect election by bodies created for other purposes. The experience of the United States, France, Sweden, and all other countries where the Upper House is elected by local legislatures, provincial councils, or municipalities, show that elections to the local authorities are fought on questions of national politics. But whether indirect or direct election is determined upon, it is already clear that the only possible method of election is that of proportional representation. The Royal Commission on Electoral Systems has reported that there is much to be said in favour of the transferable vote as a method of election for a Second Chamber, and this verdict has since been endorsed in numerous articles in the press. Thus a writer in the _Quarterly Review_ says that: "If an elected element is thought to be necessary for the popularity and effectiveness of a reformed Upper House, then let a certain number of members be elected in large constituencies by means of proportional representation."[14] Were the minimum age qualifying for a vote in such elections raised to twenty-five or more there would naturally be provided the conservative tendency to which that House is intended to give expression, and were peers eligible as candidates doubtless such peers as were interested in politics would experience little difficulty in securing election.[15] The principle of election has been adopted for the Senates of Australia and of South Africa. In the former the majority system with direct election is used; in the latter, a proportional system with indirect election. The difference in the results is most striking. In Australia each of the States is polled as a separate constituency, each elector having three votes. The result of the election of 1910 was as follows:-- AUSTRALIA: SENATE ELECTIONS, 1910 State. Votes Polled. Labour Non-Labour Seats Obtained. Votes. Votes. Labour. Non-Labour. Victoria 648,889 692,474 3 -- New South Wales 736,666 735,566 3 -- Queensland 244,292 124,048 3 -- South Australia 171,858 148,626 3 -- Western Australia 128,452 109,565 3 -- Tasmania 92,033 75,115 3 -- --------- --------- -- -- 2,021,090 1,997,029[16] 18 -- It will be seen that the Labour Party polled 2,021,090 votes and obtained 18 seats, whilst their opponents, with a poll of no less than 1,997,029 votes, obtained none. So effectively does the majority system in the form of the block vote blot out minorities. The Hon. W. Pember Reeves, in commenting upon these figures,[17] said that: "Such results give rise to revolutions." In South Africa each State is represented by eight Senators chosen by the local Parliaments by means of the single transferable vote. The first elections gave the following result:-- SOUTH AFRICA: SENATE ELECTIONS, 1910 Seats Obtained. States. Dutch Parties[18] British Parties[18] Cape Colony South African 6 Progressive 2 Transvaal Het Volk and Progressive and Nationalist 5 Labour 3 Natal Dutch 1 British 7 Orange Free State Orangia Unie 6 Constitutionalist 2 -- -- Total 18 Total 14 In the one case minorities are completely suppressed; in the other the minority in each State obtains representation. These two illustrations show that if the House of Lords is to be strengthened by the infusion of an elected element chosen by large constituencies, a true system of election must be adopted. This is the conclusion arrived at by Professor Ramsay Muir[19] after a careful examination of the different methods by which a Second Chamber can be constituted. All suggestions as to the selection of peers by hereditary peers, of peers qualified by service, by nomination, by indirect election, by direct election on a limited franchise, are ruled out and the direct election of a new Second Chamber by the single transferable vote is advocated in order that the new House may contain those elements which fail to secure representation with a system of single-member constituencies. But if, by the adoption of direct popular election and proportional representation, the Upper House were made more truly representative than the Lower, then whatever resolutions were passed defining the relations between the two Houses there is not much doubt that power would tend to pass into the hands of the more representative House. In commenting upon the Royal Commission's report _The Nation_[20] said: "Perhaps the most pregnant sentence in this whole report is that in which the Commission suggests that proportional representation might be a suitable basis for an elective Senate. We have our liberty of choice, and democracy may find its account in either alternative. We may prefer to retain an imperfectly representative Lower House. But if we place above it a really representative Senate the whole balance of the Constitution might be altered, and the Senate become the more venerable, the more democratic, and in the end, the more powerful Chamber. We may, on the other hand, reform the House of Commons, and render any Senate superfluous. In either event, proportional representation may become the ultimate key to our constitutional problem." _Federal Home Rule._ The same question, the method of election, must enter into the consideration of those larger schemes, Federal Home Rule and Imperial Federation, which have been mooted in the discussion of the constitutional relations between the two Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. A writer in _The Times_,[21] whose series of letters attracted considerable attention, said that the "central idea of Federalism appears to be that our present single Imperial Parliament, which does, or makes an attempt at doing, all the complicated work--first of the Empire, and second of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and third of the various countries which together make up the United Kingdom--is no longer adequate to the purpose. The Federalists therefore propose that the Imperial Parliament, while maintaining its supremacy absolutely intact, shall delegate a large part of its functions to a number of subordinate national or provincial Parliaments, who shall manage the domestic affairs of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, or of such other territorial divisions as may be agreed upon. These national or provincial Parliaments will be entirely independent one of another, but all will acknowledge the full and absolute sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament." Mr. Birrell stated that "Federation beginning here at home, as it is called, is ripening for a speedy decision. Such a Federation once established would be able to find room for our Dominions overseas as and when they wished to come in. We should have then a truly Imperial Parliament, at the door of which any one of our Dominions could come in, and as it were hang up its hat and coat in his Mother's House and take part in common Imperial proceedings, and in the government of this great Empire."[22] These are great changes, and without entering too deeply into details of how these new bodies are to be brought into being, it is certain that one of the conditions of their successful working is that they must be fully representative. It is inconceivable that a national council can be set up for Wales, or for Scotland, or for Ireland, without provision for the adequate representation of minorities. Lord Morley, in instituting the new Councils in India, was compelled to make provision for the representation of Muhammedans. Mr. Birrell, in the Irish Council Bill of 1907, proposed that minorities should be represented by members nominated by the Crown. It is impossible to reconcile this reactionary proposal with democratic principles, and there can be no possible reason for its adoption when there is a method of election available which enables minorities to choose their own representatives. _Imperial federation._ Mr. Birrell's vision of an Imperial Parliament for the British Empire raises once more the value of a true method of election. An Imperial Parliament will not accomplish its purpose--the consolidation of the Empire--if the basis of representation is such as to give undue emphasis to the separate interests of the constituent States. Further, it would seem desirable that the establishment of such a Parliament should be preceded by the more complete unification of the various States, for in no other Empire are there so many racial divisions, and it is from these that the greatest of political difficulties spring--in Ireland the division between north and south; in the United Kingdom between Ireland and Great Britain; in South Africa between the Dutch and British; in Canada between the French and British. The majority system of election brings out these differences in their acutest form. In Canada in 1910 no representative from the Province of Quebec attended the National Conference of Canadian Conservatives; of the four Provinces forming the South African Union it was in the Orange Free State, where in the local Parliament the minority was almost wholly deprived of representation, that racial differences gave rise to the keenest feeling. Proportional representation has proved itself to have been of the greatest value in bi-racial countries such as Belgium where the representation of political parties no longer coincides with racial divisions. The adoption of proportional representation in the United Kingdom, in Canada, and for all elections in South Africa would complete the consolidation of these various divisions of the Empire, and even where racial difficulties do not exist, as in Australia and New Zealand, the fair representation of all classes of citizens would free questions of Imperial politics from the dangers of exaggerated party majorities. _Conclusion._ Whether it is a question of improving existing institutions, or the creation of further representative bodies, the method of election is all important. All other departments of human activity show continuous improvement, and the substitution of scientific for rule-of-thumb methods of election is an improvement long overdue. It may even be said that the continued successful working of representative institutions demand such an improvement. The accomplishment of other electoral reforms can be more easily attained by the adoption of a system which allows of the fair representation of all. The reform of the House of Lords, whether by the delegation of the powers of existing peers to a small number, or by the introduction of an elected element, or its establishment on a completely democratic basis, necessitates the adequate representation of minorities. Federal Home Rule is impracticable unless due provision is made for minority representation. But in the contemplation of newer legislative bodies it must not be forgotten that it is of the utmost importance that the prestige of the House of Commons--the mother of parliaments, and, as such, the glory of English-speaking peoples--should be maintained at the highest level. Yet its predominance in the Parliament of the United Kingdom can be permanently secured only if it is made fully and completely representative. The House of Commons must once more renew itself; it must establish itself on sounder foundations. Its privileges and powers have been won by the efforts of past generations. To the present generation falls the opportunity of perfecting its organization and of strengthening its foundations by making it in truth the expression of the national will. [Footnote 1: Reply to Deputation of Liberal members at House of Commons, 20 May 1908.] [Footnote 2: "This number might be reduced to eleven, if minor variations were grouped."--Sir Charles Dilke, National Liberal Club, 10 May 1909.] [Footnote 3: _The Essentials of Self-Government,_ 1909, p. 62.] [Footnote 4: Section 41 of the South Africa Act, 1909, reads thus: "As soon as may be after every quinquennial census the Governor-General-in-Council shall appoint a commission consisting of three Judges of the Supreme Court of South Africa to carry out any redivision which may have become necessary as between the different electoral divisions in each Province, and to provide for the allocation of the number of members to which such Province may have become entitled under the provisions of this Act."] [Footnote 5: The Town Clerk of Edinburgh, Dr. Hunter, urges a rearrangement of the Parliamentary Divisions of the city, so as to assimilate them to the municipal wards. "Confusion and unnecessary expense are caused by the present arrangement.... The municipal area of the city is represented in Parliament partly by the four city members, partly by the member for Leith Burghs, and partly by the member for the County of Midlothian. The distinction thus existing between the Municipal and Parliamentary divisions of the city necessitates the annual making up of separate rolls of voters for municipal and for Parliamentary purposes respectively, involving heavy additional expense (amounting to upwards of £1100 per annum), which would be avoided if the areas for both purposes were assimilated." Assimilation is desirable "not merely in order to save needless expense, but in the interests of candidates and electors as well as of the electoral agencies. In the dual arrangement at present existing the usual organizations for electoral purposes of all kinds have to be duplicated. Not one of the Parliamentary wards correspond with any of the municipal wards."--_The Scotsman_, 9 August 1910.] [Footnote 6: "The General Election of January 1910, and the Bearing of the Results on some Problems of Representation." Paper read before the Royal Statistical Society, 19 April 1910. Mr. Rosenbaum, however, rejects proportional representation on political grounds. These have been considered in the two previous chapters.] [Footnote 7: "Electoral Statistics." Paper read before the Manchester Statistical Society, 12 December 1906.] [Footnote 8: Joseph King, M.P., in evidence before the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, 1909.] [Footnote 9: This difficulty would disappear with the adoption of Home Rule.] [Footnote 10: _Real Representation for Ireland_, 1908.] [Footnote 11: Report of Annual Meeting of the Proportional Representation Society, 21 July 1909.--_Representation,_ vol. ii. p. 154.] [Footnote 12: In reply to a deputation of the Manchester Liberal Federation, 22 May 1909.] [Footnote 13: _Minutes of Evidence_, Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, 1910 (Cd. 6352), p. 104.] [Footnote 14: _Cf._ "Two Chambers or One," _Quarterly Review_, July 1910.] [Footnote 15: The indirect election of the United States Senate gives so little satisfaction that the House of Representatives on 14 April 1911 approved of the proposed amendment to the Constitution providing for popular election by 296 votes to 6.] [Footnote 16: Of these, the Fusionists polled 1,830,353 votes.] [Footnote 17: Address to the London School of Economics, 5 October 1910.] [Footnote 18: These broad distinctive titles are here given, although the author recognizes that the Nationalist and Unionist parties in South Africa are not exclusively Dutch or British.] [Footnote 19: _Peers and Bureaucrats_, by Ramsay Muir, Professor of Modern History at Liverpool University.] [Footnote 20: 21 May 1910.] [Footnote 21: "Pacificus," _The Times_, 31 October 1910.] [Footnote 22: Address to the Eighty Club, 25 July 1910.] APPENDIX I THE JAPANESE ELECTORAL SYSTEM--THE SINGLE NON-TRANSFERABLE VOTE The following memorandum has been written by Mr. Kametaro Hayasbida, the Chief Secretary of the Japanese House of Representatives, in reply to a series of questions, the particulars of which are set out in the memorandum. _Failure of single member system._ The Original Election Law of our country was promulgated in 1889, the same year in which took place the promulgation of the Constitution. Under this law the system of small electoral districts was single-adopted, and each _Fu_ or _Ken_ (administrative district) was divided into several electoral districts each of which constituted a single-member constituency (with the exception of some large districts which, impossible of further division, had two seats allotted with the system of _scrutin de liste_). The system was, however, found in practice to be very unsatisfactory, as it often happened that a minority of the voters, instead of the majority, in certain _Fu_ or _Ken_ obtained the majority of the members returned, and, on the other hand, a party with a majority at the polls could not sometimes, as the result of the grouping of the voters in the small electoral districts, secure any representation at all. Under such circumstances it was utterly impossible for each political party to obtain representation in reasonable proportion to the strength of its voters; or, in other words, the electors of the country at large had never succeeded in being properly represented in their legislative body. As the inadequacy of the system was thus apparently shown I formulated in 1891, by somewhat what modifying Marshal's cumulative voting system, a system of large electoral districts combined with that of the single vote, and urged for a revision of the Election Law. _Multi-member constituencies. Single vote adopted 1900._ Since then several elections had taken place; and the defects of the existing law were more strongly pronounced at each successive election. It was, however, not until the year 1898 that the Government at last introduced a Bill for a revision of the law with the view of adopting the system I had the honour of formulating. After heated discussion in three successive sessions, the Bill was passed in 1900 and sanctioned as a law. This is our present Election Law. In the revised system the _Fu, Ken_, and _Shi_ (the administrative districts) constitute at the same time the electoral districts, and a voter in each district has but one vote for one candidate, while several seats (according to the population) are allotted to the district. The above is a brief historical sketch of our electoral system. I shall now try to answer your questions in order. _Equitable results._ As to the first question whether our system secures the representation of each party in reasonable proportion to its voting strength, I cannot do better than answer it by pointing out a few instances in the General Election which took place on the 15 May 1908. TABLE I THE CITY OF TOKYO (11 seats) Seats in Seats Parties. Votes. Proportion Obtained. to votes. Seiyu-Kwai (Liberals) 6,579 2.71 2 Konsei-honto (Progressives) 2,216 0.91 1 Daido-ha (Conservatives) 2,879 1.18 2 Yuko-Kwai (Radicals) 4,656 1.91 2 Churitsu (Independent) 10,414 4.29 4 ------ ----- -- Total 26,744 11.00 11 All parties except the Seiyu-kwai and Daido-ha succeeded in obtaining their representatives in reasonable proportion to their respective voting strength. The explanation given for the particular case of the Seiyu-kwai is that the party, unable for some reason or other to limit the number of candidates, had placed five candidates instead of three or four, and caused its own defeat by splitting the votes. I take at random, or rather in the order they come, a few more districts, and the results obtained are as follows:-- TABLE II TOKYO-FU (5 seats) Parties. Number of Seats in Seats Candidates. Votes. Proportion Obtained to Votes. Seiyu-kwai 5 12,794 4.02 4 Kensei-honto - - - - Daido-ha. 1 13,122 .98 1 Churitsu - - - - ------ ---- - Total 6 15,916 5.00 5 TABLE III THE CITY OF KYOTO (3 seats) Parties. Number of Seats in Seats Candidates. Votes. Proportion Obtained to Votes. Seiyu-kwai 1 1,284 0.45 - Kensei-honto - - - - Daido-ha - - - - Yuko-Kwai - - - - Churitsu 3 7,304 2.55 3 - ----- ---- - Total 4 8,588 3.00 3 TABLE IV KYOTO-FU (5 seats) Parties. Number of Seats in Seats Candidates. Votes. Proportion Obtained. to Votes. Seiyu-kwai 5 18,928 4.01 4 Kensei-honto -- -- -- -- Daido-ha -- -- -- -- Yuko-kwai -- -- -- -- Churitsu 1 4,701 0.99 1 -------------------------------------- Total.... 6 23,629 5.00 5 TABLE V THE CITY OF OSAKA (6 seats) Parties. Number of Seats in Seats Candidates. Votes. Proportion Obtained. to Votes. Seiyu-kwai 5 8,666 3.32 4 Kensei-honto -- -- -- -- Daido-ha -- -- -- -- Yuko-kwai 1 2,612 1.00 1 Churitsu 2 4,368 1.68 1 --------------------------------------------- Total.... 8 15,646 6.00 6 TABLE VI OSAKU-FU (6 seats) Parties. Number of Seats in Seats Candidates. Votes. Proportion Obtained. to Votes. Seiyu-kwai 5 15,137 3.57 5 Kensei-honto -- -- -- -- Daido-ha 1 2,199 0.52 -- Yuko-kwai 1 1,304 0.31 -- Churitsu 3 6,786 1.60 1 --------------------------------------------- Total.... 10 25,426 6.00 6 Throughout all electoral districts similar results were obtained. The Churitsu (_i.e._ those belonging to no party), considered as a group, had not everywhere been as successful as the other parties, as observe in Tables V. and VI. Each candidate of this group is quite independent of the other, and has no political views or propaganda in common, nor any organization whatever. Therefore, each case is totally different from the other. Although all independent candidates or voters are in these tables grouped as Churitsu, it is not proper to consider them in the same category with the other parties. Now, judging from the results in the General Election, a few instances of which are given above, I may say that our present system, if not fully satisfactory, tolerably secures the representation of each political party in approximate proportion to its voting capacity. _The new system and party organization._ As to the first part of your second question, whether, to obtain these results, the system involves a great deal of calculation on the part of political organizations as to the exact number of their supporters, I should say that, as the same system and method of election are uniformly adopted in the city, county, borough and village elections as well as in the elections of the Prefectural Assembly, it is not a very difficult task for all political parties to ascertain from the results of all these elections their relative strength, and to estimate the number of their supporters. As to the second part of the question, whether it is necessary to issue precise instructions to the electors as to the candidates for whom they should vote, my answer is this: as every political organization through its branch in every _Fu_ and _Ken_ and the sub-branches in the cities, counties, towns and villages, is always in close touch with its constituents, and is constantly explaining its position and propaganda, with the view not only to instruct them but also to extend the sphere of its influence, it is not so difficult as it seems to decide the number of candidates. When it is once decided efforts are made on the part of the organization to distribute the votes among the candidates in such a way that not one of them receives a defeat at the hands of the other party. To attain this object the methods are not very complicated, for every elector has but one vote for one candidate; and, moreover, the stronger candidates, so long as their own position is secured, will endeavour to distribute a portion of their votes among the weaker candidates. This being the case, the member returned with the greatest number of votes may not be the most popular candidate, but the party as a whole is much more likely to succeed in getting representatives in proportion to the strength of its voters. _The position of independents._ As to the third question, whether the system enables men of independent mind and character to maintain their position in Parliament, I should emphatically state that the revised system is much better than the old in this respect. Under the old system even such a prominent man as Mr. M. Matsuda (the Speaker of the House of Representatives some years ago, and the Minister of Finance in the present Government) suffered several defeats. But under the new system it has never happened that the leader of a party has lost his seat at any election, as he may seek his election at the safest district. To men of independent mind and character the new system offers the greater opportunity to maintain their position in the House, for in the election they may, in spite of the opposition of parties, draw their votes from all parts within a large electoral district. It may be said that the larger electoral district we have, the greater opportunity we afford to independent candidates. For instance, both Mr. Y. Ozaki, the Mayor of Tokyo, and Mr. S. Shimada, by being independent candidates, have never lost their seat in Parliament, and in the last General Election were returned for their native prefecture or town with a great number of votes. This brings me to the end of my answers to your inquiries. In conclusion I may say a few words about the public opinions in our country as to the Election Laws. _Public opinion and the new system._ Despite the fact that the new system enables the elector of the country to be more reasonably represented in the House, still there are some ambitious politicians urging for their own selfish purpose to restore the old system. But, as almost all prominent members in both Houses are fully cognizant of the relative merits and demerits of the two systems, there is not much chance of our returning to the old system. APPENDIX II THE SECOND BALLOT A Note on the German General Elections of 1903 and 1907. The German Reichstag, which consists of 397 members, is elected by a system of single-member constituencies. Every member, however, must have obtained a majority of the votes polled, either at a first or second ballot, in the constituency for which he has been returned. The German Official Returns furnish very complete details of the elections, including the figures for the first and second ballots, and the summaries at the end of the Returns disclose a very striking divergence between the proportions of seats obtained and votes polled by the various political parties. These discrepancies have attracted general attention, and have usually been attributed to the great variation in the size of German constituencies. As a matter of fact, the effect of redistribution on the proportionality between seats and votes is not nearly so large as is generally supposed. Apart from the consequences of neglecting the votes of the minority or minorities in each constituency, wherein lies the gravest defect of a single-member system, the second ballot is a disturbing factor of considerable importance. So far from diminishing the disproportion between seats and votes polled by the various parties, the second ballot frequently increases that disproportion. In order to appreciate the respective effects of unequal constituencies and of the second ballots it is necessary to consider these two factors separately. This will be facilitated by making a comparison between the results which would have been obtained without second ballots with the results actually obtained. The following tables, which are based upon the official returns, give the votes polled and the seats obtained by the five principal groups:-- GERMAN GENERAL ELECTION, 1903 Parties. Votes. Results without Results with Second Ballot. Second Ballot. Social Democrats 3,010,771 122 81 (31.7%) (30.7%) (20.4%) Centre Party 1,875,273 104 100 (19.7%) (26.2%) (25.2%) National Liberals 1,317,401 32 51 (13.9%) ( 8.1%) (12.8%) Conservatives 1,281,852 79 75 (13.6%) (19.9%) (18.9%) Radical Parties 872,653 11 36 ( 9.2%) ( 2.8%) ( 9.1%) GERMAN GENERAL ELECTION, 1907 Parties. Votes. Results without Results with Second Ballot. Second Ballot. Social Democrats 3,259,029 73 43 (28.9%) (18.4%) (10.8%) Centre Party 2,179,743 101 105 (19.3%) (26.4%) (26.4%) National Liberals 1,630,681 47 54 (14.5%) (11.8%) (13.6%) Conservatives 1,632,072 91 84 (13.6%) (22.9%) (21.2%) Radical Parties 1,233,933 30 49 (10.9%) ( 7.6%) (12.3%) _The effect of unequal constituencies on representation_. The Social Democrats were affected to a greater extent than any other party by both the factors referred to. In 1903 the Socialists polled 31.7 per cent, of the votes, and, at the first ballots, were at the head of the poll in 122, or 30.7 per cent, of the constituencies. In other words, if the system of second ballots had not been in force, the Social Democrats would have obtained very nearly their fair share of representation. If, in addition, there had been a redistribution of seats by which the sizes of constituencies had been equalized, the Social Democrats would have obtained more than their share of representation. The strength of the party lay in the large towns, and if, for example, Berlin had the additional eight seats to which it was entitled nearly all of them would have fallen to the Social Democrats. Again the three divisions of the district of Hamburg returned Social Democrats with overwhelming majorities. Were the representation allotted to Hamburg doubled, as it should be, all six seats might possibly have fallen to the Social Democrats.[1] An equalization of the size of constituencies might have produced in 1903 the phenomenon which has occurred so often in England. The largest party would have secured a number of seats far in excess of that to which it was entitled by reason of its strength. In 1907 the Socialists polled 28.9 of the votes, but only succeeded in reaching the head of the poll at the first ballot in 73, or 18.4 per cent. of the constituencies. A redistribution of seats would have added to their representation in the large towns, and the first ballots would have yielded a result which would have corresponded more fairly with their polling strength. _The effect of second ballots_. In both years the system of second ballots has had the effect of reducing very considerably the representation of the Social Democrats. In the year 1903 the Social Democrats won 56 constituencies by absolute majorities, and were engaged in the second ballots in 118 constituencies. In 66 of these constituencies they were at the head of the poll, but succeeded in maintaining this position at the second ballots in 24 only. In the remaining 52 constituencies they were second on the poll, and at the second ballots they were able to win only _one_ of these seats. In these 118 constituencies the Socialists polled 1,170,000 votes at the first ballots, whilst the other parties polled 1,920,000. As a result of the second ballots the Socialists obtained 25 seats and the remaining parties obtained 93 seats. The figures of the year 1907 tell a similar tale. At the first ballots the Social Democrats were at the head of the poll in 73 constituencies. The second ballots reduced this number to 43. They were engaged in the second ballots in 90 constituencies; they were at the head of the poll in the first ballot in 44 of these constituencies, but kept this position in 11 only; they were second on the poll in the remaining 46 constituencies and won in 3 cases only. In these 90 constituencies the Social Democrats polled at the first ballot 1,185,000 votes, whilst the other parties taken together polled 1,888,000 votes; the Socialists obtained 14 seats, the other parties obtained 76 seats. In both these elections the second ballots affected very adversely the representation of the largest party. If this party, without the second ballot and with a fair distribution of seats, might have obtained more than its share of representation, then the second ballots would have acted as a corrective, but not necessarily so. There is no reason why the second ballots should not have added to the over-representation already obtained. This will be seen from the figures of the elections in the Kingdom of Saxony. This division of the German Empire is entitled to 23 representatives in the Reichstag. In 1903 the Socialists won 18 of these seats with absolute majorities; they were engaged in the second ballots in the remaining five constituencies; they won four (all those in which they were at the head of the poll at the first ballots) and only lost the one constituency in which they were second on the poll. The Social Democrats, who at the first ballots polled 58.8 per cent, of the votes, thus obtained 22 seats out of 23, and the second ballots in this case only confirmed the overwhelming preponderance which the system of single-member constituencies had conferred upon the larger party. _Second ballots and the swing of the pendulum_.] It would, indeed, seem that a system of second ballots rather accentuates those great changes in representation which are the normal characteristic of a system of single-member constituencies. In the elections in Saxony in 1907 the Social Democrats were still by far the largest party, obtaining 48.5 per cent. of the votes. They succeeded in obtaining eight seats by absolute majorities and were engaged at the second ballots in eight other constituencies. They lost every one of these constituencies, although at the first ballots they had been at the head of the poll in five of them. The unfavourable swing of the pendulum reduced their representation at the first ballots, and the second ballots merely increased their misfortunes. Nor would redistribution have lessened the violence of these changes in the constituencies in which second ballots were necessary. Thus, for example, Frankfort-On-Main, with an electorate of 77,164, should return two members instead of one. The constituency was won by the Socialists in the second ballots of 1903, but was lost at the second ballots in 1907. In both years the Socialist candidate was at the head of the poll at the first ballots. Similarly the constituency of Elberfeld-Barmen, with an electorate of 67,241, won by an absolute majority in 1903, was lost by the Socialists at the second ballots in 1907, although their candidate had been at the head of the poll at the first ballot. If these and other constituencies had received additional representatives, the violence of the changes in the composition of the legislative body would in all probability have been increased. _The second ballot and the representation of minorities_. A study of the statistics of the German General Elections shows that the representation obtained by the various parties depends very largely upon their supremacy in certain localities. In these districts the minorities have been unrepresented for many years, the second ballots having in no way saved them from practical disfranchisement. Thus the Centre Party is in the ascendant in the Rhenish Provinces. In the district of Cologne, Münster, and Aix-la-Chapelle, the Centre Party monopolizes the representation, returning in 1907 every one of the 15 members to which the districts were entitled. In the adjoining districts of Dusseldorf, Coblentz and Treves they returned 16 out of 24. In Bavaria, the districts of Lower Bavaria, the Upper Palatinate, Lower Franconia and Schwabia, which are entitled to 23 members, were represented wholly by members of the Centre Party. Taking the kingdom of Bavaria as a whole, the Centre Party obtained 34 seats out of 48, although they polled only 44.7 per cent of the votes at the first ballots. There is therefore reproduced in Germany the conditions which obtain in certain parts of the United Kingdom--the permanent supremacy of one party which monopolizes, or nearly so, the representation of the district. _Summary_ The system of second ballots has therefore had a considerable influence in creating that divergence between the votes polled and the seats obtained which has characterized German elections. The representation of any one party depends, to a very large degree, upon the attitude taken towards it by other parties. The system in no way acts as a corrective to the anomalies arising from single-member constituencies, and may even accentuate the violent changes associated with them. Moreover, the system does not provide representation for minorities, and therefore does not ensure a fully representative character to popularly elected legislative bodies. It may be mentioned that all the criticisms here directed against the second ballot apply with nearly equal force to the use of the alternative vote (_see_ p. 95), a thinly disguised form of the same principle which appears to be meeting with some acceptance in this country. [Footnote 1: The minority would, of course, have had a better chance with six divisions. Dr. Ed. Bernstein, to whom the author submitted this memorandum, makes the following comment: "I am not so sure that the equalization of the size of the constituencies would in 1903 have secured to the Social Democratic party a number of seats far in excess of its voting strength. But this is a subordinate consideration. The possibility of an unproportional representation of parties, even if the seats are equally distributed, is undeniably there, and this ought to settle the question.] APPENDIX III THE SWEDISH SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION The principle of proportional representation was first discussed in Sweden in 1867. The new Danish Constitution of that year provided for the use of the transferable vote (Andrae's scheme) in the election of the Upper House, and Herr S. G. Troil proposed in the Swedish Parliament that the three most important of its committees should be elected by means of the same system. The motion was not carried, and a similar motion, made by Professor H. L. Ryön in 1878, was equally unsuccessful. It was not until 1896 that the next step was taken, when the Government, in view of the increasing demand for a more democratic franchise, proposed a proportional system of election. Nothing came of this proposal immediately, but from this date the agitation for an extension of the franchise gave rise to the demand for the proportional method of election in order to ensure the representation of minorities. _The former constitution of the two chambers_.] The story of the struggle for reform will best be understood if prefaced by a statement of the franchise conditions previously existing in Sweden. The Upper, or First, Chamber of the Riksdag, was elected by members of the provincial councils and of the councils of the five largest towns. The other towns sent members to their provincial councils. The members of provincial councils were elected in two stages; the primary electors chose electors of the second degree, who in turn chose the councillors. The primary electors in the country[1] had ten votes for every 100 kroner of rateable income, subject to a limit of 5000 votes. The electors of the second degree had only one vote in the election of councillors, and councillors had only one vote in the election of members of the First Chamber of the Riksdag. Owing to the great advantage conferred upon primary electors possessed of large incomes these electors largely controlled not only the composition of the town and provincial councils, but also the composition of the Upper Chamber. The election of members of the Lower Chamber of Parliament was direct; every person of not less than 800 kroner income was entitled to vote, but no one was entitled to more than one vote. _The struggle for electoral reform_. In 1899 M. Branting, the leader of the Socialist Party, proposed the adoption of proportional representation, coupled with universal and equal suffrage for the election of town councils. The main object of this proposal was to place town councils on a more democratic basis, but as the five largest councils elected representatives to the First Chamber the proposal would have had some influence upon the composition of that House. M. Branting's proposal was rejected, and when revived two years later met a similar fate. In 1902 two Liberals (MM. Hedlund and Carlsson) proposed that provincial councils should be elected by a proportional method on the basis of manhood suffrage, whilst a similar proposition was made in the same year in respect of the elections of the Lower House of Parliament. Both these motions were rejected, but in response to a demand from both Houses for an inquiry a Royal Commission was appointed to consider the problem of electoral reform. The Commission reported in the following year in favour of a list system of proportional representation with official ballot papers, and the Government proposed this system combined with manhood suffrage for the election of members for the Lower Chamber. This proposal was accepted in 1904 in the Upper Chamber, but rejected in the Lower Chamber by five votes. Next year it was again discussed, accepted by the Upper Chamber but rejected in the Lower by a majority of ten. A change of ministry took place, and in 1906 M. Staaff, the Liberal Prime Minister, proposed manhood suffrage with the "majority" system of election. But the Moderate Party insisted upon a proportional system, and the proposals of the Liberal ministry were rejected by the Upper Chamber. M. Alfred Petersson, of Paboda, then proposed manhood suffrage with a proportional system for the Lower Chamber, and a proportional system for the Upper Chamber, which, however, was to be elected as before by the provincial councils. This proposal was rejected by the Lower Chamber but accepted by the Upper Chamber, and M, Staaff resigned. The Moderates, with M. Lindman as Prime Minister, then introduced a Bill incorporating M. Petersson's proposals with the addition of the direct election of provincial councils and a less plutocratic franchise. This measure, which was adopted by both Houses in 1907, was confirmed after a General Election in 1909. _The Swedish law of 1909_. Under this law the proportional system is applied to elections for both Houses of Parliament, all parliamentary committees, town councils and provincial councils. For the Lower Chamber there is manhood suffrage. The Upper Chamber is elected still by the provincial councils and by the town councils of the five largest towns, but the elections of provincial councils are now direct. But, in order to maintain as much continuity as possible in the composition of the Upper Chamber, only one-sixth of the House is renewed every year. The maximum number of votes in the elections of both provincial and town councils is forty. The first election under the new system took place in 1909, when the Stockholm Town Council and several provincial councils were called upon to elect their proportion of members of the Upper House. In March 1910 the first elections to the Stockholm Town Council were held, and in the following May there were elections under the new system for all the provincial councils. In 1911 the first elections to the Lower House of Parliament will take place. In Sweden, even under the new law, there are no official ballot papers and no nominations of candidates. This arrangement is supposed to preserve to the electors the fullest possible liberty in voting. In practice the party organizations print ballot papers containing the names of the candidates whom they support, and these printed forms are accepted by the returning officers. Every elector, however, is at liberty to strike out any of the names on these papers, to substitute other names, to vary the order in which the names are printed, or to prepare his own ballot paper.[2] _The Swedish system of proportional representation_.] The mechanism of the proportional system adopted has had regard to the practice mentioned in the preceding paragraph. The first proposal, that of M. Petersson, of Paboda, was only a crude approximation towards a proportional system. His scheme, in brief, was (1) that the number of votes recorded for each candidate should be ascertained; (2) that the candidate with the highest number of votes should be declared elected; (3) that a further count should then take place, the papers on which the successful candidate's name appeared being treated as of the value of one-half. The remaining candidates whose names appeared on these papers would be credited with half a vote in respect of each such paper. The non-elected candidates would then be arranged according to the number of votes obtained, the highest being declared elected. As soon as any two names on any ballot paper had been declared successful a fresh count would take place, such papers being treated as of the value of one-third. This process of reducing the value of the paper as soon as a further candidate appearing thereon was elected was to be continued until all the seats were allotted. The principle underlying this distribution of seats is the same as that contained in the d'Hondt rule of the Belgian system. A group of electors which was more than twice as numerous as any other group would obtain two seats before any was allotted to a smaller group. If the group was more than three times as large as any other it would obtain three seats before the smaller group received one, and so on. It was at once recognized that this scheme would tell considerably in favour of well-organized parties--parties whose supporters would accept the ballot papers printed for them without question. An example will make this clear. If, taking an extreme case, in an election for three members 8000 voters placed the names of two candidates, P and Q, on each of their ballot papers, whilst a more loosely organized group of 13,000 voters spread its support over four candidates, T, S, V and W, different sections voting for these candidates independently, the following result might take place:-- P Q . . 8,000 | T . . . 4,000 | S . . . 3,500 | V . . . 3,000 | W . . . 2,500 Candidate P, being the first in order on the 8000 ballot papers of the first group, would be declared elected, and Q, the remaining name on these ballot papers, would be credited with 4000 votes--half the original value of the papers. Q and T, having 4000 votes each, would then be declared elected. Thus one group, with 8000 votes, would carry two seats, and the other, with 13,000 votes, would only obtain one--a result due to a lack of combination. _The allotment of seats to parties_. The plan finally adopted is based on M. Petersson's proposal, but provides, as in the Belgian scheme, for the official recognition of parties. Electors may write at the head of their ballot papers the name or motto of a party. The papers bearing the same name or motto are then grouped together, the numbers in each group ascertained, and the seats available are allotted to these groups in accordance with the d'Hondt rule, irrespective of the number of votes obtained by individual candidates. Thus, in the example given, if electors of the second group had all headed their ballot papers with the same party name or motto the particular way in which they had distributed their votes among the candidates would not have affected the number of seats obtained by the group as a whole. The first group would have obtained one, and the second two seats. _The selection of the successful candidates_. The position of the candidates on each list is determined in accordance with the original proposal of M. Petersson. The candidate receiving the highest number of votes is declared elected, the papers on which his name appears are then marked down to the value of one-half, the relative position of the remaining candidates ascertained afresh, and the highest of these declared elected, and so on. This procedure, called the reduction rule, is however subordinate to a further rule (the rule of the order of preference), which is as follows. If more than one-half of the supporters of a party list have placed the same candidate at the head of their ballot papers, the first seat apportioned to the list is allotted to this candidate; if more than two-thirds have placed the same two candidates in the same order at the head of the ballot papers, these two candidates have the first claim to the seats apportioned to the party; if more than three-fourths have placed the same three candidates in the same order at the head of the list, these are given the first, second, and third seats, and so on. The selection of the successful candidates is determined in accordance with this rule so far as possible, but as soon as the application of the rule breaks down the relative claims of the non-elected candidates on the list are determined in accordance with the reduction rule. But if, say, three candidates have been declared elected in accordance with the rule of the order of preference, and it is necessary to choose others by the reduction rule, the papers containing these three names are treated as of the value of one-fourth in determining the relative position of the remaining candidates of the group. _Free voters and double candidatures._ In order to complete the description of the Swedish system two subsidiary features, which will seldom come into play in actual elections, must be mentioned. Provision is made for those electors who owe no party allegiance, and who therefore do not wish to place any party name or motto at the head of their list. Such voters are called "free voters," and the votes recorded for their candidates are ascertained. These candidates are placed in a group by themselves, called the free group, but the number of votes recorded for each individual candidate in this group, and not the total number of votes recorded for all the candidates, forms the basis of comparison with the totals of the party lists in the allotment of seats. The second feature provides for the improbable case of two groups of electors or parties having placed the same candidate upon their list. In the event of such candidate being so favourably placed in two lists as to be elected by both parties, then, for the purpose of ascertaining the new value of the papers on which his name appears, each list is debited with half a seat. When, as already explained, one seat has been allotted to a list, the list total is divided by two in accordance with the d'Hondt rule for the purpose of the fresh comparison of totals; but if this candidate has already been elected on another list the total would be divided by one and a half instead of by two. A fresh total would be ascertained for each of the lists containing the candidate's name. _An election at Carlskrona._ The author was permitted by the courtesy of the Burgomaster of Carlskrona to watch the election of provincial councillors on 24 May 1910, to represent the city in the Bleking provincial council, and a description of this election will show how the system works in practice. Carlskrona is entitled to nine members. For the purpose of the election the town was divided into two parts, but the polling place in each division was at the town hall. The register was prepared fourteen days before the election, and stated in addition to the name, address, and occupation of the elector, the amount of his (or her) rateable income and the number of votes to which he (or she) was entitled. The conduct of the election was in the hands of the Burgomaster, assisted by the magistrates of the town. As already explained, there were no official ballot papers and no nominations of candidates. Each elector voted for such candidates as he pleased, provided they possessed the necessary qualifications--those of an ordinary elector. Three parties--the Moderate, Liberal, and Labour--contested the election. Each party printed ballot papers containing the names of the candidates adopted by the party organization and with the name of the party at the head of the ballot paper. The ballot paper issued by the Moderate party was in the following form:-- _De Moderata_ _Borgmästaren_--O. Holmdahl. _Grosshandlaren_--N. P. Nordström. _Lasarettsläkaren_--R. Lundmark. _Disponenten_--H. Berggren. _Kommendören_--G. Lagercrantz. _Rådmannen_--C. G. Ewerlof. _Chefsintendenten_--I. Neuendorff. _Kaptenen, friherre_--F. E. von Otter. _Underofficeren af 2: dra graden_--O. W. Strömberg. _Folkskolläraren_--H. E. Mattsson. _Byggmästaren_--K. J. A. Johansson. _Handlanden_--Aug. Andrén. _The Poll._ The ballot papers could be obtained at the committee rooms on, or prior to, the day of election, and also on the day of election from party agents at the doors of the polling stations. Each elector took his ballot paper folded to the Burgomaster, or presiding magistrate, who endorsed the back with the number of votes to which the elector was entitled. The presiding magistrate was assisted by two others who checked the accuracy of the proceedings. The poll opened at 10 A.M., the proceedings were adjourned for lunch at 1 P.M., the poll was again opened during the afternoon and closed about 8 P.M. The counting took place next day when, as comparatively few electors took advantage of their right to vary the order of the names as printed on the ballot papers, the number of votes recorded for each candidate was easily ascertained. Nor did the varying values of the ballot papers present any great difficulty. A calculating machine made the necessary additions both quickly and accurately. In this election only one paper was spoiled,[3] and it was very obvious that the provision of printed ballot papers by the party organizations made the act of voting a very simple one. The votes recorded for the different parties were as follows:-- Moderate . . . . . 20,334 Liberal . . . . . 8,732 Labour . . . . . 3,617 _The allotment of seats to parties. There were nine seats to be distributed among the three parties. The distribution was carried out in accordance the d'Hondt rule, but the method of applying this rule differed from that employed in Belgium. In Belgium the party totals would have been divided by the numerals 1, 2, 3, &c., and the quotients ranged in order of magnitude, the ninth in order being termed the "electoral quotient." Each party would have received as many seats as its total contained this quotient. The Swedish method provides for the allotment of one seat at a time, and it does so because of the possibility of the same candidate being elected by more than one party. Save in the rare case mentioned, the arithmetical operations, though differently presented, are identical with those of the Belgian system. Thus, at Carlskrona the first seat was given to the Moderates--that party having received the highest number of votes. Before the next seat was allotted the value of the Moderate total was reduced by one-half, and the new total was then compared with the original totals of the other parties. The totals to be considered in the allotment of the second seat were, therefore, as follows:-- Moderate. . . . . 10,167 Liberal . . . . . 8,732 Labour . . . . . 3,617 The Moderate party being still credited with the highest total received the second seat, and their original total, 20,334, was then divided by three in order to ascertain to whom the third seat should be allotted. The totals at this stage were as follows:-- Moderate . . . . . 6,778 Liberal . . . . . 8,732 Labour . . . . . 3,617 The Liberal total being now the highest, this party received the third seat, and in order to ascertain to whom the fourth seat should be given the Liberal total was reduced in value by one-half, the totals of the other parties remaining as at the previous allotment. The totals for comparison were now:-- Moderate . . . . . 6,778 Liberal . . . . . 4,366 Labour . . . . . 3,617 The Moderate total was again the highest, and the party received the fourth seat. The process of reducing the totals in succession according to the foregoing rule was continued until all the nine seats were allotted. In this election the Moderates obtained six seats, the Liberals two, and Labour one. _The selection of the successful candidates._ The returning officer had then to determine which candidates on each list should be declared successful. In the Carlskrona election this task was extremely simple, for the large majority of the voters had accepted the ballot papers provided for them by their parties. No less than 19,756 votes out of a total of 20,334 had been received for the Moderate list as printed by the party organization. The totals for each candidate were quickly ascertained. Moreover, it was possible to select all the successful candidates by the rule of the order of preference. More than six-sevenths of the Moderate votes having been recorded for the list as printed, the first six names on the list were declared elected. Of the Liberal votes, 8118 out of a total of 8732 were recorded for the party list as printed, and as this number constituted more than two-thirds of the total, the first two names on the list were declared elected. With regard to the Labour party, 3580 out of a total of 3617 votes had been recorded for the party list, and the first candidate on the list was therefore declared elected. _The election of suppléants. In common with all continental systems, supplementary members (suppléants) were chosen for the purpose of taking the place of an elected member who might die or retire before the council had run its course. The method adopted in Sweden is peculiar to itself. In Belgium the same rules serve for the election of the suppléants as for the election of members, and they are called upon to serve in the order in which they stand at the declaration of the poll. In Sweden it is held that each elected member must have a suppléant, or deputy, special to himself. The method of selection may be illustrated from the Carlskrona election. The candidate who was to be regarded as suppléant to Burgomaster Holmdahl (the first on the Moderate list) was chosen as follows: Holmdahl had received 20,334 votes, his name having appeared on every ballot paper of the Moderate party; the votes recorded for the unelected candidates on these papers were ascertained, the result being:-- Neuendorfs . . . . . 20,334 von Otter . . . . . 20,242 Strömberg . . . . . 19,913 Mattsson . . . . . 20,119 Johansson . . . . . 20,237 Andrén . . . . . . 20,170 Neuendorff being the candidate who had received the highest number of votes on these papers, was declared elected as suppléant to Holmdahl. A suppléant for Nordström, the second elected member, was then chosen from among the remaining five non-elected members. Nordström's votes were 20,235, and the votes recorded for the non-elected members on the same papers were:-- von Otter 20,143 Strömberg 19,913 Mattsson 20,055 Johansson 20,195 Andrén 20,071 Johansson, being highest with 20,195 votes, was declared suppléant to Nordström. This method of choosing the suppléant seems to be unsatisfactory. The party as such does not determine who shall be called upon to fill a vacancy in its ranks; whether a non-elected member succeeds to a vacancy as a suppléant depends very largely on accident. A good illustration occurred in the selection of a suppléant from the Labour list. The party's candidates were as follows:-- Kloo. Karlsson. Ostergren. Olsson. Ek. Johansson. Jensen. Fagerberg. Pettersson. The first candidate on the list had been declared elected, and obviously, in the opinion of the party, the next favourite was Karlsson, and had there been a second seat awarded to the list Karlsson would have been declared elected. In determining, however, whether he should be declared elected as a suppléant, his position on the list did not count, and as the party list had been voted for without alteration by most of the Labour voters, five of the non-elected candidates were credited with the same number of votes. The choice of the suppléant was made by lot, and fell in this case upon Johansson, the sixth name on the list. It may be said that there is; considerable dissatisfaction with the method of electing suppléant candidates, and the Stockholm _Dagblad_, in its issue of the 29 May 1910, stated that the choice of suppléant, although there might have been many thousand votes given to every candidate, depended upon so small a difference in the totals received by each that even one ballot paper might determine the result. This is a detail in the system that can easily be remedied, and steps are already being taken to bring the election of suppléants into agreement with the election of ordinary members. _Comparison with Belgian system._ It will be of interest to compare the Swedish with the Belgian system. It has been shown that the method of allotting seats to different groups is identical in principle in both countries. This method, the d'Hondt rule, favours the largest parties, and this explains why, in the smaller Belgian constituencies, cartels or combinations of parties take place. The Swedish system enables such combined action to take place with greater facility. It enables two parties to make use of the same motto without presenting a common list of candidates. No inter-party negotiations are required, as in Belgium, with reference to the order in which the names of candidates shall appear upon the list. In Sweden each group can put forward its own list of candidates, and so long as the electors make use of the same motto at the head of the ballot paper the combination gains the additional representation which may fall to it as a result of being treated as one party, whilst the share falling to each section is determined by the number of votes recorded for their respective candidates. The Swedish method of choosing the successful candidates from the various lists differs materially from that used in Belgium. In Sweden the d'Hondt rule is used not only for the allotment of seats to parties, but also in the selection of the successful candidates. In Belgium the use of the d'Hondt rule is restricted to the former purpose, and when once the electoral quotient is ascertained the rule is discarded. The difference in the two methods can be illustrated from the Stockholm municipal election of 1910. In the fifth ward the ballot paper of the Moderate party was as follows:-- Welin. Norstrom. Boalt. Roberg. Palmgren. Bohman. Ringholm. Herlitz. ------------------ Hafstrom. Svensson. von Rosen. Freden. The line in the ballot paper divides the eight candidates for election as members from those who were standing for election as suppléants only. The votes recorded for the Moderate party numbered 118,483, of which 86,851 were given for the party ticket as printed. The number of votes accepting the party order of the first three candidates was about 93,000. This latter number was more than three-fourths, but less than four-fifths of the total, and therefore only the first three candidates on the ballot paper could be declared elected in accordance with the rule of the order of preference. The remaining four members had to be chosen by the reduction rule; the votes recorded for the five non-elected candidates were ascertained, the papers containing the names of the three elected candidates being treated for this purpose as of the value of one-fourth. Some of the supporters of the eighth and sixth candidates had struck out the names of the fourth and other candidates. This manoeuvre had the result of placing these two candidates in the order named at the head of the poll at the fourth and fifth counts, and they were accordingly elected. Other candidates had received exclusive support, and it should be pointed out that it is the total amount of exclusive support recorded for all candidates which determines how soon the application of the rule of the order of preference breaks down. As soon as this takes place the election of any one candidate may depend, as in the election of the suppléants, upon the action of a comparatively small number of voters. Thus, some supporters of the fifth candidate, a Miss Palmgren, had struck out the names of all candidates save hers. Those papers which contained her name alone were treated as of full value, and although the votes of these supporters only numbered 1100, or less than 1 per cent. of the whole, they were sufficient to turn the scale in her favour. As, however, 86,851 votes out of a total of 118,453, had been recorded for the list as printed, showing that this proportion of voters preferred the fourth candidate to those that succeeded him, it would certainly seem that the result was not fair to this candidate. In Belgium if seven seats were won by a party which polled 118,453 votes, the electoral quotient would not be more than one-seventh of this total, and the election of the first candidate, instead of absorbing one-half the value of the votes, would consume only one-seventh. The election of the first two candidates would absorb two-sevenths instead of two-thirds, the election of three candidates would consume three-sevenths instead of three-fourths, and the election of four candidates would consume four-sevenths instead of four-fifths. In the Stockholm election more than five-sevenths of the voters had supported the party list as it was printed, and according to the Belgian system the first five candidates would have been declared elected. _The system and party organization_. The Swedish rule of selecting successful candidates is defended on the ground that it confers great power upon the electors. These can if necessary more effectively express their disapproval of the list put forward by the party organization, and as it is thought that a large number of voters too readily accept the party lead, a counterpoise is considered desirable. Recent experience in Belgium, however, would tend to show that a greater knowledge of their power has induced more and more electors to make use of the opportunity which that system allows of expressing individual preferences. If we regard a party as consisting of two groups--those that follow the party lead, and those which, whilst supporting the party, desire to assert their own preferences--then as between these two groups the Belgian system is strictly fair. If a party wins seven seats and four-sevenths of the party support the official list, this group would obtain four out of the seven seats; but in Sweden, as has been shown, at least four-fifths must support the official list before the first four candidates can be sure of election. The Swedish system discriminates in favour of the dissentients within a party, and this discrimination may have unexpected effects on party organization. The Belgian method has induced parties to welcome the support of all sections, knowing that such sections will not obtain more than their fair share of influence. In Sweden the tendency may be for party organizers to regard the support of various sections with suspicion, because, whilst these sections will obtain the full advantage of the party vote, their independent action may result in the gain of the section at the expense of the party as a whole. As a result of the Stockholm election referred to, the opinion was expressed by party organizers that it would be necessary to limit the number of candidates on a list to the number which the party knew it could carry. This would be an undesirable outcome of a rule designed to secure greater freedom for the elector, for it would tend to make party discipline more strict and parties exclusive rather than inclusive, as is the case in Belgium. It should, however, be added that in the large majority of the provincial council elections the selection of candidates was made in accordance with the rule of the order of preference. It would, therefore, seem that party organizers, as a rule, took care to present lists of candidates acceptable to the party as a whole. _The great improvement effected by the Swedish system_. The new Swedish electoral system, like all proportional systems, constitutes a striking advance upon the previous electoral conditions. The extent of the improvement will, of course, be seen from a comparison of some of its results with those of former years. For example, Stockholm used to be represented in the Lower Chamber by twenty-two members chosen by the "block" system, or _scrutin de liste_. The party in the majority monopolized the representation, and the absurdity of the system was well illustrated by an incident in the election of 1882, which was preceded by a severe struggle between the advocates of free trade and protection. At this election Stockholm returned twenty-two free traders, but as one of the elected members had not paid his taxes, all the voting papers containing his name were declared to be invalid. In consequence the twenty-two free traders were unseated and the twenty-two protectionist candidates were declared elected in their place. An attempt was made to ameliorate the evils of this system by dividing the town into five parliamentary districts, but, although so divided, Stockholm in 1908 returned twenty-one members, all of whom were either Liberals or Socialists, the large minority of Moderates being unrepresented. When the proportional system was applied in March 1910 to the election of the municipal council, each party obtained its fair share of representation in each of the six wards of the city, and the total result shows how large an improvement is effected by the new method:-- Parties. Votes Seats Seats in Obtained. Obtained. Proportion to Votes. Moderate 281,743 22 24 Liberal 142,639 12 12 Socialist 160,607 16 14 ----------------------------------- 584,989 50 50 In the election of the provincial council of Bleking the result was as follows:-- Parties. Votes Seats Seats in Obtained. Obtained. Proportion to Votes. ------------------------ ----------------------- Moderate 54,465 22 22.4 Liberal 36,595 10 15.1 Socialist 3,617 1 1.5 ---------------------------------- 94,677 39 39 The general fairness of these results is all the more remarkable, because in Stockholm there was a very considerable variation in the value of a vote in the different wards, whilst many of the constituencies in the province of Bleking returned only a few members, and these did not give full play to the proportional system. The figures confirm the experience of all other countries, that a proportional system, even when applied to comparatively small constituencies, yields results which approximate very closely to the ideal aimed at, the true representation of the electors. [Footnote 1: The town councils were elected in one stage; each elector had one vote for every 100 kroner income, subject to a limit of 100 votes. The members of the town council, when electing members of the provincial councils, had only one vote each.] [Footnote 2: A ballot paper is not declared invalid even if it contains the names of more candidates than there are members to be elected (except at the elections of parliamentary committees). The names in excess are regarded as suppléant candidates (see _Election of Suppléants_) to the number of two in the elections for the Riksdag and the town councils, and to a number equal to the number of members at the election for the provincial councils. Any additional names on a ballot paper are regarded as non-existent.] [Footnote 3: This paper bore the signature of the elector.] APPENDIX IV THE FINLAND SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION _The influence of the Belgian system._ The system of proportional representation introduced into Finland by the electoral law of 1906, while it presents little or no difficulty to the voter, is, in its method of counting the votes, perhaps the most complicated of the systems at present in force. It has for its basis the Belgian List system and the d'Hondt rule, but the variations which were introduced with the object of safeguarding the rights of the electors against the possible tyranny of party managers are so important that at the first glance its resemblance to the parent system is not easily recognized. The Belgian model is followed more closely in the method of distributing the seats to the various parties than in the manner in which the successful candidates are chosen from the party lists. In its internal party arrangement the Finnish system shows boldness, originality, and, it must be added, no little complexity of procedure. _Schedules and "compacts" in place of lists._ Finland is divided into sixteen electoral districts returning from six to twenty-three members, with the one exception of Lapland, which is a single-member constituency. In each constituency any group of not less than fifty electors can put forward a schedule of not more than three candidates, however many may be the total number of members to be elected. Each of these schedules may be headed with the name of a party or some political motto. The persons responsible for these schedules may, and commonly do, combine them in groups known as "compacts," and it is these compacts, and not the original schedules, which correspond roughly to the party "lists" of the Belgian system, the only limit to this power of combination being that the combined schedules must not contain the names of more candidates than there are vacancies to be filled. But as the names of the same candidates may, and constantly do, occur in many different schedules within a single compact, a first glance at a Finnish polling paper would seem to show in each combination the names of more candidates than there are vacancies. The compact bears the name of the political party to which it belongs. Combination into compacts is, of course, optional, and a certain number of schedules are put forward independently. A vacant corner is reserved on the ballot paper where any elector who is not content with any of the schedules submitted may make his own schedule. _An election in Nyland_. The system may be more fully understood from some details of the election of 1907 in the Nyland division. In this division, the largest in Finland, returning twenty-three members, no less than seventy-two schedules were presented, or which all except five were combined into compacts. The five remained isolated. Of the combined schedules seventeen were included in the compact of the Swedish party, but the individual candidates in these seventeen schedules numbered only twenty-three, the legal limit, the same names being repeated in several schedules. The old Finnish compact contained thirteen schedules, the Young Finns seventeen, the Social Democrats eight, the "Christian" compact seven, the "Free Christian" compact three, and the Radicals two. As already stated, the voter's task is not difficult. He, or she, simply marks the schedule of his, or her, choice. The voter can also, if he wishes, alter the order of the names in a schedule. The effect of doing this will be apparent in a moment. That the task is simple is conclusively shown by the fact that the percentage of spoilt votes was in the Nyland division only 0.58 per cent. For the whole country the percentage was only 0.93, and this with universal adult suffrage and a poll of 899,347, or 70.7 per cent, of the electorate. _The returning officer's task_. The task of the returning officer is twofold. He has to ascertain (1) the relative positions of candidates within each compact (or independent schedule), and (2) their position relatively to the candidates of other compacts in the final allotment of seats. He proceeds as follows. He first counts the votes on each schedule, reckoning a full vote to the first name, a half vote to the second, and a third of a vote to the third (the effect of an alteration of the order of names in a schedule by the voter is now apparent). Thus if schedule No. 1 (in the specimen ballot paper on page 323), containing the names Schybergson, Neovius, and Soderholm, receives the support of 6000 voters in all, of whom 3000 have placed Schybergson as No. 1, 2000 as No. 2, and 1000 as No. 3, Schybergson will have a total of 3000 + 2000/2 + 1000/3 = 4333. Similarly, if Neovius obtains the support of 2000 as No. 1, 2000 as No. 2, and 2000 as No. 3, his total will be 2000 + 2000/2 + 2000/3 = 3666; Soderholm, the third candidate, would receive 1000 votes as No. 1, 2000 as No. 2, and 3000 as No. 3, and his total would be 1000 + 2000/2 + 3000/3 = 3000. But these individual totals of 4333, 3666, and 3000 are used merely to determine the order of the candidates within the schedule itself, and having performed that function, they are not taken further into account. In the example given (as would usually be the case in practice) the order within the schedule has not been disturbed, and the candidates are credited, the first (Schybergson) with the full number of the voters who supported the schedule--6000; the second (Neovius) with one-half that number--3000; the third (Soderholm) with one-third of that number--2000. These last figures are called "numbers of comparison," a phrase intended to throw light upon their function. The same process is gone through with all the other schedules in the same compact. The returning officer then adds up all the numbers of comparison which each candidate has obtained in all the schedules within the compact where his name appears, and arranges candidates within the compact in the order of these totals. Thus, in the actual election of 1907, in the Nyland division, Schybergson headed the Swedish party compact with 9192 as the total of his "numbers of comparison," Soderholm coming next with 6837. _The allotment of seats_. When the candidates in each compact have thus been arranged in order (and the votes given in writing by independent voters have also been counted), the returning officer proceeds to the second stage of his duties--the determination of the position of candidates with reference to their competitors in other compacts; and it is on this position that the actual allotment of seats depends. For this purpose he primarily takes into account, not the "numbers of comparison" of individual candidates, but the total number of voters who have supported each compact; he credits this total to the candidate who has the highest "number of comparison" within the compact; credits the next candidate with one-half this total, the third candidate with one-third, and so on, finally arranging the whole of the candidates in order. Thus far this stage of the process is identical in substance with the Belgian method, though the appearance is different. For, obviously, if List (or compact) A, of which the candidates are G, H, I, in that order receives 12,000 votes, while List B, with candidates P, Q, R, receives 10,000, and List C, with candidates X, Y, Z, receives 8000, it is all one whether the returning officer applies the d'Hondt rule and assigns two seats to List A (thus seating G and H), two seats to List B (thus seating P and Q), and one seat to List C (thus seating X), or whether he tabulates the result of the polling thus: G 12,000 \ P 10,000 | X 8,000 > Elected. H 12,000/2 i.e. 6,000 | Q 10,000/2 i.e. 5,000 / Y 8,000/2 i.e. 4,000 Not elected, and so on. But at this point a characteristic feature of the Finnish system comes into play. Candidates' names may occur in more than one compact, and may be found in isolated schedules, or on the written papers of independent voters as well. Consequently their final order cannot be determined by this simple application of the Belgian method. The returning officer must[1] add to the number of votes credited to a candidate of any one compact such additional votes as he may have obtained either as a member of another compact or from independent voters. Thus, in the Nyland elections, Miss Sohlberg, whose name will be found at the head of Schedule 48 within the Swedish compact, obtained the eleventh place within that compact. The total number of voters supporting this compact was 44,544, and Miss Sohlberg was therefore credited with an eleventh of this total, or 4049 votes. But Miss Sohlberg's name also occurred in Schedules 62 and 63 in the "Free Christian" compact and Schedule 21 in the "Christian" compact, and as her share of the votes of these compacts she received 153 and 325 respectively. She also received four votes in writing. Thus her final total was 4049 + 153 + 325 + 4, or 4531 in all, and it was this number which determined her position on the poll. _Successful candidates in the Nyland election._ This explanation will perhaps be more comprehensible if the actual result of the polling in the Nyland division, so far as the first 25 candidates are concerned, is given in a tabular form:-- Final Names of Party. Number of Additional Final Order Candidates. Votes resulting Votes. Total. of from Place of Poll. Candidates on Compact. 1 Schybergson Swedish 44,544 2.33 44,546.33 2 Häninan Social Dem. 40,951 6.5 40,957.5 3 Soderholm Swedish 22,272 0.33 22,272.33 4 Sillanpää Social Dem. 20,475.5 8.83 20,484.33 5 Käkikoski Old Finn 20,402 9.33 20,411.33 6 Oljemark Swedish 14,848 -- 14,848 7 Sirén Social Dem. 16,650.33 2.33 16,652.66 8 Rosenquist (G.) Swedish 8,908.8 2,932.83[2] 11,841.63 9 Rosenquist (V.) Swedish 11,136 4.33 11,140.33 10 Helle Social Dem. 10,237.75 3 10,240.75 11 Palmén Old Finn 10,201 8.83 10,209.83 12 Pertillä (E.) Social Dem. 8,190.2 4.67 8,194.87 13 Ahlroos Swedish 7,424 1 7,425 14 Pertillä (V.) Social Dem. 6,725.17 1.5 6,726.67 15 Reima Old Finn 6,800.67 5.67 6,806.34 16 Erkko Young Finn 6,521 6.32 6,527.32 17 Ehrnrooth Swedish 6,363.43 75.83 6,439.26 18 Laine (M.) Social Dem. 5,850.14 4 5,854.14 19 Wasastjerna Swedish 5,568 -- 5,568 20 Ingman Social Dem. 5,118.88 3.5 5,122.38 21 Laine (O.) Old Finn 5,100.5 -- 5,100.5 22 von Alfthan Swedish 4,949.33 -- 4,949.33 23 Johansson Social Dem. 4,550.11 1.33 4,551.44 (All the above were elected.) 24 Sohlberg Swedish 4,049.45 482.45[3] 4,531.9 25 Gustaffsson Swedish 4,454.4 4.5 4,458.9 &c. &c. _Equitable results._ It will to some extent be gathered from the foregoing table that the total number of the supporters of the various compacts or parties in the Nyland division and the number of seats won were as follows: Seats Seats in Parties. Votes. Actually Proportion Won. to Votes. Swedish 44,544 9 8.7 Social Democrat 40,951 9 8.0 Old Finn 20,402 4 4.0 Young Finn 6,521 1 1.3 "Christian" compact 2,932 - .6 "Free Christian" 458 - .1 Radical 168 - - Isolated schedules 1,356 - .3 Total 117,332 23 23.0 The result is thus in reasonable correspondence with the demands of a strictly proportionate allotment of seats; this statement is also true of the results for the whole of Finland, as the following table will show:-- Seats Seats in Parties. Votes. Actually Proportion Won. to Votes. Social Democrat 329,946 80 74.1 Old Finn. 243,573 59 54.7 Young Finn 121,604 26 27.3 Swedish 112,267 24 25.2 Agrarian 51,242 9 11.5 Christian Labourer 13,790 2 3.1 Minor groups 18,568 - 4.1 Total 890,990 200 200.0 An exactly mathematical distribution is, of course, not to be expected from this, any more than from any other method which does not adopt the system of treating a whole country as a single constituency. As to the mechanism of the system it only remains to add that the process of counting was found to be very lengthy. In the Nyland division, where the results were ascertained sooner than in any other case, the elections were held on 15 and 16 March, but the result was not announced until the 2 April. To people accustomed to the greater rapidity of ordinary electoral methods this will seem a serious drawback. Possibly improved arrangements may shorten this long interval between the elections and the announcement of the result. It would obviously be premature to attempt to estimate the political effects of the Finnish system as compared with other systems of proportional representation. _Elector's freedom of choice._ The Finnish system has been in operation since 1907, and the whole political circumstances of Finland have undergone so many striking changes, and so many new factors are at work that to disentangle particular causes and effects is an impossibility. But plainly the Finnish machinery gives a greater freedom to the elector than the Belgian system. The Finnish system in fact encourages the electors to arrange the candidates of a party in the order preferred by the electors themselves, and not in the order dictated by the party managers. There is no "party ticket" for which the elector can vote blindfold. He must choose the schedule that he prefers; he can even rearrange that schedule, or, if he chooses, can make one of his own. No doubt the schedule itself is ready made for him, but it contains three names only, and is not the equivalent of the Belgian "list." On the other hand, the elector who chooses to vote for a schedule within a compact adds, whether he likes it or not, to the total votes of the compact, and so may help to return not the candidate of his choice, but the candidates preferred by the majority of the party with which he is in sympathy. An illustration of this fact may be taken from the Nyland poll. The old Finnish party were alive to the possibilities of the situation, and combined their lists with great skill so as to attract votes. They placed their favourite candidates in nearly every schedule, but not at the head of the schedule. At the head of the schedule they placed some man of local popularity, usually a peasant proprietor, whose name was not repeated in many, if any, other schedules. Thus the local favourite attracted votes to the schedule, but in the race for the highest numbers of comparison the candidates whose names appeared on few schedules were left behind those whose names appeared on many schedules even in the lower places. A portion of the official ballot paper showing the compact put forward by the Swedish People's Party is printed on the opposite page. In one corner of the ballot paper was a blank schedule in the following form. THE ELECTOR who does not approve of any of the preceding lists should write here the names of his candidates in the order in which he wishes them to be elected. CANDIDATES _Name_.................................................... _Profession or Occupation_................................ _Address_................................................. _Name_.................................................... _Profession or Occupation_................................ _Address_................................................. _Name_.................................................... _Profession or Occupation_................................ _Address_................................................. FINLAND GENERAL ELECTION, 1907 Part of Ballot Paper--Nyland Division. The Voters' Compact of the Swedish People's Party. 1 HELSINGFORS. Experienced Members of the Diet:-- --Schybergson, E. K. --Neovius, A. W. --Soderholm, K. G. 33 EAST NYLAND-LOUISA. Justice and Progress:-- --Rosenquist, G. G. --Stromberg, J. --Ehrnrooth, L. 34 MID-NYLAND-NIOKBY. The Welfare of the Rural Population;-- --Topelius, G. L. --Alfthau, K. von --Rosenquist, B. T. 35 MID-NYLAND-ESBO. The Welfare of the Rural Population:-- --Wasastjerna, O. --Schybergson, E. --Soderholin, K. 36 WEST NYLAND-KYRK-SLATT. The Welfare ol the Rural Population:-- --Nordberg, G. --Ehrnrooth, L. --Oljemark, K. T. 37 WEST NYLANB-EKENAS. The Welfare of the Rural Population. Law and Justice:-- --Oljemark, K. T. --Schybergson, E. --Soderholm, K. 38 BORGA. Knowledge and Experience:-- --Runeberg, J. W. --Bjorkenheim, G. --Rosenquist, G. G. 39 HELSINGFORS. Sound Development of the Community;-- --Westermarck, Helena. --Rosenquist, B. T. --Bjorkenheim, G. 40 HELSINGFORS. Law and Justice:-- --Sorterholm, K. --Alfthan, K. von --Westermarck, Helena, 41 HELSINGFORS. Legality and Progress:-- --Westermarck, Helena. --Neovius, A. --Ehrnrooth, L. 42 HELLSINGFORS. Swedish Culture:-- --Rosenqnist, B. T. --Gustafsson, F. prof. --Soderholm, K. 43 HELSINGFORS. Friends of Labour and of the People:-- --Alfthan, K. von --Gustafsson, F. prof. --Gronroos, F. 44 HELSINGFORS. Experience and Practical Knowledge:-- --Runeberg, J. W. --Schybergson, E. --Neovius, A. 45 HELSINGFORS. The Labourers' Welfare:-- --Ahlroos, F. --Holmberg, W. --Ehrnrooth, L. 46 HELSINGFORS. Commerce and Industry: --Heimburger, W. F. --Bjorkenheim, G. --Schybergson, E. 47 THE SKERRIES OF NYLAND: Navigation and Fisheries:-- --Hjelt, Th. --Renter, O. --Alfthan, K. 48 THE PROVINCE OF NYLAND: HELSINGFORS. Temperance, Morality and Popular Education:-- --Sohlberg, H. --Ahlroos, F. --Rosenquist, G. G. [Footnote 1: This right of addition is subject to a limit. The reinforcements must not raise a candidate's total above what he might obtain if the votes given to all compacts or lists, where his name occurs, were divided by the figure which indicates his order within the compact from which he derives his principal strength.] [Footnote 2: This large reinforcement of votes came from the Christian compact, where this candidate's name appeared as well as in the Swedish compact.] [Footnote 3: See reference to Miss Sohlberg in preceding paragraph.] APPENDIX V THE STATISTICS OF THE GENERAL ELECTIONS, 1885-1910 The following tables are taken, with permission, from a paper read on 12 December 1906, by Mr. J. Rooke Corbett, M.A., before the Manchester Statistical Society, of which a second and revised edition was published in April 1910 by the Proportional Representation Society. In these tables the totals for England, Wales, and Monmouth, Scotland and Ireland are shown separately, and the figures for England have been further subdivided according to the ten divisions into which the kingdom is divided by the Registrar General for the purpose of his work. These ten subdivisions are as follows: Metropolitan-- London. South East-- Surrey. Kent. Sussex. Hampshire. Berkshire. South Midland-- Middlesex. Hertfordshire. Buckinghamshire. Oxfordshire. Northamptonshire. Huntingdonshire. Bedfordshire. Cambridgeshire. East-- Essex. Suffolk. Norfolk. South-West-- Wiltshire. Dorsetshire. Devonshire. Cornwall. Somersetshire. West Midland-- Gloucestershire. Herefordshire. Shropshire. Staffordshire. Worcestershire. Warwickshire. North Midland-- Leicestershire. Rutlandshire. Lincolnshire. Nottinghamshire. Derbyshire. North-West-- Cheshire. Lancashire. Yorkshire-- West Riding. East Riding (with York). North Riding. Northern Division-- Durham. Northumberland. Cumberland. Westmorland. The first three columns, A, B and C, show the number of members allotted to these several divisions, the number of registered electors, and the number of members to which each division would be entitled if the 670 members of which the House of Commons is composed were divided among the several divisions in proportion to their electorates. In taking the electorate as the basis of a proportionate redistribution of seats it is not intended to prejudge the question whether population or electorate is the better standard. The electorate has been taken because the figures are available for the very year in which the election takes place, whereas the population is only enumerated once in ten years. The columns D and E show in two groups the number of members elected for these divisions, Liberal, Labour, and Irish members being gathered together in one column, Conservatives alone occupying the other. It is one of the disadvantages of our present system of representation that it makes it quite impossible to ascertain the relative strength of the several parties into which the voters are divided. In the great majority of contests there is a Liberal, Labour, or Irish Nationalist candidate on one side, and a Unionist candidate on the other, and there is practically no evidence as to how many of the supporters of either candidate belong to each of the parties concerned. Any estimate of the relative strength of the Liberal and Labour parties or of the Unionist Free Traders, and Tariff Reformers must be largely a matter of guesswork. All that is possible, therefore, is to divide the voters into two groups, as has been done in these tables. The columns F and G show the total electorate of the constituencies held respectively by the two groups of members shown in columns D and E. The figures in these two columns are of value in showing the probable result of a scheme of redistribution. The South-Eastern counties may be taken as an example. These are at present represented by 48 members. The Liberals held three constituencies in January 1910 containing an electorate of 31,221 (columns D and F); the Conservatives held 45 constituencies containing an electorate of 604,887 (columns E and G). If a redistribution of seats was made on the basis of equal electorates, the South-Eastern counties would be entitled to 55 members (column C). It may be assumed that in any rearrangement of constituencies the parties would retain their predominance in the areas which they now represent, and if so the result of a rearrangement of constituencies on the basis of equal electorates would be that in January 1910 the Conservatives would have obtained 52 seats and the Liberals 3 (column K). Similarly in the General Election of 1906 the Liberals in Wales and Monmouth held 34 seats, the Conservatives none. If the constituencies had been rearranged, the Liberals would have held 35 seats, the Conservatives none. The majorities throughout the United Kingdom which would be obtained under a scheme of equal electorates are shown in column K. The columns H and I show the number of electors who voted for the candidates of the two groups; Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist voters in one group, Conservative voters in the other. In computing the figures in these columns an allowance has been made for uncontested constituencies on the following basis. It has been supposed that the changes of public opinion which affect the contested constituencies affect uncontested constituencies also, and in estimating the number of voters in an uncontested constituency it has therefore been assumed that the strength of each party varies from one election to another in the same ratio as in the contested constituencies in the same county. The three columns J, K and L show respectively the actual majorities obtained, the majorities which would have been obtained if the country had been divided into single-member constituencies of equal size, and the majorities under a system of proportional representation. The figures in the last two columns have been calculated with reference to the totals in column C, which gives the number of members to which each division would be entitled on a proportional basis. In order to ascertain the figures given in column K _(i.e._ the probable results with equal single-member constituencies) it has been assumed, as already explained, that the two groups would, after the redistribution of seats, be predominant in the same areas as before the rearrangement. _The representation of minorities._ The tables give abundant evidence of the anomalies associated with our electoral system. One of the most striking is the great difference in the amount of representation secured by minorities in different parts of the country. The amount of representation secured by a minority has not depended upon its size, but upon the way in which it has been distributed. The following table shows the amount of representation obtained by important minorities in the General Election of January 1910:-- THE REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES, ELECTION JAN. 1910 Size of Seats Total Seats Area. Minority. Obtained. for Whole Area Ireland . . . . . . . 145,437 21 103 Scotland . . . . . . . 265,770 11 72 S. East: Counties. . . 220,995 3 48 Wales and Monmouth . . 116,696 2 34 Northern Counties . . 75,897 9 32 The figures show that in Ireland a minority of 145,437 obtained twenty-one representatives, whilst a minority of 116,696 in Wales and Monmouth obtained only two. The good fortune which befel the minority in Ireland, not only in the elections of 1910 but in all the elections since the Redistribution Bill of 1885, has been due to the fact that this minority is concentrated in one corner of Ireland and can transform itself into local majorities. The larger minority in Scotland, owing to its distribution throughout the country, obtains much less representation; the minorities in the south-eastern counties of England and Wales are also distributed throughout these two areas and likewise suffer. The minority of 75,879 in the northern counties being less evenly diffused was more fortunate, and obtained nine representatives. The figures for the election of December 1910 disclose similar anomalies. GENERAL ELECTION, 1885 Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 489,396 57 LLI 22 165,345 162,228 Con 38 324,051 188,067 16 19 3 England South-East 48 406,955 47 LLI 4 34,883 144,659 Con 44 372,072 187,831 40 39 7 S.Midland 38 312,477 36 LLI 14 123,665 124,717 Con 24 188,811 129,544 10 8 East 29 257,022 29 LLI 18 173,521 107,710 7 11 1 Con 11 83,501 98,137 South-West 40 314,603 36 LLI 27 229,612 144,273 14 16 4 Con 13 84,991 117,442 W.Midland 58 544,415 63 LLI 45 427,549 248,825 32 36 8 Con 13 116,866 198,212 N.Midland 34 328,844 38 LLI 26 255,836 55,503 18 22 4 Con 8 73,008 120,933 North-West 70 654,751 76 LLI 24 231,123 263,670 Con 46 423,628 292,942 22 22 4 Yorkshire 52 536,553 62 LLI 36 398,426 248,078 20 30 8 Con 16 138,127 189,930 20 30 8 North 32 305,015 35 LLI 25 262,287 144,803 18 25 5 Con 7 42,728 96,708 ENGLAND 461 4,150,031 480 LLI 241 2,302,248 1,740,466 21 52 16 Con 220 1,847,783 1,619,746 Wales and Monmouth 34 286,145 33 LLI 30 263,199 149,782 26 27 11 Con 4 22,946 79,006 Scotland 72 576,828 67 LLI 58 485,116 289,032 44 45 15 Con 14 91,712 181,706 Britain 567 5,013,004 580 LLI 329 3,050,563 2,179,230 91 124 42 Con 238 1,962,441 1,880,458 Ireland 103 777,954 90 LLI 85 624,760 404,892 67 54 44 Con 18 153,194 139,273 Total 670 5,790,958 670 LLI 414 3,675,323 2,584,122 158 178 86 Con 256 2,115,635 2,019,731 Majority 158 1,559,638 564,391 NOTE.--The figures in columns K and L are calculated with reference to the totals in column C. Thus the figure L 54 for Ireland in column K of the last section of the table indicates that under a system of equal single-member constituencies Ireland's 90 members would be Liberal etc. 72, Unionist 18, a Liberal majority of 54, and the corresponding figure L 44 in column L indicates that under proportional representation the 90 members which Ireland would return would be Liberal etc. 67, and Unionist 23. a Liberal majority of 44. GENERAL ELECTION, 1886 Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 489,396 57 LLI 11 87,974 125,457 Con 49 401,422 185,072 38 37 11 England-- South-East 48 406,955 47 LLI 0 - 114,518 Con 48 406,955 184,221 48 47 11 S.Midland 38 312,477 36 LLI 9 73,292 94,213 Con 29 239,185 128,339 20 20 6 East 29 257,022 29 LLI 4 87,975 81,838 Con 25 219,047 102,732 21 21 3 South-West 40 314,603 36 LLI 7 63,063 96,753 Con 33 251,540 129,056 26 22 6 W.Midland 58 544,415 63 LLI 15 136,518 173,463 Con 43 407,897 218,753 28 32 8 N.Midland 34 328,844 38 LLI 14 147,138 125,078 Con 20 181,706 126,547 6 4 North-West 70 654,751 76 LLI 13 123,459 236,134 Con 57 531,292 282,187 44 48 6 Yorkshire 52 536,553 62 LLI 33 359,414 214,407 6 Con 19 177,139 180,728 14 22 North 32 305,015 35 LLI 23 247,275 123,901 5 Con 9 57,740 96,404 14 21 ENGLAND 461 4,150,031 480 LLI 129 1,276,108 1,385,762 Con 332 2,873,923 1,634,039 203 188 42 Wales and Monmouth 34 286,145 33 LLI 27 240,752 123,186 20 23 7 Con 7 45,393 82,179 Scotland 72 576,828 67 LLI 43 339,726 218,561 14 11 5 Con 29 237,102 188,164 Subtotal 567 5,013,004 580 LLI 199 1,856,586 1,727,509 Con 368 3,156,418 1,904,382 169 154 30 Ireland 103 777,954 90 LLI 84 616,735 376,445 Con 19 161,219 144,755 65 52 38 Total 670 5,790,958 670 LLI 283 2,473,321 2,103,954 8 Con 387 3,317,637 2,049,137 104 102 Majority 104 844,316 54,817 GENERAL ELECTION, 1892 Table headings: Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 552,024 60 LLI 23 186,572 183,967 Con 37 365,452 214,275 14 20 4 England: South-East 48 463,073 50 LLI 4 38,534 147,136 Con 44 424,539 206,075 40 42 8 S.Midland 38 340,650 38 LLI 15 139,228 120,844 Con 23 210,422 147,347 8 8 4 East 29 276,491 30 LLI 13 134,632 108,866 Con 16 141,859 110,849 3 South-West 40 325,769 35 LLI 15 136,061 125,392 Con 25 189,708 136,449 10 5 1 W. Midland 58 577,397 63 LLI 16 143,567 204,453 Con 42 433,830 248,774 26 31 7 N. Midland 34 347,482 38 LLI 22 232,970 145,587 10 14 2 Con 12 114,512 130,380 North-West 70 707,392 77 LLI 26 284,970 282,139 Con 44 422,422 307,698 18 15 3 Yorkshire 52 571,864 62 LLI 35 418,414 244,099 18 28 6 Con 17 153,450 204,492 North 32 328,189 36 LLI 25 264,483 143,172 18 22 4 Con 7 63,706 115,626 ENGLAND 461 4,499,331 489 LLI 194 1,979,431 1,705,655 Con 267 2,519,900 1,821,985 73 57 15 Wales and Monmouth 34 314,063 34 LLI 31 294,395 152,326 28 30 10 Con 3 19,668 86,576 Scotland 72 606,203 66 LLI 52 449,994 267,631 32 32 8 Con 20 156,209 214,448 Subtotal 567 5,419,497 589 LLI 277 2,723,820 2,125,612 5 3 Con 290 2,695,777 2,123,009 13 Ireland 103 746,781 81 LLI 80 561,938 345,548 57 41 31 Con 23 184,843 157,181 Total 670 6,168,388 670 LLI 357 3,285,758 2,471,164 44 46 34 Con 313 2,880,620 2,280,190 Majority 44 405,138 190,974 GENERAL ELECTION, 1895 Table headings: Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 573,141 61 LLI 8 70,056 161,328 Con 52 503,085 242,999 44 47 13 England: South-East 48 472,725 50 LLI 2 24,057 152,213 Con 46 448,668 217,096 44 44 8 S.Midland 38 358,501 38 LLI 3 30,569 116,143 Con 35 327,932 164,052 32 32 6 East 29 294,153 31 LLI 8 70,467 101,736 Con 21 223,686 122,999 13 15 3 South-West 40 330,670 35 LLI 10 76,141 124,852 Con 30 254,529 144,435 20 19 3 W.Midland 58 589,881 63 LLI 9 85,544 195,545 Con 49 504,337 259,382 40 45 9 N.Midland 34 351,792 37 LLI 16 186,167 143,142 1 Con 18 165,625 149,436 2 1 North-West 70 728,292 78 LLI 10 114,035 273,585 Con 60 614,257 332,101 50 54 8 Yorkshire 52 565,799 61 LLI 28 317,932 238,032 4 7 1 Con 24 247,867 225,871 North 32 339,289 36 LLI 20 222,202 145,085 8 12 2 Con 12 117,087 124,697 ENGLAND 461 4,604,243 490 LLI 114 1,197,170 1,652,261 Con 347 3,407,073 1,983,068 233 236 48 Wales and Monmouth 34 320,532 34 LLI 25 241,750 148,552 16 18 6 Con 9 78,782 108,036 Scotland 72 636,106 68 LLI 39 335,143 243,425 6 4 2 Con 33 300,963 234,138 Subtotal 567 5,560,881 592 LLI 178 1,774,068 2,044,238 Con 389 3,786,818 2,325,242 211 214 40 Ireland 103 727,562 78 LLI 82 549,467 317,910 61 42 28 Con 21 178,095 154,379 Total 670 6,292,443 670 LLI 260 2,323,530 2,362,148 Con 410 3,964,913 2,479,621 150 172 12 Majority 150 1,641,383 117,473 GENERAL ELECTION, 1900 Table headings: Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 601,925 60 LLI 8 73,718 150,047 Con 52 528,207 247,777 44 46 14 England: South-East 48 512,408 51 LLI 3 23,362 140,277 Con 45 489,406 220,829 42 47 11 S. Midland 38 388,361 39 LLI 6 63,375 120,012 Con 32 324,986 164,148 26 27 7 East 29 319,997 32 LLI 9 80,447 101,785 Con 20 239,550 125,375 11 8 4 South-West 40 337,449 33 LLI 14 122,410 127,086 Con 26 215,039 142,269 12 9 1 W. Midland 58 630,931 63 LLI 10 96,089 200,113 Con 48 534,842 261,474 38 43 9 N. Midland 34 378,996 38 LLI 18 211,280 149,794 2 4 0 Con 16 167,716 153,294 North-West 70 794,142 79 LLI 14 176,183 281,634 Con 56 617,957 351,243 42 43 9 Yorkshire 52 612,892 61 LLI 26 326,841 239,045 5 1 Con 26 286,051 238,870 North 32 367,007 36 LLI 16 197,102 147,017 2 2 Con 16 169,905 135,459 ENGLAND 461 4,944,108 492 LLI 124 1,370,807 1,657,814 Con 337 3,573,301 2,040,508 213 212 52 Wales and Monmouth 34 342,209 34 LLI 28 286,628 161,190 22 24 8 Con 6 55,581 103,396 Scotland 72 683,840 68 LLI 34 312,781 254,112 Con 34 371,059 258,836 4 6 Britain 567 5,970,187 594 LLI 186 1,970,216 2,073,116 Con 381 3,999,941 2,402,740 195 194 44 Ireland 103 765,258 76 LLI 82 598,469 318,203 61 44 28 Con 21 166,757 145,906 Total 670 6,735,415 670 LLI 268 2,568,685 2,391,319 Con 402 4,166,698 2,548,736 134 150 16 Majority 134 1,598,013 157,417 GENERAL ELECTION, 1906 Table headings: Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 626,011 57 LLI 40 385,762 251,937 Con 20 240,249 225,725 20 13 3 England South East 48 583,000 54 LLI 22 273,398 245,046 Con 26 309,602 241,097 4 4 S.Midlands 38 441,803 40 LLI 27 328,386 193,594 16 20 2 Con 11 113,417 172,159 East 29 368,662 34 LLI 25 333,564 170,039 21 28 4 Con 4 35,098 128,991 South-West 40 371,300 34 LLI 34 321,822 176,478 28 24 4 Con 6 49,478 144,342 W.Midland 58 679,903 63 LLI 35 402,148 288,832 12 11 1 Con 23 277,760 286,862 N.Midland 34 420,677 39 LLI 28 358,852 205,066 22 27 5 Con 6 61,825 151,924 North-West 70 869,792 80 LLI 55 680,843 420,969 40 46 12 Con 15 188,949 321,560 Yorkshire 52 667,863 62 LLI 41 556,233 340,865 30 42 14 Con 11 111,635 218,778 North 32 409,843 38 LLI 27 345,353 215,748 22 26 10 Con 5 64,490 123,003 England 461 5,438,859 501 LLI 334 3,986,356 2,508,574 207 233 53 Con 127 1,452,503 2,014,441 Wales and Monmouth 34 387,585 35 LLI 34 387,585 217,462 34 35 13 Con 0 -- 100,547 Scotland 72 750,401 70 LLI 60 629,360 367,942 48 48 16 Con 12 121,041 235,098 Britain 567 6,576,845 606 LLI 428 5,003,301 3,093,978 289 316 82 Con 139 1,573,544 2,350,086 Ireland 103 693,417 64 LLI 85 545,748 301,833 67 36 22 Con 18 147,669 144,708 TOTAL 670 7,270,262 670 LLI 513 5,549,049 3,395,811 356 352 104 Con 157 1,721,213 2,494,794 Majority 356 3,827,836 901,017 GENERAL ELECTION, JANUARY 1910 Table headings: Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 658,795 57 LLI 26 246,838 254,154 Con 34 411,957 298,821 8 15 5 England: South-East 48 636,108 55 LLI 3 31,221 220,995 Con 45 604,887 334,022 42 49 11 S. Midland 38 490,592 43 LLI 11 146,312 197,717 Con 27 344,280 235,776 16 17 3 East 29 400,062 35 LLI 15 236,234 173,465 1 7 1 Con 14 163,828 170,027 South-West 40 386,514 34 LLI 18 201,726 172,692 2 Con 22 184,788 175,010 4 W. Midland 58 713,761 62 LLI 17 227,430 284,629 Con 41 486,331 334,874 24 22 6 N. Midland 34 446,752 39 LLI 23 334,766 216,469 12 19 3 Con 11 111,986 181,209 North-West 70 928,640 81 LLI 47 636,497 449,324 24 35 7 Con 23 292,143 382,796 Yorkshire 52 701,856 61 LLI 89 564,418 365,185 26 37 11 Con 13 137,438 248,507 North 32 430,594 38 LLI 23 354,697 216,760 14 24 6 Con 9 75,897 150,471 ENGLAND 461 5,793,674 505 LLI 222 2,980.139 2,551,390 21 3 Con 239 2,813,535 2,521,513 17 Wales and Monmouth 34 425,714 37 LLI 32 414,613 243,383 30 35 13 Con 2 11,101 116,696 Scotland 72 785,391 68 LLI 61 675,723 394,103 50 50 14 Con 11 109,668 265,770 Sub total 567 7,004,779 610 LLI 315 4,070,475 3,188,876 63 106 30 Con 252 3,188,876 2,903,979 Ireland 103 688,284 60 LLI 82 518,154 356,223 61 30 26 Con 21 170,130 145,437 Total 670 7,693,063 670 LLI 397 4,588,629 3,545,099 124 136 56 Con 270 3,104,434 3,049,416 Majority 124 1,484,195 495,683 GENERAL ELECTION, DECEMBER 1910 Table headings: Col A: Members Col B: Registered Electors Col C: Proportionate Number of Members Col D: Members - Liberal, Labour and Irish Col E: Members - Conservatives Col F: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalists Col G: Electorate of Constituencies held by - Conservative Col H: Voters - Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist Col I: Voters - Conservative Col J: Majority - Actual Col K: Majority - With equal Single Member Constituencies Col L: Majority - Under Proportional Representation. A B C DE FG HI J K L Prop Memb Electorate Voters Majority Memb Elect Memb Act Eq PR Metropolis 60 658,795 57 LLI 29 279,492 223,151 Con 31 379,303 264,281 2 9 5 England-- South-East 48 636,108 55 LLI 5 58,248 209,434 Con 43 577,860 311,888 38 45 11 S. Midland 38 490,592 43 LLI 14 170,762 190,120 Con 24 319,830 219,876 10 13 3 East 29 400,062 35 LLI 16 256,750 164,849 3 9 1 Con 13 143,312 154,529 South-West 40 386,514 34 LLI 14 159,494 164,698 Con 26 227,020 168,992 12 6 0 W. Midland 58 713,761 62 LLI 19 246,842 268,125 Con 39 466,919 316,574 20 20 6 N. Midland 34 446,752 39 LLI 21 298,037 202,351 8 13 3 Con 13 148,715 173,545 North-West 70 928,640 81 LLI 39 524,682 400,508 8 11 1 Con 31 403,958 386,045 Yorkshire 52 701,856 61 LLI 40 570,544 321,622 28 39 9 Con 12 131,312 239,067 North 32 430,594 38 LLI 25 375,574 200,583 18 28 6 Con 7 55,020 142,388 ENGLAND 461 5,793,674 505 LLI 222 2,940,425 2,345,441 7 Con 239 2,853,249 2,377,185 17 5 Wales and Monmouth 34 425,714 37 LLI 31 388,507 210,525 28 31 9 Con 3 37,207 121,013 Scotland 72 785,391 68 LLI 61 678,395 372,313 50 50 10 Con 11 106,996 277,183 Subtotal 567 7,004,779 610 LLI 314 4,007,327 2,928,279 61 88 14 Con 253 2,997,452 2,775,381 Ireland 103 688,284 60 LLI 84 536,675 350,029 65 34 24 Con 19 151,609 146,982 Total 670 7,693,063 670 LLI 398 4,544,002 3,278,308 126 122 38 Con 272 3,149,061 2,922,363 Majority 126 1,394,941 355,945 APPENDIX VI PREFERENTIAL VOTING: THE TRANSFER OF SUPERFLUOUS VOTES (A Memorandum by the Rt. Hon. J. Parker Smith)[1] (1) _The Element of Chance Involved: Its Magnitude_ An objection, which occurs to every one who considers schemes of Preferential Voting, is that an element of chance is introduced into the result by the methods for the transfer of the superfluous votes of successful candidates. Supposing one part of the supporters of A, a successful candidate, have put down B as their second choice, and the remainder C, and that a certain number of A's votes are superfluous, and have to be transferred, how is it to be determined what number of AB votes, as they may be called, and what number of AC votes shall be transferred? If the question is settled by chance, as, by drawing the necessary number at random from A's heap, by declaring that voting papers shall be used in the order in which they were handed in at the polling booths, or by laying down any other set of arbitrary rules to determine the order in which they shall be counted, an element of uncertainty is introduced by which there seems to be serious danger that B and C will gain or lose unfairly. Those who are accustomed to dealing with statistics will be prepared to find this danger less than might have been expected; but even they will be surprised to find of how small importance the arbitrary element is discovered, by actual calculation, to be. The difficulty can be made clear by a numerical instance. Take the case of an election for several seats, where the necessary quota is 6000, and where a favourite candidate, whom we will call A, has received the first votes of 10,000 voters. Though all those voters have agreed in putting the same candidate first, they are divided as to who may wish to be returned next. Six thousand of them put B as their second choice, and the other 4000 C. If the 6000 votes which A requires are drawn wholly from the AB votes, the result of the transfer will be that C is credited with 4000 votes and B with none. This would be clearly unfair, for, in reality, B has received among A's voters much more support than C. To use up the 4000 AC votes and only 2000 AB votes, and to transfer 4000 votes to B and none to C would be equally unfair to C. The course which is exactly fair to both B and C is that the votes which are transferred should be divided between them in the same proportion as that in which the opinions of the whole number of A's supporters is divided. That is to say, strict justice will be done if every 1000 votes which are used or transferred are made up of 600 AB votes and 400 AC votes. Accordingly, A's quota of 6000 must be made up of 3600 AB votes and 2400 AC votes, and the 4000 papers left to be transferred will consequently consist of 2400 votes for B and 1600 votes for C. This principle avoids all uncertainty, and is indisputably fair. It remains to consider how to carry it into effect. In most cases there would, in reality, be many more classes of votes than in the instance taken above. Even in such cases it is practicable, as will presently be shown, to divide the votes proportionately by an actual process of counting and separation. A certain amount of complication is, of course, introduced, but the extra labour involved does not seem impossible. The question whether this extra labour is necessary must be answered by examining the magnitude of the evil which it is sought to remedy. If the votes are counted in a random order, it is clear there is a probability that the order in which they are drawn will correspond to the total numbers of each class in the ballot-box. It is reasonable to expect that when there are 10,000 ballot papers in an urn the composition of the first thousand drawn out will nearly be the same as that of any other thousand, or of the whole 10,000. The amount of this probability may be determined mathematically, and is very great. This fact was clearly seen by Mr. Andrae, the statesman by whom the method of preferential voting was introduced into Denmark in 1855, and a mathematician of undisputed eminence. In answer to an objection of the kind now under discussion, he replied: "If this law of mine had already been in operation over the whole of Europe (including Turkey), for a period of 10,000 years, and if the elections in every part of Europe to which the law was applied were to take place, not every one, or three, or seven years, but every week in regular repetition, these elections throughout Europe, at the rate of a general European election per week, would still have to go on for more than a thousand times the period of years already stated; that is to say, for more than a thousand times ten thousand years, before the chances would be equal that the voting papers should come out of the urn in the order required to form the basis of this problem. Although, therefore, the supposed combination is, mathematically speaking, only an enormous improbability, yet, practically speaking, it is absolutely impossible."[2] To state the matter more exactly, and as the result of an independent mathematical investigation, it appears that in the case we have stated, if 4000 voting papers were drawn out of A's heap at random, instead of the papers being carefully sorted and proportionately divided, the probability is that neither B nor C would gain or lose more than 11 votes. In other words, it is just even betting that the number of AB votes in the 4000 drawn would lie between 2411 and 2389 (inclusive), and consequently that the number of BC votes will lie between 1589 and 1611. The odds are more than 3 to 1 neither B nor C would gain or lose more than 20 votes, _i.e._ that the number of AB votes drawn will lie between 2420 and 2380; more than 10 to 1 that neither would gain or lose more than 30 votes; just 50 to 1 that neither would gain or lose more than 40 votes; and about 2000 to 1 that neither would gain or lose more than 60 votes. If the number of classes were larger or the number of votes to be drawn smaller, the effect would be much less. It will thus be seen that it is only in the case of very closely contested elections that the element of chance can affect the result. It will also be observed that the _element of chance will not be of importance as between the different parties,_ but only as _between different individual candidates of the same party_, since in almost all cases the electors who are agreed upon the candidate they most desire will also put for their second choice candidates of the same party. In closely contested elections it must, of course, be admitted that as a result of this method, chance might decide which of two candidates of the same party should be elected. But in closely contested elections in large constituencies so many elements of chance are always and necessarily involved, that the introduction of a fresh one does not, in reality, make the result more arbitrary. Putting aside all the slight influences which at the last moment decide a score or two of featherweight votes, and assuming that every voter is profoundly convinced of the truth of his opinions, there remains the question of boundaries. A slight change in the line of the boundaries of the constituency might easily make a difference of fifty votes--a larger difference than what we are concerned with. To carry the dividing lines from North to South instead of from East to West, would, in many localities, completely alter the character of the representation. These are, in reality, matters of chance, and more arbitrary in their nature than the order in which voting papers are drawn from an urn. (2) _Method of Eliminating the Chance Element_ If, however, special precautions are still thought necessary, the following method of counting the votes appears to reduce, as far as practicable, the element of chance involved in the transfer of superfluous votes:-- The whole set of voting papers of the constituency being mixed, the papers, not yet unfolded, are drawn out one by one. Each is stamped, as it is drawn, with a corresponding number, 1, 2, ... in order. It is then unfolded, and sorted according to the names of the candidates marked first and second upon it. Suppose there are six candidates, A, B, C, X, Y, Z; the votes of any candidate, A, will be sorted into six heaps, viz., A votes (_i.e._ votes where A only is voted for), AB, AC, AX, AY, and AZ votes. If A is found to have received more votes than he requires, the order in which the votes will be counted to him will be as follows: Use first the A votes, then use up those heaps where the second name also is that of a candidate who has received more than the necessary minimum. If these heaps give A more than he requires, take the same proportion out of each of such heaps, taking out of each heap the last drawn votes first. If, however, these heaps are used up without giving A as many votes as he requires, take an equal proportion of the votes of each of the remaining heaps--taking out of each heap the last drawn votes first. _Example_.--Take an election where 6000 is the necessary minimum, and suppose A has 8650 votes, composed as follows: A 600 AB 2,700 AC 4,500 AX 50 AY 200 AZ 600 ----- 8,650 Using first the 600 A votes, we are left with 5400 to make up out of the remaining heaps. 1. Suppose B and C have received the quota. The 5400 can be taken from their heaps exclusively, for in their two heaps are 7200 votes; the proportion to be taken from each heap is therefore 5400 out of 7200, which is three quarters. Thus we make up A's number thus:-- A votes 600 Three-quarters of 2,700 AB " 2,025 Three-quarters of 4,500 AC " 3,375 ----- 6,000 And transfer the remainder (the AB and AC votes transferred being those stamped with the lowest numbers). 2. Suppose B and X have received the quota. Their two heaps amount to 2750 votes. Using these up, there remain 2650 votes to be made up out of the AC, AY, and AZ heaps. These three heaps together contain 5300 votes; and the proportion to be taken from each heap is 2650 out of 5300, or half. Thus A's number is made up as follows:-- A votes 600 AB " 2,700 AX " 50 Half of 4,500 AC " 2,250 Half of 200 AY " 100 Half of 600 AZ " 300 ----- 6,000 And the remaining votes of each of the three last classes--being those stamped with the lowest numbers--will be transferred. It will be observed that the element of chance is not wholly excluded, since the question, which papers out of the AC heap are transferred, is left to depend upon the order of drawing. To exclude chance wholly, these would have to be sorted into heaps according to the third name upon them, and an equal proportion taken from each heap. The figures in the first half of this paper are sufficient to show that such trouble would be wholly superfluous. [Footnote 1: This Memorandum is published by permission of the Rt. Hon. J. Parker Smith. Although written in 1884, the arguments still apply. The method described in the second part of the paper has been adopted in the Municipal Representation Bill (see Appendix VII.), but the method of application differs in detail.] [Footnote 2: Quoted by Mr. (afterwards Earl) Lytton in his _Report on the Election of Representatives for the Rigsraad_.--House of Commons papers, 1864, vol. 61, p. 24 of No. 7.] APPENDIX VII THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE SCHEDULE TO MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATION BILL, 1910 THE FIRST SCHEDULE[1] RULES FOB THE TRANSFER OF VOTES AND FOR ASCERTAINING THE RESULT OF THE POLL _Arrangement of ballot papers._ 1. After the ballot papers have been mixed, in accordance with the rules contained in the First Schedule to the Ballot Act, 1872, the returning officer shall draw out all ballot papers which he does not reject as invalid, and file in a separate parcel those on which the figure 1 is set opposite the name of the same candidate. The returning officer shall then count the number of papers in each parcel. _Ascertainment of quota._ 2. The returning officer shall then add together the numbers of the papers in all the parcels and divide the total by a number exceeding by one the number of vacancies to be filled, and the result increased by one, disregarding any fractional remainder, shall be the number of votes sufficient to secure the return of a candidate, herein called the "quota." _Candidates with quota elected._ 3. Any candidate whose parcel contains a number of papers equal to or greater than the quota shall be declared elected. _Transfer of surplus votes_.] 4.--(1) If the number of candidates elected under the last rule shall not equal the number of vacancies, the returning officer shall as far as possible transfer from each elected candidate the votes (if any) in excess of the quota (herein called surplus votes) to the candidates indicated on the ballot papers as next in order of the voters' preference, excluding candidates already declared elected. The votes of the candidate having the largest number of votes shall first be dealt with, and the particular votes to be transferred shall be determined in accordance with the following regulations:-- (a) The returning officer shall arrange all the ballot papers in the parcel of the elected candidate on which votes capable of transfer are given by filing in a separate sub-parcel those on which a next preference is indicated for some one continuing candidate. (b) The returning officer shall also make a separate sub-parcel of the ballot papers in the parcel on which the votes given are not capable of transfer. (c) The returning officer shall count the ballot papers in each sub-parcel, and also the total of all the ballot papers containing votes capable of transfer. (d) If the total number of votes capable of transfer is equal to or less than the surplus votes, the returning officer shall transfer all the votes capable of transfer. (e) If the total number of votes capable of transfer is greater than the surplus votes, the returning officer shall transfer from each sub-parcel of votes capable of transfer the number of votes which bears the same proportion to the total of the sub-parcel as the number of surplus votes bears to the total of all the votes capable of transfer. (f) The number of votes to be transferred from each sub-parcel under the preceding regulation shall be ascertained by multiplying the total of the sub-parcel by the number of surplus votes and dividing the result by the total number of votes capable of transfer. Fractional remainders shall be disregarded. (g) The particular votes transferred from each sub-parcel shall be those last filed in the sub-parcel. (2) The transfer of surplus votes shall be effected by making new sub-parcels of the ballot papers on which those votes are given, and adding those sub-parcels to the parcels (if any) of the candidates to whom the transfers are made, or, where any such candidate has as yet no parcel, a new parcel shall be formed for him from the papers transferred. (3) All ballot papers in a parcel of an elected candidate not transferred under this rule shall be set aside as finally dealt with, and the votes given thereon shall thenceforth not be taken into account. (4) If two or more parcels of elected candidates are equal in size, the returning officer shall decide which parcel he will first deal with under this rule. (5) A transfer of votes under this rule shall not be made unless the surplus votes of the elected candidate, together with any other surplus votes not transferred, exceed the difference between the totals of the votes of the two continuing candidates lowest on the poll. (6) This rule shall take effect subject to the provisions for filling the last vacancy herein-after contained, and if at any time it shall be possible to fill the last vacancy under those provisions, no further transfer under this rule shall be made. _Result of transfer._ 5. After the transfer of the surplus votes of an elected candidate, any candidate who shall, as a result of the transfer, obtain the quota of votes, shall be declared elected. _Further transfer of surplus votes._ 6.--(1) Unless and until the last vacancy shall have been filled under the provisions herein-after contained, if, after the transfers directed by Rule 4, there shall still remain a vacancy, and the votes of any elected candidate to whom a transfer has been made are in excess of the quota, the returning officer shall, as far as possible, take from the sub-parcel last transferred to that candidate a number of votes equal to the surplus. (2) The particular votes to be taken shall be determined in accordance with the regulations given in Rule 4 hereof, in the same manner as if the votes included in the sub-parcel last transferred had been the only votes given to the candidate; the ballot papers so taken shall be added in separate sub-parcels to the parcels of the continuing candidates (if any) indicated thereon as next in order of the voters' preference, and the votes given thereon shall be transferred to those candidates accordingly. Where any such candidate has as yet no parcel, a new parcel shall be formed for him from the papers transferred. (3) The remaining ballot papers in the parcel of the elected candidate (including the ballot papers taken from the parcel under Sub-Rule (1) on which the votes given are not capable of transfer) shall be set aside as finally dealt with, and the votes given thereon shall thenceforth not be taken into account. (4) After any transfer of votes under this rule, any candidate who shall, as a result of the transfer, obtain the quota of votes shall be declared elected. (5) The process directed by this rule shall be repeated until the last vacancy is filled, or until no candidate has any surplus votes, whichever shall first happen. (6) If two or more parcels shall be equal in size, regard shall be had to the number of votes counted to each candidate under Rule 1, and the parcel of the candidate highest on that count shall first be dealt with, but if the numbers of votes on that count were equal, the returning officer shall decide which parcel he will first deal with under this rule. (7) A transfer of votes under this rule shall not be made unless the surplus votes of the elected candidate, together with any other surplus votes not transferred, exceed the difference between the totals of the votes of the two continuing candidates lowest on the poll. _Distribution of votes of lowest candidate_. 7.--(1) Unless and until the last vacancy shall have been filled under the provisions herein-after contained, if, after the transfers under the preceding rules, there shall still remain one or more vacancies, or, if no candidate shall have been declared elected under Rule 3, the returning officer shall exclude from the poll the candidate having the lowest number of votes, and shall distribute the votes capable of transfer on the ballot papers in his parcel among the continuing candidates next in order of the voters' preference. Any ballot papers in the parcel, on which votes not capable of transfer are given, shall be set aside as finally dealt with, and the votes given thereon shall thenceforth not be taken into account. (2) If in any case the total of the votes of the two or more candidates lowest on the poll together with any surplus votes not transferred is less than the votes of the next highest candidate, the returning officer may in one operation exclude those candidates from the poll and distribute their votes in accordance with the foregoing provisions. (3) After the distribution under this rule of votes capable of transfer, any candidate who has received the quota shall be declared elected. (4) The surplus votes of any candidate elected under this rule who has received more than the quota shall be distributed in the manner directed by and subject to the conditions of the last preceding rule. _Further distributions_. 8. The process directed by the last rule shall be repeated on the successive exclusions one after another of the candidates with the lowest numbers of votes until the last vacancy is filled either by the election of a candidate with the quota or under the next following rule. _Filling the last vacancy_. 9.--(1) When the number of continuing candidates is reduced to the number of vacancies remaining unfilled, the continuing candidates shall be declared elected. (2) When only one vacancy remains unfilled and the votes of some one continuing candidate exceed the total of all the votes of the other continuing candidates together with any surplus votes not transferred, that candidate shall be declared elected. (3) When more than one vacancy remains unfilled and the votes of the candidate, who, if all the vacancies were filled by the successive elections of the continuing candidates with the largest numbers of votes, would be the last to be elected, exceed the total of all the votes of the continuing candidates with fewer votes than himself together with any surplus votes not transferred, that candidate and all the other continuing candidates who have not less votes than himself shall be declared elected. (4) When only one vacancy remains unfilled and there are only two continuing candidates, and those two candidates have each the same number of votes and no surplus votes remain capable of transfer, one candidate shall be declared excluded under the next following rule and the other declared elected. _Provisions for exclusion of candidates in special cases._ 10. If at any time when a candidate has to be excluded under these rules two or more candidates have each the same number of votes, regard shall be had to the number of votes counted to each candidate under Rule 1, and the candidate lowest on that count shall be excluded, but, if the numbers of votes on that count were equal, the returning officer shall decide which candidate shall be excluded. _Public notice of transfers._ 11. The returning officer shall record and give public notice of any transfer of votes made under these rules and of the total number of votes counted to each candidate after any such transfer in addition to the particulars prescribed by Rule 45 to the First Schedule to the Ballot Act, 1872. Such public notice may be in accordance with the form given in the appendix to these rules. _Recounts._ 12.--(1) Any candidate or his agent may at any time during the counting of the votes, either before the commencement or after the completion of the transfer of the votes (whether surplus or otherwise) of any candidate, request the returning officer to recount the papers then comprised in the parcels of all or any candidates (not being papers set aside as finally dealt with) and the returning officer shall forthwith recount the same accordingly. The returning officer may also at his discretion recount votes either once or more often in any case in which he is not satisfied as to the accuracy of any previous count. Provided that nothing herein shall make it obligatory on the returning officer to recount the same votes more than once. (2) If upon an election petition-- (i) any ballot papers counted by the returning officer are rejected as invalid, or (ii) any ballot papers rejected by the returning officer are declared valid, the court may direct the whole or any part of the ballot papers to be recounted and the result of the election ascertained in accordance with these rules. (3) Except as in this rule expressly provided, no recount shall be had whether on an election petition or otherwise. _Determination of questions as to transfers. 13.--(1) If any question shall arise in relation to any transfer, the decision of the returning officer, whether expressed or implied by his acts, shall be final unless an objection is made by any candidate or his agent before the declaration of the poll, and in that event the decision of the returning officer may be reversed upon an election petition. (2) If any decision of the returning officer is so reversed, the transfer in question and all operations subsequent thereto shall be void, and the court shall direct what transfer is to be made in place thereof, and shall cause the subsequent operations to be carried out and the result of the election to be ascertained in accordance with these rules. _Definitions_. 14. In these rules-- (1) The expression "votes capable of transfer" means votes given on ballot papers on which a further preference is indicated for a continuing candidate. Provided that a vote shall be deemed not capable of transfer in any case in which-- (a) The names of two or more candidates (whether already excluded from the poll or declared elected or not) are marked with the same figure and are next in order of preference, or (b) The name of the candidate to whom the transfer is to be made or of some candidate (whether continuing or not) higher in the order of the voters' preference is marked (i) by a figure not following consecutively after some other figure on the ballot paper, or (ii) by two or more figures. (2) The expression "continuing candidates" means candidates not already declared elected or excluded from the poll. APPENDIX TO SCHEDULE EXAMPLE OF AN ELECTION CONDUCTED ON THE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SET OUT ABOVE Let it be assumed that there are five members to be elected, and that there are ten candidates. The valid papers are drawn from the general heap of ballot papers and arranged in separate parcels under the names of the candidates marked with the figure 1. (Rule 1.) Each separate parcel is counted (Rule 1) and the total of all the valid votes is ascertained (Rule 2). It is found that the total of all the valid votes is 6000. This total is divided by six (_i.e._ the number which exceeds by one the number of vacancies to be filled), and 1001 (_i.e._ the quotient 1000 increased by one) is the number of votes sufficient to elect a member, and is called the "quota" (Rule 2). The result of the count may be supposed to be as follows:-- A 2,009 Elected B 952 C 939 D 746 E 493 F 341 G 157 H 152 I 118 K 93 ----- 6,000 A's votes exceed the quota and he is declared elected (Rule 3). _First Transfer_. It now becomes necessary to transfer A's surplus votes (Rule 4 (1)). A has in fact (2009 less 1001 or) 1008 surplus votes. All A's 2009 voting papers are examined and arranged in separate sub-parcels according to the second preferences indicated thereon (Rule 4 (1) (_a_)). A separate sub-parcel is also formed of those papers on which no second preference is shown, and which are therefore not capable of transfer. (Rule 4 (1) (_b_).) The result is found to be as follows. (Rule 4 (1) (_c_).) A second preference is shown for G on 1,708 papers " " " D " 257 " " " " E " 11 " " " " F " 28 " ----- Total of votes capable of transfer 2,004 " No second preference is shown on 5 " ----- Total of A's votes 2,009 The total number of votes to be transferred is 1008, and it is necessary that they should be taken from the several sub-parcels in the proportions which the latter bear to all the votes capable of transfer; that is, there must be transferred, _e.g.,_ to G a number of votes bearing the same proportion to 1008, the total to be transferred, as 1708, the number of votes in G's sub-parcel, bears to 2004, the total of votes capable of transfer. In other words the number of the ballot papers on which each candidate is next preference must be multiplied by a fraction of which the surplus is the numerator and the total of votes capable of transfer the denominator, in order to ascertain the number of votes to be transferred to the candidate in question. In making the transfers fractions of votes are neglected (Rule 4 (1) ( e) and (f)). The process is as follows:-- To G there are to be transferred 1,708 x 1,008 / 2,004 = 589 votes " D " " " 257 x 1,008 / 2,004 = 129 " " E " " " 11 x 1,008 / 2,004 = 5 " " F " " " 28 x 1,008 / 2,004 = 14 " ------- 1,007 859, 129, 5 and 14 votes are now transferred to G, D, E, and F respectively, the particular voting papers taken being those last filed in their sub-parcels, and therefore at the top of the sub-parcels. These voting papers are added in separate sub-parcels to G, D, E, and E (Rule 4 (2)). Their totals then become-- G . . . . . 157 + 859 = 1,016 D . . . . . 746 + 129 = 875 E . . . . . 493 + 5 = 498 F . . . . . 341 + 14 = 355 All the other voting papers in A's parcel (1002 in number) are set aside as finally dealt with (Rule 4 (3)), the figure 1002 being the quota 1001 with the addition of the one further vote of the surplus which, owing to the disregard of fractions, is not transferred. G having obtained more than the quota is now declared elected (Rule 5), and the poll stands as follows:-- A 1,002 Elected G 1,016 Elected B 952 C 939 D 875 E 498 F 355 H 152 I 118 K 93 _Second Transfer_ G has now more than the quota, and his surplus votes (1016 less 1001 or 15) would have to be transferred (Rule 6(1)) were it not for the provisions of Rule 6(7). But under that rule, the process of transferring a surplus is postponed in a case where the surplus is less than the difference between the two lowest candidates on the poll, and where, therefore, the transfer would produce no practical effect. In this case the difference between I and K, the two lowest candidates, is 118 - 93, or 25, and therefore it is not necessary to transfer G's surplus. The returning officer proceeds to distribute the votes of the candidates with the smallest totals (Rules 7 and 8). K's parcel is therefore examined and is found to contain 89 papers on which F is next preference, and 4 on which C is next preference. Therefore 89 votes are transferred to F and 4 to C. The poll now stands-- A 1,002 Elected G 1,016 Elected B 952 C 943 D 875 E 498 F 444 H 152 I 118 No further candidate has the quota. _Third Transfer_ The difference between I and H exceeds G's surplus, which therefore is allowed to remain (Rule 6 (7)), and the votes of I as now lowest on the poll have now to be distributed in the same manner as K's (Rule 8). But as the combined votes of H and I, together with G's surplus (152 + 118 + 15 = 285), are less than 444, the total of F, the next highest candidate, the returning officer avails himself of Rule 7 (2), and distributes both H and I's votes at one operation. I's parcel is found to contain 107 papers on which D and 11 on which B is next preference, and H's parcel is found to contain 108 papers on which B is next preference, and 44 on which there is no available preference marked. (In some cases, some or one of A, G, I, H, and K are marked as next in order of preference on the papers examined, but as all of them are already either elected or excluded they are left out of account.) Therefore, 107 votes are transferred to D, and 119 (108 + 11) to B, while 44 are set aside as finally dealt with (Rule 7 (1)). The result is to give B the quota, and he is declared elected. The poll now stands-- A 1,002 Elected G 1,016 Elected B 1,071 Elected D 982 C 943 E 498 F 444 _Fourth Transfer_ B has now a surplus of 70 votes, and it is necessary to distribute this (Rules 7 (4), 6, and 4) as it exceeds the difference between E and F, which is 54 (Rule 6 (7)). For this purpose only the 119 votes last transferred are taken into account (Rule 6 (2)). These are examined and arranged in sub-parcels, in the same manner as A's votes were examined and arranged, with the following result: A next preference is shown for E on 84 papers. No further preference is shown on 35 papers. The total number of votes capable of transfer (84) is thus greater than the surplus (70), but, as there is only one possible transfer, the process is simple: 84 x 70/84 = 70; and so the 70 votes last filed in E's sub-parcel are transferred to E. The poll now stands-- A 1,002 Elected G 1,016 Elected B 1,001 Elected D 982 C 943 E 568 F 444 _Fifth Transfer_ G's surplus is still not distributable (Rule 6(7)), but F is now lowest on the poll and his votes have to be distributed (Rule 8). On examination it is found that of F's 444 papers, 353 show a next preference for C, and the remainder, 91, contain no further preference. The 353 are transferred to C, who thus has more than the quota, and is declared elected, and the 91 are set aside as finally dealt with (Rule 7(1)). The poll now stands-- A 1,002 Elected G 1,016 Elected B 1,001 Elected C 1,296 Elected D 982 E 568 This terminates the election; for, even if all C's surplus votes (295) and all G's surplus votes (15) were transferred to E, his poll would only amount to 878. But D's votes (982) exceed this total, D is therefore declared elected (Rule 9 (2)). The final result is that A, G, B, C, and D are elected. Public Notice of the Result of the Poll and of the Transfer of Votes Number of valid votes ... 6,000 Number of members to be elected ... 5 Quota ... 1,001 [column names-- ] N: Names of Candidates V: Votes TA: Transfer of A's surplus RA: Result TK: Transfer of K's Votes RK: Result THI: Transfer of H and I's Votes RHI: Result TB: Transfer of B's surplus TB: Result TF: Transfer of F's Votes RF: Final Result N: V: TA: RA: TK: RK: THI: RHI: TB: TB: TF: RF: A 2,009 -1,007 1,002 -- 1,002 -- 1,002 -- 1,002 -- 1,002(E) B 952 -- 952 -- 952 +119 1,071 -70 1,001 -- 1,001(E) C 939 -- 939 + 4 943 -- 943 -- 943 +353 1,296(E) D 746 +129 875 -- 875 +107 982 -- 982 -- 982(E) E 493 + 5 498 -- 498 -- 498 +70 568 -- 568 F 341 + 14 355 +89 444 -- 444 -- 444 -444 -- G 157 +859 1,016 -- 1,016 -- 1,016 -- 1,016 -- 1,016(E) H 152 -- 152 -- 152 -152 -- -- -- -- -- I 118 -- 118 -- 118 -118 -- -- -- -- -- K 93 -- 93 -93 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Effective votes 6,000 -- 6,000 -- 6,000 -- 5,956 -- 5,956 -- 5,865 Preferences exhausted -- -- -- +44 44 -- 44 +91 135 Total valid votes 6,000 -- 6,000 6,000 -- 6,000 -- 6,000 -- 6,000 [Candidates A, B, C, D, and G are elected.] [Footnote 1: The rules contained in this schedule were examined and approved by the Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1907. They are substantially identical with those embodied in the Transvaal Municipal Act of 1909, and used in the municipal elections of Pretoria and Johannesburg in 1909, as well as in the model elections conducted by the Proportional Representation Society in 1906, 1908, and 1910.] APPENDIX VIII THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE SCHEDULE (4) OF TASMANIAN ELECTORAL ACT, 1907 In this Schedule, unless the contrary intention appears-- "Returning Officer" means the Returning Officer for the District: "Quota" means the number of votes sufficient to elect a candidate: "Surplus" means the number of votes which a candidate has obtained, at any stage of the scrutiny, over and above the quota: "First choice recorded for a candidate" means a voting-paper on which the number 1 is placed in the square opposite the name: "Second choice recorded for a candidate" means a voting paper on which the number 2 is placed in the square opposite his name: "Transfer value" means that portion of a vote which is unused by-- (a) an elected candidate who has obtained a surplus, (b) a candidate excluded on account of his being lowest on the poll, and which is therefore transferred to the candidate next in the order of the voter's preference. The transfer value of all votes is either 1 or some fraction of 1. METHOD OF COUNTING VOTES _First choice of each candidate to be counted_.] 1. The number of first choices recorded for each candidate shall be counted, and all informal voting papers shall be rejected. _To find the quota_. 2. The aggregate number of such first choices shall be divided by one more than the number of candidates required to be elected, and the quotient increased by one, disregarding any remainder, shall be the quota, and (except as hereinafter provided in Rule 10) no candidate shall be elected until he obtains a number of votes equal to or greater than the quota. _Candidates who have the quota to be declared elected._ 3. Any candidate who has, upon the first choices being counted, a number of such votes equal to or greater than the quota shall be declared elected. _If first choices exactly equal to quota, voting papers to be set aside_. 4. Where the number of such votes obtained by any candidate is equal to the quota, the whole of the voting papers on which a first choice is recorded for such elected candidate shall be set aside as finally dealt with. _If a surplus, surplus to be transferred._ 5. Where the number of such votes obtained by any candidate is in excess of the quota, the proportion of votes in excess of the quota shall be transferred to the other candidates not yet declared elected, next in the order of the voters' respective preferences, in the following manner:-- _Voting papers reexamined and second choices counted._ (i) All the voting papers on which a first choice is recorded for the elected candidate shall be re-examined, and the number of second choices, or (in the case provided for in Rule 12) third or next consecutive choices, recorded for each unelected candidate thereon shall be counted: _Find the transfer value._ (ii) The surplus of the elected candidate shall be divided by the total number of votes obtained by him on the counting of the first choices, and the resulting fraction shall be the transfer value: _Multiply second choices by transfer value._ (iii) The number of second or other choices, ascertained in paragraph i, to be recorded second for each unelected candidate, shall be multiplied by the transfer value: _Add result on._ (iv) The resulting number, disregarding any fractional remainder, shall be credited to each unelected candidate, and added to the number of votes obtained by him on the counting of the first choices. _If more than one surplus, largest to be first dealt with._ 6.--(a) Where, on the counting of the first choices or on any transfer, more than one candidate has a surplus, the largest surplus shall be first dealt with. If then more than one candidate has a surplus, the then largest surplus shall be dealt with, and so on: Provided that, if one candidate has obtained a surplus at a count or transfer previous to that at which another candidate obtains a surplus, the surplus of the former shall be first dealt with. _If surpluses equal, last difference to decide._ (b) Where two or more surpluses are equal, the surplus of the candidate who was the highest on the poll at the count or transfer at which they last had an unequal number of votes shall be first dealt with; and if they have had an equal number of votes at all preceding counts or transfers, the returning officer shall decide which candidate's surplus shall be first dealt with. _If transfer raises candidate up to or above quota, he is to be declared elected._ 7.--(a) Where the number of votes obtained by a candidate is raised up to or above the quota by a transfer as aforesaid, he shall thereupon be declared elected. And in such case, notwithstanding the fact that he may have reached the quota, such transfer shall be completed, and all the votes to which he is entitled there from shall be transferred to him, but no votes of any other candidate shall be transferred to him. _If votes exactly equal quota, voting papers to be set aside._ (b) Where the number of votes obtained by a candidate is raised up to, but not above, the quota by a transfer as aforesaid, the whole of the voting papers on which such votes are recorded shall be set aside as finally dealt with. _If surplus created, surplus to be transferred._ (c) Where the number of votes obtained by a candidate is raised above the quota by a transfer as aforesaid, his surplus shall be transferred to the candidates next in the order of the voters' respective preferences, in the following manner:-- _Voting paper of last transfer re-examined and third choices counted._ (i) The voting papers on which are recorded the votes obtained by the elected candidate in the last transfer shall be reexamined, and the number of third, or (in the case provided for in Rule 12) next consecutive choices recorded for each unelected candidate thereon counted: _ Find the transfer value._ (ii) The surplus of the elected candidate shall be divided by the total number of voting papers mentioned in paragraph i, and the resulting fraction shall be the transfer value: _Multiply third choices by transfer value._ (iii) The number of second (or other) choices, ascertained in paragraph i, to be recorded for each unelected candidate, shall be multiplied by the last-mentioned transfer value: _Add result on._ (iv) The resulting number, disregarding any fractional remainder, shall be credited to each unelected candidate, and added to the number of votes previously obtained by him. _When all surpluses dealt with candidate lowest on poll to be excluded, and his votes transferred._ 8.--(a) Where, after the first choices have been counted and all surpluses (if any) have been transferred as hereinbefore directed, no candidate, or less than the number of candidates required to be elected, has or have obtained the quota, the candidate who is lowest on the poll shall be excluded, and all the votes obtained by him shall be transferred to the candidates next in the order of the voters' respective preferences, in the same manner as is directed in Rule 5. _First choices to be transferred first._ (b) The votes obtained by such excluded candidate as first choices shall first be transferred, the transfer value of each vote in this case being 1. _Then other votes in order._ (c) The other votes of such excluded candidate shall then be dealt with in the order of the transfers in which, and at the transfer value at which, he obtained them. _Each transfer deemed a separate transfer._ (d) Each of the transfers which takes place under the two previous clauses of this rule shall be deemed for all purposes to be a separate transfer. _If transfer raises candidate up to quota, he is to be declared elected._ 9.--(a) Where the number of votes obtained by a candidate is raised up to or above the by any such transfer as aforesaid, he shall thereupon be declared elected. And in such case, notwithstanding the fact that he may have reached the quota, such transfer shall be completed, and all the votes to which he is entitled therefrom shall be transferred to him, but no other votes shall be transferred to him. _If votes exactly equal to quota, voting papers to be set aside._ (b) Where the number of votes obtained by a candidate is raised up to, but not above, the quota by any such transfer as aforesaid, the whole of the voting papers on which such votes are recorded shall be set aside as finally dealt with. _If surplus created, surplus to be transferred._ (c) Where the number of votes obtained by a candidate is raised above the quota by any such transfer as aforesaid, his surplus shall be transferred to the candidates next in the order of the voters' respective preferences in the same manner as is directed in Rule 7, Clause (c): Provided that such surplus shall not be dealt with until all the votes of the excluded candidate have been transferred. _Surpluses to be dealt with before further exclusion._ (d) Where any surplus exists it shall be dealt with before any other candidate is excluded. _Process of exclusion to be repeated until there remain number of candidates required._ 10. The same process of excluding the candidate lowest on the poll and transferring to other candidates his votes shall be repeated until all the candidates, except the number required to be elected, have been excluded, and the unexcluded candidates, who have not already been so declared, shall then be declared elected. _If lowest candidates equal last, difference to decide._ 11. Where at any time it becomes necessary to exclude a candidate, and two or more candidates have the same number of votes and are lowest on the poll, then whichever of such candidates was lowest on the poll at the last count or transfer at which they had an unequal number of votes shall be first excluded, and if such candidates have had an equal number of votes at all preceding counts or transfers, the returning officer shall decide which candidate shall be first excluded. _If a candidate elected or excluded, his name not considered on voting paper._ 12. In determining what candidate is next in the order of the voter's preference, any candidates who have been declared elected or who have been excluded shall not be considered, and the order of the voter's preference shall be determined as if the names of such candidates had not been on the voting paper. _Exhausted votes._ 13. Where on any transfer it is found that on any voting paper there is no candidate opposite whose name a number is placed, other than those who have been already either declared elected or excluded, such voting paper shall be set aside as exhausted. APPENDIX IX THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE REGULATIONS FOR THE ELECTION OF SENATORS UNDER THE SOUTH AFRICA ACT, 1909 I. In these Regulations:-- (1) "_Continuing Candidates_" mean candidates not elected or not excluded from the poll at any given time. (2) "_First Preference_" means the figure 1 set opposite the name of any candidate; "second preference" similarly means the figure 2; "third preference" the figure 3, and so on. (3) "_Unexhausted papers_" mean ballot papers on which a further preference is recorded for a continuing candidate. (4) "_Exhausted papers_" mean ballot papers on which no further preference is recorded for a continuing candidate, provided that a paper shall also be deemed to be exhausted in any case in which-- (_a_) The names of two or more candidates, whether continuing or not, are marked with the same figure and are next in order of preference, or (_b_) The name of the candidate next in order of preference, whether continuing or not, is marked (i) By a figure not following consecutively after some other figure on the ballot paper, or (ii) By two or more figures.[1] (5) "_Original Votes_" in regard to any candidate mean the votes derived from ballot papers on which a first preference is recorded for such candidate. (6) "_Transferred Votes_" in regard to any candidate mean votes, the value or part of the value of which is credited to such candidate and which are derived from ballot papers on which a second or subsequent preference is recorded for such candidate. (7) "_Surplus_" means the number by which the value of the votes of any candidate, original and transferred, exceeds the quota. II. (1) The Governor in Council shall by Proclamation fix a date on or before which every candidate for election shall be nominated by two members of the Legislature in writing addressed to the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly. Such nomination shall contain the candidate's full name and address, shall be signed by two members of the Legislature, and shall be accepted in writing by the candidate. A nomination paper may include any number of names not exceeding eight, but no member shall sign more than one nomination paper, and no candidate shall sign a nomination paper on which his name appears. The Clerk of the Legislative Assembly shall, after consultation with the Assessors hereinafter referred to, reject all nominations not made in accordance with these regulations. (2) Immediately after the date fixed for receiving nominations the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly shall make a return to the Governor in Council showing the names and addresses of the candidates who have been duly nominated, together with the names of the members who have nominated them. He shall at the same time certify that such nominations have been duly made in accordance with these regulations, and forward to the Governor-in-Council the certificate by the Assessors mentioned in Regulation IV. (2). In case of disagreement between the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly and the Assessors, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly shall, at the request of the Governor-in-Council, inspect the nomination papers, and his decision on the point at issue shall be final. (3) If the number of nominations received is less than the number of vacancies to be filled, the Governor-in-Council shall by Proclamation call for further nominations to be made on or before a date to be fixed therein. If the number of nominations received on the original date, or such further date as may be fixed, is equal to the number of vacancies to be filled, the Governor-in-Council shall by Proclamation declare the candidates so nominated to be duly elected. (4) If the number of candidates nominated as aforesaid exceeds the number of vacancies to be filled, the Governor-in-Council shall by Proclamation summon a joint sitting of both Houses of the Legislature for the purpose of electing candidates to fill the vacancies in the manner prescribed in these regulations. Such sitting shall be continued for a period to be fixed in the Proclamation, not being less than two hours, and no member shall be allowed to vote except during the continuation of such sitting. Provided, however, that if all the members of the Legislature have voted before the expiration of the said period of two hours, the Speaker may close the sitting. III. Each member of the Legislature present shall vote in person, and no voting by proxy shall be permitted. IV. (1) The Clerk of the Legislative Assembly shall act as returning officer and shall, subject to these rules, do all things necessary for the conduct of the election. (2) Two Assessors, not being Members of Parliament, shall be nominated, one by the President of the Legislative Council and one by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who shall assist and advise the returning officer in his duties, both in respect, of the receiving of nominations and the conduct of the election. Immediately after the date fixed for the receipt of nominations the Assessors shall furnish the returning officer, for transmission to the Governor-in-Council, with a certificate stating whether or not they are satisfied that the nominations have been received in accordance with these regulations. Further, if either of the Assessors is for any reason dissatisfied with the conduct of the election he shall report his opinion, with the reasons therefor, in writing to the President of the Legislative Council and the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, who, after consultation, may if they consider it necessary, order a recount to be made, and the returning officer shall act accordingly. (3) Before entering on their duties the returning officer and the assessors shall be required to make oath or affirmation before the Speaker that they will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of their offices according to the rules laid down herein, or such other rules as may be lawfully made. (4) The returning officer shall furnish the Governor-in-Council with the names of the persons elected, and shall make to the President of the Legislative Council and the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly a complete return signed by himself showing the various steps of the election, and the result of the election. He shall also transmit to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly a sealed packet containing the nominations, the actual ballot papers and the counterfoils, which shall be preserved for a period of at least twelve months. The Governor-in-Council shall notify by Proclamation the names of the persons duly elected. V. (1) The voting shall be by ballot. The returning officer shall ascertain that the person desiring to vote is entitled to vote and shall enter his name upon the counterfoil in the ballot paper book, and shall then tear out the ballot paper corresponding to that counterfoil, and, having stamped the ballot paper with a perforating stamp provided for the purpose, shall hand it to the member. Every ballot paper shall contain the names and addresses of all the candidates duly nominated for election, printed in alphabetical order, in the form prescribed in the annexure hereto. (2) When the member has received a ballot paper he shall take the paper to a compartment and desk provided for the purpose and signify in manner provided by the next succeeding section for whom he desires to vote. The member shall then fold the ballot paper so that the perforated mark may be visible, and having held up the ballot paper so that the returning officer can recognize the perforated mark, shall drop the ballot paper in the ballot box placed in front of the returning officer. (3) If a member inadvertently spoils a ballot paper he may return it to the returning officer, who shall, if satisfied of such inadvertence, give him another paper and retain the spoiled paper, and this spoiled paper shall be immediately cancelled, and the fact of such cancellation shall be noted upon the counterfoil. VI. Every member shall have one vote only. A member in giving his vote (_a_) Must place on his ballot paper the figure 1 in the square opposite the name of the candidate, for whom he votes; (_b_) May in addition place on his ballot paper the figure 2, or the figures 2 and 3, or 2, 3 and 4, and so on, in the squares opposite the names of other candidates in the order of his preference. VII. A ballot paper shall be invalid (_a_) Upon which a member signs his name or writes any word, or makes any mark by which it becomes recognizable; or (_b_) Which does not bear the perforated mark; or (_c_) On which the figure 1 is not marked; or (_d_) On which the figure 1 is set opposite the name of more than one candidate; or (_e_) On which the figure 1 and some other figure is set opposite the name of the same candidate; or (_f_) Which is unmarked or void for uncertainty. VIII. In carrying out these rules the returning officer shall (_a_) Disregard all fractions; (_b_) Ignore all preferences recorded for candidates already elected or excluded from the poll. IX. The ballot papers shall be examined and the returning officer, after rejecting any invalid ballot papers, shall divide the remaining papers into parcels according to the first preferences recorded for each candidate. He shall then count the number of papers in each parcel. X. For the purpose of facilitating the processes prescribed by these regulations, each valid ballot paper shall be deemed to be of the value of one hundred.[2] XI. The returning officer shall then add together the values of the papers in all the parcels and divide the total by a number exceeding by one the number of vacancies to be filled, and the result increased by one shall be the number sufficient to secure the return of a candidate, herein called the "quota." XII. If at any time under these regulations a number of candidates equal to the number of persons to be elected has obtained the quota, such candidates shall be treated as elected and no further steps shall be taken. XIII. (1) Any candidate the value of whose parcel, on the first preferences being counted, is equal to or greater than the quota, shall be declared elected. (2) If the value of the papers in any such parcel is equal to the quota, the papers shall be set aside as finally dealt with. (3) If the value of the papers in any such parcel is greater than the quota, the surplus shall be transferred to the continuing candidates indicated on the ballot papers as next in the order of the voters' preference, in the manner prescribed in the following regulation. XIV. (1) If and whenever as the result of any operation prescribed by these regulations a candidate has a surplus, that surplus shall be transferred in accordance with the provisions of this regulation. (2) If more than one candidate has a surplus the largest surplus shall be dealt with first and the others in order of magnitude; provided that every surplus arising on the first count of votes shall be dealt with before those arising on the second count, and so on. (3) Where two or more surpluses are equal the returning officer shall decide according to the terms of regulation XIX., which shall first be dealt with. (4) _(a)_ If the surplus of any candidate to be transferred arises from original votes only, the returning officer shall examine all the papers in the parcel belonging to the candidate whose surplus is to be transferred, and divide the unexhausted papers into sub-parcels according to the next preferences recorded thereon. He shall also make a separate sub-parcel of the exhausted papers. (_b_) He shall ascertain the value of the papers in each sub-parcel and of all the unexhausted papers. (_c_) If the value of the unexhausted papers is equal to or less than the surplus, he shall transfer all the unexhausted papers at the value at which they were received by the candidate whose surplus is being transferred. (_d_) If the value of the unexhausted papers is greater than the surplus, he shall transfer the sub-parcels of unexhausted papers, and the value at which each paper shall be transferred shall be ascertained by dividing the surplus by the total number of unexhausted papers. (5) If the surplus of any candidate to be transferred arises from transferred as well as original votes, the returning officer shall re-examine all the papers in the sub-parcel last transferred to the candidate and divide the unexhausted papers into sub-parcels according to the next preferences recorded thereon. He shall thereupon deal with the sub-parcels in the same manner as is provided in the case of the sub-parcels referred to in the last preceding subsection. (6) The papers transferred to each candidate shall be added in the form of a sub-parcel to the papers already belonging to such candidate. (7) All papers in the parcel or sub-parcels of an elected candidate not transferred under this regulation shall be set aside as finally dealt with. XV. (1) If after all surpluses have been transferred, as hereinbefore directed, less than the number of candidates required has been elected, the returning officer shall exclude from the poll the candidate lowest on the poll, and shall distribute his unexhausted papers among the continuing candidates according to the next preferences recorded thereon. Any exhausted papers shall be set aside as finally dealt with. (2) The papers containing original votes of an excluded candidate shall first be transferred, the transfer value of each paper being one hundred. (3) The papers containing transferred votes of an excluded candidate shall then be transferred in the order of the transfers in which, and at the value of which, he obtained them. (4) Each of such transfers shall be deemed to be a separate transfer. (5) The process directed by this regulation shall be repeated on the successive exclusions one after another of the candidates lowest on the poll, until the last vacancy is filled either by the election of a candidate with the quota, or as hereinafter provided. XVI. If as the result of a transfer of papers under these regulations the value of the votes obtained by a candidate is equal to or greater than the quota, the transfer then proceeding shall be completed, but no further papers shall be transferred to him. XVII. (1) If after the completion of any transfer under these regulations the value of the votes of any candidate shall be equal to or greater than the quota, he shall be declared elected. (2) If the value of the votes of any such candidate shall be equal to the quota, the whole of the papers on which such votes are recorded shall be set aside as finally dealt with. (3) If the value of the votes of any such candidate shall be greater than the quota, his surplus shall thereupon be distributed in the manner hereinbefore provided, before the exclusion of any other candidate. XVIII. (1) When the number of continuing candidates is reduced to the number of vacancies remaining unfilled, the continuing candidates shall be declared elected. (2) When only one vacancy remains unfilled and the value of the votes of some one continuing candidate exceeds the total value of all the votes of the other continuing candidates, together with any surplus not transferred, that candidate shall be declared elected. (3) When only one vacancy remains unfilled and there are only two continuing candidates, and those two candidates have each the same value of votes and no surplus remains capable of transfer, one candidate shall be declared excluded under the next succeeding regulation, and the other declared elected. XIX. If when there is more than one surplus to distribute, two or more surpluses are equal, or if at any time it become necessary to exclude a candidate and two or more candidates have the same value of votes and are lowest on the poll, regard shall be had to the original votes of each candidate, and the candidate for whom fewest original votes are recorded shall have his surplus first distributed or shall be first excluded as the case may be. If the values of their original votes are equal the returning officer shall decide by lot which candidate shall have his surplus distributed or be excluded. ANNEXURE A FORM OF FRONT OF BALLOT PAPER ___________________________________ | | _Counterfoil_ | Order of | Names of Candidates. _No._........ |Preference | | | _________________ |___________|________ | | | | JOHN BROWN | | | | Address............................ _The counterfoil_ |___________|______________ _must show_ | | _the number_ | | JAMES THOMSON _corresponding to_| | _that on the back_| | Address............................ _of the ballot_ |___________|______________ _paper. _ | | | | ALFRED JAMES | | | | Address............................ |___________|_____________ | | | | HENRY JONES | | | | Address............................ |___________|______________ | | | | ISAAC LEVY | | | | Address............................ |___________|______________ | | | | PAUL MAYNARD | | | | Address............................ |___________|_______________ | | | | JOHANNES OOSTHUIZEN | | | | Address............................ |___________|______________ | | | | HERBERT PAIN | | | | Address............................ |___________|_______________ | | | | GEORGE ROBINSON | | | | Address............................ |___________|_______________ | | | | JACOBUS SMIT | | | | Address............................ |___________|_______________ | | | | PETRUS VAN DER SPUY | | | | Address............................ |___________|______________ _Instructions to Members_ [_Printed below the List of Candidates on the Ballot Paper shown on opposite page_ A. Each member has one vote, and one vote only. B. The member votes-- (_a_) By placing the figure "1" opposite the name of the candidate he likes best. He is also invited to place (_b_) The figure "2" opposite the name of his second choice. (_c_) The figure "3" opposite the name of his third choice, and so on, numbering as many candidates as he pleases in order of his preference. The number of preferences is not necessarily restricted to the number of vacancies. _N.B._--The vote will be spoilt if the figure "1" is placed opposite the name of more than one candidate. [A number is printed on the back of the ballot paper corresponding with that on the counterfoil.] ANNEXURE C ILLUSTRATIVE ELECTION _Example of an Election conducted on the system of the single transferable vote in accordance with the preceding regulations_ _Reg. IX._ Assuming that there are eight members to be elected, sixteen candidates, and eighty-four electors. The valid ballot papers are arranged in separate parcels according to the first preference recorded for each candidate, and the papers in each parcel counted. Let it be assumed that the result is as follows:-- A 3 J 4 B 13 K 4 C 4 L 3 D 2 M 4 E 19 N 4 F 5 O 3 G 5 P 2 H 3 -- I 6 84 _Reg. X._ Each valid ballot paper is deemed to be of the value of one hundred, and the values of the votes obtained by the respective candidates are as shown in the first column of the result sheet. _Reg. XI._ The value of all the papers are added together and the total, 8400, is divided by nine (_i.e._ the number which exceeds by one the number of vacancies to be filled), and 934 (_i.e._ the quotient, 933, increased by one) is the number sufficient to secure the return of a member, and is called the quota. The operation may be shown thus:-- Quota = 8400/9 + 1 = 933 + 1 = 934. _Reg. XIII_. (1).] The candidates B and E, the values of whose votes exceed the quota, are declared elected. _Reg. XIII_. (3). _Transfer of surplus_.] As the values of the papers in the parcels of B and E exceed the quota, the surplus of each candidate must be transferred. B's surplus is 366 (_i.e._ 1300 less 934), and E's surplus is 966 (_i.e._ 1900 less 934). _Reg. XIV_. (2).] The largest surplus, that of E, is dealt with first. _Reg. XIV_. (4)(_a_).] The surplus arises from original votes, and therefore the whole of E's papers are divided into sub-parcels according to the next preferences recorded thereon, a separate parcel of the exhausted papers being also made. Let it be assumed that the result is as follows: G is marked as next available preference on 10 papers. H " " 5 " L " " 3 " -- Total of unexhausted papers 18 No. of exhausted papers 1 -- Total of papers 19 _Reg. XIV_. (4)(_b_).] The values of the papers in the sub-parcels are as follows:-- G 1,000 H 500 L 300 ----- Total value of unexhausted papers 1,800 Value of exhausted papers 100 ----- Total value 1,900 _Reg. XIV_. (4)(_d_).] The value of the unexhausted papers is 1800, and is greater than the surplus. This surplus is therefore transferred as follows:--All the papers unexhausted are transferred, but at a reduced value, which is ascertained by dividing the surplus by the number of unexhausted papers. The reduced value of all the unexhausted papers, when added together, with the addition of any value lost as the result of the neglect of fractions, equals the surplus. In this case the new value of each paper transferred is 966 (the surplus)/ 18 (the number of unexhausted papers) = 53, the residue of the value, 47, being required by E for the purpose of constituting his quota. The values of the sub-parcels transferred are:-- G = 530 (_i.e._ 10 papers at the value of 53) H = 265 (_i.e._ 5 " " ) L = 159 (_i.e._ 3 " " ) These operations can be shown on a transfer sheet as follows: TRANSFER SHEET Value of surplus (E's) to be transferred 966 No. of papers in E's parcel 19 Value of each paper in parcel 100 No. of unexhausted papers 18 Value of unexhausted papers 1,800 New value of each paper transferred = Surplus 966 / No. of unexhausted papers 18 = 53 Names of Candidates marked as the No. of Papers Value of Sub-parcel next available Preference. to be to be Transferred Transferred G 10 530 H 5 265 L 3 159 Totals 18 954 No. of exhausted papers 1 --- Loss of value owing to neglect of fractions -- 12 Totals 19 966 The values of the sub-parcels are added to the values of the votes already credited to the candidates G, H, L. This operation is shown on the result sheet. As a result of this operation G's total is brought above the quota, and he is declared elected. _Reg. XIV_. (2).] The next largest surplus, that of B, viz. 366, is then transferred, the operations being similar to those described in the transfer of E's surplus. Assume that there are no unexhausted papers. The new value is therefore 366 / 13 or 28. The surplus is distributed according to next preferences, as follows: A = (7 x 28) = 196 C = (6 x 28) = 168 Value lost owing to neglect of fractions 2 ---- Total ... 366 _Reg XIV. (5)._ G's surplus has now to be transferred, only the sub-parcel last transferred being re-examined. The details are as follows:-- Value of G's surplus 96 No. of papers in sub-parcel 10 Value of each paper therein 53 No. of unexhausted papers 10 Value of unexhausted papers 530 New value of each paper transferred = 96/10 = 9 The result of the distribution is shown on the result sheet, five papers of the value of nine each being transferred to A, and five of the same value to O. _Reg. XV. (1)._ There being no further surplus, the candidate lowest on the poll has now to be excluded. D and P both have 200. _Reg. XIX._ The returning officer casts lots, and P is chosen to be excluded. _Reg. XV. (1)._ Being original votes the two papers are transferred at the value of 100 each, as shown in the result sheet, 100 going to L and 100 to N. D, now being lowest, is then excluded in the same way, 100 going to H and 100 to J, all transfers being made to the next preference as marked by the elector. O now being lowest with 345, is next excluded. _Reg. XV. (2)._ 300 being the value of original votes, the three corresponding papers are transferred at the value of 100 each to K. _Reg. XV. (3)._ 45 being the value of transferred votes, the five corresponding papers are transferred at the value of 9 each to N. M is then excluded; his papers represent original votes and are transferred to F. J is then excluded; of the 500 credited to him, 400 come from original and 100 from transferred papers, but the value of the latter being 100, all five papers are transferred at that value, 300 going to I and 200 to H. A is then excluded, the value of his votes being as follows:-- Original 300 Transferred 196 " 45 The 300 original go to L. The 196 transferred representing 7 papers of the value of 28 each, and the 45 representing 5 papers of the value of 9 each, all go to N. C is then excluded, the value of his votes being as follows:-- Original 400 Transferred 168 The original go 300 to K and 100 to I, and the transferred go 84 to L and 84 to H. H, I, K, and L now exceed the quota, and are declared elected. Seven seats are now filled. _Reg. XIX._ I and K now both have a surplus of 66, which surpluses have to be transferred. I having had 600 from original votes, and K 400, K's surplus is first distributed. _Reg. XIV. (5)._ The last sub-parcel of the value of 300 is dealt with, and the whole surplus 66 goes to F, he being the next preference on all three papers. F then has the quota and is declared elected. The election is now completed, the full details being shown on the accompanying result sheet. RESULT SHEET Number of Votes 84 Number of Members to Elect 8 8,400 Value of Votes 8,400 Quota ----- + 1 = 934 9 Column headings: 1: Names of Candidates 2: Value of Votes at 1st Count. 3: Distribution of E's Surplus. 4: Result. 5: Distribution of B's Surplus. 6: Result. 7: Distribution of G's Surplus. 8: Result. 9: Distribution of P's and D's Votes. 10: Result. 11: Distribution of O's and M's Votes. 12: Result. 13: Distribution of J's and A's Votes. 14: Result. 15: Distribution of C's Votes. 16: Result. 17: Distribution of K's Surplus. 18: Result. (E: Elected, NE: Not elected) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 A 300 300+196=496+45=451 541 541-541 -- -- -- B 1,300 1,300-366=934 934 934 934 934 934 934 E C 400 400+168=568 568 568 568 568-568 -- -- D 200 200 200 200-200 -- -- -- -- -- E 1,900-966=934 934 934 934 934 934 934 934 E F 500 500 500 500 500+400=900 900 900+66=966 E G 500+530=1,030 1,030-96=934 934 934 934 934 934 E H 300+265= 565 565 565+100=665 665+200=865 +84= 949 949 E I 600 600 600 600 600 600+300=900+100=1,000 1,000 E J 400 400 400 400+100=500 500-500 -- -- - K 400 400 400 400 400+300=700 700+300=1,000-66=934 E L 300+159= 459 459 459+100=559 -- 559+300=859 +84= 943 934 E M 400 400 400 400 400 400-400 -- -- -- N 400 400 400 400+100=500 +45=545+241=786 786 786NE O 300 300 300+45=345 345-345 -- -- -- -- P 200 200 200 200-200 -- -- -- -- -- Value of exhausted papers Loss of value owing to neglect of fractions +12 = 12 +2= 14 +6= 20 -- 20 - 20 -- 20 -- 20 -- 20 Totals 8,400 8,400 8,400 8,400 8,400 8,400 8,400 8,400 8,400 [Footnote 1: The fact that a voter has not marked every preference correctly does not invalidate the whole of his preferences. His paper is only treated as exhausted when the wrongly marked preference is reached. The following are examples:-- { A 1 { A 1 { B 2 { B 2 (1) { C 3 (2) { C 3 { D 3 { D 5 { E 4 { E 6 { F - In case (1) the preferences for A and B would be valid. If the third preference were reached the paper would be treated as exhausted, as it would be impossible to say for which candidate the voter really intended to give his third preference. In case (2) the preferences for A, B and C would be valid, but not the later ones, whether D had been elected or excluded or was still a continuing candidate. It is possible that the voter meant to give a fourth preference for some other candidate, _e.g._ F, but omitted to do so. It would not be possible to treat 5 as being meant to be 4.] [Footnote 2: In small elections certain difficulties arise which are not present in the case of large elections. (_a_) The quota becomes too large if calculated in the ordinary way. Assume that 27 electors are to elect 8 candidates. Then the quota is 27/(8+1) + 1 = 4. But 8 x 4 = 32. There are not enough quotas to go round and difficulties would arise. The addition of 1 in the case of so small a number makes the quota disproportionately big. For this reason it is advisable to treat each paper as of the value of one hundred. In the case of the Transvaal the quota instead of being 84/(8+1) + 1 = 10 will be 8400/(8+1) + 1 = 934. (_b_) The disregard of fractions in the case of small numbers may mean the waste of several votes. Take the following example:-- Seat to be filled, 8 Electors 25 Quota = 25/(8+1) + 1 = 3 First Count A 10 B 3 C 3 D E 2 F 1 G 1 H 1 I 1 J 1 A having 10 has a surplus of 7, which has to be distributed. According to the usual rule A's 10 votes are examined and the surplus is distributed in proportion to the next preferences. The preferences are as follows:-- For B....... 5 " C....... 2 " F....... 1 " G....... 1 " H....... 1 Each of these numbers must be multiplied by 7/10, _i.e._ the surplus over the number of unexhausted votes, and the following votes are transferred:-- To B.......3-1/2 " C.......1-2/5 " F.......7/10 " G.......7/10 " H.......7/10 The fractions which are ignored amount to 3 votes, which are consequently wasted. This difficulty is overcome by increasing the value of the papers to one hundred, or in other words by working out the results to two places of decimals. (c) In a small election at the several stages there may be two or more candidates at the bottom with an equal number of votes. Resort has to be had to lot to decide which is to be eliminated. If the papers are raised to the value of one hundred this difficulty is much less likely to occur after the first count.] APPENDIX X LIST SYSTEM: BILL PRESENTED TO THE FRENCH CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, 1907 The _Commission du Suffrage Universel_, a committee of the Chamber of Deputies, made a careful comparison of the various Bills which had been submitted to the Chamber for the purpose of securing the proportional representation of the electors. The Commission in their report,[1] which was issued in March 1907, recommended the adoption of the Bill, of which a free translation is given below. The essential features of this measure, which has received the support of the leading advocates of proportional representation, are: (1) The allotment of seats to lists in accordance with the d'Hondt, or Belgian rule (Art. 8); (2) the use of the cumulative vote in determining the relative position of candidates (Art. 6). The elector is given as many votes as there are members to be elected, which he may cumulate upon any one or distribute among several candidates. The elector is not restricted in his choice of candidates to any one list. _Text of the Bill_ (1) Members of the Chamber of Deputies shall be elected on the list system (_scrutin de liste_) in accordance with the scheme of proportional representation hereinafter stated. There shall be no second ballot. (2) Each department shall elect one deputy for every 75,000 inhabitants. A remainder of 25,000, or more, inhabitants shall be reckoned as 75,000. (3) A department shall form a single constituency, provided that where a department would elect more than ten deputies, it shall be divided into two or more constituencies, as determined by law hereafter. (4) A "list" is constituted by a group of candidates who (after making the declaration prescribed by Article 2 of the Law of 17 July 1889) jointly appeal for the support of the electors. A list shall not include a larger number of names than there are deputies to be elected in the constituency, but it may contain a smaller number. An independent candidate shall be reckoned as a distinct list. (5) Each list shall be delivered at the prefecture at any time after the commencement of the electoral period, and at the latest ten clear days before polling day. It shall be registered and numbered at the prefecture, and a receipt for it shall be given to each candidate. The name of a candidate shall not be registered unless he has signed the list. A list with more candidates than there are deputies to be elected shall not be accepted for registration. A candidate whose name appears on one list shall not be entered on another unless he has notified the prefecture by writing under his hand, duly attested, that he retires from the former list, in which case his name shall be at once removed from the former list. Twenty-four hours before the opening of the poll the prefect shall cause each registered list with the number thereto given to be posted on the doors of the polling station. (6) An elector has as many votes as there are deputies to be elected in his constituency. He may give all or any of his votes to the same candidate. The reports of the local returning officer at each polling station shall state the number of votes obtained by each candidate. (7) A Central Board (_Commission de recensement_) shall collect the reports of the local returning officers, and ascertain the electoral total of each list, and allot the seats among the lists in proportion thereto. The electoral total of a list is the sum of the votes given to the candidates whose names appear thereon. (8) For the purpose of allotting the seats, each electoral total shall be divided by the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on up to the number of vacancies, and as many of the resulting quotients as there are vacancies shall be arranged in order of size, beginning with the largest. The smallest of these quotients so arranged, corresponding to the last seat to be filled, shall be used as the common divisor, and to every list shall be allotted a number of deputies equal to the number of times which its electoral total contains the common divisor. (9) Within each list the seats shall be assigned to the candidates who have the largest numbers of votes; in case of an equality of votes, the eldest candidate shall be elected. (10) If two or more lists have an equal right to a seat, it shall be allotted as between the competing candidates to that one who has received the greater number of votes, and if those votes are equal the eldest candidate shall be elected. (11) The unelected candidates of each list with the greatest number of votes shall be classed as first, second, and third substitutes (suppléants), and so on. If any vacancy shall occur by death, resignation, or otherwise, the substitutes shall be summoned in their classified order to fill the places of the elected members of the list to which they are attached, provided that at the time of summons they are in the enjoyment of their political rights. (12) If more than six months before the end of a Parliament, the representation of a constituency is diminished by one-fourth and there is no substitute who can be declared elected, bye-elections to fill the vacant seats shall be held in that constituency. (13) The present law shall extend to Algeria. Nothing in this law shall affect the representation of the Colonies. NOTE.--Since the introduction of this Bill several other proposals have been considered by the _Commission du Suffrage Universel._ The draft Bill proposed in the last report (March 1911) is not based so strictly upon proportional principles as the measure given above. The points of difference may be summarised as follows:-- (_a_) The use of the cumulative vote is retained (Art. 6), but there is a change in the method of allotting seats to various lists (Art. 8). The new method of allotment is as follows: an "electoral quotient" is found by dividing the number of voters by the number of vacancies, and as many seats are allotted to each list as the number of voters supporting a list contains this quotient. Since each voter has as many votes as there are seats to be filled, the number of voters supporting a list is determined arbitrarily by dividing the total number of votes cast for the list by the number of vacancies. If there are any seats not allotted by this distribution they are awarded to any list which obtains an absolute majority of the votes. Should no party obtain an absolute majority, the remaining seats are allotted to the various lists in accordance with the method described in the succeeding Appendix. This method leads to the same distribution of seats as the d'Hondt rule. (b) The Bill recognises an important new principle in permitting _apparentement des listes_. Parties may unite for the purpose of presenting lists in combination, and the lists so presented are treated for the purpose of the allotment of seats as if they emanated from one party. This is an elastic form of the Belgian "cartel," allowing parties to act together without loss of individuality. The seats won by any such cartel are allotted to the various lists composing the cartel in accordance with the second of the methods described in the previous paragraph. [Footnote 1: _Chambre des Deputés, Neuvième Legislature:_ 1907, No. 883. See note as to further report, March 1911, at end of Bill.] APPENDIX XI LIST SYSTEM: LAW ADOPTED BY THE CANTON OF BÂLE TOWN, 1905 The special features of the following law are as follows:-- (1) The partial use of the cumulative vote in determining the relative position of candidates (sec. 9). (2) The allotment of seats to lists in accordance with the rule formulated by Professor Hagenbach-Bischoff (sec. 13). The provisions for bye-elections are contained in sections 17 to 20. (1) The elector is supplied three days before the election with copies of the various party lists; he is given as many votes as there are members to be elected; he may strike out any names and insert others in any of the lists supplied to him, or compose his own list; he may repeat the name of the same candidate three times, but no more; but in no case may the total number of names exceed the number of members to be elected. (2) The Hagenbach-Bischoff rule, like the d'Hondt rule, aims at finding an electoral quotient which will allow all the seats to be allotted to the different parties without remainder. In the former rule this is found by trial. The following example explains its mechanism:-- Suppose, in an election for sixteen seats, five lists have obtained votes as follows:-- List. Votes. A 5,537 B 9,507 C 3,885 D 4,769 E 377 ------- Total 24,075 The first quota is ascertained as prescribed in section 11. The number of votes is divided by one more than the number of vacancies, and the result is increased by one, thus:-- 24075/(16+1) + 1 = 1417 It will be observed that this quota is identical with the Droop quota of the single transferable vote system. The totals obtained by each list are divided by this quota, as many representatives being allotted to each list as the list contains the quota. Remainders are ignored. Lists. Votes. Quota. Representatives. A 5,537 ÷ 1,417 3 B 9,507 ÷ 1,417 6 C 3,885 ÷ 1,417 2 D 4,769 ÷ 1,417 3 E 377 ÷ 1,417 0 -- Total 14 Only fourteen out of sixteen seats have been allotted in this operation. It is obvious that the quota is too large, and a smaller quota is ascertained in the following way. The number of votes for each list is divided by one more than the number of members already assigned to such list, and the first seat still to be disposed of is allotted to that list which has the largest quotient. The following table shows the process:-- Lists. Votes. Quotient. Representatives. A 5,537 ÷ 4 1,384 4 B 9,507 ÷ 7 1,358 6 C 3,885 ÷ 3 1,295 2 D 4,769 ÷ 4 1,192 3 E 377 ÷ 1 377 0 -- Total 15 The largest quotient is 1384, and this figure, which is taken as the new quota, allows of the allotment of fifteen seats. There still remains one seat to be disposed of, and the process just described is again repeated, as shown in the following table:-- Lists. Votes. Quotient. Representatives. A 5,537 ÷ 5 1,107 4 B 9,507 ÷ 7 1,358 7 C 3,885 ÷ 3 1,295 2 D 4,769 ÷ 4 1,192 3 E 377 ÷ 1 377 0 -- 16 On this occasion all sixteen seats are allotted, the final quota being 1358. The results obtained by the Hagenbach-Bischoff method are identical with those obtained by the d'Hondt rule. The operations required in the preceding example for the allotment of seats by the latter rule are as follows:-- List totals divided by A B C D E 1 5,537 9,507 3,885 4,769 377 2 2,768 4,753 1,942 2,384 -- 3 1,845 3,169 1,295 1,589 -- 4 1,384 2,376 971 1,192 -- 5 1,107 1,901 -- -- -- 6 -- 1,684 -- -- -- 7 -- 1,358 -- -- -- The sixteen highest quotients arranged in order of magnitude are:-- 9,507 (List B) 2,376 (List B) 5,537 (List A) 1,942 (List C) 4,769 (List D) 1,901 (List B) 4,753 (List B) 1,845 (List A) 3,885 (List C) 1,589 (List D) 3,169 (List B) 1,584 (List B) 2,768 (List A) 1,384 (List A) 2,384 (List D) 1,358 (List B) The lowest of these sixteen figures, viz. 1358, is the electoral quotient, and agrees with the final quota furnished by the Hagenbach-Bischoff rule. _Law for Elections to the Grand Council, on the principle of Proportional Representation, 26 January 1905_ 1. Nomination papers for the various electoral districts must be handed in to the police department not later than three weeks before the day fixed for the re-election of the Grand Council. They may contain the names of one or more persons eligible for election, provided that the total number of names in any nomination paper is not greater than the number of members which the electoral district in question is entitled to elect; any name may appear more than once, but not more than three times. 2. Nomination papers for town districts must be signed by at least ten qualified electors; those for country districts by at least three. An elector may sign one, and only one, nomination paper, on each occasion, in each electoral district. When handing in the nomination paper the signatories thereto must designate one of their number to attend to any necessary formalities with the police department in connexion therewith. 3. The police department shall at once communicate with the candidates nominated, and call upon them to declare within two days whether they accept the candidature or not. If the person nominated declines to stand for election his nomination shall be cancelled. 4. No candidate may appear on more than one nomination paper. If therefore any candidate be nominated in different electoral districts, or on several nomination papers in the same district, the police department shall, in informing him of the nominations, call upon him to declare, within two days, under which nomination he wishes to stand, and on receipt of his declaration shall strike his name off the other nomination papers. If the candidate makes no declaration within the time fixed, the police department shall decide by lot under which nomination he shall stand. 5. The police department shall inform the representatives of the nominators of the cancellings due to the refusal of the nominees to accept nomination, or to the latter having been nominated more than once, and shall allow the former a period of two days in which to make further nominations. To these further nominations the declaration in writing of the person nominated, accepting the candidature, must be attached. If this declaration is not attached, or if the proposed candidate already appears on another nomination, the supplementary nomination shall be rejected. 6. The final (definitive) nomination papers thus obtained shall be called lists, and no further alterations may be made in them. The lists shall each be printed on a separate sheet with the names of the candidates in the order in which they appear on the nomination papers. The lists shall also be provided with a number (in rotation) for each electoral district, and if the proposers have given them any titles these shall likewise be printed. If more than one list have the same title the police department shall require the representatives of the nominators to make some distinction between them. If this is not done within two days, these lists shall be distinguished by further special numbers (in rotation). The different lists shall be printed on paper of the same size and the same colour. 7. At least three days before the election these lists shall be delivered to each elector in an envelope, which shall at the same time serve as a voucher of the elector's right to vote. In addition to the printed lists, each voter shall receive a blank list containing no names, but as many numbered lines as there are members to be elected (free lists). The voucher shall take the place of the present admittance card. 8. Electors must present themselves in person at the polling booth and deliver the voucher to the polling officers. The latter shall retain the voucher, and in return give the elector an official stamp. 9. Each elector shall have as many votes as there are members of the Grand Council to be elected in his district, and shall for that purpose choose _one_ of the lists supplied to him. If he makes use of a printed list he may strike out any names and insert any others. Every vote is valid where the name of an eligible candidate is clearly given, and the only restrictions are that the same name may not appear more than three times, and that the total number of names may not exceed the number of members to be elected. The voter may make the alterations he desires in the printed list selected by him, or fill in the free list either at the polling booth or before reaching it. The voter shall affix the official stamp supplied to him to the list he has selected, and place the latter in the ballot box. 10. At the close of the poll the presiding officer shall open the ballot box and compare the number of voting papers therein with the number of vouchers received and the number of official stamps issued. Only the official voting papers with stamps attached shall be valid. 11. The polling officers shall then examine the valid voting papers and ascertain by entering the votes on counting sheets how many votes each name has received. If a voting paper contain more names than there are Councillors to be elected for the electoral district, then the votes in excess at the bottom of the list shall not be counted. If a voting paper contain fewer names than there are Councillors to be elected in the district, then the number of votes not used shall be ascertained and shall be added (as list votes) to the list chosen by the elector, provided the latter has made use of a printed list. The number of votes for each list shall then be ascertained by adding together the list votes and the vote given for individual candidates on the list. If eligible persons not standing on any list receive votes, each of these names shall be treated as a separate list. 12. If no nominations have been handed in, those persons shall be elected who receive most votes. In the event of equality of votes, the returning officer shall at once decide the matter by casting lots. 13. If one or more lists have been nominated, the vacancies on the Grand Council shall be divided among the several lists in proportion to the number of votes each list has received. The procedure shall be as follows:-- The total number of the valid votes shall be divided by the number of vacancies increased by one. The quotient thus obtained increased by one (but disregarding fractions) shall be called the quota. To each list there shall be allotted as many members as the number of times the quota is contained in the votes it receives. If the total number of members thus obtained is less than the number to be elected, the votes for each list shall be divided by one more than the number of members already assigned to such list, and the first seat still to be disposed of shall be allotted to that list which has the largest quotient. The same procedure shall be repeated as long as any seats remain to be disposed of. If two or more lists have the same claim to the last seat to be disposed of (equality of quotient), that list shall always take precedence in which the candidate who would be selected under the provisions of Clause 14 has received the largest number of votes. In case of equality of votes the returning officer (_Wahl-bureau_) shall immediately decide the question by casting lots. 14. From each list those candidates (to the number allotted to the list) shall be selected who have received the largest number of votes. Equality of votes is decided by lot, to be drawn immediately by the returning officer. 15. If to one or several lists are allotted more seats than there are names contained, all their candidates shall in the first place stand elected. The surplus seats shall be divided among the remaining lists by continuance of the procedure prescribed in Clause 13. 16. After ascertaining the result of the election, the electoral office shall draw up a report stating the number of the voting vouchers received, of the official stamps issued, and of the voting papers handed in, the number of the votes received for each name and for each list, arranged according to the lists, particulars of the allotment of seats and the names of the elected members. Mention shall also be made of any irregularities which have occurred. These reports shall be signed by all the electoral officers, and shall then be forwarded, together with the voting vouchers received, the unused official stamps, the voting papers and the unissued papers, to the Government Council. The result of the election shall be affixed conspicuously outside the Chief Polling Booth. The Polling Officers shall notify each elected candidate of his election in writing. 17. An elected candidate who did not appear on any of the nominations put in may refuse to accept his election within one week by giving written notice to the Government Council. The Government Council shall then immediately order a bye-election. 18. Those elected candidates whose election is rendered void owing to their simultaneously having been elected as members of the Government Council shall be immediately replaced by the Government Council by the non-elected candidates on the same list who have received most votes. If there are none, the vacant seats on the Great Council shall immediately be filled by supplementary elections, which shall also serve to fill any seats, if any rendered vacant under Clause 17. 19. Members retiring from the Great Council during their period of office shall be replaced immediately by the Government Council by the non-elected candidates on the same list who have received most votes. If there are none, supplementary elections shall take place in the first half of the next following month of May. 20. The same regulations shall serve for supplementary elections as for general elections. 21. The provisions of this law shall come into operation for the first time in the general election for the Grand Council which takes place in the year 1905. The provisions of earlier laws and resolutions of the Grand Council referring to elections to the Grand Council are hereby repealed, in so far as they are contrary to this law. INDEX (The letter _f_ after a number signifies 'and page following.' The letter _n_ signifies "note.") Accuracy of proportional systems, Acton, Lord, Acts-- Education (1867), Port of London (1908), Queensland Electoral (1905), Redistribution (1885), South Africa (1909), Tasmanian Electoral (1896), Tasmanian Electoral (1907), Transvaal Municipal (1909), Advantages of proportional representation, Advantages of single transferable vote. _See_ Single transferable vote Aldermen, election of, Allotment of seats to parties, Alternative vote, Andrae, M., Anson, Sir William R., Bart., Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., Australia, Austria, Avebury, Rt. Hon. Lord, Bâle, Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., Ballot papers, copies of, Ballots, second, Battersea Borough Council, Bavaria, Beale, Mr. W. Phipson, Belgian, or d'Hondt system, Belgium, Bernstein, Dr. Ed., Bills-- Alternative Vote (1908, 1910), Electoral Reform (1867), Electoral Reform (1884), Electoral Reform (France), Irish Council (1907), Municipal Representation Parliamentary Representation (1854), Plural Voting (1907), Redistribution (1905), Reform (1832), Representation of the People (1867), Birmingham, Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine, Blind, Karl, Block vote, Borough Councils, Boundaries, importance of, Bribery, Bright, John, Brown, Prof. Jethro, Brussels, Burke, Edmund, Bye-elections, Cairns, Lord, Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, Canada, Cape Colony Legislative Council, Carlskrona election, Cartel, _Case de tête_, Cecil, Lord Hugh, Cecil, Lord Robert, Chance, effect of, Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S., Clark, Justice, Commons, Prof. J. R., _Commission du Suffrage Universel_, Constituencies, size of, Constitutional reform, Corbett, Mr. J. Rooke, Cost of elections, Courtney of Penwith, Rt. Hon. Lord, Criticisms of single transferable vote, Cross voting, Cumulative vote, d'Alviella, Count Goblet, Deakin, Mr. Alfred, Defects of majority systems, Denmark, d'Hondt system, Dicey, Prof. A. V., Dilke, Sir Charles, Dobbs, Mr. Archibald E., Droop, H. R., Edinburgh, Education Act (1867), "Effective voting," Elections, General, _See also_ Statistics Elections, procedure at, Elector, freedom of, Elector's task, _See also_ Voting Electoral Reform Bill (1884), Electoral Reform Bill (1867), Electoral systems, Royal Commission on. _See_ Royal Commission Elimination of lowest candidate, Executive under proportional representation, Faddists, Fairness of proportional systems, Federal Home Rule, Finland, France, Franchise, Freedom of elector, French Electoral Reform Bill, Geneva, Germany, Gerrymander, Ghent, Gladstone, W. E., Glasgow, Gove method, Gregory method, Grey, Earl, Group formation, Group representation, Gulland, Mr. J. W., Guyot, M. Yves, Hagenbach-Bischoff, Prof., Hare, Thomas, Hare-Clark method, Hayashida, Mr. Kametaro, Holland, Home Rule, House of Commons, House of Commons committees, House of Lords, House of Lords, Select Committee on its Reform, House of Lords, Select Committee on Municipal Representation Bill, Illinois, Imperial Parliament, Independents, the fate of, India, Ireland, Irish Council Bill (1907), Italy, Japan, Jarrow, Jaurès, M. Jean, Jenks, Prof. E., Johannesburg, Labour Councils, Canadian, Labour Party, Lachapelle, M. Georges, Late preferences, effect of, Leeds, Limited vote, List systems, Localities, representation of, Lochee of Gowrie, Rt. Hon. Lord, London, London Borough Councils, London County Council, Lubbock, Sir John (Lord Avebury), Macdonald, Mr. J. Ramsay, Majorities, exaggeration of. _See also_ Statistics, Majorities, small, Majorities, under-representation of, Majority systems, Manchester, Marshall, J. Garth, Mill, John Stuart, Milner, Lord, Miners' Association, Northumberland, Minorities, disfranchisement of, Minorities, representation of, Model elections, Monk, Mr. F. D., 122, 247 Morley of Blackburn, Rt. Hon. Lord, Muir, Prof. Ramsay, Municipal elections, Municipal Representation Bill (1907), Nanson, Prof. E. J., Naville, Ernest, New Zealand, Nomination of public bodies, Northumberland Miners' Association, Objections to proportional representation, Orange Free State, Oregon, Organisation of elections, _Panachage_, Parliamentary Representation Bill (1854), Party exclusiveness, Party government, Party organisation, Peers, Scottish Representative, Plural Voting Bill (1907), Port of London Act (1908), Powell, Mr. Ellis T., Practicability of single transferable vote, Praed, Mackworth, Preferences, comparative efficiency of different, Present systems, defects of, Pretoria, Proportional Representation League (France), Proportional Representation Society, Provincial Councils, South Africa, Queensland Electoral Act (1906), Quota, the, Redistribution, Redistribution Act (1885), Redistribution Bill (1905), Referendum, Reform Bill (1832), Representation of the people (1867), Result sheet, Returning officer, duty of, Robertson, Mr. John M., Royal Commission on Electoral Systems, Russell, Lord John, Saxony, School Board elections, Scotland, Scottish Grand Committee, _Scrutin de liste_, Seats, allotment to parties, Second ballot, Selection of successful candidate in a list, Senates-- Australia, Canada, South Africa, Sheffield, Single transferable vote-- Advantages, _See also_ Advantages of proportional representation Application, Criticisms, Mechanism, Single vote, Smith, Rt. Hon. J. Parker, Social Democratic Party (Germany), Solothurn, South Africa, South Africa Act (1909), Spence, Catherine Helen, Spoilt ballot papers, Statistics of elections-- America, Australia, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, _Suppléants,_ Surplus votes, transfer of, Sweden, Switzerland, Systems, majority. _See_ Present systems Systems, proportional. _See_ Bâle, Belgium, Finland, France, Japan, Sweden, and Single transferable vote Tasmania, Tasmanian Electoral Act (1896), Tasmanian Electoral Act (1907), Three-cornered contests, Ticino, Toronto, Trades Unions, Transfer of surplus votes, Transfer sheet, Transvaal, Transvaal Municipal Act (1909), Two-party system, Ulster, United States, Vandervelde, M., Vivian, Mr. Henry, Voting, modes of, Wales, Wallas, Mr. Graham, Warwickshire, Whips in House of Commons, _See also_ Party organisation White, Mr. Dundas, Williams, Mr. Aneurin, Würtemberg, 
14459	----	PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION APPLIED TO PARTY GOVERNMENT A NEW ELECTORAL SYSTEM BY T.R. ASHWORTH (_President of the Victorian Division, Australian Free Trade and Liberal Association_) AND H.P.C. ASHWORTH (_Civil Engineer_) LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIM. PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1901 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I.--THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION 1 II.--THE SO-CALLED REPRESENTATIVE PRINCIPLE 22 III.--THE PRESENT POSITION or PARTY GOVERNMENT 47 IV.--THE REFORM: TRUE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION 97 V.--HOW THE EVILS OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM WILL BE REMEDIED 122 VI.--THE HARE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL DELEGATION 141 VII.--THE FREE LIST SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL DELEGATION 162 VIII.--PREFERENTIAL VOTING, THE BLOCK VOTE, THE LIMITED VOTE, &C. 172 IX.--ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE THE PRESENT SYSTEM 188 X.--APPLICATION OF THE REFORM TO AUSTRALIAN LEGISLATURES 194 XI.--THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 208 "Majority and minority, in and for themselves, are the first requisite of popular government, and not the development or representation of separate groups."--Bradford's "Lesson of Popular Government," vol. ii., page 179. PREFACE. The subject of electoral reform has been brought into prominence in Australia by a clause in the Commonwealth Bill which provides that the Federal Senate shall consist of six senators from each State, directly chosen by the people, voting as one electorate. The problem thus presented has been keenly discussed. On the one hand we have the advocates of the Block Vote asserting that the party in a majority is entitled to return all six senators; and on the other, a small band of ardent reformers pressing the claims of the Hare system, which would allow the people in each State to group themselves into six sections, each returning one senator. The claim that every section of the people is entitled to representation appears at first sight so just that it seems intolerable that a method should have been used all these years which excludes the minority in each electorate from any share of representation; and, of course, the injustice becomes more evident when the electorate returns several members. But in view of the adage that it is the excellence of old institutions which preserves them, it is surely a rash conclusion that the present method of election has no compensating merit. We believe there is such a merit--namely, that _the present method of election has developed the party system_. Once this truth is grasped, it is quite evident that the Hare system would be absolutely destructive to party government, since each electorate would be contested, not by two organized parties, but by several groups. For it is precisely this splitting into groups which is causing such anxiety among thoughtful observers as to the future of representative institutions; Mr. Lecky has attributed to it, in his "Democracy and Liberty," the decline in the parliamentary system which has accompanied the progress of democracy all over the world. The object of this book is to suggest a reform, which possesses the advantages of both methods and the disadvantages of neither; which will still ensure that each electorate is contested by the two main parties, but will allow its just share of representation to each; and which will, by discouraging the formation of minor groups, provide a remedy for the evil instead of aggravating it. T.R.A. H.P.C.A. 325 COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION APPLIED TO PARTY GOVERNMENT. CHAPTER I. THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION. Old establishments, like the British Constitution, said Edmund Burke, "are not often constructed after any theory; theories are rather drawn from them." In setting out on an endeavour to understand the principles underlying political representation, the saying expresses exactly the course which should be followed. The inquiry is the more necessary as, although representation more than anything else in the domain of government distinguishes the modern from the ancient world, the ideas which prevail as to the part it has played, is playing, and is destined to play on the world's stage are not merely hazy, but extremely inaccurate. The intimate connection of representation with the progress which has followed its introduction is so little recognized that the most advanced democracies are now willing to listen to any proposal to return to direct government. In spite of the fact that the nineteenth century has witnessed the triumph of the historical method in most fields of social inquiry, the dangers of _a priori_ speculation on political institutions are as much in evidence as when Burke wrote. If we would understand, then, the meaning of representative institutions, it is in the gradual development of the "mother of parliaments" that we must seek for the most reliable information. We must be careful, however, to leave out of sight those features of the growth of the British Constitution which are merely the expression of transitory social conditions, and to confine our attention to the landmarks which bear directly on the inquiry. The subject is best divided into two stages; the first characterized by the origin of representation; and the second by the division into parties, and the creation of cabinet government. +The First Stage of Representation.+--Rightly to understand the conditions which led to the introduction and development of the representative principle, we must look back to the period immediately following the signing of the Great Charter by the tyrant King John. The Charter reaffirmed the ancient principle that free Englishmen should not be taxed without their consent, and representation was the natural outcome of that provision. A brief glance at the social conditions of the time is necessary to understand why this was so. First, it must be remembered that the true political unit of ancient times was the city or local community. England at that time was a collection of local communities, having more or less a corporate life. Then, again, there were the three estates of the realm--the clergy, the lords, and the commons--who were accustomed to confer with the King on public affairs. The stage which marks the birth of representation was when these different estates and communities were asked to tax themselves to relieve the necessities of the King. It was obviously impossible that the consent of every freeman should be obtained, hence the duty had to be deputed to agents. Now, the idea of agency was not unknown in the ancient world, but that agents should have power to bind those for whom they acted was something entirely new. It was necessary, however, that they should have this power, and it suited the King's convenience that they should exercise it. Already, in the earliest writ of which we have knowledge, summoning each shire to send two good and discreet knights, it was provided that they should be chosen in the stead of each and all. This happened in 1254, and in the following year the clergy were also summoned for the same purpose of granting aid to the King. In the meantime the merchants and trade guilds in the cities were growing rich. The King cast longing eyes on their possessions, and wished to tax them. So we find that in 1264 Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, issued the celebrated writ summoning each of the cities and boroughs to send two of its more discreet and worthy citizens and burgesses. This is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the House of Commons, but it was really not until the fourteenth century that these several assemblies, each of which up till then taxed itself separately and legislated in its own sphere, coalesced into the present Houses. First the lower clergy fell out, and, with the knights, citizens, and burgesses, were merged into the House of Commons; and the higher prelates with the earls and barons formed the House of Lords. This, then, is the first stage of representation. What was the nature of this new force which had come into the world and was destined to so profoundly affect the whole course of human affairs? One result of immense importance is apparent at a glance. It solved a problem which had baffled the ancients--that of the nationalization of local communities on a free basis. But it is generally assumed that the only difficulty overcome was that of size; that the representative assembly is a mere substitute for the larger assembly of the whole nation. Starting with this assumption, it is claimed that the representative assembly should be a mirror of the people on a small scale, and the more faithfully it reflects their faults as well as their virtues, their ignorance as well as their intelligence, the more truly representative it is said to be. It is even asserted that with the modern facilities for taking a poll, representative government might be dispensed with and the people allowed to govern themselves. Democracy, we are assured, means that every man should exercise an equality of political power. Now, if this conception is correct, we should at once insist that every law should be submitted to a direct referendum of the people; that legislators should be mere agents for drawing up laws; and that the executive should be directly responsible to and elected by the people. But if representation is not a mere substitute for the direct action of the people this idea as to the true line of democratic progress falls to the ground. The whole question, therefore, hinges on what representation is and what are the principles underlying it. Looking back to the history of its introduction, we have seen that it was only in proportion as the deputies of the local communities were not regarded as delegates or agents that they became representatives. Professor E. Jenks has written an interesting article in the _Contemporary Review_ for December, 1898, in which he advances the theory that representation is a union of the ideas of agency, borrowed from the Roman law, and of vicarious liability from barbaric sources. As to the latter he points out that in Anglo-Saxon times the only way for the King to control the free local communities was to exact hostages till crimes were punished or fines paid. In England, where these ideas were combined, constitutional monarchy was firmly established; but in France, Germany, &c, in whose medieval parliaments the idea of agency prevailed, and where in consequence the parliamentary idea was weak, absolute monarchy held its ground. When Edward I. desired for purposes of his own to emphasize the unlimited liability of political representatives, and insisted that they should have "full and sufficient power to do what of common council shall be ordained," he probably never realized that a body having power to bind the shires and towns was a formidable institution, or that the trembling hostages would become in time haughty plenipotentiaries. But whatever may have been the social conditions which gave rise to the idea, it is certain that it was the power of binding those to whom they owed their selection which enabled the representatives to resist the encroachments of the monarchy on the liberties of the people. At first they were not legislators, but merely sought to uphold the ancient laws. They presented petitions to redress their grievances; but in time these petitions became demands; and they refused to grant the King's subsidies till the demands were complied with. It was, therefore, this first stage of representation which enabled the people to start that long struggle against the power of the King and nobles which has ended in complete self-government; nay, more, it was necessary that they should pass through this first stage before they could learn to govern themselves. Yet we have seen that if we apply the modern ideas on representation the start could never have been made. In what respects, then, did these early representative institutions differ from the modern conception as a reproduction of the people on a small scale? One obvious difference at once suggests itself. The representatives were not average members of the communities; they were the most influential; they were selected because of their special fitness for the work to be done; they were leaders of the people, not followers; they did not take inspiration from the people, but brought it to them; and having selected these men the people deferred to their judgment to act for them and protect their interests. Here, then, we arrive at the first principle involved in representation, which is leadership. But there is another and still more important difference between a representative assembly and a primary assembly of the people. It is this: that a representative cannot be a violent partisan of a small section of his constituents; he must be in general favour with all sections. Therefore a representative assembly is composed of moderate men, representing a compromise of the views of their individual supporters. Moreover, the representatives appeal to the people to sink their minor differences for the general welfare. This feature is very prominent in the early parliaments. The local communities were arrayed as a united people against the aggression of the monarchy. The principle which is here apparent is that of organization. In the first stage of English parliamentary history we may say at once that these two principles--organization and leadership--were most conspicuous. The people, sinking all minor differences, formed one united party; and recognised that their struggle against the party of prerogative depended on the ability, influence, and integrity of their deputies. +The Second Stage of Representation.+--There is no need to enter into that long struggle between the nation and the monarchy which followed. We pass on, then, to the time when the parliaments, having wrested a share of power, began to split up into parties. It was natural that when power became divided two parties should arise; one upholding the authority of the Parliament against the King; and the other favouring the divine right of Kings. The Puritans and Cavaliers in the troublous times of Charles I. were the earliest signs of this tendency. The Long Parliament, which met in 1640, was divided on these lines; the misdemeanors of the King brought on civil war; the parliamentary troops defeated the royal troops after a bloody struggle; and the King was brought to execution. The succeeding events were full of instruction. The Parliament attempted to govern the nation--or, rather, we should say the House of Commons did, for the House of Lords was abolished. But it proved quite unfit for the purpose. It was thoroughly disorganized, and rent by violent factions. The anarchy which ensued was ended by a military despot, Oliver Cromwell, who entered the House of Commons in 1653 with his soldiers. The Speaker was pulled from his chair; the members were driven from the House; and Cromwell was proclaimed dictator. It is strange, indeed, that the lesson which is to be drawn from this event, and which has been repeated in France time after time since the Revolution, has not yet been learned: the only escape from continued political anarchy is despotism. But the weakness of despotism is that it ends with the life of the despot. Cromwell's son was forced to abdicate, and the monarchy was restored. The same division of parties in the Parliament continued, and they began to take the names of Whigs and Tories. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the dissensions of these two factions again threatened to make government impossible. In administration the evil was felt most; the union of ministers of both parties was proving unworkable. So fickle did legislation become that no one could say one day what the House would do the next. It was at this crisis, and about the year 1693, that William III., who cared more for a strong administration than for political differences, created what is known as cabinet government, and, as Professor Gardiner says, "refounded the government of England on a new basis." Recognizing that power should not be separated from responsibility, he affirmed the principle that the ministers of state should be selected from the party which had a majority in the House of Commons. But the time was not yet ripe for the complete application of this principle. Early in the eighteenth century Sir Robert Walpole set the example of resigning when he no longer possessed the confidence of a majority of the House of Commons; but in the latter half of the century the great Earl of Chatham introduced again the practice of selecting ministers irrespective of party. Despite the fact that he was supported by the personal influence of George III., the attempt failed. A succession of weak ministries followed; and out of the confusion the modern division of Liberals and Conservatives emerged. Thus it was not until the beginning of the present century that the doctrines of the solidarity of the Cabinet and its complete dependence on a majority of the House of Commons were thoroughly developed in their present form. England, now grown into the United Kingdom, had at last, after six centuries of strife, won her national independence, and for one brief century has enjoyed a full measure of self-government. +Comparison of the Two Stages.+--How do the conditions presented by the nineteenth century differ from those of the fourteenth? And how is the problem of representation affected? We have seen that the great forces which animated the nation in the fourteenth century were organization and leadership. Have these forces ceased to operate? Assuredly not. In the fourteenth century we had a united people organized under its chosen leaders against the encroachments of the King and nobility on its national liberty. In the nineteenth century the people have won their political independence, but the struggle is now carried on between two great organized parties. The principle of leadership is still as strong as ever. The careers of Pitt, Peel, Palmerston, Beaconsfield, and Gladstone attest that fact. The one great difference, then, between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries is that instead of one party there are two. The problem of representation in the fourteenth century was to keep the people together in one united party, and to allow them to select their most popular leaders. Surely the problem is different in the nineteenth century. The requirements now are to organize the people into two great parties, and to allow each party separately to elect its most popular leaders. And yet we are still using the same method of election as our forefathers used six centuries ago. Although the conditions have entirely changed, we have not adapted the electoral machinery to the change. The system of single-membered electorates was rational in the fourteenth century, because there was only one party. Is it not on the face of it absurd to-day, when there are two parties? +The Meaning of Party Government.+--Why should there be two parties instead of one in order that the people should be able to govern themselves? To answer this question we must start at the beginning, and consider what is the problem of popular government. The best definition is that it is to promote the general welfare--to reconcile or average the real interests of all sections of the community. Now, if the people could all agree what is best in the interests of all, unity of action might certainly be obtained; but even then the problem would not be solved, for the people are not infallible. The greater part of the problem consists in finding out what is best in the interests of all, and no amount of mere abstract speculation can solve this part. So diverse and so complex are the interests to be reconciled, so interwoven and interdependent one with another, that the problem of securing a just balance is incapable of solution by anything short of omniscience. But in any case the people cannot be always got to agree to one course of action. Therefore the people cannot govern themselves as one united party. The only workable basis is, then, the rule of the majority, and the problem of popular government is how to ensure that the majority shall rule in the interests of all. Party government provides the best known means of solving this problem. The only way of finding out what is best for the whole people is by the incessant action and interaction of two great organized parties under their chosen leaders; each putting forth its energies to prove its fitness to hold the reins of government; each anxious to expose the defects of the other. This healthy emulation as to what is best for all, with the people to judge, is the real secret of free government. The two parties are virtually struggling as to which shall be king. Each is striving to gain the support of a majority of the people; and the grounds on which it appeals for support are that the measures it proposes are the best for the country, and that the men it puts forward are the best men for passing those measures into law and carrying on the administration of the country. This constant agitation, and this mutual competition to devise new measures, and to bring forward new men, prevent stagnation. Both sides of every leading public question of the day are presented in the rival party policies, and the people are invited to decide between them. The forces on which the parties rely to move the people are enthusiasm for measures and enthusiasm for men--party and personality, or, in other words, organization and leadership. It is in opposing these forces to counteract the selfish and anti-social passions that party government acquires its virtue. By appealing to their higher nature it induces the people to subordinate their class prejudices to the general welfare, and by setting before them definite moral ideals, and appealing to them by the force of personality, it raises the character of public opinion, and moulds individual and national character to an extent that is seldom appreciated. Here, then, is the key of human progress. Direct democracies may hold together so long as there are external enemies to induce the people to sink their differences in the common interest, or so long as there is a slave caste to do the menial work, as in the ancient democracies; but representative democracy offers the only hope of welding together a free people into a united whole. The unrestrained rule of the majority under direct democracy must degenerate into the tyranny of the majority. Instead of the equality of political power which it promises, the minority is deprived of all power. Representative democracy, on the other hand, deprives the people of the personal exercise of political power, in order to save them from the free play of their self-assertive passions, but still leaves to every man an equality of influence in deciding the direction of progress. Thus every man is induced to express his opinion as to the direction of progress; and the party policy is the resultant direction of progress of all the party electors, and therefore represents their organized opinion. Now, bear in mind that the true direction of progress is not known, and can only be found out by constant experiment directed by the most far-seeing and capable minds. It is the means of carrying on this experiment which party government provides. The party representing the organized opinion of the majority has, rightly, complete control of the direction of progress so long as it remains in a majority. But, although deliberation is the work of many, execution is the work of one. Hence the creation of a small committee of the party in power--the cabinet--associated with the leader of the party, who becomes for the time being the Prime Minister, the cabinet ministers being jointly responsible for the control of administration and the initiation of measures for the public good. But an organized minority is quite as essential to progress as an organized majority--not merely to oppose, but to criticise and expose the errors of the party in power, and to supplant it when it ceases to possess the confidence of the country. Hence progress under party government may be compared to a zigzag line, in which the changes in direction correspond to changes in ministry. By this mutual action and alternation of parties every vote cast has, in the long run, an equal influence in guiding progress. The only justification for majority rule sanctioned by free government is that when two parties differ as to what is best for the whole people the majority shall prevail, and party government tends to realize this condition. But direct government by the people offers no check whatever on the power of the majority, which is as absolute as that of the Czar of Russia. As Calhoun, the American statesman, writes in his "Disquisition on Government," "the principle by which constitutional governments are upheld, is _compromise_, that of absolute governments is _force_!" Now, the significance of party government as a guarantee of free government lies in this: that party policies represent a compromise of what every section composing each party supposes to be the interests of the whole people; and the parties are engaged in fighting out a compromise of the real interests of every section of the people. Lest it be thought that in this panegyric on party government we have been indulging in a wild flight into the region of speculative politics, we hasten to add that the ideal condition we have pictured has never been reached. The British Parliament has perhaps most nearly approached it, but already shows signs of retrogression. America and the Australian colonies are drifting further away from it. Already political philosophers are shaking their heads and predicting the failure of popular government. The cry everywhere is for a stronger executive. Party organization is breaking down; small factions actuated by self-interest hold the balance of power between the main parties, and render government unstable and capricious. The main parties themselves tend to degenerate into factions. Personality is declining--the demand is for followers, not leaders. Compromise is supplanted by log-rolling and lobbying. And, to crown all, the rumbling of class strife grows ominously louder. The danger is that these tendencies may be allowed to go too far before reform is attempted--that the confidence between classes may be destroyed. +Organization and Leadership.+--We have shown that the two great principles underlying representation are organization and leadership. Now, after all, there is nothing very profound in this conclusion. Is there a single department of concerted human action in which these same principles are not apparent? What would be thought of an army without discipline and without generals; or of a musical production in which every performer played his own tune? Even in the region of sport, can a cricket or a football team dispense with its captain and its places? And yet many people imagine that a disorganized collection of delegates of various sections can rule a nation? Such an assembly would be as much a mob as any primary assembly of the people, and would in no sense be a representative assembly. The fact is that the growing intensity of the evils which beset representative institutions throughout the civilized world to-day is due to imperfect expression of these two principles. Representative assemblies are not properly organized into two coherent parties, nor is each party allowed free play to select its most popular leaders. What is the remedy? +A Change in Electoral Machinery the Key to Reform.+--The great mistake made by all writers on electoral reform is that they have failed to recognize that the character of public opinion depends upon the way it is expressed. If the electoral machinery be adapted to give effect to those principles of organization and leadership which lie at the root of representation, then the character of public opinion will be improved. Representation, in fact, is not only a means of expressing public opinion, but also of guiding, informing, educating, and organizing it. Therefore, the method of election is an all-important factor. The first and greatest necessity is to counteract the tendency of the people to split up into factions. It may seem a startling conclusion that this is a mere matter of electoral machinery, but it is nevertheless quite true. It must be remembered that we are dealing with human beings and not with insentient figures. If the method of election allows representation to two sections only, the people will group themselves into two sections. But if it allows representation to a large number of sections, then the people will group themselves into as many sections as are allowed. Now, party government offers every hope of preventing two sections degenerating into factions, but with a number of sections there is absolutely none. Here, then, we see the one great merit of the present system of election, which explains why it has persisted so long, with all its faults. It is that it tends to confine representation to the two main parties, since each electorate is generally contested by them; but in so far as it does not completely effect that object and allows representation to independent factions it is defective. Moreover, the merit we have indicated is purchased at too high a price. It is these defects which are causing the degradation of representative institutions throughout the world to-day. It is obviously impossible to give a just share of representation to two parties and allow each party to elect its most popular leaders, in an electorate which returns only a single representative. Hence the first necessity for reform is to enlarge electorates, so that each may return several representatives. Now, the requirements for giving effect to the principles of organization and leadership in such an electorate are:-- 1. Proportional representation to the two main parties--Ministerial and Opposition, the majority and the minority. 2. The election by each party of its most popular candidates--_i.e._, those most in general favour with all sections of the party. This is the problem of representation as it presents itself to us. Leaving a detailed account of the means by which it is proposed to give effect to these great desiderata to a later chapter, let us indicate briefly where they strike at the root of the evils of the present system. +Enlarged Electorates.+--With enlarged electorates the minority will not be excluded. Each party will secure its just share of representation. When both parties are represented in each electorate the interests of the electorate will not be bargained for as the price of support. Members will cease to be mere local delegates. +Proportional Representation to the Two Main Parties.+--Representation must be absolutely confined to the two main parties, and each party must be allowed its just share. Every candidate should be required to nominate either as a Ministerialist or Oppositionist, and each party should be allotted a number of representatives proportional to the total amount of support received. If democracy means that every man's opinion, as expressed by his vote, is to have the same weight, it follows that the parties should be represented in the Legislature in the same proportion as among the people, otherwise it is ridiculous to talk of the rule of the majority. The present system sometimes results in minority rule and sometimes in minority extermination; it is difficult to say which alternative is the worse. +Election of its Most Popular Candidates by each Party.+--It would be little use to confine representation to the two main parties if the parties were allowed to split up into factions. The only way to prevent this is to provide such electoral machinery as will ensure the return of the candidates most in general favour with all sections, and will exclude the favourites of sections within the party. This distinction is vital. The general favourite is a representative; the favourite of a faction is a delegate. A representative is not only independent of any one section, but if he does favour a faction he will sink in general favour. He therefore represents a compromise of the demands of all sections. But a delegate is the mouthpiece of a faction--a follower, not a leader of the people. No section will be disfranchised by this proposal, for the true function of all minor sections is to influence the policies of the two main parties. Thus every section will be proportionally represented in one or the other policy and by all the party candidates. Not only will each party be proportionally represented but all the sections which compose each party will be proportionally represented in its policy. This is the only true meaning of proportional representation. CHAPTER II. THE SO-CALLED REPRESENTATIVE PRINCIPLE. All schemes of electoral reform hitherto proposed under the name of proportional representation are based on the so-called "representative principle"--viz., that every section of the people is entitled to separate representation in proportion to its numbers. The ideal varies somewhat, but the usual conception, is that if each member represents a different section or interest the assembly will represent all sections or all interests. Now this is simply an attempt to return to what we have described as the first stage of representation, but without the fear of the monarchy to keep the sections together. For a deliberative body or a king's council it might be suitable, but for an assembly charged with the complete control of government in the interests of all it is utterly impracticable. Each representative must represent all interests; he must be elected on a definite policy as to what is best for all the people. If he is sent in as the agent of one interest or one section of the people, he ceases to be a representative and becomes a delegate. All these schemes are therefore not proportional representation at all, but proportional delegation. We have shown that representation means the organization of public opinion into two definite lines of policy, and that this is the only way to prevent political anarchy. But the proportionalists (as they like to call themselves) say that it means representing men and the opinions they hold in proportion to their numbers. The fundamental error is that they neglect the all-important factor of human nature. They look on public opinion as something having an independent existence apart from the questions about which it is expressed and from the means of expressing it; and they fail to recognize that the character of public opinion depends on the manner in which it is expressed and organized. It is but a natural consequence that they also conceive the number of sections of opinion awaiting representation as pre-existing and independent of the electoral machinery. In short, they reduce the whole problem to a nice little exercise in mathematics, requiring only for its clear exposition some columns of figures and a few coloured diagrams to represent the different shades of public opinion. No better example of the dangers of _a priori_ speculation could be adduced than this chimerical idea of the proportionalists that public opinion is something to be divided into fractions like a mathematical quantity, unless it be, perhaps, the conclusion that if you gather together delegates representing these fractions you will have an assembly representing the sum total of public opinion. The issue is quite clear. Are we to have two parties aiming at the control of administration and appealing to all sections for support, or the separate delegation of a number of sections? In the one case we will have parties based on national policies, and in the other case we will have a number of factions, each wanting something different and determined to block progress till it gets it. Remember that it is a mere matter of electoral machinery which will determine the choice. It is true that at present we do not have two very coherent parties, but that is the fault of the present electoral system. It would seem that there can be but one answer to this question, and yet the "representative principle" shows such wonderful vitality that it is worth while considering the arguments on which it is based, and the various stages through which the idea has passed. +Mr. Hare's Scheme.+--The "representative principle" was first propounded in England in 1857 by Mr. Thomas Hare. He proposed that the United Kingdom should be constituted one huge electorate for the return of the 654 members of the House of Commons. The people were to group themselves into 654 voluntary unanimous sections, each returning one member, and each gathered from every corner of the kingdom. We propose to consider here not the scheme itself but only the principle on which it was founded. Mr. Hare rightly conceived that the great evil of the present system is the exclusion of the minority in each electorate, but he altogether failed to appreciate that the excluded minority nearly always represented one of the two main parties. He could not see, in fact, that to divide each electorate into majority and minority is to divide the whole country into majority and minority, nor that the injustice is tolerated because it is usually as bad for one party as the other. Instead, therefore, of proposing to do justice to both the majority and the minority in each electorate, he proposed to allow representation to as many minorities as possible. To him, the rule of the majority was the rule of a majority of interests; this he called the constitutional majority, as opposed to the "mere rule of numbers." Now, at the time Mr. Hare wrote party government was rather weak in England. He quotes with approval a statement of Mr. Sidney Herbert, M.P., that the House was divided into many parties, or rather no party, because the country was divided into many parties or no party, and that the division into two parties would never be restored again. It is amusing, in view of after events, to find Mr. Hare asking what would be the result of any contrivance to re-establish party. Assuming that _party_ representation was dead, Mr. Hare proposed to substitute _personal_ representation. It is positively ludicrous at this interval of time to note how the electors were expected to group themselves. They were to take personal merit as the basis of representation; every vote cast was to be a spontaneous tribute to the qualities and attainments of the person for whom it was given. And in order, presumably, that they should choose good men in preference to corrupt men, the polling-day was to be set apart as a sacred holiday, and church services were to be held to solemnize the public act and seek for the Divine blessing! The maintenance of a responsible ministry in such a House presented no difficulty to Mr. Hare. The electors were to indicate whom they considered the most illustrious statesmen, and no one would dare to question their decision! It seems strange now that this scheme should have received serious consideration. Mr. Hare was so much under the spell of the apparent justice of the underlying principle that he was blind to its results. But it was soon perceived that the electors would not group themselves as Mr. Hare supposed; that the personal ideal of every class of electors would be simply men of their own class. It was further pointed out that cranks and faddists and every organization founded on questions of the remotest interest would combine to secure representation. Mr. Disraeli declared it to be "opposed to every sound principle, its direct effect being to create a stagnant representation ... an admirable scheme for bringing crotchety men into the House." Mr. Shaw-Lefevre condemned it as "a vicious principle based upon a theory of classes," and Mr. Gladstone said that it regarded electors "not as rational and thinking beings, but merely as the equivalents of one another." Walter Bagehot, in his standard work on the "English Constitution," opposes the principle of voluntary constituencies, because it would promote a constituency-making trade. "But upon the plan suggested," he writes, "the House would be made up of party politicians selected by a party committee, chained to that committee, and pledged to party violence, and of characteristic, and therefore unmoderate, representatives for every 'ism' in all England. Instead of a deliberate assembly of moderate and judicious men, we should have a various compound of all sorts of violence. I may seem to be drawing a caricature, but I have not reached the worst. Bad as these members would be if they were left to themselves--if in a free Parliament they were confronted with the perils of government, close responsibility might improve them, and make them tolerable. But they would not be left to themselves. A voluntary constituency will nearly always be a despotic constituency." The practical difficulties in the application of Mr. Hare's scheme are almost insuperable, but it is not worth while pursuing the subject, since it is now admitted by recent advocates that the faddist argument is fatal. This is an admission that Mr. Hare completely neglected the factor of human nature. Professor Nanson writes:--"Hare proposed that there should be only one electorate, consisting of the whole State. It is unfortunate that this proposal was made. There can be no doubt that it has retarded the progress of true electoral reform for at least a generation ... it would inevitably lead to the election of a certain number of faddists." +John Stuart Mill.+--The great vogue which the Hare system has obtained is to be traced more to the influence of John Stuart Mill than to that of anyone else. Mill was captivated by the apparent justice of the proposal, and devoted a chapter of his "Representative Government" to it, wherein he declared:--"Mr. Hare's scheme has the almost unparalleled merit of carrying out a great principle of government in a manner approaching to ideal perfection, while it attains incidentally several other things of scarcely inferior importance." Believing in the absolute justice of the principle, Mill and Hare were certainly consistent in setting no limit to its application except the size of the assembly. Mill is emphatic on this point. "Real equality of representation," he asserted, "is not obtained unless any set of electors, amounting to average number of a constituency, wherever they happen to reside, have the power of combining with one another to return a representative." Now, the recent disciples of Mr. Hare are never tired of claiming the support of Mill, although they have thrown this definition to the winds. But they are guilty of far more than that, for in another chapter of Mill's book we find that his conception of a representative assembly elected by the Hare system is a purely deliberative body. He expressly declares it to be radically unfit for legislation, which he proposes to hand over to a commission appointed by the Crown. The value of his testimony is very much discounted by this fact. +Sir John Lubbock.+[1]--We have asserted that the proportional principle should be applied to two parties only--the majority and the minority, and that every section can then be represented. Mill and Hare thought that no limit should be set except the size of the assembly. All the recent advocates of the system take up an intermediate position. Appreciating the serious objections against allowing independent representation to a large number of small sections, Sir John Lubbock, president of the English Proportional Representation Society, proposes to constitute electorates returning only three to five members each, thus confining representation to only three to five sections in each electorate, and sacrificing to a great extent accurate proportional representation. In his book on "Representation," he writes:--"I have assumed that Parliament should be 'a mirror of the nation;' if the object were to secure unity of action rather than freedom of discussion, to form an executive body such as a Government, a Board of Directors, or a Vestry, the case would be quite different. It is, however, I presume, our wish that Parliament should be a deliberative assembly in which all parties should be fairly represented." But to make Parliament a deliberative body is to destroy its power to secure unity of action at all, and to render it useless as a working machine. +Miss Spence.+--An active campaign has for some time been carried on for the adoption of the Hare system in Australia. Miss C.H. Spence, of South Australia, was the pioneer reformer, and has laboured in the cause by pen and voice for no less than forty years. Great credit is undoubtedly due to Miss Spence for the clear and simple manner in which she has expounded the system, and for the good work she has done in exposing the defects of the present methods. Not only has she lectured in all parts of Australia, but she has made visits to England, where she met Mr. Hare and Sir John Lubbock, and also to America. But we may admire Miss Spence's courage and devotion to principle without agreeing with her conclusions. At a meeting held at River House, Chelsea, London, in 1894, Miss Spence submitted an analysis of 8,824 votes recorded at 50 public meetings in South Australia. The audiences were in each case asked to select six representatives out of twelve candidates. The result of a scrutiny of all the votes combined was that the following six "parties" secured one "representative" each--viz., Capital, Labour, Single Tax, Irish Catholic, Prohibition, and Women's Suffrage. Miss Spence frankly confesses that these "parties" are minorities, but holds that a majority can be formed by the union of minorities, and that party responsible government can still be carried on. Now, can any sensible man or woman imagine a working ministry formed by a union of any four of these "parties?" Capital would certainly be permanently opposed to Labour and to Single Tax, and as for the others, there is not a single principle in common. How, then, could a union be formed? The only possible way is by log-rolling; they must make a bargain to support one another's demands. Such a union could not possibly be stable, because the minority is free to offer a better bargain to any one of the "parties" to induce it to desert. Again, it may be called the rule of the majority, but what sort of a majority? Is it not plainly the rule of a majority in the interests of minorities? That is very different to the rule of the majority in the interests of all, which free government demands. The simple truth is that the "parties" are factions, and that the "representatives" are mere delegates of those factions. But in practice the case would be far worse than we have assumed. There is not the slightest guarantee that the same six factions would be elected in each six-seat electorate. We might have an unlimited number of delegates of various religions, classes, races, localities, and political organizations on all kinds of single questions. An assembly formed on these lines could hardly be dignified with the name of a representative assembly. Mr. G. Bradford, in his work on "The Lesson of Popular Government," displays a more intimate knowledge of human nature than any other recent writer. Of these schemes for the representation of minorities he says:-- As an illustration of the effect in popular government of looking to popular impulse for the initiation of measures, it may be observed that perhaps the worst of all expedients for remedying the defective working of a government by a legislature like ours, that which combines the evils of them all, is one which is urged by perfectly disinterested advocates of reform, and is known as proportional representation. If there is one principle at the base of popular government it is that the majority shall rule. If the largest of three or four fractions is to rule it ceases to be popular government, and becomes government by faction. If the tyranny of the majority is bad a tyranny of the minority is still worse. (Vol. i., p. 505.) And the following picture could hardly be better drawn:-- If the basis of carrying on the government is to be the wishes of some millions of units, it is evident that they must to a greater or less extent agree in wishing for something. It is equally evident that they cannot all agree in wishing for the same thing at the same time, while if they, or any considerable number of groups, want different things at the same time, the result in so far is anarchy. Government is paralysed, and with the well-known excitability of humanity in groups men begin to confound the importance of the thing wanted with the importance of getting what they want. The clash of contending factions is apt to suggest the clash of arms. The first necessity, therefore, is the formation of large and coherent parties, not merely for the purpose of accomplishing what is desired by the majority of the people, but also for suppressing agitation and social disturbance on behalf of what may be called merely objects of passion or private interest with comparatively small groups, at least until those objects enlist the support of a large minority. (Vol. i., pp. 492, 493.) +Professor Nanson.+--In Victoria the Hare system is championed by Mr. E.J. Nanson, Professor of Mathematics at Melbourne University. Professor Nanson approaches the subject entirely from a mathematical standpoint, and resolutely refuses to admit the factor of human nature into his calculations. Following Mr. Hare, he is a declared opponent of party government, and "would like to see it pushed further into the background." Moreover, he regards every step in the process as an end in itself. Thus the act of voting is one end, representation is another, and the rule of the majority a third. Leaving aside for the present, however, the elaborate mathematical devices which are proposed for attaining these supposed ends, let us take only the principles on which they are based. These are laid down as follows:-- (_a_) The rule of the majority. (_b_) The fair representation of all parties in proportion to their strength. (_c_) Perfect freedom to every elector to vote exactly as he pleases. (_d_) The emancipation of the voters from the tyranny of the political "boss" or caucus. (_e_) The full value of his vote to each voter without loss or waste. The principles involved, we are assured, "must appeal to every democrat, to every Liberal, to every lover of true and just representation." As to the first claim, we are willing to grant the rule of the majority, if the words are added "in the interests of minorities." The second could also be granted if by "all parties" were meant both parties, for there cannot be more than two parties in the true sense of the word. But Professor Nanson proposes such large electorates that any small section, from one-sixth to one-twelfth, can secure independent representation. Notwithstanding this, he claims that it is quite possible to give fair representation to the main parties and to small sections at the same time. In illustrating the system he avoids the issue as to the character of these sections by giving them a "scientific" nomenclature, such as Colour, Place, Pursuits, Qualities, &c. These abstractions are very misleading, as attention is diverted from the fact that they refer to voluntary groups of men united for some political purpose. The real question is, on what basis are these groups likely to be formed? When the element of human nature is taken into account it must be apparent that they will be formed for the propaganda of some sectional interest; some on a religious basis, others on a class basis, &c. Now, if we were to ask each candidate to declare his religion, we could easily take religions as the basis of representation and allow proportional representation to each religion; and similarly with classes, races, and so on. But we could only take one basis at a time, and the important deduction is that if we were to take religions as the basis of representation, the people would be induced to vote according to religion; if we were to take classes, according to class, and so on. Now, no one but the fanatic or the demagogue will claim that the majority is entitled to rule where religions only or classes only are represented. The questions then arise--What is the correct basis of representation? How should the people be induced to vote? And the answer is clearly that the people should be induced to vote on questions of general public policy, on the leading questions of the day which decide the party lines, and that, therefore, _the policies of the two main parties should form the primary basis of proportional representation_. But the Hare system, by taking individual candidates as the basis of representation, induces the elector to vote on any basis or on sectional lines. It promotes dissension instead of repressing it, and instead of encouraging all sections to express their opinion as to what is best for the general well-being, it encourages them to express their opinion as to what they imagine to be best for themselves. Public opinion expressed on these lines would be worse than useless. But Professor Nanson thinks that the electors would still have regard for the main parties, even though they grouped themselves into small sections. He declares that "any party amounting to anything like a quota would not only have two candidates of its own--one Liberal and one Conservative--but would also be wooed by candidates of both leading parties." We may well question whether factions would trouble themselves about the main parties; but, granting the assumption, the small parties might just as well be single electorates as far as the main parties are concerned. The Liberal candidates might be successful in all of them, and the Conservatives be unrepresented. The peculiar feature is that the defeated Conservatives are expected to transfer their votes to the Liberals to make up the quotas for the small parties! The third claim is that electors should have perfect freedom to vote exactly as they please, and yet Professor Nanson, in condemning Mr. Hare's original scheme, has denied that they are free to vote as faddists; but he still holds that they are free to vote on any basis if only they form one-sixth to one-twelfth of an electorate. Thus the amount of freedom is variable and a matter of opinion. Now, we altogether deny that electors should be given the opportunity to subordinate the national interests to factious interests. Just as the faddist argument is fatal to Mr. Hare's original scheme, so the splitting up into factions is fatal to Professor Nanson's present scheme. Where is the freedom which Professor Nanson claims under the present system of election? Is it not the fact that throughout England, America, and Australia the electors have very often a choice between two candidates only--one Ministerialist and one Oppositionist? By all means let us have as many political organizations as possible to make known the wishes of all sections; but the true function of all such organizations is to influence the policies of the two main parties, and not to secure independent delegates in Parliament. This means simply that the compromise among the different sections supporting a party must be effected in the electors' minds, and at the elections, and not on the floor of the Legislature. The fourth claim is the emancipation of the voters from the tyranny of the "boss." Now, the power of the "boss" lies in the control of nominations, and although to some extent this control is necessary with the present system of election, it is not essential to party government, as we hope to show. But with government by faction there would be no escape from this control. The tyranny of a faction is worse than the tyranny of the "boss." The voters need saving from their own selfish passions far more than from the "boss." The final claim that each elector is entitled to the full value of his vote, regardless of the way in which it is used, is really a claim to an equality of political power, _i.e._, to direct government. It means that electors are absolutely free to combine for their own interests, or for their interest as a class, in opposition to the public welfare. These combinations would, with an equality of direct political power, soon bring on social disruption. +Professor Jethro Brown.+--In the preface to "The New Democracy," by Professor Jethro Brown, the two fundamental difficulties of present-day politics are correctly stated to be--how to express public opinion, and how to improve its value. For the first of these Professor Brown recommends the Hare system, and for the second the study of history. Later on he writes:--"How is the amelioration of popular sovereignty to be effected? Not, I venture to believe, by the pursuit of the policy which hopes to play off ignorance against ignorance and prejudice against prejudice, and to secure good government by the arts of flattery, manipulation, and intrigue; nor, indeed, by the improvement of democratic machinery, though this is extremely desirable, and calls for immediate attention. For, above all, towers the question of character." It is quite evident that Professor Brown shares the delusion of the other advocates of the Hare system, that the manner of expressing public opinion has nothing to do with the character of public opinion. The two difficulties laid down are essentially one. The cardinal fact underlying representation is that it is a real social force, capable of reacting upon and moulding character, and therefore of improving the value of public opinion. The independence, love of freedom, respect for minorities, and capacity for self-government, which are the most distinctive traits in the English character, are not innate, but are largely the products of the British Constitution. If the only chance of improving the value of public opinion lay in the hope of inducing the individual electors to study the lessons of history, the prospect would be indeed gloomy. Professor Brown regards party government as a necessary evil, resulting from the mechanical difficulty of securing unity of action from a plurality of wills. This is practically equivalent to saying that legislation itself is a necessary evil. But he writes:--"Whatever may be the evils of party government, there can be no doubt of the utility as well as of the necessity of the institution itself. The alternative to party government is the system of government by small groups. In Australia the evils of this alternative have been occasionally displayed in practical politics; but it is to France that we must look for their supreme illustration." Turning to the chapter on the Hare system, we find that Professor Brown believes that the electors would still divide themselves into two parties, even if given the opportunity to form small groups. "I cannot believe," he writes, "that the reputation of our race for sound common-sense is so far misplaced that a provision for the faithful representation of the people would end in an immoderate Legislature! For, although the Hare system is not perfect, it does undoubtedly afford an opportunity for an absolutely _fair representation_. Of course the opportunity would be abused by some; but to argue that the abuse would be general, or if at all general, would long continue, is to argue that the people would prove themselves unworthy of the opportunity offered." While he was at the University of Tasmania the first election under the Hare system was held, and Professor Brown's opinions are based on the result. A second election has, however, just been held, which shows the futility of his hopes. +The Tasmanian Experiment.+--Despite the fact that it has been advocated for over forty years, the trial now being made of the Hare system in Tasmania is the first application of the "representative principle" to any assembly modelled on the English plan of party government, and therefore deserves more than passing notice. But the experiment is on such a small scale, and has been conducted for such a short time, that the result can hardly be expected to be conclusive as yet. The objection against the Hare system is not so much that it is not suitable to present conditions as that it will speedily bring about altered conditions. It is interesting to find that this is exactly what is taking place. The system is applied in two electorates only, at Hobart and Launceston the former returning six members and the latter four. At the first election, in 1897, the possibilities of the system were not appreciated, and electors voted on the old lines; and although the results were rather erratic and unexpected, they were considered fairly satisfactory. But the second election, held early in the present year, proved a great blow to the system. No less than three of the successful candidates were intensely unpopular; and one of them, an ex-minister, had recently been banished from public life on the report of a select committee of the House. His reinstatement aroused a storm of indignation throughout the colony, and he was forced to retire again before Parliament met. It will be as well to take the evidence of a strong advocate of the system--the _Argus_ correspondent. Of one candidate he writes:--"Judging by all available definite evidences, it seemed that five-sixths of the electors of Hobart were directly in favour of the construction of the railway by the present Great Western Railway Syndicate; while those of the remaining sixth were variously opposed to the company or to the project of constructing such a railway by private enterprise at all. This sixth is represented by Mr. R.C. Patterson, who headed the poll." Of another candidate we learn that "Mr. Mulcahy had fought a hard fight, and it is a fair assumption that on the list of the elected he represents the Roman Catholic vote. As a member of a generally popular Government, the extent of Mr. Mulcahy's personal unpopularity was remarkable and probably unique." But it was over the return of Mr. Miles that the storm raged most. The excuse is made that "the fault of Mr. Miles's return (assuming that it is a fault) lies with the electors who returned him, and not with the system under which his return was accomplished.... Once grant that a section of Hobart electors have the right to select for their representative whom they choose, and it would seem that the Hare system must be held free of all responsibility for the return of Mr. Miles." But this is precisely what cannot be granted for a moment, as we have endeavoured to show. The assertion is made that Mr. Miles would have been returned as easily under the old system, but this is not a fact. He polled only one-eighth of the votes, so that, even supposing that his supporters were twice as strong in a single electorate, he would have had only one-fourth of the votes. It is safe to say, from the small proportion of second and third preferences which he secured, that if the Block Vote had been adopted he would have been at the bottom of the poll. Commenting on these results, the _Argus_ declares that the Hare system does not pretend to reform or guide the people. Very likely not! But is it not quite evident that it has the opposite effect? Is it too much to say that, if the Hobart experiment be persevered with, the ultimate tendency will be the return of six members, each acceptable to one-sixth of the electors, and obnoxious to the other five-sixths? It is quite obvious already that the usual party lines are entirely disregarded. +Professor Commons.+--The best book on the subject yet published is the "Proportional Representation" of John E. Commons, Professor of Sociology in Syracuse University, U.S. Its great merit is that the political and social bearings of the reform are fully treated. Professor Commons rejects the Hare system in favour of the Free List system. He writes:--"The Hare system is advocated by those who, in a too _doctrinaire_ fashion, wish to abolish political parties. They apparently do not realize the impossibility of acting in politics without large groupings of individuals." He makes a great step in advance of the disciples of Mr. Hare in recognizing that the proportional principle should be applied to parties, and not to individuals, and he even defines parties correctly as being based "not altogether on sectional divisions, but on social and economic problems of national scope;" but, unfortunately, he fails to see that there can be only two parties, and that the representation of small parties would not reform the main parties, but break them up altogether. At the same time he is no mere theorist, for he declares:--"If a practicable and effective method of proportional representation cannot be discovered, the theoretical principle is a mere dream." Moreover, he prudently recognizes that his arguments as regards Federal and State Legislatures in America are in advance of what the public is ready to accept, and adds:--"We, as a people are not yet ready to abandon the notion that party responsibility in Federal affairs is essential to safety." His immediate object is, therefore, the reform of city councils, which in America are controlled by the national parties, and are exploited by the notorious "machine" organizations. We may sympathize with this object, for parties in an administrative body are a serious evil, but with legislatures the case is quite different. Professor Commons admits that third and fourth parties, if given their proportionate weight in legislation, would hold the balance of power, but he declares that "the weight of this objection, the most serious yet presented against proportional representation, varies in different grades of government." He then proceeds to examine the objection "as applied to Congress (and incidentally to the State Legislatures), where it has its greatest force, and where pre-eminently party responsibility may be expected to be decisive." And the only answer he can find is that the objection "overlooks the principle of equality and justice in representation. It may prove here that justice is the wisest expediency. It is a curious anomaly, showing confusion of thought regarding democracy, that a people who insist on universal suffrage, and who go to ludicrous limits in granting it, should deny the right of representation to those minor political parties whose existence is the natural fruit of this suffrage." But these minor parties would not be denied representation if they were allowed to exercise freely their true function, which is to influence the policies of the main parties; and it is essential to the working of the political machine that they be limited to that function. Professor Commons continues:--"The argument, however, of those who fear that third parties will hold the balance of power is not based solely on a dread of the corrupt classes, but rather of the idealists, the reformers, 'faddists,' and 'cranks,' so called. They would retain exclusive majority rule and party responsibility in order to prevent the disproportionate influence of these petty groups. They overlook, of course, the weight of the argument already made that individual responsibility is more important for the people than the corporate responsibility of parties." The assumption is here made that the complete suppression of individuality is an essential feature of party government, whereas it is in fact a peculiar feature of American politics, due to "machine" control of nominations. The one point which Professor Commons has missed is that individual candidature can be permitted and representation still be confined to the two main parties. +Conclusion.+--The advocates of proportional delegation have failed to grasp the importance of the principles of organization and leadership, which underlie representation. Mr. Hare thought that the effect of doing away with organization would be to improve leadership. But he reckoned without his host--Human Nature. Organization cannot be dispensed with without destroying leadership and bringing on the strife of factions. FOOTNOTE: [1] Now Lord Avebury. CHAPTER III. THE PRESENT POSITION OF PARTY GOVERNMENT. +England.+--We have seen that the fundamental error of the proportionalists is that they have failed to distinguish between the two stages of representation. In constantly appealing back to the earlier parliaments they altogether overlook the fact that the functions which Parliament now exercises were then vested in the King. But this error is not confined to the proportionalists, most of whom, indeed, however inconsistently, favour party government. It is also put forth as an argument by those who lay all the blame of present evils on the party system, and who think that all sections should work together as one united party. Take, for instance, the diatribe of Mr. W.S. Lilly on "The Price of Party Government" in the _Fortnightly Review_ for June, 1900. Mr. Lilly complains bitterly that the infallible oracle in politics to-day is "the man in the street." He asserts that all issues are settled "by counting heads, in entire disregard of what the heads contain." His bugbear is the extension of the franchise. "Representative institutions, for example," he asks, "what do they represent? The true theory unquestionably is that they should represent all the features of national life, all the living forces of society, all that makes the country what it is; and that in due proportion. And such was the Constitution of England up to the date of the first _Parliamentary Reform Act_. Its ideal was, to use the words of Bishop Stubbs, 'an organized collection of the several orders, states, and conditions of men, recognized as possessing political power.'" Could anything be more ridiculous? Political power is to be apportioned in the nineteenth century as it was in the fourteenth century! The people are to be always governed by their superiors! Mr. Lilly continues:--"It appears to me that the root of the falsification of our parliamentary system by the party game is to be found in the falsification of our representative system by the principle of political atomism. Men are not equal in rights any more than they are equal in mights. They are unequal in political value. They ought not to be equal in political power." The mistake here is in the premise. Has not the demagogue more power than his dupes, or the Member of Parliament more power than the elector? We have hardly yet reached, and are never likely to reach, that ideal of direct government. But what is this price which Mr. Lilly is railing at? "The price may be stated in eight words. 'The complete subordination of national to party interests.' The _complete_ subordination. I use the adjective advisedly. Party interests are not only the first thought of politicians in England, but, too often, the last and only thought." All this is sheer nonsense. The coincidence of party aims with the real interests of the people which the British Parliament has displayed since the _Reform Act_ of 1832 has never been even remotely approached by any other country. Two causes have contributed to this great result; first, the gradual extension of the franchise to all sections of the people, and second, the fact that the principles of organization and leadership have been highly developed. In one respect, however, Mr. Lilly is right. The zenith has been passed. Party government is not the same to-day in England as it was twenty years ago. But the fault lies not with the extension of the suffrage, but with the fact that the principles of organization and leadership are less operative. True, the extension of the franchise is indirectly concerned in the failure, but the primary cause is that the present system of election is unable to bear the increased strain. It no longer suffices to organize the people into two coherent parties. The effect on the parties is correctly noted by Mr. Lilly. "A danger which ever besets them," he declares, "is that of sinking into factions." Now, the result of the want of organization is the presence in Parliament of small independent factions, which, by holding the balance of power, cause the main parties to degenerate into factions. This tendency is apparent even in England, and the rock on which the parties have split is the Irish faction. Into the merits of the Irish question we do not propose to enter; it is the career of the faction in Parliament which interests us. But it may be noted that the Irish party rests on a three-fold basis as a faction; it is based mainly on a class grievance, and is also partly racial and partly religious. It was the Irish party in the House of Commons which first discovered that, by keeping aloof from the two main parties, it could terrorize both; and thus found out the weak spot in party government. Its tactics were successful up to a certain point, for Mr. Gladstone succumbed to the temptation to purchase its support, and brought in the Home Rule Bill. The result is known to all; the historical Liberal party was rent in twain; party lines were readjusted; Mr. Gladstone was left in a hopeless minority; and the remnant of his following is to-day in the same condition. What is the lesson to be learned from these events? That these tactics cannot succeed in the long run. All interests suffer, but the culprits most of all. Moreover, such tactics are unconstitutional, and would in some circumstances justify retaliatory measures. Let us trace the constitutional course. The Irish members could have exerted a considerable influence on the policies of both Liberals and Conservatives, just as the Scotch did. If they had followed this course, might they not have been in a better position to-day? Of course, the Irish faction can hardly be said to be the result of the present system of election; it is mainly the expression of old wrongs. But it has set the example, and the disintegration of the old parties is rapidly proceeding. One feature, however, in connection with the present system in Ireland may be mentioned, and that is the permanent disfranchisement of the minority. In the greater part of Ireland there is no such thing as a contest between the main parties. If a system were introduced by which the minority could get its share of representation the parties would compete on even terms for the support of the people, and good feeling would tend to be restored. To return to Mr. Lilly. The present position of party government in England is not due to defects in the institution itself, still less to the extension of the suffrage, but to imperfect organization. The true remedy is, therefore, to improve organization, not to restrict the suffrage. By this means such a condition will be brought about that if either party favours a faction it will lose in general favour; then, indeed, we may hope that the main parties themselves will cease to degenerate into factions. The same number of the _Fortnightly_ contains an unsigned article on "Lord Rosebery and a National Cabinet," in which the party system is alluded to as defunct, and in which the suggestion is thrown out that on the retirement of Lord Salisbury a national cabinet should be formed, comprising both Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Rosebery. Impending foreign complications are given as the excuse for terminating party action. Now, it is not to be denied that party government is more suitable for what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls the industrial type of society than for the militant type. Quite recently Lord Salisbury blamed the British Constitution for the state of unpreparedness for the present war. But it is equally true that in foreign affairs party action is generally suspended: in the control of India, for instance, it is so. The real question, then, is this: Is the danger of foreign aggression so serious that all questions of internal policy can be permanently set aside? If we have reached this stage, the end of modern civilization is in sight. In effect, the proposal is a return to the first stage of representation, with the difference that all sections of the people are expected to be held together by the fear of foreign aggression, instead of the fear of the aggression of the monarchy. Mr. David Syme is a censor of a very different type. So far from wishing to take control from the people, he would give the people absolute control over everything, and at all times. Seldom has the case against party government been more powerfully presented than in his work on "Representative Government in England." But Mr. Syme founds his proposed remedies on a theory of representation which is based on the literal meaning of the word. No one has put the delegation theory more clearly than in the following passage, or gone so far in applying it:-- Representation is a mental act; it is the presentation or reproduction of the state of mind of another person; and before one person can represent another person he must first know what the opinions of that other person are. A representative is a substitute; he stands in the place of, and acts for, another person. But one man cannot act for another unless he knows what that other would do were he acting for himself. In other words, he requires to know the motives which actuate that other person, or what influences his motives, namely, his principles and beliefs. The House of Commons is a representative body, not because every individual member of it represents the opinions of the whole nation, but because members in the aggregate represent those opinions, (p. 170). This position is diametrically opposed to the principles we have laid down, for it eliminates entirely the ideas of organization and leadership. Again, Mr. Syme says:--"If the government is to be carried on for the benefit of all classes, representatives should be chosen from all classes. We had class representation in the early parliaments, but then all classes were fairly represented." We have shown that the analogy from early parliaments is fallacious. Representatives should now be chosen irrespective of class, and not as class delegates. But Mr. Syme does not carry his theory to its logical conclusion. For if representatives merely express the thoughts of others, and should be class delegates, surely all classes are entitled to have their thoughts "represented;" and Mr. Syme should range himself among the disciples of Mr. Hare. But here comes in an interesting difference. Mr. Syme would retain the present system and make members continually responsible to a majority of their constituents; he would even give this majority power to dismiss them at any time. Now, this is practically an admission that representation involves the existence of a majority and a minority, or, in other words, is a means of organizing the people into a majority and a minority. Again, as regards leadership, the theory will hardly bear the test of facts. Could a man like Gladstone be said to merely express the thoughts of his constituents? Was he not rather a guide and leader of the thoughts of a great part of the British nation? In addition to the continual responsibility of members to their constituents, Mr. Syme would also make the individual ministers of state responsible to a majority of the members. He adds:--"The whole system of party government could in this manner be quietly and effectively got rid of." We do not propose to criticise the latter suggestion, as we do not believe it would be put forward to-day, in the light of fuller knowledge. Mr. Syme's book was written nearly twenty years ago. But, as regards the continual responsibility of members, we consider it important that the electors should not have their way on single questions. They should periodically express their opinion as to the general line of progress, and the representatives should then have complete control. The necessity for this is to save the people from their anti-social tendencies, which we have already stated as the great objection to all forms of direct government. Lord Macaulay once defined the position exactly in a letter addressed to the electors of Edinburgh. "My opinion," he declared, "is that electors ought at first to choose cautiously; then to confide liberally; and when the term for which they have selected their member has expired to review his conduct equitably, and to pronounce on the whole taken together." 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.) Mr. Lecky, too, holds out very little hope for the future:-- When the present evils infecting our parliamentary system have grown still graver; when a democratic House, more and more broken up into small groups, more and more governed by sectional and interested motives, shall have shown itself evidently incompetent to conduct the business of the country with honour, efficiency, and safety; when the public has learned more fully the enormous danger to national prosperity as well as individual happiness of dissociating power from property and giving the many an unlimited right of confiscating by taxation the possessions of the few--some great reconstruction of government is sure to be demanded. Fifty or even twenty-five years hence the current of political opinion in England will be as different from that of our own day as contemporary political tendencies are different from those in the generation of our fathers. Experience and arguments that are now dismissed may then revive, and play no small part in the politics of the future. Why make democracy the scapegoat for all these evils, when they are simply due to the imperfect organization of democracy? In any case, the most that could rightly be urged would be that universal suffrage had come before its time. The conclusion that its time will never come is certainly not warranted. Universal suffrage cannot be condemned till it has had a fair trial under a rational system of election. Mr. Lecky appreciates so little the connection between the method of election and the splitting up into groups that he views without alarm the Hare system, which would still further develop groups. But perhaps no one has caught the spirit of party government more truly than Mr. Lecky. Dealing with the motives which should actuate the statesman, in his latest work, "The Map of Life," he writes:-- In free countries party government is the best if not the only way of conducting public affairs, but it is impossible without a large amount of moral compromise; without a frequent surrender of private judgment and will. A good man will choose his party through disinterested motives, and with a firm and honest conviction that it represents the cast of policy most beneficial to the country. He will on grave occasions assert his independence of party, but in the large majority of cases he must act with his party, even if they are pursuing courses in some degree contrary to his own judgment. Everyone who is actively engaged in politics--everyone especially who is a member of the House of Commons--must soon learn that if the absolute independence of individual judgment were pushed to its extreme, political anarchy would ensue. The complete concurrence of a large number of independent judgments in a complicated measure is impossible. If party government is to be carried on there must be, both in the Cabinet and in Parliament, perpetual compromise. The first condition of its success is that the Government should have a stable, permanent, disciplined support behind it, and in order that this should be attained the individual member must in most cases vote with his party. Sometimes he must support a measure which he knows to be bad, because its rejection would involve a change of government, which he believes would be a still greater evil than its acceptance, and in order to prevent this evil he may have to vote a direct negative to some resolution containing a statement which he believes to be true, (p. 112.) Mr. Lecky goes on to point out that "many things have to be done from which a very rigid and austere nature would recoil;" but he adds:--"Those who refuse to accept the conditions of parliamentary life should abstain from entering into it." Moreover, he holds that "inconsistency is no necessary condemnation of a politician, and parties as well as individual statesmen have abundantly shown it." But still "all this curious and indispensable mechanism of party government is compatible with a high and genuine sense of public duty." The American theory of government is that checks must be placed on a democratic legislature by a fixed Constitution and a separate executive exercising a veto. The late Professor Freeman Snow, of Harvard University, was a strong supporter of this school. His objections to cabinet government are given in the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science" for July, 1892:-- Cabinet government is the government of a party; and for its successful operation it must have at all times a majority at its back in Parliament. If it were possible to direct the current of public opinion into exactly two channels, there would be but two parties, one of which would generally be in the ascendency; but in practice this is found to be a very difficult thing to accomplish, and it becomes the more difficult as the right of suffrage is extended to the mass of the people, with their ever-varying interests. In the countries of continental Europe parties, if indeed they may be said to exist, are broken up into groups, no two or more of which ever act together for any considerable length of time; and ministries are without a moment's notice confronted at brief intervals with opposing majorities, and must give place to others, whose tenure of office is, however, equally unstable and ephemeral. There is no other alternative; one of the two great parties must yield to any faction which becomes strong enough to hold the balance of power between them, or suffer the inevitable consequences--instability and impotence of government. Dr. Snow evidently thought that it is not possible to direct the current of public opinion into exactly two channels. He certainly had not the slightest idea that it might be a matter of electoral machinery. Finally, we may quote the opinion of Mr. James Bryce, M.P., whose "American Commonwealth" is one of the most complete studies of the tendencies of democracy in existence. Comparing the English and American systems, he writes of the former:-- That system could not be deemed to have reached its maturity till the power of the people at large had been established by the Reform Act of 1832. For its essence resides in the delicate equipoise it creates between the three powers, the ministry, the House of Commons, and the people. The House is strong because it can call the ministry to account for every act, and can by refusing supplies compel their resignation. The ministry are not defenceless, because they can dissolve Parliament, and ask the people to judge between it and them. Parliament, when it displaces a ministry, does not strike at executive authority; it merely changes its agents. The ministry when they dissolve Parliament do not attack Parliament as an institution; they recognise the supremacy of the body in asking the country to change the individuals who compose it. Both the House of Commons and the ministry act and move in the full view of the people, who sit as arbiters, prepared to judge in any controversy that may arise. The House is in touch with the people, because every member must watch the lights and shadows of sentiment which play over his own constituency. The ministry are in touch with the people, because they are not only themselves representatives, but are heads of a great party, sensitive to its feelings, forced to weigh the effect of every act they do upon the confidence which the party places in them.... The drawback to this system of exquisite equipoise is the liability of its equilibrium to be frequently disturbed, each disturbance involving either a change of government, with immense temporary inconvenience to the departments, or a general election, with immense expenditure of money and trouble in the country. It is a system whose successful working presupposes the existence of two great parties and no more, parties each strong enough to restrain the violence of the other, yet one of them steadily predominant in any given House of Commons. Where a third, perhaps a fourth, party appears, the conditions are changed. The scales of Parliament oscillate as the weight of this detached group is thrown on one side or the other; dissolutions become more frequent, and even dissolutions may fail to restore stability. The recent history of the French Republic has shown the difficulties of working a Chamber composed of groups, nor is the same source of difficulty unknown in England. (Vol. i., pp. 286, 287.) Thus we find the opinion unanimously held that the one great fault to which cabinet government is liable is instability of the ministry, owing to imperfect organization of public opinion into two definite lines of policy. Bagehot called it a case of unstable equilibrium, and Bradford, in "The Lesson of Popular Government," goes further when he declares:--"Not to speak disrespectfully, the ministry is like a company of men who, after excessive conviviality, are able to stand upright only by holding on to each other." Yet, after all, the amount of stability simply depends on the state of organization; and England has demonstrated in the golden period of her political history (about the middle of the present century) that the cabinet form of government can be quite as stable as the presidential form. Therefore, if the present position gives cause for alarm, it is not in the abolition of the cabinet or the restriction of the suffrage that the remedy must be sought, but in improved organization. And this, we hope to show, involves improved electoral machinery. +France.+--Turn to France. Is there no lesson to be drawn from the history of that unstable country since the Revolution let loose its flood of human passions, ambitions, and aspirations? Has not every attempt at popular government failed for the same cause--want of organization? France before the Revolution had groaned for centuries under the burden of a decayed feudalism and an absolute monarchy. The last vestige of constitutional forms had disappeared. The representatives of the estates had not been convened since the meeting of the States-General in 1614. The widespread and unprecedented misery of the people caused them to revolt against being taxed without their consent, and a cry went up for a convocation of the estates. The finances were in such a bad way that Louis XVI. was forced to consent, and the three estates--clergy, nobles, and commons--met at Versailles in 1789. At first they called themselves the National Assembly, but the King foolishly took up such a position with regard to the people's representatives that they swore solemnly that they would not separate till they had laid the foundation of a new Constitution, and henceforth were known as the Constituent Assembly. It was determined that the King should no longer be absolute, and the choice lay between a constitutional monarchy and a republic. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was first drawn up, and the Assembly settled down to its task. The leading spirit was Mirabeau. He had been to England, and had studied the British Constitution, and he rightly saw that France was too distracted by faction to maintain an independent executive. He therefore openly advocated a constitutional monarchy with a cabinet chosen from among the majority of the representatives. But, unfortunately, the Assembly refused to follow his lead; nor would the King take his advice to make a separate appeal to the people. In the midst of the negotiations Mirabeau died, and the last chance of establishing a constitutional monarchy disappeared. The King realized this, and tried to escape to the German frontier but was brought back. He then accepted the new Constitution, and the Legislative Assembly was elected in 1791. From the first it had no elements of stability, being split up into groups, and subject to the fear of the Paris mob. The King continued to plot with the emigrant nobles against the Constitution, and the foreign armies massed on the frontier. The danger brought on the triumph of the revolutionary spirit in 1792. The Paris commune overwhelmed both the King and the Assembly, and the republic was proclaimed. Then followed the execution of the King, the Reign of Terror, the control of the Committee of Public Safety, till finally the anarchy was ended by the military despotism of Bonaparte, who became First Consul and afterwards Emperor. What is the significance of these events in the light of our previous examination of English history? Simply this: That the French, in passing at once from absolutism and feudalism to complete self-government, were trying to jump to the Second stage of representation without passing through the first stage. Mirabeau was right; the republic was foredoomed to failure because the people had learned neither the power of nor the necessity for organization. In many respects the French Revolution parallels the English Revolution. In each case the King was beheaded; in each case the anarchy of a disorganized representative body was succeeded by a military despotism; and in each case the monarchy was restored. It was after the restoration that the English system of party government was developed. Why did this system not now take root in France? Partly because France was not blessed with a king like William of Orange, and partly because the new _systeme de bascule_, the balance system, in which the king allows each faction in turn to hold the reins of power, was discovered. So, instead of the gradual growth of constitutional liberty which took place in England, the tendency in France was back to absolutism. In 1830 Charles X., finding that he could not manage the Chamber of Deputies, issued the ordinances of St. Cloud, suspending the liberty of the press and dissolving the Legislature. Paris immediately broke out into insurrection, and the King was forced to abdicate. The crown was offered to Louis Philippe, and a second attempt at constitutional monarchy was made. But France was too divided by her unfortunate legacy of faction to maintain a continuous policy. The Legitimists, the Republicans, and the Bonapartists were all awaiting their opportunity. In 1848 the second revolution broke out in Paris; the king fled to England, and a republic was again tried. But the imperialist idea revived when Louis Napoleon was elected President. In 1851 he carried out his famous _coup d'etat,_ and again the Constitution was swept away. In the following year he was accepted as Emperor by an almost unanimous vote. Thus France again elected to be ruled by an irresponsible head. The Third Empire ended with the capture of Napoleon III. at Sedan in 1870, and since then France has carried on her third experiment in republicanism. But still the fatal defect of disorganization retards her progress; the Legislature is still split up into contending factions, and in consequence it has been found impossible to maintain a strong executive. Occasionally the factions sink their differences for a time when their patriotism is appealed to, as they have agreed to do during the currency of the present Exhibition, but it is abundantly evident that France can never be well governed till the people are able to organize two coherent parties. There is ground for hope that the monarchical and imperialist ideas are declining, and that the people are settling down to the conviction that there is nothing left but the republic. What makes recovery difficult is that the national character has been affected by the continual strife in the direction of excitability and desire for change. Those who wish to understand the forces which brought about the different changes and revolutions, traced by one who has grasped their meaning, should read the account in the first volume of Mr. Bradford's "Lesson of Popular Government." His conclusion only need be quoted here:-- As has been said, that which constitutes the strength of the English. Government, that which has made up its history for the last two hundred years, is the growth and continuity of two solid and coherent parties. Occasionally they have wavered when available leaders and issues were wanting, but as soon as a strong man came forward to take the reins the ranks closed up and the work of mutual competition again went on. On the other hand, the curse and the cause of failure of representative government on the Continent of Europe is the formation within the legislature of unstable and dissolving groups. In France the Extreme Eight, the Eight, the Eight Centre, the Left Centre, the Left, and the Extreme Left are names of differing factions which unite only for temporary purposes and to accomplish a victory over some other unit, but which are fatal to stable and firm government. The same is true of Italy, Spain, and Austria, and if not of Germany it is because military despotism holds all alike in subjection. Mr. Bodley has come to the same conclusion in his work on "France." He writes:-- There is no restraining power in the French parliamentary system to arrest a member on his easy descent, and he knows that if he escapes penal condemnation he will enjoy relative impunity. Many deputies are men of high integrity; but virtue in a large assembly is of small force without organization, and, moreover, a group of legislators leagued together as a vigilance committee would have neither consistency nor durability, which the discipline of party can alone effect. Corruption of this kind, which has undermined the republic, could not co-exist with party government. A party whose ministers or supporters had incurred as much suspicion as fell on the politicians acquitted in the Panama affair would under it be swept out of existence for a period. When the first denunciations appeared, the leaders of the party, to avert that fate, would have said to their implicated colleagues--"In spite of your abilities and of the manifest exaggeration of these charges we must part company, for though you may have been culpable only of indiscretion, we cannot afford to be identified with doubtful transactions;" and the Opposition, eager not to lose its vantage, would scan with equal keenness the acts of its own members. With party government the electorate would not have appeared to condone those scandals. But as it was, when a deputy involved in them went down before his constituents, whose local interest he had well served, with no opponent more formidable than the nominee of some decayed or immature group, they gave their votes to the old member, whose influence with the prefecture in the past had benefited the district, rather than to the new comer, whose denunciations had no authority; whereas, had each electoral district been the scene of a contest between organized parties, the same spectacle would not have been presented." (Vol. ii., pp. 302, 303.) Mr. Bodley has, in this last sentence, touched the heart of the problem. If the salvation of France depends on making each electoral district the scene of a contest between two organized parties, is not electoral machinery destined to play an important part in the solution? +The United States.+--The third great experiment in representative democracy which the nineteenth century has furnished is that which is being conducted in the United States. The contrast with France is remarkable. Just as France is the supreme example of want of organization, so America is the most conspicuous instance of perfect organization into two great national parties which the world has seen. Yet both experiments were started by a revolution, and practically at the same time. The difference lay in the fact that the Americans inherited the capacity for self-government from their British ancestors, and had already practised it in colonial times, while the French only inherited innumerable causes of dissension. But organization is not the only characteristic feature of American politics. Strange to say, it is accompanied by a suppression of individuality just as complete. It is organization without responsible leadership. For, in the first place, the politicians look on themselves not as leaders but as followers of the people; and in the second place, there are no leaders in Congress, corresponding to the cabinet ministers of British countries. Now, the view which we wish to emphasize here is that the present position of American politics is the natural result of the principles embodied in the Constitution adopted in 1789, when the Union was formed. The complete organization and the want of leadership are directly to be traced to the labours of George Washington and his associates. A brief glance at the Constitution and the early history of its working will make this clear. The thirteen States which revolted from England worked fairly well together under the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" as long as the war lasted, but as soon as peace was proclaimed it was, as Washington said, no better than anarchy. The famous Convention of 1787 was therefore held, and the Constitution was drawn up. One guiding principle of its framers was to divide power so as to place checks on the will of the people, and on outbursts of popular passion, which were then greatly dreaded. One means of attaining this object was the attempted separation of the legislative and executive functions. We say attempted advisedly, for time has but shown that the two are inseparable. But the framers of the Constitution divided the legislative function between the two Houses, and vested the executive function almost entirely, as they thought, in the President. Montesquieu, in his "_Esprit des Lois_" had laid down that the great merit of the English Constitution was the separation of these functions, and the Americans accepted this view. But, in truth, the English cabinet system had not then been fully developed. The King was still, not only in appearance, but to some extent also in fact, the head of the executive, and there was nothing to indicate that ministers were so soon to become the real leaders. The effect of this provision was a struggle between the two branches for supremacy, and the legislatures have won. The President has been degraded to a mere agent, and the legislatures have absorbed the greater part of executive functions, even to the control of finance. Now, the framers of the Constitution were apprehensive that the President might become a mere party agent, and they tried to strengthen his position by two devices. First, they gave him the power to veto statutes unless overruled by a two-thirds majority of Congress; and, secondly, they provided for his election by an electoral college, or by a double system of election. This second provision was designed to ensure the election of a President for personal instead of for party reasons; but it has proved a complete failure. Almost from the first the electoral delegates have had to pledge themselves to support the party nominee. The veto, therefore, has also become practically useless. Thus it has come about that Congress is a body entirely without leaders. A second defect in the Constitution was that it said nothing about the right of any State to withdraw from the Union. After nearly 70 years this omission was responsible for the Civil War. The legal basis for secession was then abandoned, but combinations of States have since been regarded with the greatest apprehension. This conviction that the Union must be maintained at any price has had very important consequences on the party system. The danger of allowing combinations of States to dominate party lines was demonstrated; and the division of each State by the same national parties was recognized as essential to safety. In the meantime, as we have seen, Congress had practically got control of the executive functions, which were supposed to be exercised by the President, including the nominations to office. Thus every member of the party in a majority had a share of the plunder, and "the spoils to the victors" became the basis of party organization. The system soon underwent such a remarkable development that nearly 200,000 public offices were at the disposal of the victors at each election. The party organizations immediately became omnipotent. The secret of their power lay in the control of nominations. Each party would nominate one candidate only, and the electors voted neither for men nor measures, but blindly for party. As Mr. Bryce declares:--"The class of professional politicians was therefore the first crop which the spoils system--the system of using public office as private prize of war--bore. Bosses were the second crop." The development which these party organizations have now reached is extraordinary. Practically we may say that there are only two parties--Republicans and Democrats--and they dominate not only Federal and State politics but also city government. Each party has its list of registered electors, and each holds a primary election before the real election, to decide the party candidate. But these primary elections are a mere matter of form. Only a small fraction of the electors attend them, and only those who have always supported the party are allowed to vote. The nominations are therefore really controlled, by fraud if necessary, by the "ring" of party managers. Generally there is one man who can pull the most strings, and he becomes the "boss." All power is centred in the hands of this irresponsible despot. The men who are elected owe their positions to him, and are responsible to him, not to the public. Remember that these "machine" organizations have absolute sway in every electorate, from one end of the United States to the other. It may be wondered why the people tolerate them, but they are powerless. Sometimes an independent movement is attempted, but it very rarely succeeds, and even when it does the two "machines" combine against it and agree to divide the spoils. Mr. Bryce writes:-- The disgust is less than a European expects, for it is mingled with amusement. The "boss" is a sort of joke, albeit an expensive joke. "After all," people say, "it is our own fault. If we all went to the primaries, or if we all voted an independent ticket, we could make an end of the 'boss.'" There is a sort of fatalism in their view of democracy. (Vol ii., p. 241.) What is the meaning of all this wonderful party machinery? It is this: that organization without responsible leadership can only be founded on corruption. In other words, _the spoils system is the price which the United States pay for maintaining the Union under the present Constitution_. The fault lies ultimately, therefore, in the Constitution, which tends to repress responsible leadership. Now, the mass of public opinion in America, as Mr. Bryce continually points out, is sound, and attempts have not been wanting to put an end to the system of rotation in public offices. A sustained agitation for civil service reform was entered upon, and the system of competitive examination was applied to a large number of offices. Now at last, the reformers thought, American politics would be purified. But, no! The corruption, simply took a new and more alarming turn. Direct money contributions took the place of the spoils. It became the practice to levy blackmail on corporations either to be let alone, or for the purpose of fleecing the public. The monopolies granted to protected industries are the source of a large share of these "campaign funds." The Legislatures are crowded by professional lobbyists, and it is, in consequence, impossible to obtain justice against the corporations. Surely no stronger proof can be needed that corruption is and must remain the basis of organization so long as there is no responsible leadership. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the Americans are not alive to the failure of their representative institutions. Since Mr. Bryce's great work on "The American Commonwealth" was published two books by American authors have appeared which are very outspoken in condemnation. These are "The Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy," by Mr. E.L. Godkin; and "The Lesson of Popular Government," by Mr. Gamaliel Bradford. The keynote of the first of these two books is to abolish corruption by destroying the power of the "machine" and the "boss," and of the second to introduce responsible leadership. Mr. Godkin traces the disappearance of distinguished men from public life to the control of all entrance to it by the "machine." The reform of primary elections, he holds, is then the first necessity, since "independent voting" has ceased to be a remedy. But he fails to find a solution. The conclusion he comes to is as follows:-- Is the situation then hopeless? Are we tied up inexorably simply to a choice of evils? I think not. It seems to me that the nomination of candidates is another of the problems of democracy which are never seriously attacked without prolonged perception and discussion of their importance. One of these was the formation of the federal government; another was the abolition of slavery; another was the reform of the civil service. Every one of them looked hopeless in the beginning; but the solution came in each case, through the popular determination to find some better way. (Pp. 92, 93.) But the evil goes far deeper than Mr. Godkin appears to think. To abolish corruption is to take away the present basis of organization without substituting any other. If irresponsible leadership is to be abandoned, responsible leadership must be introduced. Mr. Bradford's plan, therefore, promises more, for if responsible leadership could be introduced into Congress corruption would then be abolished also. Mr. Bradford's whole book may be said to be a study of the relations of the executive to the legislature, and the conclusions at which he arrives are a complete vindication of cabinet government. But he finds one fault, and that is the instability of ministries, which he confesses has not been apparent so far in the British House of Commons. He holds, however, that it will become more apparent with the rising tide of democracy. It is rather amusing to find that the greatest obstacle which has to be overcome in proposing a responsible executive is the veneration in which the Constitution is still held and the dislike to copying anything from England. His plan is, therefore, an adaptation of the cabinet to the conditions imposed by the Constitution. He holds that the ministers appointed by the President should sit in Congress and have control of the initiation of legislation. It is to be feared that this would hardly realize the idea of responsible leadership. Mr. Bradford establishes a chain of responsibility by the fact that the ministers are responsible to the President and the President is responsible to the people; but that is a very different thing to the continual responsibility of the cabinet to a majority of the legislature. It is probable that the President's ministers would have to encounter the opposition of a majority in one or both Houses, and it is difficult to see how a deadlock could be avoided. Mr. Bradford contemplates that the people would settle any issues which arise between the two branches at the end of the Presidential term of four years; but it is just as likely that there would then be a new President in any case. We are driven to the conclusion, therefore, that responsible leadership is incompatible with the American system of divided powers and fixed terms of office. Mr. Bryce comments on the proposal as follows:-- It is hard to say, when one begins to make alterations in an old house, how far one will be led on in rebuilding, and I doubt whether this change in the present American system, possibly in itself desirable, might not be found to involve a reconstruction large enough to put a new face upon several parts of that system. (Vol. i, pp. 290, 291.) This is very true, but is not a new building required? Is not the old house built on a rotten foundation? Mr. Bradford has certainly overlooked the effect of his proposal on party organization for one thing. If the power over legislation, and especially over expenditure of public money, is to be taken away from the irresponsible committees of Congress, the basis of party organization would cease to be corruption, and both representatives and parties would have to take on an entirely new character. As to the present character of representatives, Mr. Bryce advances a number of reasons why the best men do not go in for politics, such as the want of a social and commercial capital, the residential qualification, the comparative dullness of politics, the attractiveness of other careers, &c, but Mr. Bradford declares that the one explanation which goes further than all these is the absorption of all the powers of the government by the legislature, and the consequent suppression of individuality. He writes:-- The voters are urged to send to Congress men of character, ability, and public spirit. They might as well be asked to select men of that quality to follow the profession of burglars, a comparison which is not intended to convey any disrespect to the number of honest and respectable men who constantly are sent to Congress. Chosen as burglars, they would fail just the same in the business.... It is the organization of Congress which offers every facility to those who wish to buy and those who wish to be bought. Again, as to the present character of parties, Mr. Bradford declares:-- The names of the two great parties, Republicans and Democrats, have in themselves and at the present time no meaning at all. Simply because the basis of organization is corruption, and not questions of public policy. For the same reason recent elections have been fought on popular "crazes," such as the silver question. But Mr. Bradford says:-- New parties cannot be formed on constantly changing issues, since to have any strength they must have a certain degree of permanence. The only two nations which have succeeded in forming great national parties are Great Britain and the United States. In other European countries the splitting into groups has almost made representative government impossible. What Mr. Bradford has failed to appreciate is that the absolutely rigid division into two camps which prevails in America is founded on corruption, and will disappear when corruption is abolished. In the United States such a thing as a Congressman deserting one party for the other is practically unknown. In Great Britain, on the contrary, party lines do continually change as new issues arise; and when they are founded on questions of public policy it must be so. What gives them permanence is that certain principles underlie most questions, and men who have the same political principles are likely to think the same on any single question; and further that a member would rather follow his party and sacrifice his opinion on a single question than sacrifice most of his principles. Therefore, even if the Americans do succeed in purifying their politics, they will be faced with the same difficulty as exists elsewhere--namely, such improved organization as will secure the return of representatives on questions of general public policy only. The present system of single-membered electorates will not suffice. The only remedy lies in enlarged electorates with electoral machinery which will organize public opinion into two definite lines of policy, and will, by allowing individual candidature merge the primary election into the actual election. All this involves a radical alteration, both in the Constitution and in the methods of election. But the United States have the great advantage over France that it does not involve also a serious change in the national character. It is not unlikely that some such reform must be brought about before long. The present position cannot last. The Republican party has so long identified itself with Capital in all its forms, with the protected monopolists, the trusts and the corporations, that the mass of Labour threatens to support the Democrats; and as the latter party maintains the doctrines of direct government and the infallibility of the majority, the result will be such a financial crisis and such an industrial revolution that the Americans will have at last to admit that their government needs total reconstruction. +Australia.+--On the first day of the nineteenth century the Union of the Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland was accomplished; on the first day of the twentieth century Britain's daughters in the southern seas will inaugurate, under her ægis, a new experiment in democracy--the Australian Commonwealth. The time is opportune, then, for a review of the tendencies of Australian politics, and for a comparison with the other great democracies. Thus only can we attempt to cast the horoscope of the new nation. Australia starts with many advantages over France and America. The science of government is better understood now than when they started; the folly of placing too many checks on the people is recognized; and the British system of responsible leadership by a cabinet in the legislature is fully developed. All these features are embodied in the Constitution, and it only remains for the people to prove their fitness to work it. Applying the same tests as we have used in the case of the great democracies to the present position of Australian politics, what is the result? First, as regards organization, where do we stand? It must be confessed that we are far behind Great Britain and America, though certainly we are not in the same sad plight as France. Still there is the fact that we are classed among the failures. Take the evidence of Mr. E.L. Godkin in "Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy:"-- In his Journals during a visit to Turin in 1850, Senior records a conversation with Cesare Balbo, a member of the Chamber in the first Piedmontese Parliament, in which Balbo said, after an exciting financial debate:--"We have not yet acquired parliamentary discipline. Most of the members are more anxious about their own crotchets or their own consistency than about the country. The ministry has a large nominal majority, but every member of it is ready to put them in a minority for any whim of his own." This was probably true of every legislative body on the Continent, and it continues true to this day in Italy, Greece, France, Austria, Germany, and the new Australian democracies. (Pp. 102, 103.) He adduces in support of the statement the fact that the three colonies of New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria have had respectively twenty-eight, forty-two, and twenty-six ministries in forty years. Is the prospect any brighter for the new Commonwealth? It is to be feared not, if the present tendencies towards disintegration are allowed to grow. For in the last decade a change has come over Australian politics which portends the gravest danger. We refer to the direct class representation which, under the name of Labour parties, has spread all over the colonies. These so-called Labour "parties" are neither more nor less than class factions. Their policy is everywhere the same--viz., the use of the "balance system," which has proved so disastrous to France. The worst effect is that they prevent the main parties from working out definite policies on public questions, and cause them also to degenerate into factions. In Victoria we have actually had the ludicrous spectacle of the Opposition saving the Government time after time when deserted by its own followers. In New South Wales the individual member is sunk in the party; he must vote as the majority decides. Mr. Reid's term of office was ended by one such caucus. In Queensland, where the party is strongest, it has now practically become one of the main parties, and the whole colony is divided on class lines. Already an Intercolonial Labour Conference has been held, and a pledge drawn up which must be signed by all candidates for the party support at Federal elections. The danger of these tactics is not rightly apprehended in Australia. In reality they mark the first step towards social disruption. We may cite the authority of Mr. James Bryce on this point. After pointing out in "The American Commonwealth" that since the Civil War combinations of States have always acted through the national parties, he writes:-- This is an important security against disruption. And a similar security against the risk of civil strife or revolution is to be found in the fact that the parties are not based on or sensibly affected by differences either of wealth or of social position. Their cleavage is not horizontal, according to social strata, but vertical. This would be less true if it were stated either of the Northern States separately, or of the Southern States separately: it is true of the Union taken as a whole. It might cease to be true if the new Labour party were to grow till it absorbed or superseded either of the existing parties. The same feature has characterized English politics as compared with those of most European countries, and has been a main cause of the stability of the English government and of the good feeling between different classes in the community. (Vol. ii., p. 38.) How is it that the public conscience is not alive to the enormity of this anti-social crime? Mainly, we think, because the true principles of representation are not properly understood. It is almost universally assumed that there is no real distinction between direct and representative government. Minorities are tacitly allowed to have as much right to representation as the minority, and the confusion of terms is passed over. The working classes are told by self-seeking demagogues that they are in a majority; that the majority is entitled to rule; and that they have only to organize to come into their heritage. These sycophants, who, as Aristotle of old pointed out, bear the greatest resemblance to the court favourite of the tyrant, ask the people to believe the silly paradox that the united wisdom of the whole people is greater than that of the wisest part. The truth is that no people is fit to exercise equal political rights which is not sensible enough to choose the wisest part to carry on the government, providing only they have control over their selection, and can hold them responsible. Are the working classes in Australia going to demonstrate that they are unfit for the exercise of political rights? Are they going to justify the prognostications of the opponents of popular government? That is the real question at issue. Unless public opinion be aroused to the iniquity of class delegation, the further degradation of Australian politics is inevitable. Let it not be thought that we are decrying the organization of the working classes for political purposes. On the contrary, we hold that the organization of every class and every interest is necessary in order that it shall exert its just share of influence. But the only way in which every class can get its just share is by acting through the two main parties. A class which holds aloof can exert for a short time an undue share of influence, as a faction holding the balance of power, but only at the expense of paralyzing the government. But the working classes are hardly to be blamed in this matter, for it is a fact that before their action they were not able to exert their just share of influence. The government was such as to promote the rule of private interests instead of the general welfare, and, consequently, their interests were shamefully neglected. The real cause of the mischief was, as in America, the nominating system, which is inseparably connected with the present method of election. The consideration of this question brings us to the second characteristic of Australian politics--namely, the irresponsible leadership of the press. We have seen how in America organization has been effected without responsible leadership in Congress, only at the expense of the irresponsible leadership of the "rings" and "bosses" who control the "machines." In Australia an analogous result has been brought about by different causes. We have not had civil strife to teach us the necessity of organization, nor have we a spoils system available as a basis, but the disorganized state of the legislatures and the consequent weakness of the executive have thrown a large share of leadership into the hands of the press. Both in America and in Australia the prevalence of the ultra-democratic theory that representatives should follow and not lead the people has been a powerful contributing cause. And yet it is as clear as possible that the choice lies between two alternatives. The people must either submit to responsible leadership in Parliament or to irresponsible leadership outside. The ultra-democrats hold that responsible leadership in Parliament is incompatible with popular government. We believe that this is the fundamental error which is leading both the Australian and the American democracies astray. On the contrary, it is the irresponsible despotism which is exercised by the "bosses" in America and the newspapers in Australia which is really incompatible with free government. The source of the error lies in the failure to grasp the meaning of the term "responsible leadership." It is assumed that either the people must lead and the representatives follow, or the representatives must lead and the people follow. Bagehot may be taken as an exponent of the latter position. He thought that cabinet government was only possible with a deferential nation as opposed to a democratic nation. England he held to be the type of deferential nations, because the people were content to leave the government to the "great governing families"--_i.e._, to defer to caste, which is in principle the same as deferring to a king, who is supposed to rule by divine right. Mr. Bradford also gives a somewhat exaggerated idea of the importance of the force of personality when he declares that the mass of the people have no "views" on public questions; all they want is to be well governed. The late Professor Freeman Snow, of Harvard University, U.S., was a supporter of the ultra-democratic view. In the "Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science" for July, 1892, he declares:-- Mr. Bryce thinks that, "like other crowds, a legislature must be led and ruled." And he has formulated a theory which he believes to be "the essence of free or popular government, and the justification for vesting power in numbers." "Every question that arises in the conduct of government," he asserts, "is either a question of ends or a question of means." And as the "masses are better judges of what will conduce to their happiness than are the-classes placed above them, they must be allowed to determine ends." But, assuming the end to be given, they--the masses--should leave to their leaders--the trained statesmen--the choice of means. The defect in this theory is that it depends for its successful operation upon the continued "deference of the multitude for the classes placed above them ... upon the principle of _noblesse oblige_," a principle, by the way, derived from feudal monarchy, which has no existence in the United States, and which ought to be considered a misfortune in any free country.... Mr. Bryce has made a step in advance of Mr Bagehot in trusting the people to determine ends, whatever they may be; why not go one step further, and trust them to determine all questions of policy? These are the two opposite points of view. They are both equally wrong. The first is simply irresponsible leadership, and the second amounts to the same thing in practice, however much the people may appear to lead in theory. The true position is that the relation between the representatives and the people is reciprocal. Both lead and both follow. The people defer to the representatives, not on account of rank or caste, nor upon the principle of _noblesse oblige_, but only in so far as the representatives are able to demonstrate their fitness to devise measures for the general welfare. The people, on the other hand, are the ultimate judges, both of measures and of men. This mutual action and reaction constitutes the responsible leadership, which is one of the fundamental principles underlying the device of representation. To it we have already traced the virtue of representation as a social force, capable of moulding national character and of appealing to the higher nature of the people. An elector who is unable or unwilling to decide grave questions of public policy himself may be a very shrewd judge as to who is best fitted to decide them; and deference to ability is totally different in principle to deference to caste. In a country in the transitional stage between aristocracy and democracy, his judgment may be based partly on the principle of _noblesse oblige_; but there is not the slightest reason why in a democratic country he should require the representative to defer to him. He will merely require a higher standard and a closer and a more constant demonstration that the measures proposed are conducive to the public well-being. Moreover, it is still necessary that the representatives should be judged periodically on general lines of policy, and that the elector should not have the power of exercising control on single questions. Under these conditions the result of the mutual relation will be an improvement on both sides. But if, under the influence of irresponsible leadership outside Parliament, the people insist on increasing control over their representatives, then not only is Parliament degraded, but progress towards government in the general welfare is stopped. This long digression as to the real meaning of responsible leadership is necessary in order to gauge the drift of the prevailing tendency towards the irresponsible leadership of the press in Australia. The evil exists in all the colonies, but it is perhaps worse in our own colony of Victoria than in any other country in the world, although it is said to be very bad in Switzerland since the referendum was introduced. We have two morning newspapers in Melbourne, which take opposite sides on nearly every question which arises. They admit into their columns no facts and no arguments which tell against the position they have taken up; nay, more, they resort to downright misrepresentation to support it. It will be said that this is only a form of the party game, but the danger lies in the fact that they circulate in different classes, and therefore these classes see only one side of every question. Moreover, in their competition for the support of classes in which they desire to increase their circulation they use their influence to secure legislation which will appeal to class prejudices, or even undertake a prolonged agitation to relieve special interests from legitimate charges. The _Age_ has for a long time thrived by pandering to the prejudices of the working classes, and especially of the artisans; the _Argus_ now seeks to get even by creating dissension between town and country. All this interference with the functions of Parliament has a baneful influence on the working of the political machine. The party lines are practically decided by the newspaper contest. We have spoken of the resemblance to the "machine" control over American politics. One of the newspapers is, in effect, managed by a "ring," the other by a "boss." The despotism of David Syme in Melbourne is as unquestioned as that of Richard Croker in New York, or Matthew Quay in Pennsylvania. How close the analogy is may be inferred from the fact that Mr. Syme has exercised, and still claims the right to exercise, control over nominations to Parliament. It is notorious that the ten delegates who "represented" Victoria at the Federation Convention were elected on the _Age_ "ticket." Again, Mr. Syme is known as "the father of protection," and has been able, by the force of his indomitable will, to impose on the colony a tariff which can be compared only to the M'Kinley tariff in America, thus showing that irresponsible leadership in either form is more favourable to the rule of private interests than to the general welfare. We have said enough to show that in internal affairs the influence of the press, when it directly interferes with Parliament is an anti-social force. In matters of foreign policy the case is still worse. The press is almost universally jingoistic, because it is financially interested in sensationalism. A war generally means a fortune to newspaper proprietors. In such matters, therefore, responsible leadership by Parliament is still more urgently required. We now come to the claim of those ultra-democrats who preach the poisonous doctrines of direct government and of unrestrained majority rule, that responsible leadership is incompatible with popular government. This claim, is of course, supported by the radical press in Australia. We have already quoted from Mr. Syme's work on "Representative Government in England" the extreme views in which he confuses representation with delegation. "Popular government," he declares, "can only exist where the people can exercise control over their representatives at all times and under all circumstances." The method proposed to obtain this control is to give a majority of the constituents power to dismiss a representative at any time, and is utterly impracticable. Imagine the position of a member elected by a majority of one or two votes! The true way to prevent members abusing their trust is not to increase the direct control of the people, but to prevent the control of the press and all other irresponsible agencies over them; and so to ensure the return of better men. Perhaps the most striking anomaly in Mr. Syme's position is that, while he would confine the office of Parliament to expressing public opinion, he declares in the same work that "the press at once forms and expresses public opinion."[2] Now, it is quite true that if Parliament is weak and disorganized, or occupies itself in fighting for the spoils of office, the power of forming public opinion is thrown into the hands of the press. But the more power is seized by the press, the more Parliament is degraded, and the less is the chance of recovery. The situation presents little difficulty to Mr. Syme. Every newspaper reader, he declares, "becomes, as it were, a member of that vast assembly, which may be said to embrace the whole nation, so widely are newspapers now read. Had we only the machinery for recording the votes of that assembly, we might easily dispense with Parliament altogether." These ideas are not of mere academic interest; they have dominated the trend of Victorian politics for many years. The time has now arrived for the people to consider whether it is better to keep a Parliament of weak delegates to express the public opinion which is formed by the press than to elect a Parliament of "leaders of the people," highly-trained legists, economists, and sociologists, to form and direct the public opinion which is expressed by the newspapers. Why should the principle of leadership, as exemplified in Mr. Syme's own career, be given full scope in the press, and entirely repressed in Parliament? As to the kind of influence we mean, no better description could be given than that of the well-known Labour leader, Mr. H.H. Champion. In an open letter to Mr. David Syme in the _Champion_ of 22nd June, 1895, he wrote:-- Yet, if you rose to-morrow morning with the resolve to dismiss the ministry or to reverse the policy of the country, to stop retrenchment or to recommence borrowing, that resolve would infallibly translate itself into fact in a few weeks. In no country that I know of has any organ in the press so much influence as your paper. It is practically the sole source of information for the majority of the people. It has no competitors. It can make any person or policy popular or unpopular. It can fail to report any man or thing, and for four-fifths of the citizens it is as though that man or thing were not. It can misrepresent any speech or movement, and the printed lie alone will reach the electors. It could teach the people anything you choose. It has ruled the country for a couple of decades. It rules the country to-day. Professor Jethro Brown shows himself alive to the danger of press domination in Australia. In "The New Democracy" he writes:--"The _prestige_ of Parliament is destroyed when its deliberations and conclusions cease to be the determining factor in legislation. The transfer of the real responsibility for legislation to a new power implies the discrediting of the old school for training leaders." And he quotes with approval the expression of opinion by the Honourable B.R. Wise in the Federal Convention:-- There may be, as Mr. David Syme suggests, no risk involved in the change of masters; but for my part I would sooner trust the destinies of the country to the worst Parliament the people of Australia would elect than to the best newspaper the mind of man has ever imagined. It is little use, therefore, for the press to further degrade Parliament in the eyes of the people by railing at it in the following terms:-- So it is that Parliament as a working machine is about the clumsiest and least effective that can be conceived of. All our Parliaments are modelled on the necessities of bygone centuries. We want a working Parliament improved up to date; but we lack political invention, and have to jog along with the old lumbering machine--a sort of bullock dray trying to compete with an age of electric railways and motor cars.[3] The remedy lies with the press itself. Let it abandon all illegitimate influence, and use its power in a legitimate direction to give effect to the principles of organization and responsible leadership in Parliament. But just as the Labour faction cannot altogether be blamed for the present disintegration of Parliament, so the press cannot be held responsible for its degradation. In both eases cause and effect have been interrelated. The mistake which the press has made has been in not perceiving that the more it interferes with the legitimate functions of Parliament, even although with the best intentions, the more it degrades Parliament. We have now passed in review the two great dangers which assail the Commonwealth at the inception of federation. We have shown how intimately related they are to the two great principles underlying representative government--organization and leadership. Nay, we have seen that all the varied phenomena presented by the great democracies of the world can be expressed in terms of the same two principles. It remains to show that to give effect to the expression of these two principles in a more perfect manner than ever yet attained is a problem of electoral machinery. This task we shall now undertake. FOOTNOTES: [2] "Representative Government in England," p. 123. [3] _Age_, 28th June, 1900. CHAPTER IV. THE REFORM: TRUE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. How to give effect to the principles of organization and leadership in an electoral reform--that is the problem which we shall now attempt to solve. We have already laid down the theoretical requirements, which are (1) proportional representation to the two parties--the majority and the minority, and (2) the election by each party separately of its most popular leaders; and we shall now have to consider also how these requirements are modified by practical considerations. +Proportional Representation to the Two Parties, the Majority and the Minority.+--It will be as well to illustrate the method proposed by reference to the conditions imposed by an actual election, such as that for the Federal Senate. The Commonwealth Bill provides that each State shall be polled as a single electorate, returning six senators. Suppose that 120,000 electors vote on party lines in any State. It is clear that a party which has the support of 20,000 electors is entitled to one senator; also, that a party which has the support of 40,000 electors is entitled to two senators; of 60,000 electors to three senators, and so on. Now, suppose that one party has the support of 50,000 electors, and the other of 70,000 electors, then the minority is entitled to two and a half senators, and the majority to three and a half senators. But senators are living units, and cannot be divided into fractions. The question therefore arises, Which is entitled to the odd senator, the majority or the minority? And the answer is that they are both equally entitled to him; for it is as much a tie as if each party has the support of 10,000 electors in a single-seat electorate. But if the minority had the support of 49,999 electors, or one elector less, it would be entitled to only two senators, and if it had the support of 50,001 electors, or one elector more, it would be entitled to three senators. From the above simple facts can be deduced general rules applicable to any particular case. It is evident that the result is not affected by the number of votes allowed to each elector, providing only that each elector has the same number of votes. It is also quite irrespective of the number of candidates nominated in the interests of each party. But it would never do to allow party organizations to control nominations. How are we to combine individual candidature with party nomination? The only way to do this is to require that each candidate shall declare, either when nominating or a few days before the election, on which side of the House he intends to sit, and be classified accordingly as Ministerialist or Oppositionist. To decide the relative strengths of the two parties, it is then only necessary to take the aggregate votes polled by all the candidates nominated for each party as a measure of the amount of support which it receives. The great advantages of this provision are at once apparent. There is no incentive to limit the number of candidates so as to prevent splitting the votes. On the contrary, it is to the interest of each party to get as many strong candidates as possible to stand in its interests. There will be no necessity to ask any candidate to retire for fear of losing a seat to the party. Thus the control of nominations, which leads to the worst abuses of the present system, will be entirely obviated. Now, suppose that in the instance we have already given each elector is allowed to vote for one candidate only, the total number of votes recorded will be 120,000. Then the _unit of representation_ or number of votes which entitle a party to one senator will be 20,000 votes; each party will be entitled to one senator for every whole unit of representation, and the odd senator will go to the party having the larger remainder. For instance, if the aggregate votes polled by all the Ministerialist candidates be 72,000, and by the Oppositionist candidates 48,000, the Ministerialists, having three units plus 12,000 remainder, are entitled to four senators, and the Opposition, having two units plus 8,000, to two senators. Similarly, if each elector be allowed to vote for a number of candidates, all these figures will be increased in proportion. For example, if each elector has three votes, the unit of representation would be 60,000 votes. The following general rules may therefore be stated:-- 1. The unit of representation is equal to the total number of valid votes cast at the election, divided by the number of seats. 2. Each party is entitled to one seat for every whole unit of representation contained in the aggregate votes polled by all its candidates, and the odd seat goes to the party which has the larger remainder. The fact that the last seat has to be assigned to the party which has the larger remainder is sometimes advanced as an objection, but it is evidently the fairest possible division that the size of the electorate will permit. Of course, the larger the electorate the more accurately proportioned will be the representation. Hence the representation would be most accurate if the whole assembly were elected in one large electorate. But if, for the sake of convenience, the assembly be elected in a large number of electorates in which the relative proportions of two parties vary the gains which a party makes in some electorates will be balanced by losses in others, so that the final result would be almost as accurate as if the whole country were polled as one electorate. It must be remembered that the result in any electorate cannot be foreseen, and that it is a matter of chance which party gains the advantage. Now, if the limits of variation comprise even a single unit of representation, each party will stand an equal chance of gaining, and therefore the laws of chance will ensure that the gains balance the losses in the different electorates. Supposing a party which averages 40 per cent. in the whole country to vary between 30 per cent. and 50 per cent, in the different electorates (which may be taken as a fair assumption), the unit of representation should equal 20 per cent., or one-fifth. Under these conditions the laws of chance will ensure correct representation, so long as the electorates do not contain less than five seats. The above facts furnish a complete answer to the arguments advanced by Mr. J.W. M'Cay, ex-M.L.A., in a series of articles in the _Age_ against the application of proportional representation to the Federal Senate. While apparently recognizing that it is utterly impossible for the minority to secure a majority of the representation, he based his objection solely on the fact that a minority is able with electorates containing an even number of seats to secure one-half of the representation, and thus lead to what he terms "the minority block." The force of the objection will entirely depend on the size of the minority which is able thus to thwart the will of the majority. The Federal Senate will consist of 36 senators, each of the original States contributing six. No reasonable man would complain if the minority, being only entitled to 17 senators, actually returned 18, but Mr. M'Cay points out that it is possible for a minority entitled to 15 senators to return 18. To bring about this result he makes the absurd assumption that in each of the six States the minority polls exactly two whole units of representation, and a bare majority of a third unit. It is safe to say that this would not happen once in a thousand years. If the relative proportions of the two parties vary in the slightest in the different States some must be under and some over the assumed proportion. It is most probable that it will be under it in three States and over it in the other three States; and, under these circumstances, the party will return 15 senators, the exact number to which it is entitled. It may happen to be under the assumed proportion in only two of the States and over in the other four, and that the party will get one more senator than it is entitled to; but it is extremely improbable that it will get two more, and virtually impossible that it will get three more senators than its just proportion. Mr. M'Cay's conclusion that proportional representation can only be used in electorates returning an odd number of representatives is shown to be entirely unwarranted. Equally fallacious is Professor Nanson's rebutting statement that "scientific proportionalists recommend odd electorates." While the number of States remains even, the mathematical chance of a minority securing one-half of the representation is precisely the same whether the States return an odd or an even number of senators. As a matter of fact, the danger of a minority securing one-half of the representation is much greater at the intermediate elections for the Senate, when each State returns three senators, the reason being the smaller field. We have dwelt at some length on the preceding example, because it serves to refute another error into which some of the proportionalists have fallen. It is held that the unit of representation should be ascertained by dividing the total votes, not by the number of seats, but by the seats increased by one. This unit is generally known as the Droop quota, having been proposed in a work published by Mr. H.R. Droop in 1869. Since one vote more than one-half of the total votes is sufficient for election in a single-seat electorate, it is argued that one vote more than one-third suffices in a two-seat electorate, one vote more than one-fourth in a three-seat electorate, and so on. The unit in a six-seat electorate would be one-seventh of the votes instead of one-sixth, and it is pointed out that by this means the whole six seats would be filled by whole units, leaving an unrepresented residuum of one-seventh of the votes divided between the two parties. The error lies precisely as before in concentrating attention on one of the electorates, and in neglecting the theory of probability. The Droop quota introduces the condition that each party must pay a certain minimum number of votes for each seat, and the real distinction is that, instead of the minority and the majority having an equal chance of securing any advantage, the chances are in the same proportion as their relative strengths. If the majority be twice as strong as the minority, it will have twice the chance of gaining the advantage. To prove this, consider the position of a one-third minority in a number of five-seat electorates. The Droop quota being one-sixth of the votes, the minority will secure two seats or 40 per cent. in those electorates where it is just over one-third, and one seat or 20 per cent. where it is just under. Since the mathematical chances are that it will be over in one half and under in the other half, it will, on the average, secure only 30 per cent., although entitled to 33 per cent. Again, if the 670 members of the House of Commons were elected in three to five-seat electorates, and the Droop quota used as proposed by Sir John Lubbock, and if the Ministerialists were twice as strong as the Oppositionists, they would, on the average, return 30 more members than the two-thirds to which they are entitled, and this would count 60 members on a division. The following table illustrates the erroneous result obtained by applying the Droop quota when a number of grouped-electorates are concerned. It will be noticed that where parties are nearly equal it makes very little difference which unit is used:-- +-------------+--------------------------------------------+ | STRENGTH OF | AVERAGE REPRESENTATION. | | +----------------------+---------------------+ | PARTY |Five-Seat Electorates.|Ten-Seat Electorates.| +-------------+----------------------+---------------------+ | 10 per cent.| 2 per cent. | 6 per cent. | | 20 " " | 14 " " | 17 " " | | 30 " " | 26 " " | 28 " " | | 40 " " | 38 " " | 39 " " | | 50 " " | 50 " " | 50 " " | +-------------+----------------------+---------------------+ The Droop quota, therefore, gives, not proportional, but disproportional representation. +Election by Each Party of its Most Popular Candidates.+--Still keeping in mind the six-seat electorate for the Federal Senate, we may note that there are two rival systems in the field--the _scrutin de liste_ or Block Vote, in which each elector votes for any six of the candidates, and the Hare system, which allows each elector an effective vote for one candidate only. The adoption of either of these systems would be unfortunate. To force each elector to vote for six candidates is probably to require him to vote for more than he is inclined to support, and certainly for more than his party is entitled to return; and, also, to put it in the power of the majority to return all six senators. To allow him to vote for one candidate only, on the other hand, is to break up both parties into factions by allowing the favourites of sections within the parties to be elected, instead of those most in general favour with all sections composing each party. An intermediate position is therefore best. No elector should be required to vote for more than three candidates, and no elector should be allowed to vote for less. Because in the first place it is evident that each party will, on the average, return three senators, and, secondly, it may be taken for granted that even the minority will nominate at least three candidates. Two alternative proposals may be submitted as fulfilling these conditions:-- _1. Each elector should vote for any three candidates, or 2. Each elector should have six votes, and have the option of giving two votes to individual candidates._ The first plan is the simpler, but the second is probably the better, as it allows more discrimination without sacrificing any of the advantages. Either proposal is practically equivalent to applying the Block Vote to each party separately; and whatever may be the objections to applying the Block Vote to two or more parties it is the simplest and best system to elect the candidates most in general favour when one party only is concerned. It is true that the majority will return rather more than one-half of the representatives and the minority rather less than one-half, so that the minority will have more votes in proportion to its strength. But with two parties of fairly equal but fluctuating strength the fairest way is to require each elector to vote for at least one-half of the number of representatives. Besides, apart from the fact that it is not known before the election how many seats each party will obtain, it is absolutely necessary that each elector shall have the same number of votes in order that each party be allotted its just share of representation. Moreover it is not proposed to limit the elector's freedom of choice in the slightest by confining him to the candidates of one party. The great majority of electors will vote on party lines, because every vote given to a candidate of the opposing party tells against the representation of their own party. The reason of this is that every vote counts individually for the candidate and collectively for the whole party. Any elector, therefore, who divides his voting power equally between the two parties practically wastes it as far as the party representation is concerned. But it is neither necessary nor desirable to bring about such a rigid party division as prevails in America, for instance, where a man is born, lives, and dies Republican or Democrat. If electors were confined to the candidates of one party, an elector who wished to vote for an individual candidate of the opposing party would be placed in the dilemma of deserting either his favourite or his party. The division into parties is really required in the elected body, and not in the constituent body. +Rules for the Reform.+--We are now in a position to draw up a list of rules for the proposed reform, applicable to all legislatures in which party government prevails:-- 1. Electorates to be grouped so as to contain at least three seats, and preferably not less than five seats nor more than twenty seats. 2. Candidates to declare when nominating, or a few days before the election, whether they are in favour of or opposed to the party in power, and to be classified accordingly as Ministerialists or Oppositionists. 3. Ballot papers to contain the names of all candidates nominated, arranged in two parallel columns, one headed Ministerialists, and the other Oppositionists. The list of candidates under each heading to be arranged in alphabetical order. 4. Each elector to have as many votes as there are seats, and to be allowed to give either one or two votes to any candidate. The votes to be distributed as he pleases among all the candidates of both lists. 5. The total number of valid votes cast at the election to be divided by the number of seats; the quotient to be known as the "unit of representation." 6. Each party to be allowed one seat for every whole unit of representation contained in the aggregate votes polled by all its candidates, and the last seat to go to the party which has the larger remainder. 7. The candidates of each party having the highest number of votes to be declared elected to the number of seats to which each party is entitled in accordance with the preceding rule. 8. In case of a tie between candidates or parties the lot decides. The alternative plan for rule 4, which is somewhat simpler, would read as follows:-- 4. Each elector to vote for half the number of candidates that there are seats, _i.e._, three votes in a five or six-seat electorate, four votes in a seven or eight-seat electorate, &c. The votes to be distributed as he pleases among all the candidates of both lists. It is unnecessary to dwell on the absolute simplicity of these rules. They involve no radical departure from existing methods of voting or of counting votes. Once the totals are added up, the calculations necessary to decide the successful candidates are within the reach of a school child. EXAMPLE.--Take as an example 13 candidates in a six-seat electorate who poll as follows:-- MINISTERIALISTS. OPPOSITIONISTS. BROWN 83,000 YOUNG 53,000 RYAN 74,000 BELL 51,000 COX 44,000 HUME 47,000 WHITE 42,000 JONES 45,000 PEEL 38,000 BLACK 34,000 ADAMS 35,000 ------- GREY 33,000 230,000 SWIFT 21,000 ------- 370,000 Total votes = 370,000 + 230,000 = 600,000. Unit of representation = 600,000/6 = 100,000. Ministerialists: 3 units + 70,000 remainder = 4 seats. Oppositionists: 2 units + 30,000 remainder = 2 seats. The Ministerialists, having the larger remainder, secure the last seat. The successful candidates are Brown, Ryan, Cox, and White (M.), Young and Bell (O.) It will be noted that without the proportional principle the Ministerialists would have returned two members only, and the Oppositionists four. It is to be distinctly understood that the simpler plan of voting for half the number of candidates that there are seats is practically as good as the other. In order to show, however, that the plan we have favoured may be simplified, we illustrate by a sample ballot paper a method which has been used in Belgium. Two white spots are printed opposite each candidate's name. An ink pad and stamp are then provided at each polling booth, and the elector stamps out a white spot for each vote he wishes to give. In the paper illustrated two votes are given to Brown, two to Jones, one to Grey, and one to Swift. This elector has, therefore, given two-thirds of his voting power to the Ministerial party, and one-third to the Opposition, and has thus directly influenced both policies. A further advantage of the proposal is the ease with which such a paper can be read by the returning officer. BALLOT PAPER * * * * * Ministerialists. Oppositionists. +---------------+ +---------------+ | | | | | | | o o | ADAMS | | o o | BELL | | | | | | | +---------------+ +---------------+ | | | | | | | x x | BROWN | | o o | BLACK | | | | | | | +-----+---------+ +---------------+ | | | | | | | o o | COX | | o o | HUME | | | | | | | +-----+---------+ +---------------+ | | | | | | | o x | GREY | | x x | JONES | | | | | | | +-----+---------+ +---------------+ | | | | | | | o o | PEEL | | o o | YOUNG | | | | | | | +-----+---------+ +---------------+ | | | | o o | RYAN | | | | +-----+---------+ | | | | x o | SWIFT | | | | +-----+---------+ | | | | o o | WHITE | | | | +-----+---------+ 1. You are allowed Six votes, and can give either one or two votes to any candidate on either list. 2. Stamp out one of the white spots if you wish to give a candidate one vote. 3. Stamp out the two white spots if you wish to give a candidate two votes. 4. Your ballot paper will be invalid if you stamp out more or less than Six white spots. +Character of Parties.+--We must now prove that the methods proposed will actually organize the people into two coherent parties. Let us suppose either party to be composed of three sections. The problem is to induce these three sections to work together, and to sink their petty differences in the general interest, in short to unite as a party, aiming at the control of administration with a definite policy on public questions. Let us further suppose the party entitled to three representatives. Now, it is quite conceivable that exactly the same three candidates would be elected if each elector had any number of votes from one to three, and this would actually tend to be the case the more united the party is. But herein lies the difference: that with one vote only any one section holding narrow and violent views can return an independent delegate, and therefore has a direct inducement to do so, while with three votes it is forced to work with the other two sections, for if it refuses to do so it is in their power to exclude its nominee. It is this power to exclude independent factions which is the first requisite to prevent the main parties degenerating into factions. Now, the advocates of the Hare system declare that each elector should have one effective vote only, no matter how many seats the party is entitled to. The elector would therefore only express his opinion as to the delegate of his own section, and not as to the constitution of the whole party, and there would be nothing whatever to prevent the election of the favourites of sections, instead of the representatives most in general favour with all sections. But if there were only one party it would be impossible to make all the sections work together in this manner. Some of them would combine into a majority of the party, and would exclude the minority. With two great competing parties, however, the case is quite different. So far from either party wishing to exclude any small minority, both will compete for its support, providing only that it will fall into line with the other sections on the main questions of policy. Each section will therefore support the party which will consent to embody the most favourable compromise of its demands in its policy. If its demands are such that both parties refuse to entertain them, it will exercise no influence in the direction of furthering its own views. From this statement it is evident that no system of independent direct proportional representation within the party can be recognized as a right to which the different sections are entitled, as it would inevitably break up the party, and lead to sectional delegation. The sections would then change in character, and become violent factions. But, nevertheless, if the sections work together as described, every section will be proportionately represented in the party policy, and therefore by every representative of the party. Moreover, no section can dictate to either party, or obtain more than a fair compromise. For all the sections are interdependent, and any section which attempts to exert more than its just share of influence will sink in general favour, and will find those who are inclined to support its pretensions rejected at the election. The difference between the two stages of representation may now be clearly appreciated. In the first stage we have seen that the fear of the aggression of the monarchy held all sections together in one party. In the second stage, however, it has been abundantly demonstrated by experience that the fear of each other will not hold the sections of the two parties together. The electoral machinery must, therefore, supply the deficiency. +Party Lines.+--With the altered character of parties there is ground for hope that the basis of division will become questions of general public policy, and that all causes of factious dissension and of social disruption will tend to be repressed. This improvement is indeed urgently needed. For if in any country party lines are decided by geographical considerations, as town _v._ country; by class, as Capital _v._ Labour; by race as in South Africa; by religion as in Belgium; or by personal ambition for the spoils of office--in any of these cases the future of that country is open to the gravest doubt. Perhaps the greatest danger which assails most democratic countries to-day is the risk of the working classes being persuaded by demagogues that equal political rights have been extended to them in order that they shall govern, instead of in order that they shall not be misgoverned. If the general welfare is to be advanced, all classes must influence the policies of both parties. This condition is indispensable to bring about the ideal condition of two parties differing only as to what is best for all. Equally to be condemned is the narrow-minded and intolerant view of those who can see no virtue in an opposing party; who define, for instance, the distinction between parties as the party for things as they are, and the party for things as they ought to be; the latter being, of course, their own party. This is one of the objectionable features of Australian newspaper-made politics. A more rational view of the distinction which often underlies party divisions is between those who desire change and those who oppose change. J.S. Mill points out how the latter may often be useful in preventing progress in a wrong direction. There are times when such attitude is called for, but generally speaking we may say that the fundamental distinction between parties should be a difference of opinion as to the direction of progress. Nor is it inconsistent for a party to change its opinion or alter its policy; on the contrary, it is essential to progress. The majority must often modify its policy in the light of the criticism of the minority, and the minority must often drop the unpopular proposals which have put it in a minority. These features are all essential to the working of the political machine. +The Character of Representatives.+--Granting that all sections of each party can be induced to work together, the beneficial effect on the character of representatives would be incalculable. Instead of being forced to pander to every small section for support, they would appeal to all sections. The enlarged electorates which are contemplated would be arranged to embrace the widest diversity of interest, and a representative would then be free to follow his own independent judgment, unfettered by the dictation of small cliques. His actions might offend some sections who supported his election; but he has a wide field, and may gain the support of other sections by them. Therefore, he may actually improve his position by gaining more supporters than he loses. Contrast this with the present system, in which the representatives are cooped up in single-membered electorates to denned sets of supporters. The very principle of community of interest on which these electorates must be arranged in order to get a fair result is destructive of the idea of representation. It is no wonder, then, that the present system is tending towards delegation. Local delegation we have always had, more or less, but we are now threatened by class delegation also. The conclusion of Mr. Kent in "The English Radicals" may be quoted on this point. He says:-- The question of the relationship of members to their constituents is at the present time perplexed and undetermined; for though the control of Parliament by the people is an indisputable fact, yet it is maintained by means of quite another kind from those which the early Radicals proposed. The result is somewhat paradoxical, for while the system of pledges has been contemptuously rejected, yet the theory that a member is a delegate tacitly prevails in English politics. That members of the House of Commons have tended and do tend to lose their independence it is impossible to doubt. A distinguished French publicist, M. Boutmy, for instance, has remarked the fact; and he thinks that in consequence a deterioration of the tone of politicians is likely to recur. Mr. E.L. Godkin, an American writer, whose judgments are entitled to respect, has expressed much the same opinion; "the delegate theory," he says, "has been gaining ground in England, and in America has almost completely succeeded in asserting its sway, so that we have seen many cases in which members of Congress have openly declared their dissent from the measures for which they voted in obedience to their constituents." It is one of the greatest merits of the proposed reform that this vexed question of representation or delegation would be definitely settled. For, although the area of independent action is enlarged, definite limits are set to it. +Possible Objections.+--We may now reply to some objections which have been or might be urged. At the outset we would point out that the critics nearly always base their objections on the conditions which have prevailed in the past or do exist in the present chaotic state of parties; and seldom appreciate the fact that they would lose force if a better condition could be brought about. Let us take the Melbourne _Argus_ report of Professor Nanson's objections:-- Professor Nanson pointed out that the scheme depended for its efficacy on the existence of party government, which the Professor was glad to say was being pushed more and more into the background. He took a practical illustration from the defeat of the O'Loghlen Government in 1883. In that case, after the election the Government came back with a following of one-tenth. The other combined party had nine-tenths, and of these a little more than half were Liberals and a little less than half were Conservatives. He pointed out that under Mr. Ashworth's system the Liberals would have got the whole of the Opposition seats and the Conservatives none, whereas under any intelligent modification of the Hare system the parties would have been returned in the proportion of five Liberals, four Conservatives, and one O'Loghlenite. The system contained the evils of the _scrutin de liste_ doubled by being applied to two parties, the evils of the Limited Vote, which had been condemned by all leading statesmen, and it played into the hands of these who were best able to organize. Take the latter statements first. The evil of the Block Vote or _scrutin de liste_ is that it gives all the representation to the majority, and excludes the minority; its merit is that it prevents the formation of a number of minorities. How this evil will be doubled if it is entirely removed by allowing both majority and minority their just share of representation we leave the Professor to explain. The statement that the scheme would play into the hands of those who are best able to organize is absolutely without foundation. On the contrary, the organization is automatic. It would certainly encourage the formation of organizations to influence the policies of the parties, since every organization would be able to exert its proportionate influence, but that is an advantage, not an evil. We will leave the statement about party government alone, and now take the "practical illustration." The Professor here assumes three distinct parties, but it is quite evident there are only two. It is not usual for Liberal Unionists and Conservatives to fight one another at elections in Great Britain at present. In the same way, if a section of Liberals and a section of Conservatives unite to oppose a Government, they will work together and not try to exclude one another. Moreover, they will have a common policy, so that it matters little who are elected so long as they are the best men to carry out the policy. Is it likely the Conservatives would join the Liberals, if the latter were trying to get all the seats? Thus all the Professor's assumptions are incorrect. But even if they were correct the conclusion is still wrong. The Liberal section could not get all the seats if they tried. Imagine a ten-seat electorate, in which the combined party is entitled to nine members. The electors would not be required to vote for more than five candidates, whereas the Professor has assumed that they would be forced to vote for nine. He has forgotten that the Block Vote becomes the Limited Vote under the conditions named, and that the Limited Vote allows the minority a share of representation. Besides, in any case, these conditions would never arise in a country in a healthy state of political activity, because then parties would tend more nearly to equalize each other in strength. It has also been objected that a Ministerialist candidate, say, might stand as an Oppositionist, if the votes of the Opposition candidates were more split up and it was likely to require less votes for election in that party. This is a rather fantastic suggestion. The candidate in question would have to declare himself in favour of a number of things which he would oppose immediately he was elected. If not, he would have to openly declare his intention, but that could easily be made illegal. In any case there would be very little gained, and there is further the risk that, if defeated, all his votes would count to the Opposition. Another possible objection is that too many candidates might stand, since it is to the interest of each party to get all the support it can. But candidates are not likely to stand to oblige the party or when there is no chance of being elected. It is quite possible that, in a country already split up into numerous groups, the groups would refuse to act together, and that each group would nominate its own list. This is an extreme assumption, and certainly would not happen in British countries. And there would be a constant incentive to the groups to compromise, since a combination can return its candidates. We hope now to have at least established the fact that the organization of a democracy into two coherent parties--a majority and a minority--is vitally connected with the electoral machinery. We do not claim that the method we have proposed will induce a people to vote on true party lines all at once, for human nature cannot be changed in a day; but we do confidently assert that it will greatly accelerate that desirable result, and will tend to give effect to the principles of organization and responsible leadership. CHAPTER V. HOW THE EVILS OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM WILL BE REMEDIED. From the inception of the representative system it has been usual to elect representatives in small districts, returning only one or two members, and the single-membered electorate is now almost universal. In the early Parliaments, however, elections were not contested as they are nowadays. It was merely a choice of the most suitable men to represent a corporate local community. Hence an indirect method of election was generally resorted to, the final choice being left to a small committee of the most important men. With the gradual rise of the party system the conditions entirely changed; and it is important to gain a clear idea of what is involved in the change. In the first stage we have referred to it is not probable that there were any candidates at all. The position of member of Parliament was not sought after; it was rather thrust upon the man selected as a duty he owed the community. The choice would usually be unanimous, since there would be some men whose recognized influence and attainments would mark them off as most fitted for the position. If there was any difference of opinion it would be merely as to who was best fitted to represent all, and therefore there would never be any excluded minority. The essential difference in the second stage is that every election is contested by two organized parties. The choice is now not of men only, but of measures and of men as well. It is a contest in the first place within each party as to who is best fitted to represent the party, and in the second place between the two parties for the support of the people. The party in a majority secures all the representation; the party in a minority none. Now, the minority is certainly not represented by the choice of the majority; on the contrary, its views are exactly the opposite. Hence the question arises: Is not this exclusion of the minority an injustice? Does it not amount to disfranchisement? The usual reply is either that the majority must rule or that the injustice done in some electorates is balanced in others, so that in the long run rough justice is obtained. As to the first contention, it is the party which has the support of a majority of the whole people which should rule; and the excluded minority in some of the electorates belongs to this party. The second practically amounts to the statement that two wrongs make a right. A practice prevails in the United States which will illustrate the position. Each State sends a number of representatives to Congress proportional to its population, and the division into electorates is left to the State. By manipulating the electoral boundaries the party which has a majority in each State is enabled to arrange that the injustice done to itself is a minimum, and that the injustice done to the opposing party is a maximum. By this iniquitous practice, which is known as the gerrymander, the party in a minority in each State is allowed to get only about one-half or one-quarter of its proper share of representation. But as the practice is universal in all the States, the injustice done to a party in some States is balanced in others. Will those who seek to excuse the injustice done to the minority in each electorate by the present system of election seriously contend that the same argument justifies the gerrymander? The truth is that the present system has survived the passage from the first stage of representation into the second, not because it does justice to both parties, but because it has operated largely to prevent the formation of more than two parties. It has, therefore, been a means of giving effect to the central feature of representation, viz.: the organization of public opinion into two definite lines of policy. But it is a comparatively ineffective means, and it no longer suffices to prevent sectional delegation in any of the democracies we have examined. Besides, it is accompanied by a series of other evils, which in so far as they lead to the suppression of responsible leadership, tend to the degradation of public life. We propose now to consider the effect of the reform in remedying these defects of the present system. +Parties Not Represented in the Legislature in the Same Proportion as in the Country.+--Representation under the present system is purely arbitrary; the amount which each party secures is a matter of chance. If a party with a majority in the whole country has a majority in each of the electorates it will secure all the representation. On the other hand, if it splits up its votes in each electorate, or even only in those electorates where it has a majority, it may secure none at all. Theoretically, then, any result is possible. The argument would lose its force, however, if in practice the result usually came out about right. But this seldom happens, and, speaking generally, two cases may be distinguished: first, when parties are nearly equal, the minority is almost as likely as the majority to return a majority of the representatives, thus defeating the principle of majority rule; and, second, when one party has a substantial majority, it generally sweeps the board and annihilates the minority. A few examples will illustrate these facts. The 1895 election for the Imperial Parliament is analyzed by Sir John Lubbock in the _Proportional Representation Review_. He shows that out of 481 contested seats, the Liberals, with 1,800,000 votes were entitled to 242, and the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, with 1,775,000 to 239, a majority of three seats for the Liberals. But the Conservatives and Unionists actually returned 279, and the Liberals only 202, a majority of 77 seats. The Conservatives and Unionists obtained also a majority of 75 of the uncontested seats, giving them a total majority of 152, instead of the 72 to which they were entitled. Recent elections for the United States Congress are shown by Professor Commons to present striking inequalities. At the election for the 51st Congress, 1888, the Republicans polled 5,348,379, and the Democrats 5,502,581. But the Republican minority actually secured 164 seats against 161, a majority of 3, and were enabled to carry the McKinley tariff law. For the 52nd Congress, 1890, the Republicans, with 4,217,266 votes, only elected 88, while the Democrats, with 4,974,450 votes, elected 235, and the Populists, with 354,217 votes, elected 9 Congressmen. The Democratic majority should have been only 2, instead of 138. Compared with the 51st Congress, their proportion of the popular vote increased only 1 per cent., but their proportion of the representatives increased 21 per cent. It required 47,923 votes to elect a Republican, 44,276 to elect a Populist, and only 21,078 to elect a Democrat. To come nearer home, did not Mr. Reid return to power at the 1898 election in New South Wales although the Opposition polled a majority of 15,000 against him? The last election in Victoria illustrates nothing so much as the chaotic state of parties, brought about by newspaper influence in promoting false lines of division. No less than 30 seats, representing 81,857 votes, were contested only by candidates who professed to be Ministerialists of various shades. Of 52 seats contested by Ministerial and Opposition candidates, each party secured 26; but the Ministerialists paid 59,255 votes for their seats as against 44,327 cast for the Opposition. 13 seats were uncontested, 9 Ministerial and 4 Opposition, giving a total of 65 members to the Ministerial party and 30 members to the Opposition. The arbitrary and haphazard character of these results is obvious. It would be entirely removed by the reform. Every election would reflect the true feeling of the country; the right of the majority to rule would be rendered certain, and the right of the minority to a fair hearing would be assured. Taking the country as a whole, the Ministerialists would pay almost exactly the same number of votes for each seat as the Opposition. In each separate electorate the accuracy would not be so great, but the rectification of even this slight and unavoidable inequality would, instead of being arbitrary, be subject to the laws of chance. +Ineffective Votes.+--Under the present system, all votes cast for rejected candidates are ineffective; therefore nearly one-half of the electors have no voice in the Government. A Liberal elector may live in a Conservative constituency all his life without having the opportunity to cast an effective vote. The evil of popular indifference is largely to be explained by this fact. It is no answer to say that it affects both parties equally. The trouble is that nearly one-half of the electors of each party have no influence in deciding who are to represent the party, and therefore do not help to frame its policy. This evil would also be entirely removed. Every vote cast would count to one or the other party. It is not necessary that every vote should be counted to some one candidate, as the advocates of the Hare system claim. Votes given to rejected candidates would be in effect just as much transferred to the successful candidates as by the Hare system. Moreover, it is an important gain that the candidates of each party would be ranged in order of favour, as the relative position of the candidates would be an index of the feeling of each electorate, not only as regards men but also as regards measures. Therefore, even the votes given to rejected candidates would affect the framing of the party policy, and show the progress of public opinion. +Uncontested Seats.+--At the 1895 election for the Imperial Parliament no less than 189 seats out of 670 were uncontested. Thus one-quarter of the people had no opportunity of expressing any opinion. In Australia the proportion is often quite as large. The present Legislative Council of Victoria is an extreme instance. One-third of the Council retires every three years; and at the last election not a single seat was contested. Only 4 out of the 48 sitting members have had to contest election. Under these circumstances the holding of an election at all becomes a farce. No doubt it is very convenient for the favoured individuals; but as the primary object of elections is the ascertainment of public opinion, it is very desirable that every seat should be contested. The chief cause of this evil is that when one party is strong in an electorate it is hopeless for the minority to contest it, unless the majority nominates more than one candidate. On the other hand, the majority knows that if it does split its votes the minority will probably win the seat. The result is that the sitting member has a great advantage, and is often tolerated even though he is acceptable to only a minority of his own party. With the reform each electorate would become the scene of a contest between the two parties for their proportional share of representation. It is very unlikely, indeed, that in any electorate no more candidates would be nominated than are required to be elected. +Limitation of Choice.+--Even when seats are contested, the elector's choice is very limited under the present system. Wherever party government is strong, each party nominates only one candidate, owing to the danger of splitting up its votes and so losing the seat. The elector has then practically no choice. He may disapprove of the candidate standing for his own party, but the only alternative is to stultify himself by supporting the opposing candidate. If in disgust he abstains from voting altogether, it is the same as giving each candidate half his vote. Even when two or three candidates of his own party are nominated, and he supports the one whose views coincide most closely with his own, he can exert very little direct influence on the party policy. Besides, he will often think it wise to support the strongest candidate rather than the one he favours most. These considerations show what a very imperfect instrument the present system is for expressing public opinion. The test which should be applied to any system of election is whether it allows each elector to express his opinion on general policy, and from this point of view the present system fails lamentably; all opinion which does not run in the direct channel of party is excluded. Mr. Bryce has fixed on this defect as the weak point of the party system, but the fault really lies in the limitation of choice connected with the present system of election. It is quite true that "in every country voting for a man is an inadequate way of expressing one's views of policy, because the candidate is sure to differ in one or more questions from many of those who belong to the party."[4] But if, in the first place, the incentive to limit the number of candidates be removed and the field of choice widened, and if, in the second place, each elector be allowed to vote for several candidates instead of one only, the defect would be remedied. Now, the reform makes both these provisions, and the importance of the improvement can hardly be overrated. It means, first, that every elector will be not only allowed, but also induced, to express his opinion on general policy. He may give his votes to candidates either for their general views or for some particular view; or, if he lays less stress on measures than on men, he may give them to men of high character or of great administrative ability. It means, secondly, that every section of opinion composing each party will be fairly represented, and that none will be excluded, because the candidates of each party will compete among themselves for the support of all sections, in order to decide those most in general favour. Hence every section will directly help to frame and influence the party policy, and there will be not the slightest excuse for independent action outside the two main parties. In the third place, it means the substitution of individual responsibility for the corporate responsibility of parties, since the electors will have the power to reject those who wish to modify party action in any direction contrary to the general wish. It means, finally, that every elector's opinion, as expressed by his vote, will have equal influence in deciding the direction of party action. +Control of Nominations.+--There is a constant incentive with the present system of election to limit the number of candidates to two, one representing each party. For if either party splits up its votes on more than one candidate it will risk losing the seat. But the necessity to limit the candidates involves some control of the nominations, and this is perhaps the worst feature of the system. It means that, instead of the electors being allowed to select their representative, he is chosen for them by some irresponsible body. We have seen how in the United States the nominating system is the source of the power of the "boss" and the "machine;" and the same result is only a matter of time in British countries. The registration of voters is not yet conducted in the same rigid manner as in America, nor is the farce of holding a primary election gone through; but whether the control be exercised by a political organization, a newspaper, a local committee, or a secret society, the principle is the same. Mr. Bryce has noticed the rapid change in the practice of England on this point:--"As late as the general elections of 1868 and 1874 nearly all candidates offered themselves to the constituency, though some professed to do so in pursuance of requisitions emanating from the electors. In 1880 many--I think most--Liberal candidates in boroughs and some in counties were chosen by the local party associations, and appealed to the Liberal electors on the ground of having been so chosen. In 1885, and again in 1892, all, or nearly all, new Liberal candidates were so chosen, and a man offering himself against the nominee of the association was denounced as an interloper and traitor to the party. The same process has been going on in the Tory party, though more slowly. The influence of the locally wealthy, and also that of the central party office, is somewhat greater among the Tories, but in course of time choice by representative associations will doubtless become the rule."[5] Is it to be expected that this power will not be abused as in America? The trouble is that no association can represent all the party electors, and that the representative becomes responsible to the managers of the association, to whom he really owes his election. Any control of this kind is fatal to the principle of responsible leadership. And yet the only alternative with the present method of election is the break-up of the party system. This is the dilemma in which all modern democracies are placed. The evil will be completely obviated by the reform. Instead of limiting the candidates, it will be to the advantage of each party to induce the strongest and most popular candidates to stand on its behalf, since the number of seats it will obtain depends only on the aggregate votes polled by all the candidates. With individual candidature there can be no "machine" control of nominations. All are free to appeal directly to the people. +Localization of Politics.+--The local delegate is unfortunately the prevailing type of Australian politician. The value of a member is too often measured by the services he renders to his constituents individually or the amount of money he can get the Government to spend in his constituency. Hence the nefarious practice of log-rolling in Parliament. Is it any wonder that some of the colonies promise to rival France in the proportion of unreproductive works constructed out of loan money? How few of our members approach the ideal expressed by Edmund Burke in his address to the electors of Bristol:--"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of our nation, with one interest--that of the whole--where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member, indeed, but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament." It must be confessed, however, that Burke's ideal is rather exalted; it is the duty of a member to make known the requirements of his district. It is the ministry which is specially charged with looking after the interest of the whole and of resisting illegitimate demands. But it cannot do so if its position is so insecure that it must purchase the support of the "parish pump" politician. The only way to nationalize politics is to ensure that every electorate shall be contested on national issues by organized parties, and that every locality shall be represented on both parties. The proposed system will provide this remedy. In enlarged electorates each party will take good care that its candidates are men of local influence in the most important divisions of the electorate; therefore, sectional and local interests will be represented, but they will be subordinated to the interests of the whole electorate; and where there are a few large divisions the interests of each will more nearly coincide with national interests than where there are a large number of small divisions. Besides, log-rolling will not be so easy between groups of representatives as among single representatives. +Incentive to Bribery and Corruption.+--We now come to a class of evils which to a large extent result from the fact that a few votes in each electorate decide whether a party gets all the representation or none at all. Candidates are impelled, in order to gain support from every faction, to acts degrading to themselves and destructive to the moral tone of the people. Foremost among these evils is the great incentive to bribery and corruption; it is manifested not only in direct expenditure at the elections, but also in promises of patronage and class advantages. Direct bribery is perhaps worst in America; Professor M. Cook states, in a paper on "The Alarming Proportion of Venal Voters" in the _Forum_ for September, 1892, that in twenty-one towns of Connecticut 16 per cent, of the voters are venal. As Professor Commons remarks:--"It is plain that the bribable voters themselves are adequate to hold the balance of power between the parties. The single-membered district, therefore, places a magnificent premium upon bribery." In England the _Corrupt Practices Act_ has done immense good: nothing reflects so much honour on the Imperial Parliament as the voluntary transference of the duty of deciding cases to the judiciary. In Australia this much-needed reform has not yet been introduced, and direct bribery prevails to a much larger extent than would be supposed from the number of cases investigated. Members of Parliament are naturally loth to convict one of their own number, and the knowledge of this fact prevents petitions being lodged. The mere existence of secret bribery is bad enough, but a greater danger is that acts of indirect bribery are openly practised, with the tacit approval of electors. "There have been instances," says Mr. Lecky, in his "Democracy and Liberty," "in which the political votes of the police force, of the P.O. officials, of the civil service clerks have been avowedly marshalled for the purpose of obtaining particular class advantages--a disintegrated majority is strongly tempted to conciliate every detached group of votes." In Australia this has become a regular practice; and a still worse feature is that Members of Parliament have free access to public departments to promote class and local interests. Class legislation is frequently brought forward on the eve of an election with the sole object of influencing votes. These conditions favour the wire-pullers and mere self-seekers, and, in so far as they prevent the electors from voting on the political views and personal merits of the candidates, they are inimical to the public interests. Mr. Lecky has pointed out that a certain amount of moral compromise is necessary in public life, and that a politician may indulge in popularity-hunting from honourable public motives; the danger is that unworthy politicians may screen themselves under shelter of this excuse. We do not claim that the proposed system would abolish corruption, but we are justified in hoping that it would mitigate it very much. Even if the venal vote still held the balance of power between parties, parties are not so easily corrupted as individuals. But the most important gain is that it could only exert an influence proportional to its numbers; it could not decide whether a party gets all the representation or none at all, as at present. In most cases it would be doubtful if it would affect a single candidate. Consider, again, the case of individual candidates of the same party; any candidate resorting to bribery in order to increase his chance of election would do so partly at the expense of the other candidates of his own party, who would immediately denounce him. Instead of being forced to conciliate selfish factions, the candidates would be free to appeal for the support of the unselfish sections. +Continual Change in Electoral Boundaries.+--The irregular growth of population necessitates a periodical revision of the electoral boundaries of single-membered electorates. Owing to the influence of vested interests, this is generally effected in an arbitrary manner; and the glaring anomalies only are rectified. We have in Victoria at the present day some country electorates with 6,000 electors on the rolls and others with only 1,500. An elector in the latter has four times the voting power of an elector in the former. The process of alteration of the boundaries offers great temptation to unfairness; and in American politics the opportunity is taken full advantage of by a practice which has received the name of the gerrymander. In his work on "Proportional Representation" Professor Commons writes:-- It is difficult to express the opprobrium rightly belonging to so iniquitous a practice as the gerrymander; but its enormity is not appreciated, just as brutal prize-fighting is not reprobated providing it be fought according to the rules. Both political parties practise it, and neither can condemn the other. They simply do what is natural: make the most of their opportunities as far as permitted by the constitution and system under which both are working. The gerrymander is not produced by the iniquity of parties, it is the outcome of the district system. If representatives are elected in this way there must be some public authority for outlining the districts. And who shall be the judge to say where the line shall be drawn? Exact equality is impossible, and who shall set the limit beyond which inequality shall not be pressed? Every apportionment act that has been passed in this or any other country has involved inequality; and it would be absurd to ask a political party to pass such an act and give the advantage of the inequality to the opposite party. Consequently, every apportionment act involves more or less of the gerrymander. The gerrymander is simply such a thoughtful construction of districts as will economize the votes of the party in power by giving it small majorities in a large number of districts, and coop up the opposing party with overwhelming majorities in a large number of districts. This may involve a very distortionate and uncomely "scientific" boundary, and the joining together of distant and unrelated localities into a single district; such was the case in the famous original act of Governor Gerry, of Massachusetts, whence the practice obtained its amphibian name.[6] But it is not always necessary that districts be cut into distortionate shapes in order to accomplish these unjust results. (pp. 49, 50.) He illustrates a gerrymander which actually made one Democratic vote equal to five Republican votes. We have quoted this description of the methods of the gerrymander not so much because the evil has attained any magnitude in Australia as because it offers a warning of the probable result of adopting the single-membered district system for our Federal legislature. With enlarged or grouped electorates the periodical revision of boundaries would be entirely obviated, because the size of the electorate may be kept constant, and the number of representatives varied. Under such a system all unfairness would disappear, and the gerrymander would be impossible. Representation would automatically follow the movements of population. FOOTNOTES: [4] Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," vol ii, p 325 [5] Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," vol. ii., note on p. 81. [6] Governor Gerry contrived an electorate which resembled a salamander in shape. CHAPTER VI. THE HARE SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL DELEGATION. The single transferable vote, generally known as the Hare system, was first invented by a Danish statesman, M. Andrae, and was used for the election of a portion of the "Rigsraad" in 1855. In 1857 Mr. Thomas Hare, barrister-at-law, published it independently in England in a pamphlet on "The Machinery of Representation." This formed the basis of the scheme elaborated in his "Election of Representatives," which appeared in 1859. He proposed to abolish all geographical boundaries by constituting the whole of the United Kingdom one electorate for the return of the 654 members of the House of Commons. Each member was to be elected by an equal unanimous number of electors. The method of election was therefore so contrived as to allow the electors to group themselves into 654 constituencies, each group bound only by the tie of voluntary association, and gathered from every corner of the Kingdom. The total number of votes cast (about a million) was to be divided by 654, and the quotient, say about 1,500, would be the quota or number of votes required to elect a member. But some of the candidates would naturally receive more votes than the quota, and a great many more would receive less. How were all the votes to be equally divided among 654 members so that each should secure exactly the quota? The single transferable vote was proposed to attain this result. Each elector's vote was to count for one candidate only, but he was allowed to say in advance to whom he would wish his vote transferred in case it could not be used for his first choice. Each ballot paper was, therefore, to contain the names of a number of candidates in order of preference--1, 2, 3, &c. Then all the candidates having more than a quota of first choices were to have the surplus votes taken from them and transferred to the second choice on the papers, or if the second choice already had enough votes, to the third choice, and so on. When all the surpluses were distributed a certain number of members would be declared elected, each with a quota of votes. The candidates who had received the least amount of support were then to be gradually eliminated. The lowest candidate would be first rejected, and his votes transferred to the next available preference on his ballot papers; then the next lowest would be rejected, and so on till all the votes were equally distributed among the 654 members. Such was the Hare system as propounded by its author. The electors were to divide themselves into voluntary groups; then the groups which were too large were to be cut down by transferring the surplus votes, and the smaller groups were to be excluded and the votes also transferred until the groups were reduced to 654 equal constituencies. These two processes, transferring surplus votes and transferring votes from excluded candidates, are the main features of the system. Mr. Hare's rules for carrying them out are drawn up in the form of a proposed electoral law, and in the different editions of his work the clauses vary somewhat. They are also complicated by an impossible attempt to retain the local nomenclature of members. As regards surplus votes it was provided that the ballot papers which had the most preferences expressed should be transferred; still a good deal was left to chance or to the sweet will of the returning officer, and this has always been admitted as a serious objection. The process of elimination is still more unsatisfactory. Mr. Hare was from the first strongly opposed to the elimination of the candidate who had least first preferences, and he therefore proposed that, in order to decide which candidate had least support, all expressed preferences should be counted. This involved such enormous complication that in the 1861 edition of his work he abandoned the process of elimination altogether in favour of a process of selection. He then proposed to distribute surplus votes only, and to elect the highest of the remainder, regardless of the fact that they had less than a quota. He then wrote:--"The reduction of the number of candidates remaining at this stage of the election may be effected by taking out the names of all those who have the smallest number of actual votes--that is, who are named at the _head_ of the smallest number of voting papers, and appropriating each vote to the candidate standing _next_ in order on each paper. This process would be so arbitrary and inequitable in its operation as to be intolerable. It might have the effect of cancelling step by step more votes given to one candidate than would be sufficient to return another.... Such a process disregards the legitimate rights both of electors and of candidates." But the process of selection was not proportional representation at all, being practically equivalent to a single untransferable vote, and Mr. Hare finally adopted, in spite of its defects, the "arbitrary and inequitable" process of elimination in his last edition in 1873. And all his recent disciples have been forced to do the same, because nothing better is known. Mr. Hare's scheme has ceased to be of any practical interest, since it is now generally admitted that electorates should not return more than ten or twenty members. Moreover, it is admitted that the electors would group themselves in very undesirable ways, and not as Mr. Hare expected. And yet the only effect of limiting the size of the electorates is to reduce the number of undesirable ways in which electors might group themselves. Let us briefly note the different proposals which have been made. +1. Sir John Lubbock's Method.+--In his work on "Representation," Sir John Lubbock says:--"The full advantage of the single transferable vote would require a system of large constituencies returning three or five members each, thus securing a true representation of opinion." Three-seat electorates are, however, too small to secure accurate proportional representation; with parties evenly balanced, for instance, one must secure twice as much representation as the other. The following rules are given to explain the working of the system:-- (1) Each voter shall have one vote, but may vote in the alternative for as many of the candidates as he pleases by writing the figures 1, 2, 3, &c, opposite the names of those candidates in the order of his preference. COUNTING VOTES. (2) The ballot papers, having been all mixed, shall be drawn out in succession and stamped with numbers so that no two shall bear the same number. (3) The number obtained by dividing the whole number of good ballot papers tendered at the election by the number of members to be elected plus one, and increasing the quotient (or where it is fractional the integral part of the quotient) by one, shall be called the quota. (4) Every candidate who has a number of first votes equal to or greater than the quota shall be declared elected, and so many of the ballot papers containing those votes as shall be equal in number to the quota (being those stamped with the lowest numerals) shall be set aside as of no further use. On all ballot papers the name of the elected candidate shall be deemed to be cancelled, with the effect of raising by so much in the order of preference all votes given to other candidates after him. This process shall be repeated until no candidate has more than a quota of first votes or votes deemed first. (5) Then the candidate or candidates having the fewest first votes, or votes deemed first, shall be declared not to be elected, with the effect of raising by so much in the order of preference all votes given to candidates after him or them, and rule 4 shall be again applied if possible. (6) When by successive applications of rules 4 and 5 the number of candidates is reduced to the number of members remaining to be elected, the remaining candidates shall be declared elected. Objection is commonly taken to this method on account of the element of chance involved in the distribution of surplus votes. Suppose the quota to be 1,000, and a candidate to receive 1,100 votes, the 100 votes to be transferred would be those stamped with the highest numerals. But if the hundred stamped with the lowest numerals or any other hundred had been taken the second choices would be different. Strictly speaking, however, this is not a chance selection--it is an arbitrary selection. The returning officer must transfer certain definite papers; if he were allowed to make a chance selection it would be in his power to favour some of the candidates. Sir John Lubbock points out that the element of chance might be eliminated by distributing the second votes proportionally to the second choices on the whole 1,100 papers, and that it might be desirable to leave any candidate the right to claim that this should be done if he thought it worth while. +2.--The Hare-Clark Method.+--The Hare system has been in actual use in Tasmania for the last two elections. It is applied only in a six-seat electorate at Hobart and a four-seat electorate at Launceston. The rules for distributing surplus votes proportionally were drawn up by Mr. A.I. Clark, late Attorney-General. The problem is not so simple as it appears at first sight. There is no difficulty with a surplus on the first count; it is when surpluses are created in subsequent counts by transferred votes that the conditions become complicated. Mr. Clark adopts a rule that in the latter case the transferred papers only are to be taken into account in deciding the proportional distribution of the surplus. Suppose, as before, the quota to be 1,000 votes, and a candidate to have 1,100 votes, 550 of which are marked in the second place to one of the other candidates. Then the latter is entitled to 50 of the surplus votes, and a chance selection is made of the 550 papers. The element of chance still remains, therefore, if this surplus contributes to a fresh surplus. +3.--The Droop-Gregory Method.+--This method, advocated by Professor Nanson, of the Melbourne University, is claimed to entirely eliminate the element of chance. The Gregory plan of transferring surplus votes is defined as a fractional method. If a candidate needs only nine-tenths of his votes to make up his quota, instead of distributing the surplus of one-tenth of the papers all the papers are distributed with one-tenth of their value. Reverting to our former example, if a candidate is marked second on 550 out of 1,100 votes, the quota being 1,000 and the surplus 100, then instead of selecting 50 out of the 550 papers, the whole of them would be transferred in a packet, the value of the packet being 50 votes, or, as Professor Nanson prefers to put it, the value of each paper in the packet being one-eleventh of a vote. Should this packet contribute to a new surplus the third choices on the whole of the papers are available as a basis for the redistribution. The packet would be divided into smaller packets, and each assigned its reduced value. It might here be pointed out that the use of fractions is quite unnecessary, the value of each packet in votes being all that is required, and that the-same process may be used with the Hare-Clark method to avoid the chance selection of papers. The only real difference is this: that when a surplus is created by transferred votes Mr. Clark distributes it by reference to the next preference on all the transferred papers, and Professor Nanson by reference to the last packet of transferred papers only--the packet which raises the candidate above the quota. Which of these methods is correct? Should we select the surplus from all votes, original and transferred, as Sir John Lubbock proposes; from all transferred votes only, with Mr. Clark; or from the last packet only of transferred votes, with Professor Nanson? Consider a group of electors having somewhat more than a quota of votes at its disposal. If it nominates one candidate only every one of the electors will have a voice in the distribution of the surplus, but if it puts up three candidates, two of whom are excluded and the third elected, Mr. Clark would allow those who supported the two excluded candidates to decide the distribution of the surplus, and Professor Nanson only those who supported the last candidate excluded. Both are clearly wrong, for the only rational view to take is that when a candidate is excluded it is the same as if he had never been nominated and the transferred votes had formed part of the original votes of those to whom they are transferred. Whenever a surplus is created it should therefore be distributed by reference to all votes, original and transferred. As regards these surpluses, Mr. Clark and Professor Nanson have adopted an arbitrary basis, which is no more than Sir John Lubbock has done; and they have therefore eliminated the element of chance only for surpluses on the first count. It may be asked, Why cannot all surpluses be distributed by reference to all the papers, if that is the correct method? The answer is that the complication involved is enormous. Yet this was the plan first advocated by Professor Nanson, who wrote, in reply to a definite inquiry how the Gregory principle was applied:--"I explain by an example. A has 2,000 votes, the quota being 1,000. A then requires only half the value of each vote cast for him. Each paper cast for him is then stamped as having lost one-half of its value, and the whole of A's papers are then transferred with diminished value to the second name (unelected, of course). The same principle applies all through. Whenever anyone has a surplus all the papers are passed to the next man with diminished value." Now, the effect of this extraordinary proposal would be that the whole of the papers would have to be kept in circulation till the last candidate was elected, with diminishing compound fractional values. In a ten-seat electorate a large proportion would pass through several transfers, and would towards the end of the count have such a ridiculously small fractional value that it would take several millions of the ballot-papers to make a single vote! It is no wonder that this method was abandoned when the complications to which it would lead were realized. A simple method of avoiding this complexity would be to treat transferred surplus papers as if the preferences were exhausted. It must be remembered that in all transfers a certain number of papers are lost owing to the preferences being exhausted, and the additional loss would be small. Thus at the first Hobart election 206 votes were wasted, and this number would have been increased by two only. Every surplus would then be transferred by reference to the next choice, wherever expressed, on both original papers and papers transferred from excluded candidates. It might be provided, however, for greater accuracy that all papers contributing to surpluses on the first count only should be transferred in packets. Should these contribute to a new surplus, it should be divided into two parts, proportional to (1) original votes and votes transferred from excluded candidates, and (2) the value of the packet in votes. Each part would then be distributed proportionally to the next available preferences wherever expressed. To divide the packets into sub-packets is a useless complication. The loss involved in neglecting them would usually be less than one-thousandth part of the loss due to exhausted papers. Having now dealt with the main features of the different variations of the Hare system, we may proceed to consider some details which are common to all of them. A difference of opinion exists, however, as regards the quota. Sir John Lubbock and Professor Nanson advocate the Droop quota, which we have shown to be a mathematical error; Miss Spence and Mr. Clark use the correct quota. +The Wrong Candidates are Liable to be Elected.+--The Hare system may be criticised from two points of view; first, as applied to the conditions prevailing when it is introduced, and, secondly, as regards the new conditions it would bring about. Its advocates confine themselves to the first point of view, and invariably use illustrations based on the existence of parties. We readily grant that if the electors vote on party lines, and transfer their votes within the party as assumed, the Hare system would give proportional representation to the parties; but even then it would sacrifice the interests of individual candidates, for it affords no guarantee that the right candidates will be elected. The constant tendency is that favourites of factions within the party will be preferred to general favourites. This at the same time destroys party cohesion, and tends to split up parties. Nor can this result be wondered at, since the very foundation of the system is the separate representation of a number of sections. One reason why the wrong candidates are liable to be elected is that the electors will not record their honest preferences if the one vote only is effective. They will give their vote to the candidate who is thought to need it most, and the best men will go to the wall because they are thought to be safe. Mr. R.M. Johnston, Government Statistician of Tasmania, confirms this view when he declares--"The aggregate of all counts, whether effective or not, would seem to be the truer index of the general favour in which each candidate stands, because the numbers polled at the first count may be greatly disturbed by the action of those who are interested in the success of two or more favourites who may be pretty well assured of success, but whose order of preference might by some be altered if sudden rumour suggested fears for any one of the favoured group. This accidental action would tend to conceal the true exact measure of favour in the first count." If this statement means anything it is that the three preferences which are required to be expressed should have been all counted as effective votes at the Hobart election instead of one only; and this is exactly what we advocate. It is also admitted that when two candidates ran together at the first Launceston election the more popular candidate was defeated; and again the _Argus_ correspondent writes of the recent Hobart election:--"The defeat of Mr. Nicholls was doubtless due to the fact of his supporters' over-confidence--nothing else explains it. Many people gave him No. 2 votes who would have given him No. 1 votes had they not felt assured of his success." A second reason why the wrong candidates are liable to be elected is that the process of elimination adopted by all the Hare methods has no mathematical justification. The candidate who is first excluded has one preference only taken account of, while others have many preferences given effect to. We have shown that this glaring injustice was recognized by Mr. Hare, and only adopted as a last resort. Professor Nanson admits that "the process of elimination which has been adopted by all the exponents of Hare's system is not satisfactory," and adds--"I do not know a scientific solution of the difficulty." To bring home the inequity of the process, consider a party which nominates six candidates, A, B, C, D, E, and F, and whose numbers entitle it to three seats, and suppose the electors to vote in the proportions and order shown below on the first count. FIRST SECOND THIRD FOURTH COUNT. COUNT. COUNT. COUNT. 7-vote ADEFBC ADEBC AEBC ABC 6-vote EFDACB EDACB EACB ACB 5-vote CEBDFA CEBDA CEBA CBA 4-vote BDFACE BDACE BACE BAC 4-vote DCEFBA DCEBA CEBA CBA 3-vote FBAECD BAECD BAEC BAC It will be noted that F, having fewest first votes, is eliminated from the second count, D from the third count, and E from the fourth. A has then 13 votes, B 7, and C 9. If the quota be 9 votes, A's surplus would be passed on to B, and A, B, and C would be declared elected. But D, E, and F are the candidates most in general favour, and ought to have been elected. For if any one of the rejected candidates be compared with any one of the successful candidates it will be found that in every case the rejected candidate is higher in order of favour on a majority of the papers. Again, if the Block Vote be applied, by counting three effective votes, the result would be--A 10 votes, B 12, C 9, D 21, E 22, and F 13. D, E, and F would therefore be elected. Thus we see that A, B, and C, the favourites of sections within the party, are elected, and D, E, and F, the candidates most in general favour--those who represent a compromise among the sections--are rejected. In practice, then, the Hare system discourages compromise among parties, and among sections of parties; and therefore tends to obliterate party lines. This has already happened in Tasmania, where all experience goes to show that the Hare system is equivalent to compulsory plumping. In every election the result would have been exactly the same if each elector voted for one candidate only. The theory that it does not matter how many candidates stand for each party, since votes will be transferred within the party, has been completely disproved. Votes are actually transferred almost indiscriminately. The candidates have not been slow to grasp this fact, and at the last election handbills were distributed giving "explicit reasons why the electors should give their No. 1 to Mr. So-and-so, and their No. 2 to any other person they chose."[7] Three out of every four first preferences are found to be effective, but only one out of every five second preferences, and one out of fifty third preferences. The first preferences, therefore, decide the election. The actual result is that, in the long run, the Hare system is practically the same as the single untransferable vote. The whole of the elaborate machinery for recording preferences and transferring votes might just as well be entirely dispensed with. The "automatic organization" which it was to provide exists only in the calculations of mathematicians. +A Number of Votes are Wasted.+--It is claimed for the Hare system that every vote cast is effective, because it counts for some one candidate. But unless every elector places all the candidates in order of preference some votes are wasted because the preferences become exhausted. When a paper to be transferred has no further available preferences expressed it is lost. In order to reduce this waste, a vote is held to be informal in the six-seat electorate at Hobart unless at least three preferences are given. Notwithstanding this, the number of such votes wasted was 7 per cent, at the first election and 10 per cent, at the second. The effect of this waste is that some of the candidates are elected with less than the quota. At the last Hobart election only three out of six members were elected on full quotas, and at Launceston only one out of four. The result is to favour small, compact minorities, and to lead sections to scheme to get representation on the lowest possible terms. The Droop quota, being smaller than the Tasmanian quota, would have the effect of electing more members on full quotas, and it is often recommended on that account. Indeed, Professor Nanson declares:--"In no circumstances is any candidate elected on less than a quota of votes. The seats for which a quota has not been obtained are filled one after the other, each by a candidate elected by an absolute majority of the whole of the voters. For the seats to be filled in this way all candidates as yet unelected enter into competition. The matter is settled by a reference to the whole of the voting papers. If any unelected candidate now stands first on an absolute majority of all these papers he is elected. But if not, then the weeding-out process is applied until an absolute majority is obtained. The candidate who gets the absolute majority is elected. Should there be another seat, the same process is repeated. If an absolute majority of the whole of the voters cannot be obtained for any candidate, then the candidate who comes nearest to the absolute majority is elected." It will be seen that Professor Nanson proposes to bring to life again all the eliminated candidates, in order to compete against those who have less than the quota. The proportional principle is then to be entirely abandoned, and the seats practically given to the stronger party, although the minority may be clearly entitled to them. The vaunted "one vote one value" is also to be violated, because those who supported the elected candidates are to have an equal voice with those still unrepresented. And finally, the evil is not cured, it is only aggravated, if an eliminated candidate is elected. +The Hare System is not Preferential.+--The idea is sedulously fostered that the Hare system is a form of preferential voting, and many people are misled thereby. The act of voting is exalted into an end in itself. The most elaborate provisions are now suggested by Professor Nanson to allow the elector to express his opinion only as far as he likes. The simple and practical method in use in Tasmania of requiring each elector to place a definite number of candidates in order of preference is denounced as an infringement of the elector's freedom. Why force him to express preferences where he does not feel any? The Professor has therefore invented "the principle of the bracket." If the elector cannot discriminate between the merits of a number of candidates he may bracket them all equal in order of favour. Indeed, where he does not indicate any preference at all, the names unmarked are deemed equal. Therefore, if he does not wish his vote transferred to any candidate, he must strike out his name. It is pointed out that a ballot paper can thus be used if there is any kind of preference expressed at all, and the risk of informality is reduced to a minimum. All the bracket papers are to be put into a separate parcel, and do not become "definite" till all the candidates bracketed, except one, are either elected or rejected; the vote is then transferred to that candidate. And as bracketed candidates will occur in original papers, surplus papers, and excluded candidates' papers at every stage of the count, the degree of complication in store for the unhappy returning officer can be imagined. The whole of these intricate provisions are founded on a patent fallacy. Preferences are not expressed in the Hare system, as in true preferential voting, that they may be given effect to in deciding the election, but simply in order to allow the elector to say in advance to whom he would wish his vote transferred if it cannot be used for his first choice. The elector is allowed to express his opinion about a number of candidates, certainly, but after being put to this trouble only one of his preferences is used. And which one is used depends entirely on the vagaries of the system. The principle of the bracket illustrates this fact; if the elector has no preference the system decides for him. If his first choice just receives the quota the other preferences are not even looked at. Again, of all the electors who vote for rejected candidates, those who are fortunate enough to vote for the worst (who are first excluded) have their second or third preferences given effect to, and few of their votes are wasted; but the votes of those who support the best of them (who are last excluded) are either wasted or given to their remote preferences. In Mr. Hare's original scheme, for instance, the votes of the last 50 candidates excluded would have been nearly all wasted, unless some hundreds of preferences were expressed. Another claim on which great stress is laid is that by the process of transferring votes every vote counts to some one candidate. This means nothing more than that the votes of rejected candidates are transferred to the successful candidates. Where is the necessity for this? So long as each party secures its just share of representation and elects its most favoured candidates, there is no advantage gained by transferring the votes. Miss Spence even declares that "every Senator elected in this way will represent an equal number of votes, and will rightly have equal weight in the House. According to the block system, there is often a wide disparity between the number of votes for the highest and the lowest man elected." Surely the mere fact of transferring votes till they are equally distributed does not make all the successful candidates equally popular! On the contrary, it is very desirable to know which candidates are most in favour with each party. +Ballot Papers Must be Brought Together for Counting.+--This is a practical objection to the Hare system, which puts it out of court for large electorates. If the whole of Victoria were constituted one electorate, as at the Federal Convention election, the transference of votes could not be commenced till all the ballot papers had come in from the remote parts of the colony, two or three weeks after the election. On this point Professor Nanson writes:--"In an actual election in Victoria this 'first state of the poll' could be arrived at with the same rapidity as was the result of the recent poll on the Commonwealth Bill. In both cases but one fact is to be gleaned from each voting paper. The results from all parts of the colony would be posted in Collins-street on election day. These results would show exactly how the cat was going to jump. The final results as regards parties would be obvious to all observers, although the result as regards individual candidates would be far from clear. But this, although of vast importance to the candidates themselves, would be a matter of small concern to the great mass of the people." These remarks are based on the assumption that the electors vote on strictly party lines, which a reference to Tasmanian returns will show is not usually the case. Few will be disposed to agree that a knowledge of the successful candidates is a matter of small moment. FOOTNOTE: [7] _Hobart Mercury_ CHAPTER VII. FREE LIST SYSTEM OF PROPORTIONAL DELEGATION. The _Liste Libre_, or Free List system, is a far simpler and more practical method of proportional representation than the Hare system. The distinctive feature is that it applies the proportional principle not to individual candidates but to parties. But, like the Hare system, it places no restriction on the number of parties. It is therefore particularly adapted to the circumstances of the countries on the Continent of Europe, which, having already a number of strong party organizations, wish to retain them and to do justice to each. Accordingly we find that nearly all experiments in proportional representation to the present time have been confined to those countries. Perhaps the very earliest attempt to apply the proportional principle was that of Mr. Thomas Gilpin, in a pamphlet, "On the Representation of Minorities of Electors to act with the Majority in Elected Assemblies," published at Philadelphia in 1844. He proposed that electorates should be enlarged, and that each party should nominate a list of candidates equal to the number required to be elected, and should place them in order of preference. Each elector could then vote for one of these lists; and each party would be allotted a number of representatives proportional to the amount of support it received. The highest on each list, to the number allotted, would be elected. It will be seen that this is really a system of double election; for the order of favour of the candidates of any party would have to be decided before the nominations were made. Only two years afterwards M. Victor Considerant published a similar scheme at Geneva, Switzerland. Each elector was to vote first for a party and then for any number of candidates on the party list whom he preferred. The party votes were to decide the number of members allotted to each list, and the individual votes the successful candidates. The little republic of Switzerland has been the scene of nearly all subsequent improvement. In 1867 Professor Ernest Naville founded the _Association Réformiste_ at Geneva to advocate the principle of proportional representation. In 1871 the Association adopted the _Liste Libre_ system, invented by M. Borely, of Nimes, France, in which each elector was to place all the candidates of his party in order of preference. But as this allows the electors little direct influence on their own candidates and none outside of them, a combination of the cumulative vote and the _Liste Libre_ was adopted in 1875. Each elector was to have as many votes as there were seats to be filled, but he could not only give them to any candidates on any list, but he could also give as many votes as he liked to any one candidate. Thus if there were ten seats to be filled the elector could give ten votes to one candidate, or one vote to each of ten candidates, or five votes to one candidate and divide the remaining five among others, and so on. The only condition necessary was that his votes added up to ten. The aggregate votes given to all the candidates of each party were then to be taken as the basis of proportional distribution among the parties and the highest on each list to the number decided were to be elected. It was not till the year 1890 that this scheme was actually put into practice. The election of 1889 had resulted so unjustly to the Liberal party in the canton of Ticino that an insurrection broke out. This forced the hand of the Federal Government, which had to quell the disturbance, and proportional representation was recommended and adopted. Several other cantons followed suit, and it is expected that the whole of Switzerland will soon adopt the reform. A modification of this plan has lately been adopted by the Swiss Association. In this later plan electors can give a single vote only to individual candidates, but if they do not use all their votes in this way they may cumulate the balance on any one party list by marking at the head of the list. Thus if the elector in a ten-seat electorate gives five votes to individual candidates, and places a mark at the head of one of the lists, the balance of five votes will count to that list. The aggregate votes given to individual candidates on any list, plus the votes placed at the head of the list, will form the basis of proportional distribution among the lists. This is the plan adopted by the American Proportional Representation League as most nearly suited to American habits, and recommended by Professor Commons in his book on "Proportional Representation." Belgium has also quite recently adopted a scheme of proportional representation. As in Switzerland, its advent was hastened by political disturbances. The Catholic party, not satisfied with exerting a preponderating influence in the country districts, wished to obtain also its proportionate share of representation in the cities, and proposed a scheme of proportional representation for them only. This caused such ill feeling that riots took place in the streets of Brussels. Finally, proportional representation was promised all round, and became law for both the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate at the latter end of 1899. In Brussels, where there are 18 seats to be filled, a trial election had already been held in 1893 with satisfactory results. Six lists were nominated, the largest being that of the Socialists, who nominated ten candidates; and over 12,000 electors voted. Each elector was allowed 18 votes, and the methods in which he could distribute them were somewhat complicated. He might (1) mark at the head of a list, (2) mark at the head of a list and also opposite one or more candidates on the same list, (3) mark opposite the names of not more than 18 candidates on any list. In the first case his 18 votes counted to the list marked, in the second case one vote was counted to each of the individual candidates marked and the balance counted for the list; in the third case one vote was counted to each candidate marked. The aggregate of votes marked at the head of each list, plus the individual votes on the list, was then taken as the basis of proportional distribution. So many of the votes were cumulated on lists that only about one-fifth of the votes cast were operative in the selection of candidates. In the bill which has recently become law a new method has therefore been adopted, which gives more power to the party committees, but allows the electors to modify their choice. For this purpose the party organization nominates the candidates in order of preference. The elector may then accept this order by marking at the head of the list, or he may give his vote to any one candidate on the list. If all the electors of a party vote in the first way, those nominated highest on the list, to the number to which the party becomes entitled, are elected. But if all the electors vote in the second way, those with the highest single votes are elected. The actual result will usually be a compromise between the two, and it is evidently the interest of the party organization to place the candidates in their real order of favour, in order that the electors may accept the list. For if an unpopular candidate were placed at the head of the list few would accept it. The first election under this system has just taken place, and the result was, as expected, to reduce the Clerical representation considerably. In all the above variations of the Free List system the distribution of seats is effected by dividing the aggregate votes polled by each party by a unit of representation, but three different methods of determining this unit are in use. The first is obtained by simply dividing the total number of votes by the number of seats. The objection to this unit is that when there are several parties, part of the seats only can be allotted on full units, and the rest have to be allotted to those parties which have the highest remainders or fractions of a unit, and this unduly favours small parties, who do not poll even a single unit. The rule to divide the total votes by the number of seats increased by one, which was first proposed by Mr. H.R. Droop, reduces slightly the number of seats allotted on remainders, and was adopted by the canton of Soluthern in 1895. In Belgium a third plan, devised by Professor D'Hondt, of Brussels, is used, which is designed to prevent any seats being allotted on remainders. This unit is evidently smaller than either of the others, and is to be found by trial. It is only necessary that the sum of the quotients obtained by dividing it into each of the lists shall be equal to the number of seats to be filled. Suppose a five-seat electorate in which 6,000 votes are divided among four parties, who poll 2,500, 1,850, 900, and 750 votes respectively. Then if we take one-fifth, or 1,200 votes, as the unit, the result would be the following:-- (1) 2,500 = 2 units of representation + 100 remainder = 2 seats. (2) 1,850 = 1 unit of representation + 650 remainder = 1 seat. (3) 900 = unit of representation + 900 remainder = 1 seat. (4) 750 = unit of representation + 750 remainder = 1 seat. If the Droop unit of one-sixth, or 1,000 votes, be used, the result will be different:-- (1) 2,500 = 2 units of representation + 500 remainder = 2 seats. (2) 1,850 = 1 unit of representation + 850 remainder = 2 seats. (3) 900 = unit of representation + 900 remainder = 1 seat. (4) 750 = unit of representation + 750 remainder = seat. By the third method any number of votes between 834 and 900 will be found to comply with Professor D'Hondt's condition, and the result would, in this instance, be the same as by the Droop method. Although the highest number was at first used, the lower limit has been adopted in the new bill. In no case can the proportional distribution be considered satisfactory. If the electorates are small, and the number of parties large, accurate proportional representation is quite out of the question. In Switzerland, however, the electorates are made to contain sometimes as many as 30 seats. The effect of such large electorates must be in time to encourage the formation of a great number of small factions. At the same time there is not so much incentive to split up the parties as by the Hare system. Passing now to the selection of party candidates, none of the methods can be said to ensure the election of those most in general favour. When electors are allowed to cumulate on individual candidates, the favourites of sections within the party will be elected. If, on the other hand, they are allowed to cumulate on party lists, all votes thus given are ineffective in the selection of the successful candidates. It may be noted that although the nomination of candidates in lists by party organizations is less in accordance with the practice of British countries than the individual candidature of the Hare system, there is nothing to prevent one candidate being nominated to stand in the place of a party. A word of warning must be added as to the danger of holding up Belgium and Switzerland as examples of true electoral justice to Australia. The direct government of the people which Switzerland has adopted bears not the slightest resemblance to the representative institutions of British countries. Both the referendum and proportional delegation are suited to direct government and are destructive to party responsible government. The Swiss adopted the referendum to save themselves from the lobbying and plutocratic character of their legislatures. The initiative and proportional delegation have followed because they are complementary reforms. The consequence is that the legislators have been degraded to mere agents for drawing up measures, and leadership has been transferred to the press. It is the peculiar conditions of Switzerland which enable it to tolerate unrestrained majority rule. It is a small country, surrounded by powerful neighbours, whose strength lies in its weakness. Moreover, the people are very conservative. In Zurich, for instance, which is largely devoted to manufactures, a proposal to limit the hours of work in factories to twelve hours a day was rejected by the people. Nor is direct government proving a success; the tyranny of the majority is already apparent. The first federal initiative demanded a measure to prevent the slaughter of animals by bleeding, designed to interfere with the religious rites of the Jews. Despite the fact that it was opposed by the Federal Council, as contrary to the right of religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, it was carried by the referendum. Belgium, again, can hardly be taken as a model of constitutional liberty. Surely we in Australia do not want the factious strife of religious, racial, and class sections, which so nearly brought on a revolution last year. Yet this is exactly what proportional delegation to sections would bring about. Belgium has a hard task to reconcile two races so differently constituted as the Walloons and Flemings, and has been able to avoid instability of the ministry so far only because the Clerical party, which is mostly Flemish, still has a majority. The new system has only consecrated the sectional principle, and will do nothing to restore harmony. CHAPTER VIII. PREFERENTIAL VOTING, THE BLOCK VOTE, ETC. +Preferential Voting.+--Laplace, the great mathematician, to whom we owe so much of the theory of probability, showed more than a century ago that although individual electors may have very different views as to the relative merits of a number of candidates for any office, still the expression of the degree of favour in which the candidates are held by the whole body of electors will be the same if each elector be assumed to have a uniform gradation of preference. Suppose that there are ten candidates, and it is required to place them in order of general favour. Each elector should be required to place the whole ten in the order of his preference, 1, 2, 3, &c. Let the maximum degree of merit be denoted by ten marks, so that every first preference will count as ten marks. Then, although an individual elector might be disposed to give his second preference only five marks, and the rest of his preferences, say, two marks, Laplace demonstrated that it is most probable that the total result would be the same if each elector be assumed to give his second preference nine marks, his third preference eight marks, and so on. Therefore, if all first preferences be multiplied by ten, second preferences by nine, and so on in regular order down to last preferences multiplied by one, the total number of marks will be an index of the order in general favour. If there is one office to be filled, the candidate with the highest number of marks should be elected; if there are two offices, the two highest candidates, and so on. But the assumed condition must be rigidly complied with; each elector must express his honest preferences. Whether he will do so or not depends upon the circumstances. Laplace recognized this element of human nature, and declared that if electors are swayed by other considerations independent of the merit of the candidates the system would not apply. For instance, if the candidates are the nominees of a number of independent sections, each of which is anxious only to secure the return of its own candidate, and to defeat those who stand most in his way, the tendency will be general to place the more popular candidates, those whose success is most feared, at the bottom of the list, so as to give them as few marks as possible. The result would be to favour mediocre men, or even in extreme cases the most inferior. Practically, therefore, the system is not applicable where any of the electors are personally interested in the result. If a number of judges were called on to decide the relative merits of several essays or prize designs, and the competitors' names were not known to them, the system might be used. But even in such a case a simpler method is available; for, although it may be difficult to pick out the best, it is generally easy to agree upon the worst. It is usual, then, to gradually eliminate the worst, and when the number is reduced to two to take the decision of the majority. This process of elimination may be, however, combined with the preferential system, and the result is more accurate than if one count only be made. At the first count the candidate with the fewest marks would be eliminated and his name struck out on all the papers. All those under him on each paper would then go up one point in order of favour, and further counts would be held, eliminating the lowest candidate each time till the candidates were reduced to the number desired. This method is very complicated, and involves a great amount of trouble. Consider now the case of a voluntary association of individuals, such as a club or society; and suppose that it is required to elect a president or committee. The condition is clearly that he or they should be most in general favour with all the members; and the question whether Preferential Voting is applicable will depend on how united the members are. Now, clubs are not usually, nor should they be, divided into cliques or parties; indeed, if a serious split does take place it generally results in the resignation of part of the club and the formation of a separate organization. But in a live club it is impossible to prevent slight differences of opinion; and an officer-bearer who has the interests of the club at heart must often offend small sections who want to exert undue influence. In an election for president this office-bearer would stand no chance of election if there are several candidates and any small section likes to put him at the bottom of the list, so as to give him as many bad marks as possible. This is the weak point in Preferential Voting; any small section can ensure the rejection of a general favourite. The greater the number of candidates the smaller the minority which is able to do this; dummy candidates may therefore be introduced to make it more certain. The risk would, however, be very much lessened if the process of gradual elimination we have described were adopted. When we come to the election of representatives to a legislature it is evident at once that Preferential Voting is not applicable at all. We have shown that the true condition required is not the return of candidates most in general favour with both parties, but the return of the candidates most in general favour with each party separately. Preferential Voting would therefore only be applicable if the electors of each party voted separately for its own candidates; and even then it would be open to the objection we have already urged. If it were applied to the two parties voting together the electors would certainly not be influenced only by the merit of the candidates. They might record their honest preferences as regards the candidates of their own party, but they would naturally place the candidates of the opposing party in inverse order of merit. The candidates most in general favour would be those who represented neither party. Suppose there are three candidates for a single seat, two representing large parties of 49 per cent, each, and the third a small party of 2 per cent. The electors of the large parties would be more afraid of one another than of the small party, and would give their second preferences to its candidate. This candidate, representing one-fiftieth of the electors, would then actually be elected; he would receive 202 marks, and neither of the others could possibly secure more than 200. Moreover, he would still be elected if the process of elimination were adopted, since on the second count he would beat either of the other candidates separately by 51 votes to 49. These plain facts are indisputable. What is to be thought, then, of the claim made by Professor Nanson that Preferential Voting, with the process of elimination, is the most perfect system known for single-membered electorates. +The Block Vote.+--The Block Vote, General Ticket, or _scrutin de liste_, is in general use when there is more than one seat to be filled. Each elector has as many votes as there are members to be elected, and the highest on the list, to the number of representatives required, are successful. Dealing first with elections to a legislative body, the system is eminently unjust to parties. A rigid control of nominations is necessary in the first place, because any party which splits up its votes spoils its chance. Each party will therefore nominate only as many candidates as there are seats, and the stronger of two parties, or the strongest of a number of parties, will elect the entire list. A minority might in the latter case secure all the representation, but the practical effect of the Block Vote is to force the electors to group themselves into two parties only. It therefore has the same beneficial effect as the single electorate of confining representation to the two main parties. This is apparently nob recognized by Professor Nanson, who writes, in his pamphlet on the Hare system:--"Contrast with this the results of the Block system. With strict party voting, which has been assumed throughout, each of the five parties would put forward seven candidates. The seven seats would all be secured by Form, with 44 votes out of a total of 125, and the remaining 81, or more than two-thirds of the voters, would be wholly unrepresented." Does the Professor really think that the 81 (who, by the way, are _less_ than two-thirds) would be so foolish as not to combine and secure all the seats? The exclusion of the minority in a single-membered electorate excites only a feeling of hopelessness, but when it fails to secure a single representative in an electorate returning several members, a spirit of rankling injustice is aroused. The Block Vote has, therefore, never been tolerated for long in large electorates. In the early history of the United States many of the States adopted it, and sent to Congress a solid delegation of one party or the other. This proved so unjust, and operated so adversely to the federal spirit in promoting combinations of States, that Congress, in 1842, made the single-membered electorate obligatory on all the States. In France it was adopted at the election for the Chamber of Deputies in 1885. The result as regards parties was about as good as with the single electorate system. The Republicans and Conservative-Monarchists, whose numbers entitled them to 311 and 257 seats respectively, actually secured 366 and 202. But it was abandoned after a trial at this one election. The Block Vote was adopted in Australia for the election of ten delegates from each colony to the Federal Convention. This was a work in which all parties might fairly have joined together; and in most colonies the people did select the best men, regardless of party. In Victoria, however, the newspapers took on the _rôle_ of the "machine," and the ten candidates nominated by the _Age_ were elected. Many of the supporters of the defeated candidates voted for some on the successful list who just defeated their own favourites. Had this been foreseen they would have thrown away these votes by giving them to those sure to be elected or to those least likely to be elected. The injustice of forcing each elector to vote for the whole ten is thus brought home. We are now threatened with the adoption of the Block Vote for the Federal Senate, and in some of the States for the House of Representatives as well; and it is in the hope of preventing this wrong that the present book is written. So far we have been considering the Block Vote as applied to the election of a legislature with two or more parties; we now propose to consider it as applied to one party only. It is a matter of common knowledge that the Block Vote, when used for such an election as that of the committee of a club, works very well, and results in the return of the candidates most in general favour with all sections. The reason is, of course, that all sections work together, and members vote for the best men, regardless of sectional lines. We will go further and say that the Block Vote is by far the best method for such purposes, and is superior even to Preferential Voting. In the first place it is free from the defect that a small section can ensure the rejection of a general favourite; and in the second place it rests on at least as secure a theoretical basis. To fix our ideas, suppose there are ten candidates for five members of a committee. Laplace assumed (1) that each member would have a knowledge of the merits of all the ten candidates, (2) that his estimate of the respective candidates would vary arbitrarily between nothing and a maximum degree of merit, (3) that each member would express his honest preferences. The Block Vote, on the other hand, assumes (1) that each member can pick out the five best candidates, and therefore express his opinion as to how the committee should be constituted, (2) that he will be inclined to place these five candidates on one plane of favour and the other five on one plane of non-favour. We submit that the latter assumptions agree more closely with the actual state of affairs. The members can distinguish between candidates who have merit and those who have no merit or of whose merit they are ignorant; to force them, therefore, to place all the candidates in order of preference is to make them express preferences where none exist.[8] On the whole, then, the Block Vote is more likely to place the candidates in their real order of favour. But some reservation must be made. The Block Vote works best when the number of candidates does not exceed two or three times the number of vacancies. Suppose, first, that the candidates present in the final result a fairly regular order of favour from lowest to highest. Each of the successful candidates will then be supported by at least an absolute majority of the members, providing the number of candidates be not greater than twice the number of vacancies. But if there are four or five times as many candidates as vacancies, none of the successful candidates will have the support of a majority of the members. On the other hand, however, the candidates do not usually present a regular order of favour from lowest to highest when there are a large number of candidates, for there may be a long "tail" of candidates who receive very few votes. The following general rule may therefore be laid down:--The Block Vote works best when the total votes given to rejected candidates do not exceed the total votes given to successful candidates. The difficulties indicated above were met by the Australian Natives' Association by a plan which provided that no candidate should be elected except by an absolute majority of the voters. The Block Vote is used throughout; and if at the first ballot the required number of candidates do not obtain an absolute majority a second ballot is held, from which those at the bottom of the poll and those who have been elected are eliminated. This process is continued till all the vacancies are filled. Four or five ballots are sometimes required, and the proceedings become very irksome. A sub-committee was recently appointed to investigate the subject, and reported in favour of the Preferential System with one count only. The process of elimination was considered too complicated to be practicable. Now, the conditions presented by these elections, in which a very large number of candidates are generally nominated, are precisely those in which Preferential Voting lends itself most easily to abuse. An insignificant minority may defeat a candidate who should be elected, by placing him at the bottom of their lists. A variation of the Block Vote may be suggested which is much simpler and better. The preferential ballot papers should be used, and two counts should be made. At the first count the primary half of the preferences should be counted as effective votes, and the candidates should be reduced to twice the number of vacancies. A second count should then be made of the ballot papers, using the Block Vote. All or nearly all the candidates would then obtain an absolute majority, and it is practically impossible that any candidate should be eliminated by the first count who would have had any chance of election in the second. This plan is far superior to the original method. It is right that members who vote for candidates who are hopelessly out of it should be allowed to transfer their votes; but it is not right that members who first help to elect some candidates at one ballot should have the same voting power as others at subsequent ballots. The Hare system is sometimes advocated for clubs on account of its supposed just principle. Any live club which adopts it runs the risk of disruption. It merely encourages the formation of cliques and sections; any slight split would be accentuated and rendered permanent. +The Limited Vote.+--The injustice of the Block Vote led to the introduction of the Limited Vote, which allows the minority some share of the representation. We have seen that the Block Vote forces each party to try to return all the representation, and of course one party only can succeed. But if neither party be forced to try to return more than it is entitled to each party will get its correct share of representation, providing both parties are equally organized. This leads to the Limited Vote, in which each elector has a number of votes somewhat less than the number of seats. The Limited Vote was used in England for a number of three-seat electorates, which were created by the Reform Bill of 1867, each elector being allowed to vote for two candidates only. By this means the majority would usually return two candidates and the minority one. Thus the Limited Vote has the same advantage as the Block Vote and the single electorate system, that it tends to confine representation to the two main parties, but it creates an artificial proportion of representation between them. Moreover, it renders strict party organization even more necessary, since each party must arrange to use its voting resources to the best advantage. Consider the three-seat electorate, for instance. The minority will, if it is wise, nominate two candidates only; and the majority may nominate either two or three. But if the majority does divide its votes among three candidates it runs the risk of securing one only. It can do so safely when two conditions are fulfilled: first, it must be sure of polling more than three-fifths of the votes; and, second, it must arrange to distribute all its votes equally among the three candidates. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that the Limited Vote was responsible for introducing "machine" tactics into England. In Birmingham, when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain organized the Liberals and succeeded in carrying all three seats, the electors in each ward were directed how to vote so that as few votes as possible might be wasted. These three-cornered constituencies were abolished by the _Redistribution Act_ of 1884; and Sir John Lubbock, reviewing the experiment, declared--"On the whole, it cannot be denied that under the Limited Vote the views of the electors have been fairly represented." The system has also been tried to a smaller extent in the United States. In New York 32 of the delegates to a constitutional convention were elected from the State polled as one electorate, each elector being allowed to vote for 16 candidates. Both parties were afraid to split their votes, and the result was that each returned 16. The rest of the delegates were elected in single-membered electorates, and of these the Republicans secured 81 and the Democrats 47. It might here be pointed out that the Republicans might have secured more than 16 of the delegates from the State at large if they had nominated 20 candidates and allowed the laws of chance to regulate their organization. Each elector might have been directed to put the twenty names into his hat, and to reject the first four he pulled out. The same evil is apparent in Boston, where twelve aldermen are elected at large, each elector being allowed seven votes. Each party nominates seven candidates only; and the majority invariably elects seven and the minority five. The Limited Vote is therefore not a satisfactory solution of the problem of representation. It gives an artificial instead of proportional representation, and it necessitates strict party organization and control of nominations. At the same time it will generally give a very fair representation if parties are not strictly organized, and might well have been adopted for the Federal Convention, five or six votes being allowed instead of ten. Newspaper domination would thus have been prevented. +Election of the Candidate Most in General Favour.+--It is often required to ascertain the candidate most in general favour where one party only is concerned, such as an election for leader of the Opposition or president of a club; and the methods in general use are very defective. We do not refer to the theoretical difficulty, which perplexes some persons, of giving effect to the actual degree of favour in which the candidates stand in the electors' minds, but to the simple problem of finding out who is preferred most by the bulk of the electors. Thus it is universally recognised that when two candidates stand the candidate who has the support of an absolute majority of the electors is entitled to election. Yet it is possible that the rejected candidate may be nearly twice as popular. This might happen if the majority held that there was little to choose between the two candidates, while the minority thought they could not be compared. But it is quite evident that such distinctions cannot be recognized; the candidate who is preferred by an absolute majority must be elected. It is when there are more than two candidates that the difficulty arises. To elect the candidate who has most first preferences is open to very serious objection; he may have a small minority of the total votes, and each of the other candidates might be able to beat him single-handed. The best way to overcome the difficulty is undoubtedly by some process of gradually eliminating the least popular candidates till the number is reduced to two; the candidate with the absolute majority is then elected. We propose to consider the different ways in which elimination might be made. We assume, in the first place, that each elector has cast an advance vote--_i.e._, that he has placed all the candidates in order of preference. The most primitive method is to eliminate at each successive count the candidate who has least first preferences. This is the method adopted in the Hare system, and we have already shown that it is very defective; in fact, it is no improvement at all. The eliminated candidate might be most in general favour, and might be able to beat each of the other candidates single-handed. A second method is to use Preferential Voting to decide which candidate should be eliminated at each successive count. This is far superior, but it is extremely complicated, and is open to the objection that when there are a large number of candidates a small section may cause the rejection of the general favourite. We propose to describe a method based on the Block Vote which is much simpler, and which does not lend itself to abuse. We have shown that the Block Vote works best when the candidates can be divided into two equal sections of favour and non-favour. Suppose there are four candidates, the first two preferences should therefore be counted as effective votes, instead of the first preference only. The eliminated candidate will then be the least in general favour. A second count is then made of the three candidates left, and the first preferences and half of the second preferences are counted as effective, and the lowest again eliminated. The candidate who has an absolute majority is then elected. The method may be indefinitely extended; if there are five candidates the first two preferences and one-half of the third preferences are counted, and so on. But when there are a great many candidates more than one might be eliminated. Any number up to eight could be safely reduced to four at the first count. FOOTNOTE: [8] The bracket principle introduced by Professor Nanson into the Hare system involves a partial recognition of this fact. CHAPTER IX. ATTEMPTS TO IMPROVE THE PRESENT SYSTEM. +The Double Election.+--In the preceding chapter we have strongly insisted that the different methods considered for ensuring the return of the candidate acceptable to all sections are not applicable to the election of legislators. The true principles of political representation require, not the election of the candidate most in general favour with both parties, but the election by each party separately of its own most favoured candidates. But as it is impossible for both parties to be represented in a single-membered electorate, the best alternative is that both should contest the seat and one be represented. The present system of election has largely tended to realize this alternative, especially in those countries in which party government was strong, such as England and the United States; and representation has in consequence been confined to the two main parties. In England, where the party system was gradually developed, this result was attained without any rigid control of nominations, because the true party spirit prevailed and personal ambition was subordinated to political principle; and in the United States it was only brought about at the cost of "machine" control of nominations. But on the Continent of Europe, where party government was transplanted from England, it has never really taken root. Each small group nominated its own candidates, and the successful candidate represented only a plurality, and not a majority, of the electors. Instead of a contest between two organized parties there was a scramble among numerous factions. In France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany an attempt has been made to check this evil by the double election. If at the first election no candidate secures an absolute majority of the votes, a second election is held, for which only the two candidates who head the poll at the first election are allowed to compete. One must then get an absolute majority. The double election has undoubtedly tended to prevent a further splitting up into groups, but the Continental countries offer such poor soil for the growth of party government that it has only restricted the contest to two factions in each electorate; and, of course, the dominant factions are not the same in the various electorates. +The Advance Vote.+--In Australia the same evil has become increasingly evident, and it is now no uncommon thing for a candidate to be elected by less than one-third or one-quarter of the total votes. In Queensland a plan has been introduced to meet the evil, under the name of the Advance Vote, which is designed to secure the advantages of the French plan without the trouble and expense of a second election. The electors simply declare in advance at the first election how they would vote at the second election. All that is necessary is that they place the candidates in order of preference, 1, 2, 3, 4, &c. Then, instead of holding a second election between the two who have the greatest number of first preferences, it is merely necessary for the returning officer to consult each ballot paper and see which of these two candidates is higher in order of favour. Thus if one is marked 3 and the other 4, the vote is counted to the candidate marked 3. This device is assumed to give exactly the same result as the French plan, providing only that the same electors vote at both elections, and do not change their views between the two elections. But in reality it possesses hardly any of the advantages of the French plan. It is another instance of the danger of neglecting the factor of human nature. The French do not go to the trouble and expense of a second election for nothing. Their plan is far the better. First of all, consider the candidates. They know well beforehand that unless one of them gets an absolute majority of the votes at the first election they will be put to the expense and delay of a second election, therefore it is to their interest that the number of candidates be restricted. This tends to keep down the representation to two sections. Next, consider the electors. They know also that unless they give a majority of votes to one of the candidates they will be put to the trouble of voting a second time, therefore they will take good care the votes are not split up, even if the candidates wanted it. What is the result? Simply that in the vast majority of cases one of the candidates gets a majority at the first election, and no second election is necessary; and, most important of all, the tendency to split up is counteracted. Now take the Queensland system. None of these checks operate. The splitting up into groups is actually encouraged, and it is to the interest of each group to see as many more groups as possible formed, in order to increase its own relative importance, for the delegates of the two strongest groups have a chance of election instead of the strongest group only. In practice the plan threatens to break down, owing to a practical point being overlooked. It is evident that the success of the Advance Vote depends on the electors marking all the preferences. The ballot paper should be made informal unless all the preferences are given. In Queensland this has not been done, and the consequence is that a large proportion of the electors refuse to give more than one preference. No more conclusive evidence is needed that the scheme has promoted the growth of factions. These electors voluntarily disfranchise themselves rather than vote for any of the other candidates, and of course the very object of the scheme is defeated; the successful candidate cannot secure a majority of the votes cast. +The Exhaustive Ballot.+--A bill has just been introduced into the Legislative Assembly of Victoria, providing for a further extension of the principle of the Advance Vote. The plan is favoured by Professor Nanson, and professes to be an improvement on the Queensland plan, although it is only an "instalment of reform" in view of the ultimate adoption of the more perfect Preferential Voting. The Queensland plan is objected to because all but the two highest candidates are thrown out. Suppose, for instance, two candidates stand for the weaker party and three for the stronger party, it is quite likely that all the candidates of the stronger party will be thrown out. Therefore the lowest candidate only of the five should be thrown out. All his papers should be transferred to the candidate who is marked 2 on them; and those below him on all the papers should go up one point in order of favour. If he stood 3 on a paper, the candidate who was 4 would now become 3. Another count of first preferences should then be made, and the lowest again thrown out; and so on till one candidate gets an absolute majority. It is pointed out triumphantly that this plan, which is known as the Exhaustive Ballot, actually saves in this instance all the trouble and expense of no less than three separate elections. The process of elimination is the same as that adopted in the Hare system, and is little, if at all, better than the Queensland plan in securing the election of the right candidate, while as regards the formation of groups it is worse. For this plan actually encourages the groups to split up, since if one candidate nominated by a group is thrown out his vote will be transferred to the others. Therefore the double election is much better than either form of the Advance Vote. They would do nothing towards restoring the one redeeming merit of the single electorate, of confining representation to the two main parties. And all other mathematical schemes founded on the _a priori_ assumption that the candidate most favoured by all sections is entitled to the seat are just as objectionable. The conclusion that must be reached from all these considerations is that, except when there is a single candidate standing in the interests of each of the two main parties, it is impossible to say with the present system who ought to be elected. The difficulty is one of fundamental principle. The only way to do justice to both parties is to enlarge the electorates so that each can get its proportionate share of representation, and then to provide such machinery as will allow each party separately to elect its most favoured candidates. In no other way can the people be induced to organize into two coherent parties. CHAPTER X. APPLICATION OF THE REFORM TO AUSTRALIAN LEGISLATURES. +Federal Legislatures.+--The keynote of the Australian Federal Constitution, as expressed in the Commonwealth Bill, is full and unreserved trust in the people. This is in direct contrast with the American Constitution, which seeks to place checks on the people by dividing power among the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and assigning to each separate functions. Do we fully realize the dangers as well as the glorious possibilities of unfettered action? Do we sufficiently feel the weight of the responsibility we have undertaken? In reality we have declared to the world the fitness of the Australian democracy to work a Constitution from which the most advanced of the other nations would shrink! We do not hesitate to avow our firm belief that there is only one thing that can save the situation. Unless Australia is to show to the world a warning instead of an example, all her energies must be bent on the formation of two coherent organized parties, dividing each State on national issues, and competing for the support of all classes and all interests in every electorate throughout the Commonwealth. That is the lesson we have endeavoured to inculcate throughout this book, and we are tempted to quote in support of it the opinion of an American author, Professor Paul S. Reinsch, in a work just published on "World Politics." He says:-- The political experience of the last two centuries has proved that free government and party government are almost convertible terms. It is still as true as when Burke wrote his famous defence of party, in his _Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents_, that, for the realization of political freedom, the organization of the electorate into regular and permanent parties is necessary. Parliamentary government has attained its highest success only in those countries where political power is held alternately by two great national parties. As soon as factional interests become predominant; as soon as the stability of government depends upon the artificial grouping of minor conflicting interests; as soon as the nation lacks the tonic effect of the mutual criticisms of great organizations, the highest form of free government becomes unattainable. (pp. 327, 328.) The greatest strain on the Constitution will probably be felt at the outset. Both people and politicians are suddenly called upon to rise to a higher plane of political thought and action. The idea that each State is to send representatives to fight for its own interests must first be got rid of. The only way in which all interests can be reconciled is by each State acting through the national parties. The greatest danger which assails the Commonwealth is the risk of combinations of States dominating party lines; and it is the more imminent that divergent opinions between the larger and the smaller States were already apparent at the Convention. The four smaller States, Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, with about one-third of the population, will have two-thirds of the representation in the Senate; while the two large States, Victoria and New South Wales, will have about two-thirds of the representation in the House of Representatives. At the Convention the fear was expressed that the former, representing a majority of the States, and the latter, representing a majority of the people, might come into conflict, and that a deadlock would ensue. It was on this issue that the great struggle at the Convention took place, resulting in the adoption of a double dissolution and a subsequent joint sitting of the two Houses if necessary. By this machinery all disputes will be finally settled. But what will happen if some of the States consider themselves unjustly treated? Even apart from conflicts between the two Houses, if only one State stood aloof from the main parties it could paralyze government, just as Ireland did in the Imperial Parliament. It is evident, then, that the very existence of the Union is bound up in the immediate formation of national parties. In the United States this lesson was not learned till the Civil War had demonstrated the danger of combinations of States. Since then two great parties have been maintained, even though their existence involves the spoils system and machine organization. In Switzerland, too, the federal tie was not drawn close till after the revolution in 1847, in which the Catholic cantons attempted to secede. Unfortunately, another cause of dissension menaces the Commonwealth. We allude to the class representation which we have already animadverted upon. The separate representation of sections or classes within the States is just as much to be dreaded as the separate representation of States, and bodes as much ill. It seems not unlikely that the fate of the first Federal ministry will be in the hands of the Labour party, which will be able to dictate its policy. It is utterly inconsistent with the democratic theory that a small minority should have this power; and it is to be hoped that in the wider field of federal politics its true character will be recognized. It is only by the mutual action of two great national parties that the true direction of progress, favoured by the people, can be worked out; a small minority studying only its own interests is sure to be a bad guide. A steady pressure maintained through the two national parties will ensure the recognition of all just demands; such extreme and ill-considered demands as that for the initiative and national referendum can only provoke opposition and cause reaction. Even those who sympathize with the ultimate objects of the Labour unions must see the folly of their present unpatriotic and suicidal tactics. It is a matter for hope that in the wider sphere of federal politics the irresponsible leadership of the press is not likely to be the power for harm that it is in some of the individual States at present. But while it may not dominate the Federal Parliament as a whole to the same extent, its control over nominations in the States will be quite as great, and immeasurably greater if the Block Vote is adopted. Nor are signs wanting of a union of some of the larger newspaper ventures in the principal States, with a view to increase their power. Such is a brief review of the outlook. The great requisites essential for progress are the organization of two national parties and responsible leadership in the Federal Parliament. The dangers to the Commonwealth may be summed up under the two heads of lack of organization and irresponsible leadership outside Parliament. Is it possible that the dangers may be avoided and the requisites secured by a change in electoral machinery? Those who have no conception of the working of social forces, and who do not trace the law of causation into the realm of mind, will be inclined to scoff at the suggestion. To them the only hope of improvement lies in appealing to the people to elect better men. They ignore entirely the reciprocal relation of the Parliament and the people, and while recognizing the influence of the people on the character of Parliament, they deny the influence of Parliament on the character of the people. They declare that the people are "free agents" and will have better government when they make up their minds to get it; and no electoral machinery or parliamentary machinery can influence the result. Such is the passive attitude which consciously or unconsciously is almost universally assumed. Yet who can study the history of the British Constitution without being impressed with the fact that every step in the evolution of its machinery was a true sociological invention and had the effect of directing the people's will, which is the motive force, into channels conducive to the general welfare? Take away the responsible leadership of the Cabinet in the British Parliament, and it would become a sink of corruption like the United States Congress; take away its organization into two national parties, and it would become a rabble like the French Chambers. Now, is not the electoral machinery the connecting link between the people and Parliament, and therefore a vital part in the machinery of government? Does it not actually decide the constitution of Parliament? If this be granted, it follows that unless the electoral machinery be adapted to give effect to these two great principles, parliaments will inevitably decline; and that the present method of election is a very inadequate means of giving effect to them few will deny. Our claim for the application of the electoral reform set forth in the preceding pages rests simply on the fact that it will give effect to these principles under conditions in which the present system would fail. We press especially for its application to the Federal House of Representatives, which will be the most important Australian representative assembly; for it it there that organization and responsible leadership are most urgently needed. That they will not be obtained if the present schemes of dividing the States into single-membered electorates are adopted is morally certain; and the result can only be disaster and bitter disappointment. If the mathematical devices described in the last chapter are added, the disorganization will be still more complete. And as for the scheme for allowing separate delegation to a number of sections, which is advocated under the name of the Hare system, it would be absolutely fatal. Who can believe that if Mr. Hare's wild scheme to divide the British people into several hundred sections had been adopted 40 years ago the Imperial Parliament would now be an organized assembly? Take the conditions presented by the first elections for the Federal Parliament, to be held early next year. In some respects it is fortunate that a definite issue is available as a basis of party organization; for there is a general consensus of opinion that all other considerations must be subordinated to a pronouncement on the tariff issue. In an article on "The Liberal Outlook" in _United Australia_, the Hon. Alfred Deakin writes:--"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 suspense 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 realize all that is at stake or make the necessary sacrifices of opinions and preferences to express themselves emphatically on this point." Now, 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 Freetrade and Protectionist representatives. Tasmania and Western Australia could conveniently be polled for this purpose each as one electorate; South Australia might be divided into two electorates, Queensland into three, and Victoria and New South Wales into four or five. It is very desirable that the first election be contested on definite policies advanced by the prospective party leaders; the suggestion that the first ministry should be merely a provisional ministry, to act till the first responsible ministry is formed after the election, is therefore open to serious objection. The leader of the Freetrade party or the leader of the Protectionist party should be chosen as first Federal Premier, and the first election should decide which policy is to be adopted. Contrast this scheme with the proposals now under consideration. In Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland bills have been introduced dividing the States into single-membered electorates, and some of the smaller States are inclined to use the Block Vote. In Victoria a bad precedent has been established by giving the party in power the duty of determining boundaries. From time to time it will be necessary to rearrange the boundaries, not only on account of movements of population within the State, but also because the number of representatives which the State is entitled to will vary. Look forward to the time when the State becomes entitled to one more representative; every one of the 23 electorates, in which vested interests will have been created, will have to be altered These are precisely the conditions which have led to the growth of the gerrymander in the United States. Already the first scheme submitted to the Assembly has been defeated by a combination of country members, who held that Melbourne was allotted a larger share of representation than it now has in the local Parliament. Whatever may be the arguments by which the disparity between the size of town and country electorates be supported in local affairs, surely they cannot apply where national issues only are at stake. The principle of equal electorates is recognized in the Commonwealth Bill by the rules for allotting representation to the States. Why not, then, for the divisions of each State? It is said that a larger proportion of the electors vote in the town, but it is not those only who vote who are represented. In dividing a State into electorates for the purpose of the reform, the number of electors in each division should therefore form the basis of proportional distribution. The unit of representation would be the total number of electors in the State divided by the number of seats. One representative would be allowed to each division of the State for each unit of representation, and the remaining seats, if any, would go to those divisions with the largest remainders. Coming now to the Federal Senate, the bill provides that every State, except Queensland, must be polled as one electorate for the election of six senators at the first election and in case of a double dissolution; at intermediate elections three senators only will be elected, as they retire in rotation. This equal representation of the States might be taken to imply that the Senate is intended to represent State rights, and the provision that each State is to be polled as one electorate would seem to support that view. On the other hand, the senators are not required to vote according to States, for it is provided that "each senator shall have one vote;" the vote of a State may therefore be neutralized by its representatives. And again, the Senate is to be elected directly by the people and not by the State legislatures, as at first proposed. To some extent, therefore, the Federal Senate as now constituted presents a new problem in representation, on which it is not advisable to dogmatize. Personal considerations will probably have more weight than in the selection of representatives; but when we reflect that it is really little more than a revising assembly, elected by the same voters as the House of Representatives to deal with the same questions, and having no special functions of its own, the conclusion seems irresistible that the election must be contested by the same national parties, and that the same method of election should be adopted. Until the Parliament of the Commonwealth prescribes a uniform method of choosing senators, the duty is to be left to the State parliaments; and it is to be regretted that the States have taken no steps to secure uniform action at the first election. In Victoria a fierce newspaper contest is being waged over the Block Vote and the Hare system, and the arguments, being mutually destructive, only go to prove that both are equally objectionable. The _Age_ naturally wishes to have the privilege of electing six senators as it did ten delegates to the Federal Convention, and contends that the majority should elect all the senators; the _Argus_ rushes to the other extreme in declaring that six separate minorities ought to be represented, and ignores the risk that these minorities would be formed on a class or religious basis. The middle position advocated in this book--namely, that majority and minority should each return its proportional share of representation--is free from the objections to both these extreme views. +State Legislatures.+--Even after federation the State Houses will still continue to touch at most points the daily lives of the people; they will merely be shorn of some of their powers and drained of some of their best leaders. The fiscal issue, which has had great influence in deciding party lines in the past, will be removed from the arena of strife, leaving no other than an indefinite line of division into Liberals and Conservatives, which in practice tends to become a division into lower and upper classes. This is the danger ahead; and it can only be avoided by the formation of strong party organizations appealing to all classes to work together for the general welfare. Party government is just as necessary in State politics as in national politics. The present position is intolerable; the disintegration of parties is so complete that there is not a responsible ministry in Australia worthy of the name. Among the causes which have led to this deplorable state of affairs the present method of election is undoubtedly the most potent; it frequently happens that four or five candidates, representing as many groups, contest a single seat. In Victoria, where the state of chaos is perhaps worst, the influence of the press, the existence of a strong Labour section in the Lower House, and the class character of the Upper House, representing property and capital, have been the principal contributing causes. With the advent of federation a revision of the State constitution is widely demanded, and is likely to be conceded. One of the first steps necessary to restore harmony must be reform of the Upper House by a gradual extension of the franchise and a lowering of the qualification, so as to ensure that elections are freely contested; it is its present unrepresentative character which gives force to the appeals of the radical press and intensifies class divisions. The relation of State parties to the national parties is an important subject. In the article from which we have already quoted, in _United Australia_, Mr. Deakin writes:--"There cannot be a series of Liberal parties, one Federal and the others in the States, each going its own way. There must be but one party, with one programme, to which effect will require to be given continuously in both the States and the Commonwealth." He therefore deplores that the Liberal party, together with its "left wing," the Labour class, will be split on the fiscal issue. "It is this apparently unavoidable rupture in the party," he declares, "which endangers its prospects and presents an opportunity to the Conservative classes of either seizing or sharing an authority to which they could not otherwise aspire." If this means that the "Liberal" and Labour classes are entitled by reason of their numbers to a perpetual lease of power in both domains, there can be no more dangerous doctrine. Parties should be decided by questions of progress and financial policy, and not on class lines; and since the State and Federal legislatures have separate spheres of action, parties should be separate also, unless, indeed, they are to be founded on corruption, as in the United States, where the same two parties control not only national and State politics, but city government also. In the consolidation of public opinion into two definite lines of policy based on the questions to be dealt with lies the only hope, then, of the progress of the individual States within their own range; and in promoting this desirable result the reform advocated in these pages finds its true application. CHAPTER XI. THE CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS. +The Agent of Progress.+--If the analysis made in the preceding pages of the principles underlying political representation comes to be regarded as correct, the science of sociology must be profoundly affected: for it is a fact that not only the importance but the very existence of the principles involved has been completely missed by speculators in that field. The view we have taken is that representation is the most important sociological invention which has been made in the whole history of the human race; that the successive steps taken in the evolution of the British Constitution mark a series of inventions scarcely less important, and that the resulting institution of party and responsible government is the indispensable agent of democratic progress. We have traced throughout the electoral and parliamentary machinery on which the institution is based the action of two great principles--organization and responsible leadership--and we have shown that these are the mainsprings of the whole mechanism. Yet we find even such an authority as Mr. Herbert Spencer objecting to the party system, on the ground that it lends itself to a one-man or a one-party tyranny.[9] The fact is that it is only when representative government is weak, and approaches direct government, that such a result can happen, and the distinction is so little recognized that a brief recapitulation may be permitted. The fundamental error is in conceiving representation as merely a means of registering the popular will; many even go so far as to regard it as an imperfect means of ensuring that each single question will be decided according to the will of the majority. All such conceptions really amount to direct government, and where they are given effect to, whether by the referendum or sectional delegation, society is not organized for consistent progress. Indeed, if the lessons of history can be trusted, such a state of society is bound to be wrecked from within by anti-social influences; political power becomes the object of factious strife, and the rule of the majority degenerates into the tyranny of the majority. We have endeavoured to show that the true conception of representative government involves a recognition of the principles of organization and leadership, and that representation is in consequence a means not only of registering the popular will, but also of organizing and guiding it. In both cases, therefore, the popular will is the ultimate motive force, but in the one case the desires of the people clash, while in the other they are directed into channels conducive to the general welfare. We have regarded it as an essential condition of representative government that the popular will be expressed only as to the direction of progress, that is to say on general policy and not on single questions, and that complete control of progress be then left to the representative body. In no other way can the people be saved from their anti-social tendencies, and induced to express their opinion as to what is best for all. We have seen how the electoral machinery is adapted to organize this expression of the popular will into two alternative directions of progress; how this is effected by the fact of two parties competing for the support of the people on policies expressing these lines of progress; and how the parliamentary machinery allows the stronger of these two parties for the time being complete control of administration and of the direction of progress. The effect of this organization is that the popular will is reduced to effective action in one direction at a time--a result which is not possible with direct government. Nor is the principle of responsible leadership which is involved in the reciprocal relation of the representative body and the people any less important. Society cannot progress faster than the individual units composing it. True progress lies therefore in raising the standard of public opinion, and it is this principle which ensures that result by reacting upon and moulding individual character. Hence we find that in countries like England, where the principle is operative, progress is effected without supervision and undue interference in the affairs of the individual by the State, while in countries where the principle is not operative, such as the Continental countries of Europe and some of the Australian colonies, the contrary is the case. Legislation should therefore be directed to changing the nature of the individual, and should not be too far in advance of public opinion. This is what Mr. Lester F. Ward, in his work on "Outlines of Sociology," calls attractive legislation. He writes:-- The principle involved in attraction, when applied to social affairs, is simply that of _inducing_ men to act for the good of society. It is that of harmonizing the interests of the individual with those of society, of making it advantageous to the individual to do that which is socially beneficial; not merely in a negative form as an alternative of two evils, as is done when a penalty is attached to an action, but positively, in such a manner that he will exert himself to do those things that society most needs to have done. The sociologist and the statesman should co-operate in discovering the laws of society and the methods of utilizing them, so as to let the social forces flow freely and strongly, untrammelled by penal statutes, mandatory laws, irritating prohibitions, and annoying obstacles. (p. 274.) Now, we submit that this attractive legislation is possible only when there is no oppressed minority, and is therefore the peculiar province of representative government; for we have shown that the whole machinery is adapted to induce the people to desire only what is best in the interests of society. Let us briefly examine the bearing of the view that representative machinery is the agent of progress on previous theories of social progress. +Professor Huxley.+--No one has more clearly laid down the conditions of social progress than the late Professor Huxley in his essay on _Evolution and Ethics_. The gradual strengthening of the social bond by the practise of self-restraint in the interests of society he called the ethical process, and he showed that social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution of this ethical process. This action he compares to that of a gardener in clearing a patch of waste ground. If he relaxes his efforts to maintain the state of art within the garden, weeds will overrun it and the state of nature will return. So the human race is doomed to a constant struggle to maintain the state of art of an organized polity in opposition to the state of nature; to substitute as far as possible social progress for cosmic evolution. He says:-- Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an audacious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm, and to set man to subdue nature to his higher ends; but I venture to think that the great intellectual difference between the ancient times with which we have been occupied and our day, lies in the solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enterprise may meet with a certain measure of success....[10] Moreover, the cosmic nature born with us, and to a large extent necessary for our maintenance, is the outcome of millions of years of severe training, and it would be folly to imagine that a few centuries will suffice to subdue its masterfulness to purely ethical ends. Ethical nature may count upon having to reckon with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts. But, on the other hand, I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided by sound principles of investigation, and organized in common effort, may modify the conditions of existence for a period longer than that now covered by history. And much may be done to change the nature of man himself. The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.[11] But Huxley never realized that the real cause of the better prospects of success in modern as contrasted with ancient times is the discovery of representative machinery. "The business," he declared, "of the sovereign authority--which is, or ought to be, simply a delegation of the people appointed to act for its good--appears to me to be not only to enforce the renunciation of the anti-social desires, but wherever it may be necessary to promote the satisfaction of those which are conducive to progress."[12] There is no conception here of the principles of organization and responsible leadership, so necessary in constituting this "delegation." +Herbert Spencer.+--By a great many sociologists it is denied that man has his destiny in his own hands, or can by common effort modify the conditions of existence so as to promote progress. The conception which is held to justify this view is that there is an exact correspondence between the progress of human society and the growth of an organism. Foremost among those who take this view is Mr. Herbert Spencer. The close analogy which the progress of the assumed social organism bears to the growth of the physiological organism is worked out in great detail throughout the "Synthetic Philosophy," and is taken to establish "that Biology and Sociology will more or less interpret each other." The practical conclusion which is drawn is that the growth of society must not be interfered with; if the State goes beyond the duty of protection, it becomes an aggressor. So Mr. Spencer is a most uncompromising opponent of State action, even education and public sanitation coming in for his condemnation. Moreover, he holds that if the social organism be let alone it will tend to a future state of society in which social altruism will be so developed that the individual will voluntarily sacrifice himself in the interests of society. In an essay on _The Social Organism_ ("Essays," Second Series), he writes:-- Strange as the assertion will be thought, our Houses of Parliament discharge in the social economy functions that are, in sundry respects, comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses in a vertebrate animal.... We may describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral, social; and a good brain is one in which the desires answering to their respective interests are so balanced that the conduct they jointly dictate sacrifices none of them. Similarly we may describe the office of Parliament as that of _averaging_ the interests of the various classes in a community; and a good Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these respective interests are so balanced that their united legislation concedes to each class as much as consists with the claims of the rest. The error of regarding society merely as an aggregate is here clearly shown, for if the "parties" in Parliament were based on class delegation, as assumed, social progress would be blocked. The only real foundation for the resemblance between society and an organism is this: that unless the individual units composing society reduce themselves to unity of action in a definite direction, society as a whole cannot progress; or, in other words, that the principles of organization and leadership are essential to progress. Yet Mr. Spencer denies that there is any sphere of collective action for the operation of these principles! +Benjamin Kidd.+--The "social organism" theory is also the foundation of the theory of social progress with which Mr. Benjamin Kidd startled the scientific world a few years ago in "Social Evolution." While appreciating the importance of the factor of individual reason, he contended that self-restraint by the individual in the interests of society is impossible without an ultra-rational sanction; that, in fact, without this the reason is the most anti-social and anti-evolutionary of all human qualities. The central fact therefore with which we are confronted in our progressive societies is stated as follows:--"_The interests of the social organism and those of the individuals comprising it at any particular time are actually antagonistic; they can never be reconciled; they are inherently and essentially irreconcilable._" What becomes of this extraordinary proposition if it is clearly established that the amount of reconciliation depends on the extent to which the principles of organization and responsible leadership are given effect to by representative machinery? +Past Progress.+--The question will naturally be raised: If a representative body is now the indispensable agent of social progress, how can progress previous to the introduction of representation be explained? The answer is that the same principles were operative, but in different forms, more suited to the stage of social development. Indeed, we may say that, from the time that man emerged from the brute stage and became a social animal, the types of society which have survived in the struggle for existence with the state of nature and with other types have been those in which the principles of organization and leadership have been most active. Even the lowest types of savages, such as the native tribes studied by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. Gillen in Central Australia, have a complicated system of organization, the peculiar feature of which is totemism, or group marriage; but this is more the result of development than of conscious effort. Leadership also is rudimentary, for, although the old men have control of the elaborate ceremonies described, they conform almost entirely to custom and tradition. Out of this savage stage there grew in favoured countries the second type of human society--the patriarchal, in which leadership becomes personal, and centred in a chief who exercises despotic authority. Patriarchal society grew out of the necessities of a pastoral existence; indeed, it was the discovery of the domestication of animals which gave rise to it. Among other interesting features which were developed are permanent marriage, slavery, and ancestor worship. There can be no doubt that the latter played an important part in binding the tribe into one organization, and in inducing all the tribe to submit to the leadership of the chief. There is a second stage of patriarchal society in which the large tribes break up into clans and become less nomadic. Professor Jenks has shown, in his "Short History of Politics," how this stage originated in the adoption of agriculture. We begin now to have the village community, bound by the tie of kinship, and submitting to the leadership of a lord; and are already on the threshold of modern political society, in which all these ancient barriers are broken down and the individual becomes the social unit. The cause of this momentous change is development of the art of warfare. But before we reach the modern State there is an intermediate stage, namely, feudalism. The feudal chief is simply the successful warrior--the leader of a band of adventurers who get control of a definite territory and exact military allegiance from its inhabitants. Out of the consolidation of these bands, or by conquest, modern States were founded. Leadership was now vested in an irresponsible despot--the king; and the trouble was to render this new institution permanent, and to induce the people to submit to it. The former result was attained by making the kingship hereditary, but the latter has always been a difficult task. It is doubtful if it would ever have been accomplished but for a significant alliance--that of Church and State. The convenient fiction of the divine right of kings was invented, and religion was used to bolster up the institution and to provide a sanction for submission to absolutism. In other words, irresponsible leadership was tolerated because responsibility was supposed to exist to a Higher Power. So we find that all the great religious movements--Christianity, Mohammedanism, and even Buddhism--have been associated with the establishment of mighty kingdoms. Moreover, the only two kingdoms in Europe in which absolutism still holds out are Russia and Turkey, in which the head of the State is also head of the Church. But military despotism, which was based solely on the exploitation of weaker communities, of which ancient Rome was the culminating type, wanted the elements of permanent progress, and was bound to disappear before a new type which rested on the development of internal resources. Militarism must therefore be looked on as a real stage of progress; for in contrast with patriarchal society it was competitive, and it broke down many ancient barriers, and prepared the way for industrial co-operation. Thus we arrive at the conditions favourable to the rise of representative institutions. For when the cost of wars had to be raised out of the national resources kings found it convenient to get the consent of the people to taxation. Hence the great movement throughout Western Europe for the establishment of parliaments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Why is it that in England alone this movement was successful? Partly no doubt because its isolated position was favourable to internal progress, but mainly because it was the only State in which the principles of organization and responsible leadership were continuously given effect to. So it is that in England there was developed that wonderful machinery of representative government which has enabled the people to substitute responsible for irresponsible leadership, and has made the national character what it is. This machinery has now been adopted nearly all over the world, wherever it has been desired to make the popular will felt, but in no case has it sufficed to give effect to the underlying principles to the same extent; and success has been attained only in so far as they have been effective. The lesson of the last century has been that the machinery which proved sufficient in England, where progress was uniform through several centuries, breaks down when the pace of progress is increased. An extreme instance is the recent attempt to introduce party government into Japan, a country just emerging from the feudal stage, an interesting account of which is given in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July, 1899. The experiment failed because the clans could not be divided on questions of political principle. In a greater or less degree that is the fundamental source of difficulty everywhere; if the representative machinery produces only sectional delegation the tendency is back through anarchy to absolutism. Is it not an extraordinary fact, then, that the vital distinction between representation and delegation is so universally ignored? Such is a brief outline of the evolution of human society; however inadequate it may be, it at least serves to illustrate the truth that social progress has never been made in the past except when the principles of organization and leadership have been operative. +Future Progress.+--As to the ultimate tendency of future progress it would be pedantry to dogmatize; our task has been the humbler one of pointing out the means by which progress is to be attained. We have assumed, however, that there is a separate sphere of collective action in which government is an instrument for the positive amelioration of social conditions. We are aware that this conclusion is at variance with the two extreme schools of modern thought; on the one hand, with the individualists, who hold that government should only be used for mutual protection and to keep order; and on the other hand, with the socialists, who would leave nothing to individual action. Professor Huxley has reduced the claims of these two schools to absurdity and impossibility respectively; and we believe that the problem of the future is to find out that middle course between the anarchy of the one and the despotism of the other which makes for progress. It seems likely that the state of society we are approaching will be one in which, while natural inequalities will be recognized, neither the artificial inequalities of fanatical individualism nor the artificial equalities of regimental socialism will be tolerated, and every man will enter the rivalry of life on terms of an equality of opportunity. This is the state foreshadowed by Mr. Lester Ward in his "Outlines of Sociology" and called by him _Sociocracy_. Such ideals, however, serve only to refute false conceptions and offer little practical guidance. What is wanted is a clear recognition of the fact that _progress depends on collective effort acting through representative machinery, the efficiency of which depends on the extent to which the principles of organization and responsible leadership are operative._ The question with which democratic countries are faced to-day is this: Must it be acknowledged that the people are unfit for self-government, or is the representative machinery defective? We have supported the view that the latter is the case as regards English-speaking-countries at all events; and we have shown that in British countries the remedy lies in improved electoral machinery, while in the United States both electoral and parliamentary machinery are at fault. FOOTNOTES: [9] "Principles of Ethics." [10] "Collected Essays," vol. ix., p. 83. [11] _Ibid._, p. 85. [12] "Collected Essays," vol. i., pp. 275-276. 
21006	----	Transcriber's note: Text enclosed between paired asterisks is in bold face. Original page numbers are shown at the right margin to facilitate use of the index. THE GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE The MacMillan Company New York - Boston - Chicago Dallas - San Francisco MacMillan & Co., Limited London - Bombay - Calcutta Melbourne The MacMillan Co. of Canada, Ltd. Toronto THE GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE by FREDERIC AUSTIN OGG, Ph. D. Professor of Political Science in the University of Wisconsin Author of "Social Progress in Contemporary Europe" New York The MacMillan Company 1918 All rights reserved Copyright, 1913. by the MacMillan Company Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1913. Reprinted July, December, 1913; June, 1914; August, 1915; July, 1916; September, 1917. TO MY FATHER PREFACE (p. vii) It is a matter of common observation that during the opening years of the twentieth century there has been, in many portions of the civilized world, a substantial quickening of interest in the principles and problems of human government. The United States is happily among those countries in which the phenomenon can be observed, and we have witnessed in recent times not only the organization of societies and the establishment of journals designed to foster research within the field, but also a notable multiplication and strengthening of courses in political science open to students in our colleges and universities, as well as the development of clubs, forums, extension courses, and other facilities for the increasing of political information and the stimulation of political thinking on the part of the people at large. It is the object of this book to promote the intelligent study of government by supplying working descriptions of the governmental systems of the various countries of western and central Europe as they have taken form and as they operate at the present day. Conceived and prepared primarily as a text for use in college courses, it is hoped none the less that the volume may prove of service to persons everywhere whose interest in the subject leads them to seek the sort of information which is here presented. The content of the book has been determined, in the main, by three considerations. In the first place, it has been deemed desirable to afford a wide opportunity for the _comparative_ study of political institutions, especially by reason of the familiar fact that the governmental system of a minor country may, and frequently does, exhibit elements of novelty and of importance not inferior to those to be observed in the political organization of a greater state. Hence there are included descriptions of the governments of the minor as well as of the major nations of western and central Europe; and the original purpose to attempt some treatment of the governments of the eastern nations has been abandoned, somewhat reluctantly, only because of the demands of space, and because it was felt that this portion of the projected work would perhaps meet no very serious need in the usual college courses. In the second place, it is believed that the intelligent study of present-day governments must involve at all (p. viii) stages the taking into careful account of the historical origins and growth of these governments. Hence a considerable amount of space has been devoted to sketches of constitutional history, which, however, are in all instances so arranged that they may readily be omitted if their omission is deemed desirable. In the case of countries whose political system underwent a general reconstitution during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era it has been thought not feasible to allude, even briefly, to historical developments prior to the later eighteenth century. In the third place, it has been considered desirable to include in the book some treatment of political parties and of the institutions of local administration. Within a field so expansive it has been possible to undertake but an introduction to a majority of the subjects touched upon. In the foot-notes will be found references to books, documents, and periodical materials of widely varying types, and it is hoped that some of these may serve to guide student and reader to more intensive information. The preparation of the book has been facilitated by the encouragement and the expert advice accorded me by a number of teachers of government in colleges and universities in various portions of the country. And I have had at all times the patient and discriminating assistance of my wife. For neither the plan nor the details of the work, however, can responsibility be attached to anyone save myself. I can only hope that amidst the multitude of facts, some elusive and many subject to constant change, which I have attempted here to set down, not many seriously vitiating errors may have escaped detection. Frederic Austin OGG. Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 10, 1913. TABLE OF CONTENTS (p. ix) PART I.--GREAT BRITAIN I. THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION 1. The Importance of Historical Background 1 2. Anglo-Saxon Beginnings 2 3. The Norman-Plantagenet Period 6 4. The Rise of Parliament 11 5. Administrative and Judicial Development 16 6. The Tudor Monarchy 18 7. Parliament under the Tudors 21 8. The Stuarts: Crown and Parliament 26 9. The Later Stuarts: the Revolution of 1688-1689 31 II. THE CONSTITUTION SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 1. Crown and Parliament after 1789 34 2. Rise of the Cabinet and of Political Parties 37 3. The Scottish and Irish Unions 39 4. The Nature and Sources of the Constitution 41 5. The Flexibility of the Constitution 44 III. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY 1. The Crown: Legal Status and Privileges 48 2. The Powers of the Crown 52 3. The Importance and Strength of the Monarchy 58 4. Privy Council, Ministry, and Cabinet 60 5. The Executive Departments 61 6. The Cabinet: Composition and Character 64 7. The Cabinet in Action 70 IV. PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 1. The House of Commons prior to 1832 77 2. Parliamentary Reform, 1832-1885 80 3. The Franchise and the Electoral Questions of To-day 86 4. Electoral Procedure and Regulations 92 V. PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF LORDS (p. x) 1. Composition 97 2. The Reform of the Lords: the Question prior to 1909 101 3. The Question of the Lords, 1909-1911 106 4. The Parliament Act of 1911 and After 112 VI. PARLIAMENT, ORGANIZATION, FUNCTIONS, PROCEDURE 1. The Assembling of the Chambers 117 2. Organization of the House of Commons 120 3. Organization of the House of Lords 125 4. Privileges of the Houses and of Members 126 5. The Functions of Parliament 128 6. General Aspects of Parliamentary Procedure 132 7. The Conduct of Business in the two Houses 138 VII. POLITICAL PARTIES 1. Parliamentarism and the Party System 143 2. Parties in the Later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries 145 3. The Second Era of Whig [Liberal] Ascendancy, 1830-1874 147 4. The Second Era of Conservative Ascendancy, 1874-1905 150 5. The Liberal Revival 155 6. The Rule of the Liberals, 1906-1912 158 7. The Parties of To-day 162 VIII. JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1. English Law 167 2. The Inferior Courts 170 3. The Higher Courts 173 4. Local Government to the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835 176 5. Local Government Reform, 1835-1912 179 6. Local and Central Government 181 7. Local Government To-day: Rural 183 8. Local Government To-day: Urban 186 PART II.--GERMANY IX. THE EMPIRE AND ITS CONSTITUTION 1. Political Development Prior to 1848 193 2. The Creation of the Empire 198 3. The Constitution: Nature of the Empire 202 4. The Empire and the States 205 X. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT: EMPEROR, CHANCELLOR, AND BUNDESRATH 1. The Emperor 210 2. The Chancellor 213 3. The Bundesrath 217 XI. THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT: REICHSTAG, PARTIES, JUDICIARY (p. xi) 1. Composition of the Reichstag--Electoral System 223 2. Organization and Powers of the Reichstag. 226 3. The Rise of Political Parties 229 4. Party Politics after 1878 233 5. Parties since 1907 236 6. Law and Justice 241 XII. THE CONSTITUTION OF PRUSSIA--THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY 1. The German States and their Governments 245 2. The Rise of Constitutionalism in Prussia 246 3. The Crown and the Ministry 253 XIII. THE PRUSSIAN LANDTAG--LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1. Composition of the Landtag 257 2. The Movement for Electoral Reform 260 3. Organization and Functions of the Landtag 263 4. Local Government: Origins and Principles 265 5. Local Government: Areas and Organs 268 XIV. THE MINOR GERMAN STATES--ALSACE-LORRAINE 1. The More Important Monarchies 275 2. The Lesser Monarchies and the City Republics 279 3. Alsace-Lorraine 282 PART III.--FRANCE XV. CONSTITUTIONS SINCE 1789 1. A Century of Political Instability 289 2. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era 290 3. From the Restoration to the Revolution of 1848 295 4. The Second Republic and the Second Empire 297 5. The Establishment of the Third Republic 301 6. The Constitution of To-day 304 XVI. THE PRESIDENT, THE MINISTRY, AND PARLIAMENT 1. The President 308 2. The Ministry 311 3. Parliament: Senate and Chamber of Deputies 315 4. The Problem of Electoral Reform 319 XVII. PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE--POLITICAL PARTIES 1. Organization and Workings of the Chambers 325 2. Political Parties since 1871 329 XVIII. JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1. French Law 335 2. The Courts 337 3. Local Government: Development since 1789 341 4. Local Government To-day 346 PART IV.--ITALY (p. xii) XIX. CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1. The Era of Napoleon 353 2. The Restoration and the Revolution of 1848 358 3. The Achievement of Unification 362 4. The Constitution 365 XX. THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENT SYSTEM 1. The Crown and the Ministry 368 2. Parliament: the Senate 372 3. The Chamber of Deputies--Parliamentary Procedure 375 4. The Judiciary 381 5. Local Government 383 XXI. STATE AND CHURCH--POLITICAL PARTIES 1. Quirinal and Vatican 387 2. Parties and Ministries, 1861-1896 391 3. The Era of Composite Ministries, 1896-1912 395 4. Phases of Party Politics 398 PART V.--SWITZERLAND XXII. THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM--THE CANTONS 1. The Confederation and Its Constitutions 405 2. The Nation and the States 411 3. Cantonal Legislation: the Referendum and the Initiative 416 4. The Cantonal Executive and Judiciary 421 XXIII. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 1. The Executive 423 2. Legislation: the Federal Assembly 426 3. Legislation: the Referendum and the Initiative 430 4. Political Parties 434 5. The Judiciary 437 PART VI.--AUSTRIA-HUNGARY XXIV. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY PRIOR TO THE AUSGLEICH 1. Austrian Political Development to 1815 442 2. Hungarian Political Development to 1815 445 3. The Era of Metternich 450 4. The Revolution of 1848 453 5. The Revival of Constitutionalism: the Ausgleich 456 XXV. THE GOVERNMENT AND PARTIES OF AUSTRIA 1. The Constitution 460 2. The Crown and the Ministry 463 3. The Reichsrath--the Electoral System 465 4. Political Parties 474 5. The Judiciary and Local Government 483 XXVI. THE GOVERNMENT AND PARTIES OF HUNGARY (p. xiii) 1. The Constitution 489 2. The Crown and the Ministry 491 3. Parliament--the Electoral System 492 4. Political Parties 500 5. The Judiciary and Local Government 505 XXVII. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: THE JOINT GOVERNMENT 1. The Common Organs of Government 510 2. The Territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina 514 PART VII.--THE LOW COUNTRIES XXVIII. THE GOVERNMENT OF HOLLAND 1. A Century of Political Development 517 2. The Crown and the Ministry 523 3. The States-General and Political Parties 525 4. The Judiciary and Local Government 531 XXIX. THE GOVERNMENT OF BELGIUM 1. The Constitution--the Crown and the Ministry 534 2. The Houses of Parliament--the Electoral System 538 3. Parties and Electoral Reform since 1894--Parliamentary Procedure 542 4. The Judiciary and Local Government 549 PART VIII.--SCANDINAVIA XXX. THE GOVERNMENT OF DENMARK 1. Development Prior to 1814 553 2. The Rise of Constitutionalism, 1814-1866 556 3. The Crown and the Ministry 559 4. The Rigsdag--Political Parties 562 5. The Judiciary and Local Government 568 XXXI. THE SWEDISH-NORWEGIAN UNION AND THE GOVERNMENT OF NORWAY 1. Political Development to 1814 570 2. The Swedish-Norwegian Union, 1814-1905 573 3. The Norwegian Constitution--Crown and Ministry 578 4. The Storthing--Political Parties 581 5. The Judiciary and Local Government 587 XXXII. THE GOVERNMENT OF SWEDEN 1. The Constitution--the Crown and the Ministry 589 2. The Riksdag--the Electoral System 591 3. The Riksdag in Operation--Political Parties 597 4. The Judiciary and Local Government 600 PART IX.--THE IBERIAN STATES (p. xiv) XXXIII. THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN 1. The Beginnings of Constitutionalism 603 2. Political and Constitutional Development, 1833-1876 606 3. The Present Constitution 611 4. The Crown and the Ministry 613 5. The Cortes 616 6. Political Parties 620 7. The Judiciary and Local Government 626 XXXIV. THE GOVERNMENT OF PORTUGAL 1. A Century of Political Development 629 2. The Government of the Kingdom 634 3. The Revolution of 1910 639 4. The Constitution of 1911 643 GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE (p. 001) PART I.--GREAT BRITAIN CHAPTER I THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION I. THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL BACKGROUND *1. Political Pre-eminence of Great Britain.*--George III. is reported to have pronounced the English constitution the most perfect of human formations. One need hardly concur unreservedly in this dictum to be impressed with the propriety of beginning a survey of the governmental systems of modern Europe with an examination of the political principles, rules, and practices of contemporary Britain. The history of no other European nation, in the first place, exhibits a development of institutions so prolonged, so continuous, and so orderly. The governmental forms and agencies of no other state have been studied with larger interest or imitated with clearer effect. The public policy of no other organized body of men has been more influential in shaping the progress, social and economic as well as political, of the civilized world. For the American student, furthermore, the approach to the institutions of the European continent is likely to be rendered easier and more inviting if made by way of a body of institutions which lies at the root of much that is both American and continental. There are, it is true, not a few respects in which the governmental system of the United States to-day bears closer resemblance to that of France, Germany, Switzerland, or even Italy than to that of Great Britain. The relation, however, between the British and the American is one, in the main, of historical continuity, while that between the French or German and the American is one which arises largely from mere imitation or from accidental resemblance. *2. The Continuity of Institutional History.*--No government can be studied adequately apart from the historical development which has (p. 002) made it what it is; and this ordinarily means the tracing of origins and of changes which stretch through a prolonged period of time. Men have sometimes imagined that they were creating a governmental system _de novo_, and it occasionally happens, as in France in 1791 and in Portugal in 1911, that a régime is instituted which has little apparent connection with the past. History demonstrates, however, in the first place, that such a régime is apt to perpetuate more of the old than is at the time supposed and, in the second place, that unless it is connected vitally with the old, the chances of its achieving stability or permanence are inconsiderable. In Germany, for example, if the institutions of the Empire were essentially new in 1871, the governmental systems of the several federated states, and of the towns and local districts, exhibited numerous elements which in origin were mediæval. In France, if central institutions, and even the political arrangements of the department and of the arrondissement, do not antedate the Revolution, the commune, in which the everyday political activity of the average citizen runs its course, stands essentially as it was in the age of Louis XIV. If the element of continuity is thus important in the political system of Germany, France, or Switzerland, in that of England it is fundamental. It is not too much to say that the most striking aspect of English constitutional history is the continual preservation, in the teeth of inevitable changes, of a preponderating proportion of institutions that reach far into the past. "The great difficulty which presses on the student of the English constitution, regarded as a set of legal rules," observes a learned commentator, "is that he can never dissociate himself from history. There is hardly a rule which has not a long past, or which can be understood without some consideration of the circumstances under which it first came into being."[1] It is the purpose of the present volume to describe European governments as they to-day exist and operate. It will be necessary in all cases, however, to accord some consideration to the origins and growth of the political organs and practices which may be described. In respect to Great Britain this can mean nothing less than a survey, brief as may be, of a thousand years of history. [Footnote 1: W. R. Anson, The Law and Custom of the Constitution (3d ed., Oxford, 1897), I., 13.] II. ANGLO-SAXON BEGINNINGS The earliest form of the English constitution was that which existed during the centuries prior to the Norman Conquest. Political organization among the Germanic invaders of Britain was of the (p. 003) most rudimentary sort, but the circumstances of the conquest and settlement of the island were such as to stimulate a considerable elaboration of governmental machinery and powers. From the point of view of subsequent institutional history the most important features of the Anglo-Saxon governmental system were kingship, the witenagemot, and the units of local administration--shire, hundred, borough, and township.[2] [Footnote 2: See G. B. Adams, The Origin of the English Constitution (New Haven, 1912), Chap. 1. That the essentials of the English constitution of modern times, in respect to forms and machinery, are products of the feudalization of England which resulted from the Norman Conquest, and not survivals of Anglo-Saxon governmental arrangements, is the well-sustained thesis of this able study. That many important elements, however, were contributed by Anglo-Saxon statecraft is beyond dispute.] *3. Kingship.*--The origins of Anglo-Saxon kingship are shrouded in obscurity, but it is certain that the king of later days was originally nothing more than the chieftain of a victorious war-band. During the course of the occupation of the conquered island many chieftains attained the dignity of kingship, but with the progress of political consolidation one after another of the royal lines was blotted out, old tribal kingdoms became mere administrative districts of larger kingdoms, and, eventually, in the ninth century, the whole of the occupied portions of the country were brought under the control of a single sovereign. Saxon kingship was elective, patriarchal, and, in respect to power, limited. Kings were elected by the important men sitting in council, and while the dignity was hereditary in a family supposedly descended from the gods, an immediate heir was not unlikely to be passed over in favor of a relative who was remoter but abler.[3] In both pagan and Christian times the royal office was invested with a pronouncedly sacred character. As early as 690 Ine was king "by God's grace." But the actual authority of the king was such as arose principally from the dignity of his office and from the personal influence of the individual monarch.[4] The king was primarily a war-leader. He was a law-giver, but his "dooms" were likely to be framed only in consultation with the wise men, and they pertained to little else than the preservation of the peace. He was supreme (p. 004) judge, and all crimes and breaches of the peace came to be looked upon as offenses against him; but he held no court and he had in practice little to do with the administration of justice. Over local affairs he had no direct control whatever. [Footnote 3: Thus, in 871, the minor children of Ethelred I. were passed over in favor of Alfred, younger brother of the late king.] [Footnote 4: The Anglo-Saxon king was "not the supreme law-giver of Roman ideas, nor the fountain of justice, nor the irresponsible leader, nor the sole and supreme politician, nor the one primary landowner; but the head of the race, the chosen representative of its identity, the successful leader of its enterprises, the guardian of its peace, the president of its assemblies; created by it, and, although empowered with a higher sanction in crowning and anointing, answerable to his people." W. Stubbs, Select Charters Illustrative of English Constitutional History (8th ed., Oxford, 1895), 12.] *4. The Witenagemot.*--Associated with the king in the conduct of public business was the council of wise men, or witenagemot. The composition of this body, being determined in the main by the will of the individual monarch, varied widely from time to time. The persons most likely to be summoned were the members of the royal family, the greater ecclesiastics, the king's gesiths or thegns, the ealdormen who administered the shires, other leading officers of state and of the household, and the principal men who held land directly of the king. There were included no popularly elected representatives. As a rule, the witan was called together three or four times a year. Acting with the king, it made laws, imposed taxes, concluded treaties, appointed ealdormen and bishops, and occasionally heard cases not disposed of in the courts of the shire and hundred. It was the witan, furthermore, that elected the king; and since it could depose him, he was obliged to recognize a certain responsibility to it. "It has been a marked and important feature in our constitutional history," it is pointed out by Anson, "that the king has never, in theory, acted in matters of state without the counsel and consent of a body of advisers."[5] [Footnote 5: Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1., 7. Cf. W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, I., 127.] *5. Township, Borough, and Hundred.*--By reason of their persistence, and their comparative changelessness from earliest times to the later nineteenth century, the utmost importance attaches to Anglo-Saxon arrangements respecting local government and administration. The smallest governmental unit was the township, comprising normally a village surrounded by arable lands, meadows, and woodland. The town-moot was a primary assembly of the freemen of the village, by which, under the presidency of a reeve, the affairs of the township were administered. A variation of the township was the burgh, or borough, whose population was apt to be larger and whose political independence was greater; but its arrangements for government approximated closely those of the ordinary township. A group of townships comprised a hundred. At the head of the hundred was a hundred-man, ordinarily elected, but not infrequently appointed by a great landowner or prelate to whom the lands of the hundred belonged. Assisting him was a council of twelve or more freemen. In the (p. 005) hundred-moot was introduced the principle of representation, for to the meetings of that body came regularly the reeve, the parish priest, and four "best men" from each of the townships and boroughs comprised within the hundred. The hundred-moot met as often as once a month, and it had as its principal function the adjudication of disputes and the decision of cases, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical. *6. The Shire.*--Above the hundred was the shire. Originally, as a rule, the shires were regions occupied by small but independent tribes; eventually they became administrative districts of the united kingdom. At the head of the shire was an ealdorman, appointed by the king and witan, generally from the prominent men of the shire. Subordinate to him at first, but in time overshadowing him, was the shire-reeve, or sheriff, who was essentially a representative of the crown, sent to assume charge of the royal lands in the shire, to collect the king's revenue, and to receive the king's share of the fines imposed in the courts. Each shire had its moot, and by reason of the fact that the shires and bishoprics were usually coterminous, the bishop sat with the ealdorman as joint president of this assemblage. In theory, at least, the shire-moot was a gathering of the freemen of the shire. It met, as a rule, twice a year, and to it were entitled to come all freemen, in person or by representation. It was within the competence of those who did not desire to attend to send as spokesmen their reeves or stewards; so that the body was likely to assume the character of a mixed primary and representative assembly. The shire-moot decided disputes pertaining to the ownership of land, tried suits for which a hearing could not be obtained in the court of the hundred, and exercised an incidental ecclesiastical jurisdiction.[6] [Footnote 6: The classic description of Anglo-Saxon political institutions is W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, 3 vols. (6th ed., Oxford, 1897), especially I., 74-182; but recent scholarship has supplemented and modified at many points the facts and views therein set forth. A useful account (though likewise subject to correction) is H. Taylor, The Origins and Growth of the English Constitution, 2 vols. (new ed., Boston, 1900), I., Bk. 1., Chaps. 3-5; and a repository of information is J. Ramsay, The Foundations of England, 2 vols. (London, 1898). A valuable sketch is A. B. White, The Making of the English Constitution, 449-1485 (New York, 1908), 16-62. A brilliant book is E. A. Freeman, The Growth of the English Constitution (4th ed., London, 1884); but by reason of Professor Freeman's over-emphasis of the perpetuation of Anglo-Saxon institutions in later times this work is to be used with caution. Political and institutional history is well set forth in T. Hodgkin, History of England to the Norman Conquest (London, 1906), and C. W. C. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest (London, 1910). A useful manual is H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905); and an admirable bibliography is C. Gross, The Sources and Literature of English History (London, 1900).] III. THE NORMAN-PLANTAGENET PERIOD (p. 006) At the coming of William the Conqueror, in 1066, two fundamental principles may be said to have been firmly fixed in the English political system. The first was that of thoroughgoing local self-government. The second was that of the obligation of the king, in all matters of first-rate importance, such as the laying of taxes and the making of laws, to seek the counsel and consent of some portion of his subjects. In the period which was inaugurated by the Conquest neither of these principles was entirely subverted, yet the Norman era stands out distinctly as one in which the powers of government were gathered in the hands of the king and of his immediate agents in a measure unknown at any earlier time. Building in so far as was possible upon foundations already laid, William was able so to manoeuver the consequences of the Conquest as to throw the advantages all but wholly upon the side of the crown. Feudalism, land-tenure, military service, taxation, the church--to all was imparted, by force or by craft, such a bent that the will of the sovereign acquired the practical effect of law, and monarchy in England, traditionally weak, was brought to the verge of sheer absolutism. *7. Extension of Centralized Control.*--In respect to the actual mechanism of government the principal achievement of the Norman-Plantagenet period was the overhauling and consolidation of the agencies of administration. Despite the fact that local institutions of Saxon origin were largely respected, so that they have continued to this day the most substantial Anglo-Saxon contribution to English polity, there was a notable linking-up of these hitherto largely disassociated institutions with the institutions of the central government. This was accomplished in part by the dissolution of the earldoms by which the monarchy had been menaced in later Saxon days, and in part by a tremendous increase of the power and importance of the sheriffs. It was accomplished still more largely, however, by the organization of two great departments of government--those of justice and finance--presided over by dignitaries of the royal household and manned by permanent staffs of expert officials. The department of justice comprised the Curia; that of finance, the Exchequer. At the head of the one was the Chancellor; at the head of the other, the Treasurer. The principal officials within the two comprised a single body of men, sitting now as _justitiarii_, or justices, and now as _barones_ of the Exchequer. The profits and costs of asserting and administering justice and the incomings and outgoings of the Exchequer were but different aspects of the same fundamental concerns of (p. 007) state.[7] The justices of the Curia who held court on circuit throughout the realm and the sheriffs who came up twice a year to render to the barons of the Exchequer an account of the sums due from the shires served as the real and tangible agencies through which the central and local governments were knit together. As will appear, it was from the Norman Curia that, in the course of time, there sprang immediately those diversified departments of administration whose heads comprise the actual executive of the British nation to-day. [Footnote 7: Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. I., II.] *8. King and Great Council.*--Untrammelled by constitutional restrictions, the Conqueror and his earlier successors recognized such limitations only upon the royal authority as were imposed by powerful and turbulent subjects. Associated with the king, however, was from the first a body known as the _Commune Concilium_, the Common, or Great, Council. "Thrice a year," the Saxon Chronicle tells us, "King William wore his crown every year he was in England; at Easter he wore it at Winchester; at Pentecost, at Westminster; and at Christmas, at Gloucester; and at these times all the men of England were with him--archbishops, bishops and abbots, earls, thegns and knights." By the phrase "all the men of England" is to be understood only the great ecclesiastics, the principal officers of state, and the king's tenants-in-chief--in truth, only such of the more important of these as were summoned individually to the sovereign's presence. At least in theory, however, the Norman kings were accustomed to consult this gathering of magnates, very much as their predecessors had been accustomed to consult the witenagemot, upon all important questions of legislation, finance, and public policy. It may, indeed, be said that it is the development of this Council that comprises the central subject of English constitutional history; for, "out of it, directly or indirectly, by one process or another, have been evolved Parliament, the Cabinet, and the courts of law."[8] [Footnote 8: W. Wilson, The State (rev. ed., Boston, 1903), 369.] *9. The Plantagenet Monarchy.*--During the century and a half following the death of the Conqueror the vigor of the monarchy varied enormously, but not until the days of King John can there be said to have been any loss of power or independence which amounted to more than a passing circumstance. In a charter granted at the beginning of his reign, in 1100, Henry I. confirmed the liberties of his subjects and promised to respect the laws of Edward the Confessor; but the new sovereign did not propose, and no one imagined that he intended to propose, to relax any of the essential and legitimate power which had been transmitted to him by his father and brother. The reign of (p. 008) Stephen (1135-1154) was an epoch of anarchy happily unparalleled in the history of the nation. During the course of it the royal authority sank to its lowest ebb since the days of the Danish incursions. But the able and wonderfully energetic Henry II. (1154-1189) recovered all that had been lost and added not a little of his own account. "Henry II.," it has been said, "found a nation wearied out with the miseries of anarchy, and the nation found in Henry II. a king with a passion for administration."[9] With the fundamental purpose of reducing all of his subjects to equality before an identical system of law, the great Plantagenet sovereign waged determined warfare upon both the rebellious nobility and the independent clergy. He was not entirely successful, especially in his conflict with the clergy; but he effectually prevented a reversion of the nation to feudal chaos, and he invested the king's law with a sanction which it had known hardly even in the days of the Conqueror. The reign of Henry II. has been declared, indeed, to "initiate the rule of law."[10] By reviving and placing upon a permanent basis the provincial visitations of the royal justices, for both judicial and fiscal purposes, and by extending in the local administration of justice and finance the principle of the jury, Henry contributed fundamentally to the development of the English Common Law, the jury, and the modern hierarchy of courts. By appointing as sheriffs lawyers or soldiers, rather than great barons, he fostered the influence of the central government in local affairs. By commuting military service for a money payment (_scutage_), and by a revival of the ancient militia system (the _fyrd_), he brought the control of the armed forces of the nation effectually under royal control. By the frequent summons of the Great Council and the systematic reference to it of business of moment he contributed to the importance of an institution through whose amplification a century later Parliament was destined to be brought into existence. [Footnote 9: Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. I., 13.] [Footnote 10: Stubbs, Select Charters, 21.] *10. The Great Charter, 1215.*--The period of Richard I. (1189-1199) was, in constitutional matters, a continuation of that of Henry II. Richard was absent from the kingdom throughout almost the whole of the reign, but under the guidance of officials trained by Henry the machinery of government operated substantially as before. Under John (1199-1216) came a breakdown, occasioned principally by the sovereign's persistence in evading certain limitations upon the royal authority which already had assumed the character of established rules of the constitution. One of these forbade that the king should impose fresh taxation except with the advice and consent of the Great Council. (p. 009) Another enjoined that a man should not be fined or otherwise despoiled of his property except in virtue of judicial sentence. These and other principles John habitually disregarded, with the consequence that in time he found himself without a party and driven to the alternative of deposition or acceptance of the guarantee of liberties which the barons, the Church, and the people were united in demanding of him. The upshot was the promulgation, June 15, 1215, of Magna Carta. No instrument in the annals of any nation exceeds in importance the Great Charter. The whole of English constitutional history, once remarked Bishop Stubbs, is but one long commentary upon it. The significance of the Charter arises not simply from the fact that it was wrested from an unwilling sovereign by concerted action of the various orders of society (action such as in France and other continental countries never, in mediæval times, became possible), but principally from the remarkable summary which it embodies of the fundamental principles of English government in so far as those principles had ripened by the thirteenth century. The Charter contained little or nothing that was new. Its authors, the barons, sought merely to gather up within a reasonably brief document those principles and customs which the better kings of England had been wont to observe, but which in the evil days of Richard and John had been persistently evaded. There was no thought of a new form of government, or of a new code of laws, but rather of the redress of present and practical grievances. Not a new constitution, but good government in conformity with the old one, was the essential object. Naturally enough, therefore, the instrument was based, in most of its important provisions, upon the charter granted by Henry I. in 1100, even as that instrument was based, in the main, upon the righteous laws of Edward the Confessor. After like manner, the Charter of 1215 became, in its turn, the foundation to which reassertions of constitutional liberty in subsequent times were apt to return; and, under greater or lesser pressure, the Charter itself was "confirmed" by numerous sovereigns who proved themselves none too much disposed to observe its principles. In effect the Charter was a treaty between the king and his dissatisfied subjects. It was essentially a feudal document, and the majority of its provisions relate primarily to the privileges and rights of the barons. None the less, it contains clauses that affected all classes of society, and it is especially noteworthy that the barons and clergy pledged themselves in it to extend to their dependents the same customs and liberties which they were themselves demanding of the crown. Taking the Charter as a whole, it guaranteed the freedom of the Church, defined afresh and in precise terms surviving feudal (p. 010) incidents and customs, placed safeguards about the liberties of the boroughs, pledged security of property and of trade, and stipulated important regulations respecting government and law, notably that whenever the king should propose the assessment of scutages or of unusual aids he should take the advice of the General Council, composed of the tenants-in-chief summoned individually in the case of the greater ones and through the sheriffs in the case of those of lesser importance. Certain general clauses, e.g., that pledging that justice should neither be bought nor sold, and that prescribing that a freeman might not be imprisoned, outlawed, or dispossessed of his property save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land, meant in effect considerably less than they sometimes have been interpreted to mean.[11] Yet even they served to emphasize the fundamental principle upon which the political and legal structure was intended to be grounded, that, namely, of impartial and unvarying justice.[12] [Footnote 11: The term "peers," as here employed, means only equals in rank. The clause cited does not imply trial by jury. It comprises a guarantee simply that the barons should not be judged by persons whose feudal rank was inferior to their own. Jury trial was increasingly common in the thirteenth century, but it was not guaranteed in the Great Charter.] [Footnote 12: Good accounts of the institutional aspects of the Norman-Angevin period are Stubbs, Constitutional History, I., 315-682, II., 1-164; Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, I., Bk. 2, Chaps. 2-3; Adams, The Origin of the English Constitution, Chaps. 1-4; and White, Making of the English Constitution, 73-119. Two excellent little books are Stubbs, Early Plantagenets (London, 1876) and Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry II. (London, 1892). General accounts will be found in T. F. Tout, History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III., 1216-1377 (London, 1905), and H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and the Angevins (London, 1904). A monumental treatise, though one which requires a considerable amount of correction, is E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1867-69), and a useful sketch is Freeman, Short History of the Norman Conquest (3d ed., Oxford, 1901). Among extended and more technical works may be mentioned: F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law, 2 vols. (2d ed., Cambridge, 1898), which, as a study of legal history and doctrines, supersedes all earlier works; F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897); J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895); K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, 2 vols. (London, 1887); ibid., John Lackland (London, 1902), and J. H. Ramsay, The Angevin Empire (London, 1903). The text of the Great Charter is printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 296-306. English versions may be found in G. B. Adams and H. M. Stephens, Select Documents of English Constitutional History (New York, 1906), 42-52; S. Amos, Primer of the English Constitution and Government (London, 1895), 189-201; and University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints (translation by E. P. Cheyney), I., No. 6. The principal special work on the subject is W. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta; a Commentary on the Great Charter of King John (Glasgow, 1905). An illuminating commentary is contained in Adams, Origin of the English Constitution, 207-313.] IV. THE RISE OF PARLIAMENT (p. 011) *11. Beginnings of the Representative Principle.*--The thirteenth century was clearly one of the most important periods in the growth of the English constitution. It was marked not merely by the contest which culminated in the grant of the Great Charter but also by the beginnings, in its essentials, of Parliament. The formative epoch in the history of Parliament may be said to have been, more precisely, the second half of the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272), together with the reign of the legislator-king Edward I. (1272-1307). The creation of Parliament as we know it came about through the signal enlargement of the Norman-Plantagenet Great Council by the introduction of representative elements, followed by the splitting of the heterogeneous mass of members definitely into two co-ordinate chambers. The representative principle was in England no new thing in the thirteenth century. As has appeared, there were important manifestations of it in the local governmental system of Anglo-Saxon times. As brought to bear in the development of Parliament, however, the principle is generally understood to have sprung from the twelfth-century practice of electing assessors to fix the value of real and personal property for purposes of taxation, and of jurors to present criminal matters before the king's justices. Thus, Henry II.'s Saladin Tithe of 1188--the first national imposition upon incomes and movable property--was assessed, at least in part, by juries of neighbors elected by, and in a sense representative of, the taxpayers of the various parishes. By the opening of the thirteenth century the idea was fast taking hold upon the minds of Englishmen, not only that the taxpayer ought to have a voice in the levying of taxes, but that between representation and taxation there was a certain natural and inevitable connection. In the Great Charter, as has been stated, it was stipulated that in the assessment of scutages and of all save the three commonly recognized feudal aids the king should seek the advice of the General Council. The General Council of the earlier thirteenth century was not regularly a representative body, but it was not beyond the range of possibility to impart to it a representative character, and in point of fact that is precisely what was done. To facilitate the process of taxation it was found expedient by the central authorities to carry over into the domain of national affairs that principle of popular representation which already was doing approved service within the sphere of local justice and finance, and from this adaptation arose, step by step, the conversion of the old gathering of feudal magnates into a national parliamentary assembly. *12. Early Parliaments.*--The means by which the transformation (p. 012) was accomplished consisted in the first instance, as has been said, in the introduction into the Council of new and representative elements. The earliest step in this direction was taken in 1213, when King John, harassed by fiscal and political difficulties, addressed to the sheriffs a series of writs commanding that four discreet knights from every county be sent to participate in a deliberative council to be held at Oxford. The practice took root slowly. In 1254 Henry III., in sore need of money for the prosecution of his wars in Gascony, required of the sheriffs that two knights be sent from each county to confer with the barons and clergy relative to the subsidies which should be accorded the crown. The desired vote of supplies was refused and the long-brewing contest between the king and the barons broke in civil war. But during the struggle that ensued the foundations of Parliament were still more securely laid. Following the king's defeat at Lewes, in 1264, Simon de Montfort, leader of the barons, convened a parliament composed of not only barons and clergy but also four knights from each shire, and at London during the following year, he caused again to be assembled, in addition to five earls, eighteen barons, and a large body of clergy, two knights from each of the several shires and two burgesses from each of twenty-one towns known to be friendly to the barons' cause. These proceedings were essentially revolutionary and unauthorized. Even the gathering of 1265, as Stubbs remarks, presented the appearance largely of a party convention, and there is no evidence that its author intended such a body to be regularly or frequently summoned, or even summoned a second time at all. None the less, now for the first time representatives of the towns were brought into political co-operation with the barons, clergy, and knights; and the circumstance was filled with promise. During the ensuing thirty years there were several "parliaments," although the extent to which knights and burgesses participated in them is uncertain. The period was one of experimentation. In 1273 four knights from each shire and four citizens from each town joined the magnates in taking the oath of fealty to the new and absent sovereign, Edward I. The First Statute of Westminster, in 1275, declares itself to have been adopted with the assent of the "commonalty of the realm." In 1283 a parliament was held which almost precisely duplicated that of 1265. In 1290, and again in 1294, there was one, in which, however, representation of the towns was omitted. The gathering which served to fix the type for all time to come was Edward I.'s so-called Model Parliament of 1295. To this parliament the king summoned severally the two archbishops, all of the bishops, the greater abbots, and the more important earls and barons; while (p. 013) every sheriff was enjoined to see that two knights were chosen from each shire, two citizens from each city, and two burgesses from each borough. Each bishop was authorized, furthermore, to bring with him his prior or the dean of the cathedral chapter, the archdeacons of his diocese, one proctor or agent for his cathedral chapter, and two of his diocesan clergy. In the parliament as actually convened there were 2 archbishops, 18 bishops with their lesser clergy, 66 abbots, 3 heads of religious orders, 9 earls, 41 barons, 63 knights of the shire, and 172 representatives of the cities and boroughs--an aggregate of approximately 400 persons. There were thus present in the assemblage, in person or by deputy, all of the constituent orders of English society, and the irregular device of Simon de Montfort was vested at last with the character of legality. After Edward I. Parliament may be said to have been an established institution of the realm. Its meetings long continued intermittent and infrequent, and its powers from time to time varied enormously, but the place which it filled in the economy of the nation grew ever more important. *13. Establishment of the Bicameral System.*--Like its counterpart in France, the Estates-General, the English Parliament comprised the three great estates or orders--nobility, clergy, and commons--of which, aside from the peasantry, mediæval society in all western European countries was composed. In the working out of its internal structure, however, two chambers resulted, rather than, as in France, three. Originally the three estates sat separately. Their primary business was the voting of supplies and, the principle being that a tax ought to be conceded by those who would be called upon to pay it, the natural course was for the lords to grant their scutages and aids, the commoners their tenths and fifteenths, and the clergy their subsidies, apart. Indeed there is reason to believe that at times even the knights and the burgesses deliberated separately. Gradually, however, there appeared certain affiliations of interest which operated to modify the original practice. In the first place, the lesser clergy, inconvenienced by attendance and preferring to vote their contributions in the special ecclesiastical assemblages known as the convocations of Canterbury and York, contrived to throw off entirely their obligation of membership. The greater clergy and the greater barons, in the next place, developed sufficiently large interests in common to be amalgamated with ease in one body. Similarly, the lesser barons found their interests essentially identical with those of the country freeholders, represented by the knights of the shire, and with those of the burgesses. The upshot was a gradual alignment of the aggregate membership in two great groups, (p. 014) the one of which became historically the House of Lords, the other the House of Commons. At the beginning of the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377) the three estates still sat separately, but before the close of this period the bicameral arrangement seems definitely to have been established. There is no evidence that at any stage of their history the three groups ever sat as a single body. It need hardly be emphasized that the entire course of English history since the fourteenth century has been affected profoundly by the fact that the national assembly took the form of two houses rather than of one, as did the Scotch, of three as did the French, or of four as did the Swedish. But for the withdrawal of the lesser clergy, the number might very possibly have been three. *14. Powers of Finance and Legislation.*--Structurally, the English Parliament is a creation of the Middle Ages; politically, it is a product of modern times, and, in no small measure, of the past hundred years. Before the close of the Middle Ages, however, it had acquired a sum total of authority which at least gave promise of its development into a great co-ordinate, if not a preponderating, power in the state. In the first place, it had forced the establishment of the twin principles of public finance (1) that the right to levy taxes of every sort lay within its hands and (2) that the crown might impose no direct tax without its assent, nor any indirect tax save such as might be justified under the customs recognized in Magna Carta. When Edward I. confirmed the Charter, in 1297, he agreed that no tallages or aids should thereafter be taken without the assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the land. A statute of 1340 reiterated the principle still more specifically. In 1395 appeared the formula employed to this day in the making of parliamentary grants, "by the Commons with the advice and assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal." And in 1407 Henry IV. extended the royal approval to the principle that money grants should be initiated in the Commons, assented to by the Lords, and only thereafter reported to the king. For the ancient theory of taxation by estates was substituted, slowly but inevitably, the modern doctrine of the fiscal pre-eminence of the Commons. The second point at which Parliament made decisive advance before the close of the mediæval period was in respect to powers of ordinary legislation. Originally, Parliament was not conceived of as, in the strict sense, a law-making body at all. The magnates who composed the General Council had exercised the right to advise the crown in legislative matters, and their successors in Parliament continued to do the same, but the commoners who in the thirteenth century were (p. 015) brought in were present, in theory, for fiscal rather than legislative purposes. The distinction, however, was difficult to maintain, and with the continued growth of the parliamentary body the legislative character was recognized eventually to be inherent in the whole of it. At the opening of the fourteenth century laws were made, technically, _by_ the king with the _assent_ of the magnates at the _request_ of the commoners. The knights and burgesses were recognized as petitioners for laws, rather than as legislators. They could ask for the enactment of a statute, or for a clearer definition of law, but it was for the king and his councillors to determine finally whether legislation was required and what form it should assume. Even when a law which was requested was promised it not infrequently happened that the intent of the Commons was thwarted, for the text of the measure was not drawn up, normally, until after the parliament was dissolved, both form and content were determined arbitrarily by the crown and council, and between petition and statute there might be, and often was, gross discrepancy. *15. Development of the Legislative Process.*--By a memorable statute of 1322, in the reign of Edward II., it was stipulated that "the matters which are to be established for the estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, accorded, and established in parliaments, by our lord the king, and by the assent of the prelates, earls, and barons, and the commonalty of the realm; according as it hath been before accustomed."[13] This declaration is understood to have established, not only the essentially legislative character of Parliament, but the legislative parity of the commoners with the magnates. It remained, however, to substitute for the right of petition the right of legislating by bill. Throughout the fourteenth century Parliament, and especially the Commons, pressed for an explicit recognition of the principle that the statute in its final form should be identical with the petition upon which it was based. In 1414 Henry V. granted that "from henceforth nothing be enacted to the petitions of his commons that be contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their assent."[14] The promise tended in practice to be evaded, and late in the reign of Henry VI. there was brought about an alteration of procedure in accordance with which measures were henceforth to be introduced in either house, in the form of drafted bills. The legislative process was now essentially reversed. The right of initiative was secured to the Commons, concurrently with the Lords; the crown was restricted to a right of veto or assent. The change in procedure was reflected (p. 016) in a change of formula. Statutes began to be made "by the King's most excellent majesty by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same." And these words comprise the formula with which every act of Parliament to-day begins. Technically, the laws were, and are still, made by the crown; practically Parliament, once merely a petitioning and advising body, had become a full-fledged legislative assemblage. [Footnote 13: Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 97.] [Footnote 14: Ibid., 182.] Throughout the later fourteenth and earlier fifteenth centuries the growth of Parliament in self-assertiveness was remarkable. Twice during the fourteenth century, in 1327 and in 1399, it exercised the fundamental prerogative of deposing the sovereign and of bestowing the crown upon a successor.[15] And before the close of the Lancastrian era it had assumed advanced ground in demanding the right of appropriating (as well as of voting) subsidies, the accounting by the public authorities for moneys expended, the removal of objectionable ministers, and the annual assembling of the two houses. During the civil wars of the second half of the fifteenth century parliamentary aggressiveness and influence materially declined, and at the opening of the Tudor period, in 1485, the body was in by no means the favorable position it had occupied fifty years earlier. As will appear, its eclipse continued largely through the epoch of the Tudors. Yet its broader aspects had been permanently fixed and its perpetuation in the constitutional system positively assured.[16] [Footnote 15: Strictly, upon the first of these occasions the sovereign, Edward II., was driven by threat of deposition to abdicate.] [Footnote 16: On the rise of Parliament see Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, II., Chaps. 15, 17; Taylor, Origins and Growth of the English Constitution, I., 428-616; G. B. Smith, History of the English Parliament, 2 vols. (London, 1892), I., Bks. 2-4; White, Making of the English Constitution, 298-401; D. J. Medley, Students' Manual of English Constitutional History (2d ed., Oxford, 1898), 127-150; Tout, History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III., Chaps. 5, 6, 10. Valuable biographical treatises are G. W. Prothero, Life of Simon de Montfort (London, 1877); E. Jenks, Edward Plantagenet [Edward I.] the English Justinian (New York, 1902); and T. F. Tout, Edward the First (London, 1906).] V. ADMINISTRATIVE AND JUDICIAL DEVELOPMENT *16. The Permanent Council.*--One line, thus, along which were laid the foundations of the English governmental system of to-day comprised the transformation of the Norman Great Council into the semi-aristocratic, semi-democratic assemblage known as Parliament. A parallel line (p. 017) was the development from the Great Council of a body designated after the thirteenth century as the Permanent, after the fifteenth as the Privy, Council, and likewise of the four principal courts of law. By a very gradual process those members of the original Council who were attached in some immediate manner to the court or to the administrative system acquired a status which was different from that of their colleagues. The Great Council met irregularly and infrequently. So likewise did Parliament. But the services of the court and the business of government must go on continuously, and for the care of these things there grew up a body which at first comprised essentially a standing commission, an inner circle, of the Council, but which in time acquired a virtually independent position and was designated, for purposes of distinction, as the Permanent Council. The composition of this body varied from time to time. Certain functionaries were included regularly, while the remaining members owed their places to special summons of the crown. Its powers were enormous, being at the same time administrative, judicial, and financial, and the mass of business to which it was required to give attention was increasingly great. *17. The Courts of Law.*--Three things resulted. In the first place, the Permanent Council acquired, in practice, complete detachment from the older and larger body. In the second place, to facilitate the accomplishment of its work there were introduced into it trained lawyers, expert financiers, and men of other sorts of special aptitudes--men, often, who in rank were but commoners. Finally, there split off from the body a succession of committees, to each of which was assigned a particular branch of administrative or judicial business. In this manner arose the four great courts of law: (1) the Court of Exchequer, to which was consigned jurisdiction over all fiscal causes in which the crown was directly concerned; (2) the Court of Common Pleas, with jurisdiction over civil cases between subject and subject; (3) the Court of King's Bench, presided over nominally by the king himself and taking cognizance of a variety of cases for which other provision was not made; and (4) the Court of Chancery, which, under the presidency of the Chancellor, heard and decided cases involving the principles of equity. The differentiation of these tribunals, beginning in the early twelfth century, was completed by the middle of the fourteenth. Technically, all were co-ordinate courts, from which appeal lay to the King in Council; and of the judicial prerogative which the Council as a whole thus retained there are still, as will be pointed out, certain survivals. By the time of Henry VI. (1422-1461) the enlargement of membership and the specialization of functions of the Permanent Council had (p. 018) progressed so far that the Council had ceased entirely to be a working unit. In the end what happened was that, precisely as the Permanent Council had been derived by selection from the original Great Council, so from the overgrown Permanent Council was constituted, in the fifteenth century, a smaller and more compact administrative body to which was assigned the designation of "Privy Council."[17] [Footnote 17: Stubbs, Constitutional History, II., Chap. 13; White, Making of the English Constitution, 123-251; Adams, Origin of the English Constitution, 136-143; W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, 3 vols. (London, 1903-1909), I., 1-169.] VI. THE TUDOR MONARCHY *18. Popular Absolutism.*--The salient fact of the Tudor period of English history (1485-1603) is the vigor and dominance of the monarchy. From the Wars of the Roses the nation emerged in need, above all other things, of discipline and repose. It was the part of the Tudors to enforce relentlessly the one and to foster systematically the other. The period was one in which aristocratic turbulence was repressed, extraordinary tribunals were erected to bring to justice powerful offenders, vagrancy was punished, labor was found for the unemployed, trade was stimulated, the navy was organized on a permanent basis, the diffusion of wealth and of education was encouraged, the growth of a strong middle class was promoted--in short, one in which out of chaos was brought order and out of weakness strength. These things were the work of a government which was strongly paternal, even sheerly despotic, and, for a time at least, the evolution of parliamentary machinery was utterly arrested. But it should be observed that the question in sixteenth-century England was not between strong monarchy on the one hand and parliamentary government on the other. The alternatives were, rather, strong monarchy and baronial anarchy. This the nation clearly perceived, and, of the two, it much preferred the former. "The Tudor monarchy," says an English scholar, "unlike most other despotisms, did not depend on gold or force, on the possession of vast estates, unlimited taxation, or a standing army. It rested on the willing support of the nation at large, a support due to the deeply-rooted conviction that a strong executive was necessary to the national unity, and that, in the face of the dangers which threatened the country both at home and abroad, the sovereign must be allowed a free hand. It was this conviction, instinctively felt rather than definitely realized, which enabled Henry VIII. not only to crush open rebellion but to punish the slightest signs of opposition to his (p. 019) will, to regulate the consciences of his subjects, and to extend the legal conception of treason to limits hitherto unknown. It was this which rendered it possible for the ministers of Edward VI. to impose a Protestant régime upon a Romanist majority, and allowed Mary to enter upon a hateful marriage and to drag the country into a disastrous war. It was this, finally, which enabled Elizabeth to choose her own line in domestic and foreign policy, to defer for thirty years the war with Spain, and to resist, almost single-handed, the pressure for further ecclesiastical change. The Tudor monarchy was essentially a national monarchy. It was popular with the multitude, and it was actively supported by the influential classes, the nobility, the gentry, the lawyers, the merchants, who sat as members of Parliament at Westminster, mustered the forces of the shire as Lords-Lieutenant, or bore the burden of local government as borough magistrates and justices of the peace."[18] [Footnote 18: G. W. Prothero, Select Statutes and other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, (Oxford, 1898), xvii--xviii.] *19. The Privy Council.*--The times of the Tudors and of the early Stuarts have been designated with aptness the period of "government by council." Parliament continued to exercise a certain control over legislation and taxation, but it was in and through the Privy Council, together with certain subordinate councils, that the absolute monarchy, in the main, performed its work. The Privy Council--or simply "the Council"--comprised ordinarily about seventeen or eighteen persons, although under Henry VIII. its membership at one time approached forty. The councillors were almost invariably members of one or the other of the two houses of Parliament, an arrangement by which was facilitated the control of the proceedings of that body by the Government, but which did not yet involve any recognized responsibility of the executive to the legislative branch. After Queen Mary the councillors were, with few exceptions, laymen. Technically, the function of the Council was only advisory, but in practice even those sovereigns, as Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, who were most vigilant and industrious, were obliged to allow to the councillors large discretion in the conduct of public business, and under the early Stuarts the Council very nearly ruled the realm. Representing at all times the sovereign, who was supposed invariably to be present at its deliberations, the Council supervised the work of administration, regulated trade, granted licenses, controlled the press, kept an eye on the law courts, ferreted out plots, took measures to suppress rebellion, controlled the movements of the fleet, assisted in the management of ecclesiastical affairs, and, in short, considered (p. 020) and took action upon substantially all concerns of state. By virtue of its right to issue orders or ordinances it possessed a power that was semi-legislative; through its regulation of trade, its management of loans and benevolences, and its determination of military obligations, it participated actively in the control of taxation; and, under the presidency of the crown, it possessed the functions of a supreme tribunal, whose jurisdiction, in part original and in part appellate, was widespread and peculiarly despotic.[19] [Footnote 19: Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, cii. See A. V. Dicey, The Privy Council (London, 1887); E. Percy, The Privy Council under the Tudors (Oxford, 1907).] *20. Other Councils: The Star Chamber.*--In 1487 there was created a special tribunal, consisting at the outset of seven great officials and members of the Council, including two judges, to take special cognizance of cases involving breaches of the law by offenders who were too powerful to be reached under the operation of the ordinary courts. This was the tribunal subsequently known, from its meeting-place, as the Court of Star Chamber. In effect it was from the beginning a committee of the Privy Council, empowered to exercise a jurisdiction which in truth had long been exercised extra-legally by the Council as a whole. The relation of the two institutions inclined in practice to become ever closer, and by the middle of the sixteenth century the Star Chamber had been enlarged to include all of the members of the Council, together with the two chief justices; and since the Star Chamber possessed a statutory sanction which the Council lacked, the judicial business of the older body was despatched regularly by its members sitting under the guise of the newer one. The tendency of the Tudor régime toward the conciliar type of government is manifested further by the creation of numerous subsidiary councils and courts whose history cannot be recounted here. Most of these were brought into existence during the reign of Henry VIII. Those of principal importance were (1) the Council of the North, set up in 1539; (2) the Council of Wales, confirmed by statute of 1542; (3) the Court of Castle Chamber, reproducing in Ireland the principal features of the English Star Chamber; (4) the Courts of Augmentation, First Fruits and Annates, and Wards; and (5) the Elizabethan Court of High Commission.[20] [Footnote 20: A. T. Carter, Outlines of English Legal History (London, 1899), Chap. 12; A. Todd, Parliamentary Government in England, ed. by S. Walpole, 2 vols. (London, 1892), I., Chap. 2; Dicey, The Privy Council, 94-115.] VII. PARLIAMENT UNDER THE TUDORS (p. 021) *21. Control by the Crown.*--By the Tudors generally, and especially Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, Parliament was regarded as a tool to be used by the crown, rather than as in any sense an independent, co-ordinate power in the state. When innovations were to be introduced, such as those carried through by Henry VIII., it was Tudor policy to clothe them with the vestments of parliamentarism, to the end that they might be given the appearance and the sanction of popular measures; and when subsidies were to be obtained, it was recognized to be expedient to impart to them, in similar manner, the semblance of voluntary gifts on the part of the nation. It was no part of Tudor intent, however, that Parliament should be permitted to initiate measures, or even to exercise any actual discretion in the adoption, amendment, or rejection of proposals submitted by the Government. There were several means by which the crown contrived to impede the rise of Parliament above the subordinate position which that body occupied at the accession of Henry VII. One was the practice of convening Parliament irregularly and infrequently and of bringing its sessions to an early close. Another, employed especially during Thomas Cromwell's ministry under Henry VIII. and during the reign of Elizabeth, was that of tampering with the freedom of borough and county elections. A third was the habit, also notorious under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, of dictating and directing in all that was essential in the proceedings of the chambers. Henry VIII. bullied his parliaments systematically; Elizabeth, by cajolery, flattery, deceit, and other arts of which she was mistress, attained through less boisterous methods the same general end. Measures were thrust upon the chambers accompanied by peremptory demand for their enactment; objectionable projects originated by private members were stifled; and the fundamental parliamentary privileges of free speech, freedom from arrest, and access to the sovereign were arbitrarily suspended or otherwise flagrantly violated. *22. The Independence of the Crown.*--Finally must be mentioned certain devices by which the crown was enabled to evade limitations theoretically imposed by Parliament's recognized authority. One of these was the issuing of proclamations. In the sixteenth century it was generally maintained that the sovereign, acting alone or with the advice of the Council, could issue proclamations controlling the liberty of the subject, so long as such edicts did not violate statute or common law. As a corollary, it was maintained also that the crown could dispense with the action of law in individual cases and at (p. 022) times of crisis. The range covered by these prerogatives was broad and undefined, and in the hands of an aggressive monarch they constituted a serious invasion of the powers of legislation nominally vested in Parliament. It is true that the act of 1539 imparting to royal proclamations the force of law was repealed in 1547; but proclamations continued, especially under Elizabeth and James I., not only to be numerous, but to be enforced relentlessly by penalties inflicted through the Star Chamber. The most important power of Parliament in the sixteenth century was still that of voting supplies. But in respect to finance, as in respect to legislation, the crown possessed effective means of evading parliamentary control. In the first place, the sovereign possessed large revenues, arising from crown lands, feudal rights, profits of jurisdiction, and ecclesiastical payments, with which Parliament had nothing whatever to do. In the second place, the great indirect taxes--customs duties and tonnage and poundage--were, in the sixteenth century, voted at the accession of a sovereign for the whole of the reign. It was only in respect to extraordinary taxes--"subsidies" and "tenths and fifteenths"--that Parliament was in a position effectually to make or mar the fiscal fortunes of the Government; except that, of course, it was always open to Parliament to criticise the financial expedients of the crown, such as the sale of monopolies, the levy of "impositions," and the collection of benevolences, and to influence, if it could, the policy pursued in relation to these matters. *23. The House of Lords in 1485.*--Despite the numerous strictures that have been mentioned, Parliament in the Tudor period by no means stood still. The enormous power and independence exhibited by the chambers, especially the Commons, in the seventeenth century was the product of substantial, if more or less hidden, growth during the previous one hundred and fifty years. The composition of the two houses at the accession of Henry VII. was not clearly defined. The House of Lords was but a small body. It comprised simply those lords, temporal and spiritual, who were entitled to receive from the king, when a parliament was to be held, a special writ, i.e., an individual summons. The number of these was indeterminate. The right of the archbishops, the bishops, and the abbots to be summoned was immemorial and indisputable, although the abbots in practice evaded their obligation of attendance, save in cases in which it could be shown that as military tenants of the crown they were obligated to perform parliamentary duty. Among the lay nobility the selection of individuals for summons seems originally to have been dependent upon the royal pleasure. Eventually, however, the principle became (p. 023) fixed that a man once summoned must be summoned whenever occasion should arise, and that, furthermore, his eldest son after him must be summoned in similar manner. What was at the outset an obligation became in time a privilege and a distinction, and by the day when it did so the rule had become legally established that the king could not withhold a writ of summons from the heir of a person who had been once summoned and had obeyed the summons by taking his seat. During the fourteenth century the aggregate membership of the chamber fluctuated in the neighborhood of 150. By reason of the withdrawal of some of the abbots and the decline of the baronage, in the fifteenth century the body was yet smaller. The number of temporal lords summoned to the first parliament of Henry VII. was but 29. *24. The House of Commons in 1485.*--The House of Commons at the beginning of the Tudor period was a body of some 300 members. It contained 74 knights of the shire, representing all but three of the forty English counties, together with a fluctuating number of representatives of cities and boroughs. In the Model Parliament of 1295 the number of urban districts represented was 166, but as time went on the number declined, in part because of the discrimination exercised from time to time in the selection of boroughs to be represented, and in part by reason of the fact that in times when representation did not appear to yield tangible results the borough taxpayers begrudged the two shillings per day paid their representatives, in some instances sufficiently to be induced to abandon altogether the sending of members. By the time of Edward IV. (1399-1413) the number of represented towns had fallen to 111. At the beginning of the fifteenth century county members were elected by the body of freeholders present at the county court, but by statute of 1429 the electoral privilege was restricted to freeholders resident in the county and holding land of the yearly rental value of forty shillings, equivalent, perhaps, to some £30 to £40 in present values. This rule, adopted originally with the express purpose of disfranchising "the very great and outrageous number of people either of small substance or of no value" who had been claiming an electoral equality with the "worthy knights and squires," continued in operation without amendment until 1832. The electoral systems prevailing in the boroughs exhibited at all times the widest variation, and never prior to 1832 was there serious attempt to establish uniformity of practice. In some places (the so-called "scot and lot" boroughs) the suffrage was exercised by all rate-payers; in others, by the holders of particular tenements ("burgage" franchise); in others (the "potwalloper" (p. 024) boroughs) by all citizens who had hearths of their own; in many, by the municipal corporation, or by the members of a guild, or even by neighboring landholders. Borough electoral arrangements ran the full gamut from thoroughgoing democracy to the narrowest kind of oligarchy. *25. Development under the Tudors: Composition.*--During the Tudor period the composition of the two chambers underwent important change. In the Lords the principal modification was the substitution of temporal for spiritual preponderance. This was brought about in two ways. The first was the increase numerically of the hereditary peers from thirty-six at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. to about eighty at the accession of James I. The second was the dropping out of twenty-eight abbots, incident to the closing of the monasteries by Henry VIII. and only partially compensated by the creation at the time of six new bishoprics. In 1509 the number of lords spiritual was forty-eight; in 1603, it was but twenty-six. The House of Commons under the Tudors was virtually doubled in size. The final incorporation of Wales in 1535 meant the adding of twenty-five members. In 1536 and 1543 the counties of Monmouth and Chester were admitted to representation. There followed the enfranchisement of a number of boroughs, and by the end of the reign of Henry VIII. the representation of counties had been increased from 74 to 90, and that of the boroughs had been brought up to 252, giving the House an aggregate membership of 342. During the reign of Edward VI. twenty new constituencies were created, and during that of Mary twenty-one. But the most notable increase was that which took place in the reign of Elizabeth, the net result of which was the bringing in of 62 new borough representatives, in some cases from boroughs which now acquired for the first time the right of representation, in others from boroughs which once had possessed the right but through disuse had been construed to have forfeited it. The total increase of the Commons in numerical strength during the Tudor period was 166. There can be little question that in a few instances parliamentary representation was extended with the specific purpose of influencing the political complexion of the popular chamber. But, on the whole, the reason for the notable increase, especially of borough members, is to be found in the growing prosperity of the country and in the reliance which the Tudors were accustomed to place upon the commercial and industrial classes of the population. *26. Other Developments.*--A second point at which Parliament in the Tudor era underwent modification was in respect to permanence and sittings. Prior to Henry VIII. the life of a parliament was confined, as a rule, to a single session, and sessions were brief. But (p. 025) parliaments now ceased to be meetings to be broken up as soon as some specific piece of business should have been completed, and many were brought together in several succeeding sessions. Henry VIII.'s Reformation Parliament lasted seven years. During the forty-five years of Elizabeth there were ten parliaments and thirteen sessions. One of these parliaments lasted eleven years, although it met but three times. It is true that the parliaments of Elizabeth were in session, in the aggregate, somewhat less than three years, an average for the reign of but little more than three weeks a year. But the point is that, slowly but effectually, Parliament as an institution was acquiring a recognized position in the political system of the nation. In 1589 Thomas Smith, a court secretary, published a book entitled "The Commonwealth of England and the Manner of Government Thereof," in which was laid down the fundamental proposition that "the most high and absolute power of the realm of England consisteth in the parliament"; and there is no record that the proclamation of this doctrine, even by a court official, elicited serious protest or difference of opinion. It was in the Tudor period, further, that both houses instituted the keeping of journals and that the appointment of committees and numerous other aspects of modern parliamentary procedure had their beginnings. Finally, the Elizabethan portion of the period was an epoch during which there took place a very real growth in independence of sentiment and an equally notable advance in consciousness of power on the part of the popular chamber. Even before the death of Elizabeth there were ill-repressed manifestations of the feeling that the Tudor monarchy had done its work and that the time for a larger amount of parliamentary control had arrived. Nothing was clearer in 1603 than the fact that the sovereign who should expect to get on agreeably with his Commons must be both liberal and tactful. That the Stuarts possessed the first of these qualities in only a very limited measure and the second one not at all is a fact upon which turns an entire chapter of English constitutional history.[21] [Footnote 21: Excellent works of a general nature on the Tudor period are H. A. L. Fisher, History of England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of Henry VIII. (London, 1906); A. F. Pollard, History of England from the Accession of Edward VI. to the Death of Elizabeth (London, 1910); and A. D. Innis, England under the Tudors (London, 1905). For institutional history see Taylor, English Constitution, II., Bk. 4. More specialized treatment will be found in Smith, History of the English Parliament, I., Bk. 5; Dicey, The Privy Council, 76-130; and Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, Chaps. 10, 12. An excellent survey of English public law at the death of Henry VII. is contained in F. W. Maitland, Constitutional History of England (Cambridge, 1911), 165-236. Books of large value on the period include W. Busch, England under the Tudors, trans. by A. M. Todd (London, 1895), the only volume of which published covers the reign of Henry VII.; A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII. (London, 1902 and 1905), and England under the Protector Somerset (London, 1900); and M. Creighton, Queen Elizabeth (new ed., London, 1899).] VIII. THE STUARTS: CROWN AND PARLIAMENT (p. 026) *27. Absolutism Becomes Impracticable.*--Throughout the larger portion of the seventeenth century the principal interest in English politics centers in the contest which was waged between the nation represented in Parliament and the sovereigns of the Stuart dynasty. The question, as one writer has put it, was "at first whether government should be by the king or by the king in parliament, afterwards whether the king should govern or whether parliament should govern."[22] The Stuart sovereigns brought with them to the English throne no political principles that were new. When James I., in a speech before Parliament March 21, 1610, declared that monarchy "is the supremest thing upon earth," and that, "as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, ... so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a King may do in the height of his power,"[23] he was but giving expression to a conception of the royal prerogative which had been lodged in the mind of every Tudor, but which no Tudor had been so tactless as publicly to avow. The first two Stuarts confidently expected to maintain the same measure of absolutism which their Tudor predecessors had maintained--nothing more, nothing less. There were, however, several reasons why, for them, this was an impossibility. The first arose from their own temperament. The bluntness, the lack of perception of the public will, and the disposition perpetually to insist upon the minutest definitions of prerogative, which so pre-eminently characterized the members of the Stuart house must have operated to alienate seventeenth-century Englishmen under even the most favorable of circumstances. A second consideration is the fact, of which the nation was fully cognizant, that under the changed conditions that had arisen there was no longer the need of strong monarchy that once there had been. Law and order had long since been secured; all danger of a feudal reaction had been effectually removed; foreign invasion was no more to be feared. Strong monarchy had served an invaluable purpose, but that purpose had been fulfilled. [Footnote 22: C. Ilbert, Parliament, its History, Constitution, and Practice (London and New York, 1911), 28-29.] [Footnote 23: Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 293-294.] *28. The Rights of the Commons Asserted.*--Finally there was the (p. 027) fact of the enormous growth of Parliament as an organ of the public will. The rapidity of that development in the days of Elizabeth is, and was at the time, much obscured by the disposition of the nation to permit the Queen to live out her days without being seriously crossed in her purposes. But the magnitude of it becomes apparent enough after 1603. In a remarkable document known as the Apology of the Commons, under date of June 20, 1604, the popular chamber stated respectfully but frankly to the new sovereign what it considered to be its rights and, through it, the rights of the nation. "What cause we your poor Commons have," runs the address, "to watch over our privileges, is manifest in itself to all men. The prerogatives of princes may easily, and do daily, grow; the privileges of the subject are for the most part at an everlasting stand. They may be by good providence and care preserved, but being once lost are not recovered but with much disquiet. The rights and liberties of the Commons of England consisteth chiefly in these three things: first, that the shires, cities, and boroughs of England, by representation to be present, have free choice of such persons as they shall put in trust to represent them; secondly, that the persons chosen, during the time of the parliament, as also of their access and recess, be free from restraint, arrest, and imprisonment: thirdly, that in parliament they may speak freely their consciences without check and controlment, doing the same with due reverence to the sovereign court of parliament, that is, to your Majesty and both the Houses, who all in this case make but one politic body, whereof your Highness is the head."[24] The shrewdness of the political philosophy with which this passage opens is matched only by the terseness with which the fundamental rights of the Commons as a body are enumerated. To the enumeration should be added, historically, an item contained in a petition of the Commons, May 23, 1610, which reads as follows: "We hold it an ancient, general, and undoubted right of Parliament to debate freely all matters which do properly concern the subject and his right or state; which freedom of debate being once foreclosed, the essence of the liberty of Parliament is withal dissolved."[25] The occasion for this last-mentioned assertion of right arose from the king's habitual assumption that there were various important matters of state, e.g., the laying of impositions and the conduct of foreign relations, which Parliament possessed no right so much as to discuss. [Footnote 24: Petyt, Jus Parliamentarium (London, 1739), 227-243. Portions of this document are printed in Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 286-293.] [Footnote 25: Commons' Journals, I., 431; Prothero, Statutes, 297.] *29. The Parliaments of James I. and Charles I.*--The tyranny of (p. 028) James I. and Charles I. assumed the form, principally, of the issue of proclamations without the warrant of statute and the exaction of taxes without the assent of Parliament. Parliament, during the period 1603-1640, was convened but seldom, and it was repeatedly prorogued or dissolved to terminate its inquiries, thwart its protests, or subvert its projected measures. Under the disadvantage of recurrent interruption the Commons contrived, however, to carry on a contest with the crown which was essentially continuous. During the reign of James I. (1603-1625) there were four parliaments. The first, extending from 1604 to 1611, was called in session six times. It sorely displeased the king by remonstrating against his measures, and especially by the persistency with which it withheld subsidies pending a redress of grievances. The second, summoned in 1614, vainly reiterated the complaints of its predecessor and was dissolved without having enacted a single measure. The third, in 1621, revived the power of impeachment (dormant since the days of Henry VII.), reasserted the right of the chambers to debate foreign relations, and avenged by a fresh protestation of liberties the arrest of one of its members. The fourth, in 1624, abolished monopolies and renewed the attack upon proclamations. The first parliament of Charles I., convoked in 1625, criticised the policy of the new sovereign and was dissolved. The second, in 1626, was dissolved to prevent the impeachment of the king's favorite minister, the Duke of Buckingham. The third, in 1628-1629, drew up the memorable Petition of Right, to which the king gave reluctant assent, and in which arbitrary imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers, the establishment of martial law in time of peace, and the imposition of gifts, loans, benevolences, or taxes without the consent of Parliament were specifically prohibited.[26] The fourth of Charles's parliaments, the so-called Short Parliament of 1640, followed a period of eleven years of personal government and showed no disposition to surrender the rights that had been asserted. The fifth--the Long Parliament, convoked also in 1640--imprisoned and executed the king's principal advisers, abolished the Star Chamber and the several other special courts and councils of Tudor origin, pronounced illegal the levy of ship-money and of tonnage and poundage without parliamentary assent, made provision for the assembling of a parliament within three years of the dissolution of the present one, and forced the king into a position where he was obliged to yield or to resort to war. [Footnote 26: The text of the Petition of Right is printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 515-517; Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 339-342.] *30. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate.*--Between the (p. 029) political theory maintained by the Stuart kings and that maintained by the parliamentary majority it was found impossible to arrive at a compromise. The Civil War was waged, in the last analysis, to determine which of the two theories should prevail. It should be emphasized that the parliamentarians entered upon the contest with no intent to establish a government by Parliament alone, in form or in fact. It is sufficiently clear from the Grand Remonstrance of 1641[27] that what they contemplated was merely the imposing of constitutional restrictions upon the crown, together with the introduction of certain specific changes in the political and ecclesiastical order, e.g., the abolition of episcopacy. The culmination of the struggle, however, in the defeat and execution of the king threw open the doors for every sort of constitutional innovation, and between 1649 and 1660 the nation was called upon to pass through an era of political experimentation happily unparalleled in its history. May 19, 1649, kingship and the House of Lords having been abolished as equally "useless and dangerous,"[28] Parliament, to complete the work of transformation, proclaimed a commonwealth, or republic; and on the great seal was inscribed the legend, "In the first year of freedom by God's blessing restored." During the continuance of the Commonwealth (1649-1654) various plans were brought forward for the creation of a parliament elected by manhood suffrage, but with the essential principle involved neither the Rump nor the people at large possessed substantial sympathy. In 1654 there was put in operation a constitution--the earliest among written constitutions in modern Europe--known as the Instrument of Government.[29] The system therein provided, which was intended to be extended to the three countries of England, Scotland, and Ireland, comprised as the executive power a life Protector, to be assisted by a council of thirteen to twenty-one members, and as the legislative organ a unicameral parliament of 460 members elected triennially by all citizens possessing property to the value of £300.[30] Cromwell accepted the office of Protector, and the ensuing six years comprise the period known commonly as the (p. 030) Protectorate. [Footnote 27: S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1899), 202-232.] [Footnote 28: Gardiner, Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 384-388; Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 397-400.] [Footnote 29: Gardiner, Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 405-417; Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 407-416.] [Footnote 30: On the history of this unicameral parliament see J. A. R. Marriott, Second Chambers, an Inductive Study in Political Science (Oxford, 1910), Chap. 3; A. Esmein, Les constitutions du protectorat de Cromwell, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Sept.-Oct. and Nov.-Dec., 1899.] The government provided for by the Instrument was but indifferently successful. Between Cromwell and his parliaments relations were much of the time notoriously strained, and especially was there controversy as to whether the powers of Parliament should be construed to extend to the revision of the constitution. In 1657 the Protector was asked to assume the title of king. This he refused to do, but he did accept a new constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice, in which a step was taken toward a return to the governmental system swept away in 1649.[31] This step comprised, principally, the re-establishment of a parliament of two chambers--a House of Commons and, for lack of agreement upon a better designation, "the Other House." Republicanism, however, failed to strike root. Shrewder men, including Cromwell, had recognized all the while that the English people were really royalist at heart, and it is not too much to say that from the outset the restoration of monarchy was inevitable. Even before the death of Cromwell, in 1658, the trend was distinctly in that direction, and after the hand of the great Protector had been removed from the helm such a consummation was a question but of time and means. May 25, 1660, Charles II., having engaged to grant a general amnesty and to accept such measures of settlement respecting religion as Parliament should determine upon, landed at Dover and was received with all but universal acclamation.[32] [Footnote 31: Gardiner, Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 447-459.] [Footnote 32: The best of the general treatises covering the period 1603-1660 are F. C. Montague, The History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Restoration (London, 1907), and G. M. Trevelyan, England Under the Stuarts (London, 1904). The monumental works within the field are those of S. R. Gardiner, i.e., History of England, 1603-1642, 10 vols. (new ed., London, 1893-1895); History of the Great Civil War, 4 vols. (London, 1894); and History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 4 vols. (London, 1894-1901). Mr. Gardiner's work is being continued by C. H. Firth, who has published The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656-1658, 2 vols. (London, 1909). The development of institutions is described in Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, Chaps. 13-14; Smith, History of the English Parliament, I., Bks. 6-7; Pike, History of the House of Lords, _passim_; J. N. Figgis, The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge, 1896); and G. P. Gooch, History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1898). An excellent analysis of the system of government which the Stuarts inherited from the Tudors is contained in the introduction of Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents. Of the numerous biographies of Cromwell the best is C. H. Firth, Oliver Cromwell (New York, 1904). A valuable survey of governmental affairs at the death of James I. is Maitland, Constitutional History Of England, 237-280.] IX. THE LATER STUARTS: THE REVOLUTION OF 1688-1689 (p. 031) *31. Charles II. and James II.*--Throughout the period 1660-1689 there was enacted a final grand experiment to determine whether a Stuart could, or would, govern constitutionally. The constitution in accordance with which Charles II. and James II. were expected to govern was that which had been built up during preceding centuries, amended by the important reforms effected by the Long Parliament in 1641. The settlement of 1660 was a restoration no less of Parliament than of the monarchy, in respect both to structure and to functions. The two chambers were re-established upon their earlier foundations, and in them was vested the power to enact all legislation and to sanction all taxation. The spirit, if not the letter, of the agreement in accordance with which the Stuart house was restored forbade the further imposition of taxes by the arbitrary decree of the crown and all exercise of the legislative power by the crown singly, whether positively through proclamation or negatively through dispensation. It required that henceforth the nature and amount of public expenditures should, upon inquiry, be made known to the two houses, and that ministers might regularly be held to account for their acts and those of the sovereign. The easy-going Charles II. (1660-1685) contrived most of the time to keep fairly within the bounds that were prescribed for him. He disliked the religious measures of his first parliament, but he recognized that a fresh election might be expected to result in the choice of a House of Commons still less to his taste, and, accordingly, the Cavalier Parliament was kept in existence throughout the entire period 1661-1679. The parliamentary history of the closing years of the reign centered about the question of the exclusion of the king's Catholic brother, James, from the throne, and was given special interest by the conflict of groups foreshadowing political parties; but Charles maintained unfailingly an attitude which, at the least, did not endanger his own tenure of the throne. James II. (1685-1688) was a man of essentially different temper. He was a Stuart of the Stuarts, irrevocably attached to the doctrine of divine right and sufficiently tactless to take no pains to disguise the fact. He was able, industrious, and honest, but obstinate and intolerant. He began by promising to preserve "the government as by law established." But the ease with which the Monmouth uprising of 1685 was suppressed deluded him into thinking that through the exemption of the Catholics from the operation of existing laws he might in time realize his ambition to re-establish Roman Catholicism in England. He proceeded, therefore, to issue decrees dispensing (p. 032) with statutes which Parliament had enacted, to establish an ecclesiastical commission in violation of parliamentary law of 1641, and, in 1687, to promulgate a declaration of indulgence extending to all Catholics and Non-Conformists a freedom in religious matters which was clearly denied by the laws of the country.[33] By this arbitrary resumption of ancient prerogative the theory underlying the Restoration was subverted utterly. [Footnote 33: Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History, 641-644; Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 451-454.] *32. The Revolution: the Bill of Rights.*--Foreseeing no relief from absolutist practices, and impelled especially by the birth, in 1688, of a male heir to the king, a group of leading men representing the various political groups extended to the stadtholder of Holland, William, Prince of Orange, an invitation to repair to England to uphold and protect the constitutional liberties of the realm. The result was the bloodless revolution of 1688. November 5, William landed at Torquay and advanced toward London. James, finding himself without a party, offered vain concessions and afterwards fled to the court of his ally, Louis XIV. of France. By a provisional body of lords, former commoners, and officials William was requested to act as temporary "governor" until the people should have chosen a national "convention."[34] This convention assembled January 22, 1689, resolved that James, by reason of his flight, should be construed to have abdicated, and established on the throne as joint sovereigns William and Mary, with the understanding that the actual government of the realm should devolve upon the king. [Footnote 34: Not properly a parliament, because not summoned by a king.] The Revolution of 1688-1689 was signalized by the putting into written form of no inconsiderable portion of the English constitution as it then existed. February 19, 1698, the new sovereigns formally accepted a Declaration of Right, drawn up by the convention, and by act of Parliament, December 16 following, this instrument, under the name of the Bill of Rights, was made a part of the law of the land. In it were denied specifically a long list of prerogatives to which the last Stuart had laid claim--those, in particular, of dispensing with the laws, establishing ecclesiastical commissions, levying imposts without parliamentary assent, and maintaining a standing army under the exclusive control of the crown. In it also were guaranteed certain fundamental rights which during the controversies of the seventeenth century had been brought repeatedly in question, including those of petition, freedom of elections, and freedom of speech on the part (p. 033) of members of Parliament.[35] The necessity of frequent meetings of Parliament was affirmed, and a succession clause was inserted by which Roman Catholics and persons who should marry Roman Catholics, were excluded from the throne. In the Bill of Rights were thus summed up the essential results of the Revolution, and, more remotely, of the entire seventeenth-century parliamentary movement. With its enactment the doctrine of divine right disappeared forever from the domain of practical English politics. The entire circumstance of William III.'s accession determined the royal tenure to be, as it thereafter remained, not by inherent or vested right, but conditioned upon the national will.[36] [Footnote 35: In this connection should be recalled the Habeas Corpus Act of May 26, 1679, by whose terms the right of an individual, upon arrest, to have his case investigated without delay was effectually guaranteed. Stubbs, Select Charters, 517-521; Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 440-448.] [Footnote 36: In respect to ecclesiastical affairs the Bill of Rights was supplemented by the Toleration Act of May 24, 1689, in which was provided "some ease to scrupulous consciences in the exercise of religion," i.e., a larger measure of liberty for Protestant non-conformists. The text of the Bill of Rights is in Stubbs, Select Charters, 523-528; Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History, 645-654; and Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 462-469; that of the Toleration Act, in Gee and Hardy, 654-664; and, in abridged form, in Adams and Stephens, 459-462. General accounts of the period 1660-1689 are contained in R. Lodge, History of England from the Restoration to the Death of William III. (London, 1910), Chaps. 1-15, and in Trevelyan, England Under the Stuarts, Chaps. 11-13. O. Airy. Charles II., is an excellent book. The development of Parliament in the period is described in Smith, History of the English Parliament, I., Bk. 8, II., Bk. 9.] CHAPTER II (p. 034) THE CONSTITUTION SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY I. CROWN AND PARLIAMENT AFTER 1789 *33. Elements of Stability and Change.*--Structurally, the English governmental system was by the close of the seventeenth century substantially complete. The limited monarchy, the ministry, the two houses of parliament, the courts of law, and the local administrative agencies were by that time constituted very much as they are to-day. The fundamental principles, furthermore, upon which English government is operated were securely established. Laws could be enacted only by "the king in parliament"; taxes could be levied only in the same manner; the liberty of the individual was safeguarded by a score of specific and oft-renewed guarantees. In point of fact, however, the English constitution of 1689 was very far from being the English constitution of 1912. The overturn by which the last Stuart was driven from the throne not only marked the culmination of the revolution commenced in 1640; it comprised the beginning of a more extended revolution, peaceful but thoroughgoing, by which the governmental system of the realm was amplified, carried in new directions, and successively readapted to fresh and changing conditions. At no time from William III. to George V. was there a deliberate overhauling of the governmental system as a whole. Save in occasional parliamentary enactments and judicial decisions, the constitutional changes which were wrought were rarely given documentary expression. Yet it is hardly too much to say that of the principles and practices which to-day make up the working constitution of the United Kingdom almost all were originated or reshaped during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In describing, in succeeding chapters, the principal aspects of this governmental system it will be necessary frequently to allude to these more recent constitutional developments, and it would but involve repetition to undertake an account of them at this point. An enumeration and a brief characterization of a few of the more important will serve for the moment to impress the importance constitutionally of the period under consideration. *34. The Decreased Authority of the Crown.*--First may be (p. 035) mentioned the gradual eclipse of the crown and the establishment of complete and unquestioned ascendancy on the part of Parliament. In consequence of the Revolution of 1688-1689 the sovereign was shorn definitely of a number of important prerogatives. William III., however, was no figure-head, and the crown was far from having been reduced to impotence. Understanding perfectly the conditions upon which he had been received in England, William none the less did not attempt to conceal his innate love of power. He claimed prerogatives which his Whig supporters were loath to acknowledge and he exercised habitually in person, and with telling effect, the functions of sovereign, premier, foreign minister, and military autocrat.[37] His successor, Anne, though apathetic, was hardly less attached to the interests of strong monarchy. It was only with the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, in 1714, that the bulk of those powers of government which hitherto the crown had retained slipped inevitably into the grasp of the ministers and of Parliament. George I. (1714-1727) and George II. (1727-1760) were not the nonentities they have been painted, but, being alien alike to English speech, customs, and political institutions, they were in a position to defend but indifferently the prerogatives which they had inherited. Under George III. (1760-1820) there was a distinct recrudescence of the monarchical idea. The king, if obstinate and below the average intellectually, was honest, courageous, and ambitious. He gloried in the name of Englishman, and, above all, he was determined to recover for the crown some measure of the prestige and authority which his predecessors had lost. The increasingly oligarchical character of Parliament in the period and the disintegration of the ruling Whig party created a condition not unfavorable for the realization of the royal programme, and through at least a score of years the influence which the sovereign exerted personally upon government and politics exceeded anything that had been known since the days of William III. In 1780 the House of Commons gave expression to its apprehension by adopting a series of resolutions, the first of which asserted unequivocally that "the influence of the crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." [Footnote 37: On the constitution as it was at the death of William III., see Maitland, Constitutional History of England, 281-329.] After the retirement of Lord North, in 1782, however, the influence of the sovereign declined perceptibly, and during the later portion of the reign, clouded by the king's insanity, all that had been gained for royalty was again lost. Under the Regency (1810-1820) and during the reign of the reactionary and scandal-smirched George IV. (p. 036) (1820-1830) the popularity, if not the power, of the crown reached its nadir. In the days of the genial William IV. (1830-1837) popularity was regained, but not power. The long reign of the virtuous Victoria (1837-1901) served completely to rehabilitate the monarchy in the respect and affections of the British people, a consummation whose stability more recent sovereigns have done nothing to impair. As will be pointed out in another place, the influence which the sovereign may wield, and during the past three-quarters of a century has wielded, in the actual conduct of public affairs is far from inconsiderable. But, as will also be emphasized, that influence is but the shadow of the authority which the crown once--even as late as the opening of the eighteenth century--possessed. It is largely personal rather than legal; it is asserted within the domain of foreign relations rather more than within that of domestic affairs; and as against the adverse will of the nation expressed through Parliament it is, in effect, powerless.[38] [Footnote 38: On the monarchical revival under George III., see D. A. Winstanley, Personal and Party Government; a Chapter in the Political History of the Early Years of the Reign of George III., 1760-1766 (Cambridge, 1910). For an excellent appraisal of the status of the crown throughout the period 1760-1860 see T. E. May, The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III., edited and continued by F. Holland, 3 vols. (London, 1912), I., Chaps. 1-2.] *35. Ascendancy of the House of Commons.*--A second transformation wrought in the working constitution since 1689 is the shifting of the center of gravity in Parliament from the House of Lords to the House of Commons, together with a notable democratizing of the representative chamber. In the days of William and Anne the House of Lords was distinctly more dignified and influential than the House of Commons. During the period covered by the ministry of Walpole (1721-1742), however, the Commons rose rapidly to the position of the preponderating legislative branch. One contributing cause was the Septennial Act of 1716, whereby the life of a parliament was extended from three years to seven, thus increasing the continuity and desirability of membership in the Commons. Another was the growing importance of the power of the purse as wielded by the Commons. A third was the fact that Walpole, throughout his prolonged ministry, sat steadily as a member of the lower chamber and made it the scene of his remarkable activities. The establishment of the supremacy of the Commons as then constructed did not, however, mean the triumph of popular government. It was but a step toward that end. The House of Commons in the eighteenth century was composed of members elected (p. 037) in the counties and boroughs upon a severely restricted franchise or appointed outright by closed corporations or by individual magnates, and it remained for Parliament during the nineteenth century, by a series of memorable statutes, to extend the franchise successively to groups of people hitherto politically powerless, to reapportion parliamentary seats so that political influence might be distributed with some fairness among the voters, and to regulate the conditions under which campaigns should be carried on, elections conducted, and other operations of popular government undertaken. Of principal importance among the enactments by which these things were accomplished are the Reform Act of 1832, the Representation of the People Act of 1867, the Ballot Act of 1872, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883, the Representation of the People Act of 1884, and the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885. The nature of these measures will be explained subsequently.[39] [Footnote 39: See pp. 80-86.] II. RISE OF THE CABINET AND OF POLITICAL PARTIES *36. Cabinet Origins.*--In the third place, the period under review is important by reason of the development within it of the most remarkable feature of the English constitutional system to-day, namely, the cabinet. The creation of the cabinet was a gradual process, and both the process and the product are utterly unknown to the letter of English law. It is customary to regard as the immediate antecedent of the cabinet the so-called "cabal" of Charles II., i.e., the irregular group of persons whom that sovereign selected from the Privy Council and took advice from informally in lieu of the Council itself. In point of fact, by reason principally of the growing unwieldiness of the Privy Council, the practice of deferring for advice to a specially constituted committee, or inner circle, of the body far antedated Charles II. By some it has been traced to a period as remote as the reign of Henry III., and it is known that not only the thing itself, but also the name "cabinet council," existed under Charles I. The essential justification of the creation of the cabinet was stated by Charles II. in 1679 in the declaration that "the great number of the Council has made it unfit for the secrecy and despatch that are necessary in many great affairs." The growing authority of the select circle of advisors was the object of repeated attacks, and the name "cabinet" (arising from the king's habit of receiving the members in a small private room, or cabinet, in the royal palace) was applied at first as a term of reproach. The device met, however, a genuine need, and by 1689 its perpetuation was assured. The larger (p. 038) Privy Council was continued in existence, and it exists to-day; but its powers became long ago merely nominal.[40] [Footnote 40: H. W. V. Temperley, The Inner and Outer Cabinet and the Privy Council, 1679-1683, in _English Historical Review_, Oct., 1912.] *37. Principles of Cabinet Government Established.*--Under William III. the cabinet took on rapidly the character which it bears to-day. Failing in the attempt to govern with a cabinet including both Whigs and Tories, William, in 1693-1696, gathered about himself a body of advisers composed exclusively of Whigs, and the principle speedily became established for all time that a cabinet group must be made up of men who in respect to all important matters of state are in substantial agreement. Before the close of the eighteenth century there had been fixed definitely the conception of the cabinet as a body necessarily consisting (a) of members of Parliament (b) of the same political views (c) chosen from the party possessing a majority in the House of Commons (d) prosecuting a concerted policy (e) under a common responsibility to be signified by collective resignation in the event of parliamentary censure, and (f) acknowledging a common subordination to one chief minister.[41] During the eighteenth-century era of royal weakness the cabinet acquired a measure of independence by which it was enabled to become, for all practical purposes, the ruling authority of the realm; and, under the limitation of strict accountability to the House of Commons, it fulfills substantially that function to-day. Its members, as will appear, are at the same time the heads of the principal executive departments, the leaders in the legislative chambers, and the authors of very nearly the whole of governmental policy and conduct.[42] [Footnote 41: H. D. Traill, Central Government (London, 1881), 24-25.] [Footnote 42: On the rise of the cabinet see, in addition to the general histories, M. T. Blauvelt, The Development of Cabinet Government in England (New York, 1902), Chaps. 1-8; E. Jenks, Parliamentary England; the Evolution of the Cabinet System (New York, 1903); and H. B. Learned, Historical Significance of the Term "Cabinet" in England and the United States, in _American Political Science Review_, August, 1909.] *38. Beginnings of Political Parties.*--A fourth phase of governmental development within the period under survey is the rise of political parties and the fixing of the broader aspects of the present party system. In no nation to-day does party play a rôle of larger importance than in Great Britain. Unknown to the written portions of the constitution, and all but unknown to the ordinary law, party management and party operations are, none the less, of constant and fundamental importance in the actual conduct of government. The origins of political parties in England fall clearly within the seventeenth century. It was the judgment of Macaulay that the (p. 039) earliest of groups to which the designation of political parties can be applied were the Cavalier and Roundhead elements as aligned after the adoption of the Grand Remonstrance by the Long Parliament in 1641. The first groups, however, which may be thought of as essentially analogous to the political parties of the present day, possessing continuity, fixity of principles, and some degree of compactness of organization, were the Whigs and Tories of the era of Charles II. Dividing in the first instance upon the issue of the exclusion of James, these two elements, with the passage of time, assumed well-defined and fundamentally irreconcilable positions upon the essential public questions of the day. Broadly, the Whigs stood for toleration in religion and for parliamentary supremacy in government; the Tories for Anglicanism and the prerogative. And long after the Stuart monarchy was a thing of the past these two great parties kept up their struggles upon these and other issues. After an unsuccessful attempt to govern with the co-operation of both parties William III., as has been pointed out, fell back definitely upon the support of the Whigs. At the accession of Queen Anne, in 1702, however, the Whigs were turned out of office and the Tories (who already had had a taste of power in 1698-1701) were put in control. They retained office during the larger portion of Queen Anne's reign, but at the accession of George I. they were compelled to give place to their rivals, and the period 1714-1761 was one of unbroken Whig ascendancy. This was, of course, the period of the development of the cabinet system, and between the rise of that system and the growth of government by party there was an intimate and inevitable connection. By the close of the eighteenth century the rule had become inflexible that the cabinet should be composed of men who were in sympathy with the party at the time dominant in the House of Commons, and that the returning by the nation to the representative chamber of a majority adverse to the ruling ministry should be followed by the retirement of the ministry.[43] [Footnote 43: For references on the history of English political parties see pp. 144, 160, 166.] III. THE SCOTTISH AND IRISH UNIONS *39. The Union with Scotland, 1707.*--Finally may be mentioned the important changes in the governmental structure which arose from the Act of Union with Scotland, in 1707, and the Act of Union with Ireland, in 1801. Except during a brief portion of the period of the Protectorate, the legal relation of England and Wales, on the one side, and the kingdom of Scotland, on the other, was from 1603 to (p. 040) 1707 that simply of a personal union through the crown. Scotland had her own parliament, her own established church, her own laws, her own courts, her own army, and her own system of finance. By the Act of 1707 a union was established of a far more substantial sort. The two countries were erected into a single kingdom, known henceforth as Great Britain. The Scottish parliament was abolished and representation was accorded the Scottish nobility and people in the British parliament at Westminster. The quota of commoners was fixed at forty-five (thirty to be chosen by the counties and fifteen by the boroughs) and that of peers (to be elected by the entire body of Scottish peers at the beginning of each parliament) at sixteen. All laws respecting trade, excises, and customs were required to be uniform throughout the two countries, but the local laws of Scotland upon other subjects were continued in operation, subject to revision by the common parliament. The Scottish judicial system remained unchanged;[44] likewise the status of the established Presbyterian Church.[45] [Footnote 44: Save that appeals might be carried from the Scottish Court of Session to the House of Lords.] [Footnote 45: J. Mackinnon, The Union of England and Scotland (London, 1896). This scholarly volume covers principally the period 1695-1745.] *40. The Union with Ireland, 1801.*--The history of Ireland, in most of its phases, is that of a conquered territory, and until late in the eighteenth century the constitutional status of the country approximated, most of the time, that of a crown colony. During the Middle Ages the Common Law and the institutions of England were introduced in the settled portions of the island (the Pale), and a parliament of the English type began to be developed; but Poynings's Law of 1494, by requiring the assent of the English king and council for the convening of an Irish parliament, by enjoining that all bills considered by the Irish parliament must first have been considered by the English parliament, and by declaring all existing statutes of the English parliament to be binding upon Ireland, effectually stifled, until its repeal in 1782, Irish parliamentary development. From the middle of the seventeenth century Catholics were debarred from membership, and, from the early eighteenth, from voting at parliamentary elections. The repeal of Poynings's Law in 1782 and the removal of the Catholic disqualification ten years later bettered the situation, yet at the close of the eighteenth century Irish governmental arrangements were still very unsatisfactory. Parliament was independent in the making of laws, but not in the control of administration; and it was in no true sense a national and representative body. The policy urged by Pitt, namely, the establishment of a (p. 041) legislative union on the plan of that which already existed between England and Scotland, gradually impressed itself upon the members of Parliament as more feasible than any other. An Act of Union creating the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" was adopted by the Irish parliament in February, 1800, and by the British parliament five months later, and, January 1, 1801, it was put in operation. Under the terms of this measure the Irish parliament was abolished, and it was arranged that Ireland should be represented in the common parliament[46] by four spiritual lords and twenty-eight temporal peers, chosen by the Irish peerage for life, and by one hundred members (sixty-four sitting for counties, thirty-five for boroughs, and one for the University of Dublin) of the House of Commons. The Anglican Church of Ireland was amalgamated with the established Church of England, though, subsequently in 1869, it was disestablished and disendowed. The union with Ireland was in the nature of a contract, and while in a number of respects the conditions which were involved in it have been altered within the past hundred years, its fundamentals stand to-day unchanged. It is these fundamentals, especially the assimilation of Ireland with Great Britain for legislative purposes, which are the object of relentless attack on the part of the Home Rule and other nationalistic and reforming elements.[47] [Footnote 46: Styled "the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."] [Footnote 47: An abridgment of the text of the Act of Union with Scotland is printed in Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 479-483; of that of the Act of Union with Ireland, ibid., 497-506. The full text of the former will be found in Robertson, Select Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 92-105; that of the latter, ibid., 157-164. On Ireland before the Union see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, II., Chap. 16.] IV. THE NATURE AND SOURCES OF THE CONSTITUTION *41. The Elusiveness of the Constitution.*--The description of the British governmental system which is hereafter to be undertaken will be clarified by a word of comment at this point upon the character which the English constitution of to-day has assumed, upon the form in which it exists, and upon the sources from which it has been drawn. The term "constitution," as is familiarly understood, may be employed to denote a written instrument of fundamental law which has been framed by a constituent assembly, drafted by an ordinary legislative body, or promulgated upon the sole authority of a dictator or monarch; or, with equal propriety, it may be used to designate a body of (p. 042) customs, laws, and precedents, but partially, or even not at all, committed to writing, in accordance with which the machinery of a given governmental system is operated. The constitution of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is of this second type. The student who desires to bring together the principles and to tabulate the working details of the British constitutional order will find no single document, nor any collection of documents, in which these things are wholly, or even largely, set down. For the accomplishment of such a task it would be necessary to review intensively a thousand years and more of history, to lay hold of a statute here and of a judicial decision there, to take constant cognizance of the rise and crystallization of political usages, and to probe to their inmost recesses the mechanisms of administration, law-making, taxation, elections, and judicial procedure as they have been, and as they are actually operated before the spectator's eyes. Foremost among its compeers in antiquity, in comprehensiveness, and in originality, the British constitution is at once the least tangible and the most widely influential among European bodies of fundamental law. *42. Constituent Elements: the Law.*--The elements of which this constitution is to-day composed have been classified in various ways. For present purposes they may be gathered in five principal categories. In the first place, there are treaties and other international agreements, which in Great Britain as in the United States are invested with the character of supreme law of the land. In the second place, there is a group of solemn engagements which have been entered into at times of national crisis between parties representing opposed, or contracting, political forces. Of such character are the Great Charter, the Petition of Right, and the Bill of Rights. A third and larger category comprises parliamentary statutes which add to or modify governmental powers or procedure. Statutes of this type include clearly the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, the Act of Settlement of 1701, the Septennial Act of 1716, Fox's Libel Act of 1792, the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884, the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Act of 1872, the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, and the Parliament Act of 1911. In the fourth place there is the Common Law, a vast body of legal precept and usage which through the centuries has acquired fundamental and immutable character. The first three elements mentioned, i.e., treaties, solemn political engagements, and statutes, exist solely, or almost so, in written form. The rules of the Common Law, however, have not been reduced to writing, save in so far as they are contained in reports, legal opinions, and, more particularly, authoritative decisions of the courts, such as those (p. 043) on the rights of jurymen, on the prerogative of the crown, on the privileges of the houses of Parliament and of their members, and on the rights and duties of the police. *43. Constituent Elements: the Conventions.*--Finally, there are those portions of the constitution which have been denominated with aptness by Mr. Dicey "the conventions."[48] The "law" of the constitution, comprising the four categories of elements which have been enumerated, is at all points, whether written or unwritten, enforceable by the courts; the conventions, although they may and not seldom do relate to matters of vital importance, are not so enforceable. The conventions consist of understandings, practices, and habits by which are regulated a large proportion of the actual operations of the governmental authorities. They may have acquired expression in written form, but they do not appear in the statute-books or in any instrument which can be made the basis of action in a court of law. For example, it is a convention of the constitution which forbids the king to veto a measure passed by the houses of Parliament. If the sovereign were in these days actually to veto a bill, the political consequences might be serious, but there could be no question of the sheer legality of the deed. It is by virtue of a convention, not a law, of the constitution, that ministers resign office when they have ceased to command the confidence of the House of Commons; that a bill must be read three times before being finally voted upon in the House of Commons; that Parliament is convened annually and that it consists of two houses. The cabinet, and all that the cabinet, as such, stands for, rests entirely upon convention. To these things, and many others, the student who is concerned exclusively with the constitutional law of the British nation may give little or no attention. But by one who is seeking to understand the constitutional system as it is and as it operates attention must be fixed upon the conventions quite as steadily as upon the positive rules of law. If the conventions are not to be regarded as technically parts of the constitution, they are at least not infrequently as binding in practice as are these rules; and they may be even more determinative of the operations of the public powers.[49] The English constitution is indeed, as Mr. Bryce has described it, "a mass of precedents carried in men's minds or recorded in writing, dicta of lawyers or statesmen, customs, usages, (p. 044) understandings and beliefs, a number of statutes mixed up with customs and all covered over with a parasitic growth of legal decisions and political habits."[50] At no time has an attempt been made to collect and to reduce to writing this stupendous mass of scattered material, and no such attempt is likely ever to be made. "The English," as remarks the French critic Boutmy, "have left the different parts of their constitution where the waves of history have deposited them; they have not attempted to bring them together, to classify or complete them, or to make of it a consistent or coherent whole."[51] [Footnote 48: Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (7th ed., London, 1908), 22-29.] [Footnote 49: Convention occupies a large place in most political systems, even in countries which are governed under elaborate written constitutions. Their importance in the government of the United States is familiar (see Bryce, American Commonwealth, 3d ed., I., Chaps. 34-35). On the influence of conventions in France see H. Chardon, L'Administration de la France; les fonctionnaires (Paris, 1908), 79-105.] [Footnote 50: J. Bryce, Flexible and Rigid Constitutions, in Studies in History and Jurisprudence (London and New York, 1901), No. 3.] [Footnote 51: E. Boutmy, Studies in Constitutional Law: France--England--United States, trans. by E. M. Dicey (London, 1891), 6.] V. THE FLEXIBILITY OF THE CONSTITUTION *44. Aspects of Continuity and of Change.*--In pursuance of what has been said two observations, representing opposite aspects of the same truth, are pertinent. The first is that in respect to the principles and many of the practices of the English constitution it is pre-eminently true that, to employ a familiar phrase of Bishop Stubbs, the roots of the present lie deep in the past.[52] The second is that the English constitution is a living organism, so constantly undergoing modification that any description of it which may be attempted is likely to be subject to correction almost before it can be completed. At no time, as Mr. Freeman wrote, "has the tie between the present and the past been rent asunder; at no moment have Englishmen sat down to put together a wholly new constitution in obedience to some dazzling theory."[53] On the contrary, each step in the growth of the constitutional system has been the natural consequence of some earlier step. Great changes, it is true, have been wrought. To mention but the most obvious illustration, autocratic kingship has been replaced by a parliamentary government based upon a thoroughgoing political democracy. None the less, transitions have been regularly so gradual, deference to tradition so habitual, and the disposition to cling to ancient names and forms, even when the spirit had changed, so deep-seated, that the constitutional history of England presents elements of continuity which cannot be paralleled in any other country of Europe. [Footnote 52: Constitutional History of England, I., prefatory note.] [Footnote 53: Growth of the English Constitution, 19.] The letter of a written constitution may survive through many decades unchanged, as has that of the Italian _Statuto_ of 1848, and as did that of the American constitution between 1804 and 1865. No (p. 045) constitutional system, however, long stands still, and least of all one of the English variety, in which there exists but little of even the formal rigidity arising from written texts. Having no fixed and orderly shape assigned it originally by some supreme authority, the constitution of the United Kingdom has retained throughout its history a notably large measure of flexibility. It is by no means to-day what it was fifty years ago; fifty years hence it will be by no means what it is to-day. In times past changes have been accompanied by violence, or, at least, by extraordinary manifestations of the national will. Nowadays they are introduced through the ordinary and peaceful processes of legislation, of judicial interpretation, and of administrative practice. Sometimes, as in the instance of the recent overhauling of the status of the House of Lords, they are accompanied by heated controversy and widespread public agitation. Not infrequently, however, they represent inevitable and unopposed amplifications of existing law or practice and are taken note of scarcely at all by the nation at large. *45. The Constituent Powers of Parliament.*--The principal means by which changes are wrought in the English constitution to-day is that of parliamentary enactment. It is to be observed that in Great Britain there is not, nor has there ever been, any attempt to draw a line of distinction between powers that are constituent and powers that are legislative. All are vested alike in Parliament, and in respect to the processes of enactment, repeal, and revision there is no difference whatsoever between a measure affecting the fundamental principles of the governmental system and a statute pertaining to the commonest subject of ordinary law. "Our Parliament," observes Mr. Anson, "can make laws protecting wild birds or shell-fish, and with the same procedure could break the connection of Church and State, or give political power to two millions of citizens, and redistribute it among new constituencies."[54] The keystone of the law of the constitution is, indeed, the unqualified omnipotence which Parliament possesses in the spheres both of constitution-making and of ordinary legislation. In Parliament is embodied the supreme will of the nation; and although from time to time that will may declare itself in widely varying and even inconsistent ways, at any given moment its pronouncements are conclusive. [Footnote 54: Law and Custom of the Constitution, 4th ed., I., 358.] *46. What are "Constitutional" Laws?*--From this unrestricted competence of Parliament arise two highly important facts. One of them is that the distinction between "constitutional" laws, on the one hand, and ordinary statutes, on the other, is neither so obvious nor so essential as under most governmental systems. The concept, (p. 046) even, of constitutional law has developed but slowly among the English, and the phrase is as yet seldom employed in legal discussion. In the United States constitutional amendments or addenda, in so far at least as they assume written form, emanate from sources and by processes different from those that obtain in the enactment of ordinary statutes. In most continental nations the constituent process is at least somewhat different from that employed in the enactment of simple laws. And these specially devised processes are designed to emphasize the essential differentiation of the product from the handiwork of the ordinary legislative bodies. In Great Britain, however, there is, as has appeared, no difference of process, and the distinction between the law of the constitution and ordinary statute law is not infrequently all but impossible to trace. If it is to be traced at all, it must be derived from the circumstances of enactment. Some measures, e.g., the Habeas Corpus Act, the Act of Settlement, and the Parliament Act of 1911, relate obviously to the most fundamental and enduring aspects of state. Others just as clearly have to do with ephemeral and purely legislative concerns. Precisely where the line should be drawn between the two no man can say. It is, in the opinion of Mr. Bryce, because of this obstacle primarily that no attempt has been made to reduce the English constitution to the form of a single fundamental enactment.[55] [Footnote 55: Studies in History and Jurisprudence, I., No. 3.] *47. All Parts of the Constitution subject to Amendment.*--In the second place, no portion whatsoever of the constitution is immune from amendment or abrogation at the hand of Parliament. So forcefully was the French observer De Tocqueville impressed with this fact that he went so far as to assert that there really is no such thing as an English constitution at all.[56] De Tocqueville wrote, however, from the point of view of one who conceives of a constitution as of necessity an "instrument of special sanctity, distinct in character from all other laws, and alterable only by a peculiar process, differing to a greater or less extent from the ordinary forms of legislation";[57] and this conception is recognized universally nowadays to be altogether inadequate. There is, in every proper sense, an English constitution. No small portion of it, indeed, is in written form. And it is worth observing that in practice there is tending to be established in England in our own day some measure of that (p. 047) distinction between constituent and legislative functions which obtains in other countries. There is no disposition to strip from Parliament its constituent powers; but the feeling is gaining ground that when fundamental and far-reaching innovations are contemplated action ought not to be taken until after there shall have been an appeal to the nation through the medium of a general election at which the desirability of the proposed changes shall be submitted as a clear issue. The principle, broadly stated, is that Parliament ought to exercise in any important matter its constituent powers only under the sanction of direct popular mandate. It was essentially in deference to this principle that the elections of December, 1910, turning squarely upon the issue of the reform of the House of Lords, were ordered. Thus, while in numerous continental countries the distinction between constituent and legislative functions is being nowadays somewhat relaxed, in Great Britain there is distinctly a tendency to establish in a measure a differentiation in this matter which long has been in practice non-existent. [Footnote 56: "In England the Parliament has an acknowledged right to modify the constitution; as, therefore, the constitution may undergo perpetual changes, it does not in reality exist (_elle n'existe point_); the Parliament is at once a legislative and a constituent assembly." OEuvres Complètes; I., 166-167.] [Footnote 57: Lowell, Government of England, I., 2.] In effect, every measure of Parliament, of whatsoever nature and under whatsoever circumstances enacted, is "constitutional," in the sense that it is legally valid and enforceable. When an Englishman asserts of a measure that it is unconstitutional he means only that it is inconsistent with a previous enactment, an established usage, the principles of international law, or the commonly accepted standards of morality. Such a measure, if passed in due form by Parliament, becomes an integral part of the law of the land, and as such will be enforced by the courts. There is no means by which it may be rendered of no effect, save repeal by the same or a succeeding parliament. In England, as in European countries generally, the judicial tribunals are endowed with no power to pass upon the constitutional validity of legislative acts. Every such act is _ipso facto_ valid, whether it relates to the most trivial subject of ordinary legislation or to the organic arrangements of the state; and no person or body, aside from Parliament itself, possesses a right to override it or to set it aside.[58] [Footnote 58: For brief discussions of the general nature of the English constitution see A. L. Lowell, Government of England, 2 vols. (New York, 1909), I., 1-15; T. F. Moran, Theory and Practice of the English Government (new ed., New York, 1908), Chap. 1; J. A. R. Marriott, English Political Institutions (Oxford, 1910), Chaps. 1, 2; J. Macy, The English Constitution (New York, 1897), Chaps. 1, 9; and S. Low, The Governance of England (London, 1904), Chap. 1. A suggestive characterization is in the Introduction of W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (new ed., Boston, 1873). A more extended and very incisive analysis is Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, especially the Introduction and Chaps. 1-3, 13, 14-15.] CHAPTER III (p. 048) THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY I. THE CROWN: LEGAL STATUS AND PRIVILEGES *48. Contrasts of Theory and Fact.*--The government of the United Kingdom is in ultimate theory an absolute monarchy, in form a limited, constitutional monarchy, and in fact a thoroughgoing democracy.[59] At its head stands the sovereign, who is at the same time the supreme executive, a co-ordinate legislative authority (and, in theory, much more than that), the fountain of justice and of honor, the "supreme governor" of the Church, the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, the conservator of the peace, and the _parens patriae_ and _ex officio_ guardian of the helpless and the needy. In law, all land is held, directly or indirectly, of him. Parliament exists only by his will. Those who sit in it are summoned by his writ, and the privilege of voting for a member of the lower chamber is only a franchise, not a right independent of his grant. Technically, the sovereign never dies; there is only a demise of the crown, i.e., a transfer of regal authority from one person to another, and the state is never without a recognized head. [Footnote 59: From this essential incongruity of theory, form, and fact arises the special difficulty which must attend any attempt to describe with accuracy and completeness the British constitutional system. In the study of every government the divergences of theory and fact must be borne constantly in mind, but nowhere are these divergences so numerous, so far-reaching, or so fundamental as in the government of the United Kingdom.] The assertions that have been made represent with substantial accuracy the ultimate theory of the status of the crown in the governmental system. In respect to the form and fact of that system as it actually operates, however, it would hardly be possible to make assertions that would convey a more erroneous impression. The breadth of the discrepancy that here subsists between theory and fact will be made apparent as examination proceeds of the organization and workings of the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the government of the realm. It is necessary first of all, however, to give attention to certain of the more external aspects of the position which the monarch occupies. *49. Title to the Throne: the Act of Settlement, 1701.*--Since (p. 049) the Revolution of 1688 title to the English throne has been based solely upon the will of the nation as expressed in parliamentary enactment. The statute under which the succession is regulated is the Act of Settlement, passed by the Tory parliament of 1701, by which it was provided that, in default of heirs of William III. and Anne, the crown and all prerogatives thereto appertaining should "be, remain, and continue to the most Excellent Princess Sophia, and the heirs of her body, being Protestants."[60] Sophia, a granddaughter of James I., was the widow of the Elector of Hanover, and although in 1701 she was not first in the natural order of succession she was first among the surviving heirs who were Protestants. It was by virtue of the act mentioned that, upon the death of Anne in 1714, the throne devolved upon the son of the German Electress (George I.). The present sovereign, George V., is the eighth of the Hanoverian dynasty. Although it would be entirely within the competence of Parliament to repeal the Act of Settlement and to vest the crown in a member of some house other than the Hanoverian, there is, of course, no occasion for such an act, and the throne may be expected to continue to pass from one member of the present royal family to another in strict accordance with the principles of heredity and primogeniture. The rules of descent are essentially identical with those governing the inheritance of real property at common law.[61] Regularly, the sovereign's eldest son, the Prince of Wales,[62] inherits. If he be not alive, the inheritance passes to his issue, male or female. If there be none, the succession devolves upon the sovereign's second son, or upon his issue; and in default thereof, upon the eldest son who survives, or his issue. If the vacancy be not supplied by or through, a son, daughters and their issue inherit after a similar order. No Catholic may inherit, nor anyone marrying a Catholic; and by the Act of 1701 it was stipulated that every person who should attain the throne "shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established." (p. 050) If after accession the sovereign should avow himself a Catholic, or should marry a Catholic, his subjects would be absolved from their allegiance. It is required, furthermore, that the sovereign shall take at his coronation an oath wherein the tenets of Catholicism are abjured. Until 1910 the phraseology of this oath, formulated as it was in a period when ecclesiastical animosities were still fervid,[63] was such as to be offensive not only to Catholics but to temperate-minded men of all faiths. By act of parliament passed in anticipation of the coronation of George V., the language employed in the oath was made very much less objectionable. The sovereign is required now merely to declare "that he is a faithful Protestant and that he will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the throne of the Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of his power according to law." [Footnote 60: The text of the Act of Settlement is printed in Stubbs, Select Charters, 528-531; Adams and Stephens, Select Documents, 475-479; and Gee and Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History, 664-670, As safeguards against dangers which might conceivably arise from the accession of a foreign-born sovereign the Act stipulated (1) that no person who should thereafter come into possession of the crown should go outside the dominions of England, Scotland, or Ireland, without consent of Parliament, and (2) that in the event that the crown should devolve upon any person not a native of England the nation should not be obliged to engage in any war for the defense of any dominions or territories not belonging to the crown of England, without consent of Parliament.] [Footnote 61: Lowell, Government of England, I., 17.] [Footnote 62: This title was created by Edward I. in 1301. Its possession has never involved the exercise of any measure of political power.] [Footnote 63: The words to be employed were prescribed originally in the Act for Establishing the Coronation Oath, passed in the first year of William and Mary. For the text see Robertson, Select Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 65-68. An historical sketch of some value is A. Bailey, The Succession to the English Crown (London, 1879).] *50. Regencies.*--The age of majority of the sovereign is eighteen. The constitutions of most monarchical states contain more or less elaborate stipulations respecting the establishment of a regency in the event of the sovereign's minority or incapacitation. In Great Britain, on the contrary, the practice has been to make provision for each such contingency when it should arise. A regency can be created and a regent designated only by act of Parliament. Parliamentary enactments, however, become operative only upon receiving the assent of the crown, and it has sometimes happened that the sovereign for whom a regent was required to be appointed was incapable of performing any governmental act. In such a case, there has been resort usually to some legal fiction by which the appearance, at least, of regularity has been preserved. A regency act regularly defines the limits of the regent's powers and establishes specific safeguards in respect to the interests of both the sovereign and the nation.[64] [Footnote 64: For the text of the Regency Act of 1811, passed by reason of the incapacitation of George III., see Robertson, Statutes, Cases and Documents, 171-182. For an excellent survey of the general subject see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., Chap. 3.] *51. Royal Privileges: the Civil List.*--The sovereign is capable of owning land and other property, and of disposing of it precisely as may any private citizen. The vast accumulations of property, however, which at one time comprised the principal source of revenue of the crown, have become the possession of the state, and as such are administered entirely under the direction of Parliament. In lieu (p. 051) of the income derived formerly from land and other independent sources the sovereign has been accorded for the support of the royal household a fixed annual subsidy--voted under the designation of the Civil List--the amount of which is determined afresh at the beginning of each reign. The Civil List was instituted by an act of 1689 in which Parliament settled upon the king for the meeting of personal expenses, the payment of civil officers, and other charges, a stipulated sum, thus separating for the first time the private expenditures of the crown from the public outlays of the nation.[65] The sum given William III. was £700,000. George III., in return for a fixed Civil List, surrendered his interest in the hereditary revenues of the crown, and William IV. went further and, in return for a Civil List of £510,000 a year, surrendered not only the hereditary revenues but also a large group of miscellaneous and casual sources of income.[66] At the accession of Queen Victoria the Civil List was fixed at £385,000. The amount was comparatively small, but opportunity was taken at the time finally to transfer to Parliament the making of provision for all charges properly incident to the maintenance of the state. In addition to various annuities payable to the children of the royal family, the Civil List of Edward VII., established by Act of July 2, 1901, amounted to £470,000, of which £110,000 was appropriated to the privy purse of the king and queen, £125,000 to salaries and retiring allowances of the royal household, and £193,000 to household expenses. At the accession of George V., in 1910, the Civil List was continued in the sum of £470,000.[67] [Footnote 65: Under Charles II. Parliament began to appropriate portions of the revenue for specific purposes, and after 1688 this became the general practice. Throughout a century the proceeds of particular taxes were appropriated for particular ends. But in 1787 Pitt simplified the procedure involved by creating a single Consolidated Fund into which all revenues were turned and from which all expenditures were met.] [Footnote 66: Accuracy requires mention of the fact that, by exception, the crown still enjoys the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall, the latter being part of the appanage of the Prince of Wales.] [Footnote 67: On the history of the Civil List see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., 152-175.] The sovereign enjoys unrestricted immunity from political responsibility and from personal distraint. The theory of the law has long been that the king can do no wrong, which means that for his public acts the sovereign's ministers must bear complete responsibility and for his private conduct he may not be called to account in any court of law or by any legal process. He cannot be arrested, his goods cannot be distrained, and as long as a palace remains a royal residence no sort of judicial proceeding can be executed in it. (p. 052) Strictly, the revenues are the king's, whence it arises that the king is himself exempt from taxation, though lands purchased by the privy purse are taxed. And there are numerous minor privileges, such as the use of special liveries and a right to the royal salute, to which the sovereign, as such, is regularly entitled. II. THE POWERS OF THE CROWN *52. Sources: the Prerogative.*--Vested in the crown is, in the last analysis, an enormous measure of authority. The sum total of powers, whether or not actually exercised by the sovereign immediately, is of two-fold origin. There are powers, in the first place, which have been defined, or conferred outright, by parliamentary enactment. Others there are, however--more numerous and more important--which rest upon the simple basis of custom or the Common Law. Those powers which belong to the statutory group are, as a rule, specific and easily ascertainable. But those which comprise the ancient customary rights of the crown, i.e., the prerogative, are not always possible of exact delimitation. The prerogative is defined by Dicey as "the residue of discretionary or arbitrary authority which at any time is legally left in the hands of the crown."[68] The elements of it are to be ascertained, not from statutes but from precedents, and the sources of it, as enumerated by Anson, are (1) the residue of the executive power which the king in the early stages of English history possessed in all of the branches of government; (2) survivals of the power once accruing to the king as the feudal chief of the country; and (3) attributes with which the crown has been invested by legal theory, e.g., the attribute of perpetuity popularly expressed in the aphorism "the king never dies," and that of perfection of judgment, similarly expressed in the saying "the king can do no wrong."[69] The most considerable element in the prerogative is that which Anson first mentions, i.e., the power which the king has carried over, in the teeth of the popularization of the governmental system, from days when the royal authority was not hedged about as since the seventeenth century it has been. It is further to be observed that no inconsiderable portion of the royal powers as they exist to-day represent original prerogative worked over and delimited by parliamentary enactment, so that in many instances it becomes difficult to determine whether a given power exists by virtue of a statute, by which it is to be regarded as absolutely defined, or (p. 053) by virtue of an anterior prerogative which may be capable of being stretched or interpreted more or less arbitrarily. Nominally, the sovereign still holds by divine right. At the head of every public writ to-day stand the words "George V., by the Grace of God of Great Britain and Ireland King." But no principle of the working constitution is more clearly established than that in accordance with which the prerogatives of the crown may be defined, restricted, or extended by the supreme legislative power. Among prerogatives once claimed and exercised, but long since rendered obsolete by prohibitive legislation may be mentioned those of imposing taxes without parliamentary consent, suspending or dispensing with laws, erecting tribunals not proceeding according to the ordinary course of justice, declaring forfeit the property of convicted traitors,[70] purveyance, pre-emption, and the alienation of crown lands at pleasure. [Footnote 68: Law of the Constitution (7th ed.), 420.] [Footnote 69: Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. I., 3-5.] [Footnote 70: Abolished by the Felony Act of 1870.] *53. Powers, Theoretical and Actual.*--It is not, however, the origin of the royal power, but rather the manner of its exercise, that fixes the essential character of monarchy in Great Britain to-day. The student of this phase of the subject is confronted at the outset with a paradox which has found convenient expression in the aphorism that the king reigns but does not govern. The meaning of the aphorism is that, while the sovereign is possessed of all of the inherent dignity of royalty, it is left to him actually to exercise in but a very restricted measure the powers which are involved in the business of government. Technically, all laws are made by the crown in parliament; all judicial decisions are rendered by the crown through the courts; all laws are executed and all administrative acts are performed by the crown. But in point of fact laws are enacted by Parliament independently; verdicts are brought in by tribunals whose immunity from royal domination is thoroughly assured; and the executive functions of the state are exercised all but exclusively by the ministers and their subordinates. One who would understand what English monarchy really is must take account continually both of what the king does and may do theoretically and of what he does and may do in actual practice. The matter is complicated further by the fact that powers once possessed have been lost, that others which have never been formally relinquished have so long lain unused that the question may fairly be debated whether they still exist, and that there never has been, nor is likely ever to be, an attempt to enumerate categorically or to define comprehensively the range of powers, either theoretical or actual. *54. Executive Powers.*--Disregarding for the moment the means of their actual exercise, the powers of the crown to-day may be said to (p. 054) fall into two principal groups. The first comprises those which are essentially executive in character; the second, those which are shared with the two houses of Parliament, being, therefore chiefly legislative. The first group is distinctly the more important. It includes: (1) the appointment, directly or indirectly, of all national public officers, except some of the officials of the parliamentary chambers and a few unimportant hereditary dignitaries; (2) the removal, upon occasion, of all appointed officers except judges, members of the Council of India, and the Comptroller and Auditor General; (3) the execution of all laws and the supervision of the executive machinery of the state throughout all its branches; (4) the expenditure of public money in accordance with appropriations voted by Parliament; (5) the pardoning of offenders against the criminal law, with some exceptions, either before or after conviction;[71] (6) the granting, in so far as not prohibited by statute, of charters of incorporation; (7) the creating of all peers and the conferring of all titles and honors; (8) the coining of all money; (9) the summoning of Convocation and, by reason of the headship of the Established Church, the virtual appointment of the archbishops, bishops, and most of the deans and canons; (10) the supreme command of the army and navy, involving the raising and control of the armed forces of the nation, subject to such conditions only as Parliament may impose; (11) the representing of the nation in all of its dealings with foreign powers, including the appointment of all diplomatic and consular agents and the negotiation and conclusion of peace; and (12) the exercise, largely under statutory authority conferred within the past half-century, of supervision or control in respect to local government, education, public health, pauperism, housing, and a wide variety of other social and industrial interests. [Footnote 71: This power, in practice, is seldom exercised. The Act of Settlement prescribed that "no pardon shall be pleadable to an impeachment by the Commons in parliament."] *55. The Composition of the Executive.*--The executive branch of the government, through whose agency these powers are exercised, consists of the sovereign, the ministry, and the entire hierarchy of administrative officials reaching downwards from the heads of departments and the under-secretaries at London through the several grades of clerks to the least important revenue and postal employees. There are various points of view from which the chief of the executive may be conceived of as the sovereign, the prime minister, the ministry collectively, or the king and ministry conjointly. So far as executive functions go, the sovereign, in law, is very nearly as supreme as (p. 055) in the days of personal and absolute monarchy. The ministers are but his advisers, the local administrative authorities his agents. The government is conducted wholly in his name. In practice, however, supreme executive acts of the kinds that have been mentioned are performed by the ministers; or, if performed by the crown immediately, will not be undertaken without the ministers' knowledge and assent. The ministers, and not the sovereign, may be held to account by parliament for every executive act performed, and it is but logical that they should control the time and tenor of such acts. It falls very generally to the prime minister to speak for and otherwise represent the ministerial group. On the whole, however, it accords best with both law and fact to consider the executive under the working constitution as consisting of the crown as represented and advised by the ministry. *56. The Crown and Legislation.*--The second general group of powers lodged in the crown comprises those which relate to legislation. Technically, all legislative authority is vested in "the king in parliament," by which is meant the king acting in collaboration with the two houses. Parliament transacts business only during the pleasure of the crown. The crown summons and prorogues the houses, and it is empowered at any time to dissolve the House of Commons. No parliamentary act, furthermore, is valid without the crown's assent. It is on the legislative, rather than the executive side, none the less, that the crown has lost most heavily in actual authority. There was a time when the crown possessed inherent law-making power and through the agency of proclamations and ordinances contributed independently to the body of enforceable law. To-day the sovereign may exercise no such power, save alone in the crown colonies. It is true that ordinances with the force of law are still issued, and that their number and importance tend steadily to be increased. But in all cases these ordinances have been, and must be, authorized specifically by statute. As "statutory orders" they emanate from a delegated authority purely and bear no relation to the ancient ordinance by prerogative. The king may not even, by virtue of any inherent power, promulgate ordinances in completion of parliamentary statutes--the sort of thing which the French president, the Italian king, and virtually every continental ruler may do with full propriety. Of his own authority, furthermore, the sovereign may not alter by one jot or tittle the law of the land. There was a time when the crown claimed and exercised the right to suspend, or to dispense with, laws which had been duly enacted and put in operation. But this practice was forbidden definitely (p. 056) in the Bill of Rights, and no sovereign since the last Stuart has sought to revive the prerogative. Still another aspect of the ancient participation by the king in the legislative function was the influencing of the composition of the House of Commons through the right to confer upon boroughs the privilege of electing members. This right, never expressly withdrawn, is regarded now as having been forfeited by disuse. Finally, the power to withhold assent from a measure passed in Parliament has not been exercised since the days of Queen Anne,[72] and while legally it still exists, it is conceded for all practical purposes to have been extinguished. [Footnote 72: In 1707, when the Queen refused her assent to a bill for settling the militia in Scotland.] *57. Principles Governing the Actual Exercise of Powers.*--After full allowances have been made, the powers of the British crown to-day comprise a sum total of striking magnitude. "All told," says Lowell, "the executive authority of the crown is, in the eye of the law, very wide, far wider than that of the chief magistrate in many countries, and well-nigh as extensive as that now possessed by the monarch in any government not an absolute despotism; and although the crown has no inherent legislative power except in conjunction with Parliament, it has been given by statute very large powers of subordinate legislation.... Since the accession of the House of Hanover the new powers conferred upon the crown by statute have probably more than made up for the loss to the prerogative of powers which have either been restricted by the same process or become obsolete by disuse. By far the greater part of the prerogative, as it existed at that time, has remained legally vested in the crown, and can be exercised to-day."[73] [Footnote 73: Government of England, I., 23, 26.] The next fundamental thing to be observed is that the extended powers here referred to are exercised, not by the king in person, but by ministers with whose choosing the sovereign has but little to do and over whose acts he has only an incidental and extra-legal control. Underlying the entire constitutional order are two principles whose operation would seem to reduce the sovereign to a sheer nonentity. The first is that the crown shall perform no important governmental act whatsoever save through the agency of the ministers. The second is that these ministers shall be responsible absolutely to Parliament for every public act which they perform. From these principles arises the fiction that "the king can do no wrong," which means legally that the sovereign cannot be adjudged guilty of wrongdoing (and that therefore no proceedings may be instituted against him), and politically that the ministers are responsible, singly in small affairs and (p. 057) conjointly in more weighty ones, for everything that is done in the crown's name. "In a constitutional point of view," writes an English authority, "so universal is the operation of this rule that there is not a moment in the king's life, from his accession to his demise, during which there is not some one responsible to Parliament for his public conduct; and there can be no exercise of the crown's authority for which it must not find some minister willing to make himself responsible."[74] In continental countries the responsibility of ministers is established very commonly by specific and written constitutional provision. In Great Britain it exists by virtue simply of a group of unwritten principles, or conventions, of the constitution; but it is there none the less real. In the conduct of public affairs the ministry must conform to the will of the majority in the House of Commons; otherwise the wheels of government would be blocked. And from this it follows that the crown is obliged to accept, with such grace as may be, the measures which the ministry, working with the parliamentary majority, formulates and for which it stands ready to shoulder responsibility. It is open to the king, of course, to dissuade the ministers from a given course of action. But if they cannot be turned back, and if they have the support of a parliamentary majority, there is nothing that the sovereign can do save acquiesce. [Footnote 74: Todd, Parliamentary Government in England, I., 81.] *58. Appointment of Ministers.*--In the naming of a new premier, following the retirement of a ministry, the king is legally unhampered; but here again in practice he is bound to designate the recognized leader of the dominant party, and so to pursue a course in which there is left no room for the exercise of discretion. Only when there is no clearly recognized leader, or when circumstances compel the formation of a coalition ministry, is there a real opportunity for the sovereign to choose a premier from a number of more or less available men.[75] In the appointment of the remaining ministers, and of all persons whose offices are regarded as political, the crown yields uniformly to the judgment of the premier. The King's Speech, on the opening of Parliament, is written by the ministers; all public communications of the crown pass through their hands; peers are created and honors bestowed in accord with their advice; measures are framed and executive acts are undertaken by them, sometimes without the sovereign's knowledge and occasionally even contrary to his wishes. [Footnote 75: This sort of situation presented itself several times during the reign of Queen Victoria, but in general it is exceptional.] III. THE IMPORTANCE AND STRENGTH OF THE MONARCH (p. 058) *59. The Real Authority and Service of the Crown.*--It would be an error, however, to conclude that kingship in England is unimportant, or even that the power wielded in person by the crown is negligible. On the contrary, the uses served by the crown are indisputable and the influence exerted upon the course of public affairs may be decisive. The sovereign, in the words of Bagehot, has three rights--the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn. "A king of great sense and sagacity," it is added, "would want no others."[76] Despite the fact that during upwards of two hundred years the sovereign has not attended the meetings of the cabinet, and so is deprived of the opportunity of wielding influence directly upon the deliberations of the ministers as a body, the king keeps in close touch with the premier, and cabinet councils at which important lines of policy are to be formulated are preceded not infrequently by a conference in which the subject in hand is threshed out more or less completely by king and chief minister. Merely because the ancient relation has been reversed, so that now it is the king who advises and the ministry that arrives at decisions, it does not follow that the advisory function is an unimportant thing. Queen Victoria many times wielded influence of a decisive nature upon the public measures of her reign, especially in respect to the conduct of foreign relations. The extent of such influence cannot be made a matter of record, because the ministers are in effect bound not to publish the fact that a decision upon a matter of state has been taken at the sovereign's instance. It is familiarly known, however--to cite a recent illustration--that Edward VII. approved and encouraged the Haldane army reforms, that he sought to dissuade the House of Lords from the rejection of the Lloyd-George budget of 1909, and that he discouraged the raising, in any form, of the issue of the reconstitution of the upper chamber. In other words while, as a constitutional monarch content to remain in the background of political controversy, the late king not only had opinions but did not hesitate to make them known; and in the shaping and execution of the Liberal programme his advice was at times a factor of importance.[77] [Footnote 76: The English Constitution (rev. ed.), 143.] [Footnote 77: The most satisfactory estimate of the political and governmental activities of Edward VII. is contained in Mr. Sidney Lee's memoir of the king, printed in the Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement (London and New York, 1912), I., 546-610.] *60. Why Monarchy Survives.*--Monarchy in Great Britain is a solid (p. 059) and, so far as can be foreseen, a lasting reality. Throughout the tempestuous years 1909-1911, when the nation was aroused as it had not been in generations upon the issue of constitutional reform, and when every sort of project was being warmly advocated and as warmly opposed, without exception every suggested programme took for granted the perpetuation of the monarchy as an integral part of the governmental system. In the general bombardment to which the hereditary House of Lords was subjected hereditary kingship wholly escaped. The reasons are numerous and complex. They arise in part, though by no means so largely as is sometimes imagined, from the fact that monarchy in England is a venerable institution and the innate conservatism of the Englishman, while permitting him from time to time to regulate and modify it, restrains him from doing anything so revolutionary as to abolish it. That upon certain conspicuous occasions, as in the Cromwellian period, and again in 1688, kingship has owed its very life to the conservative instinct of the English people is well enough known to every student of history. But to-day, as ever, the institution rests upon a basis very much more substantial than a mere national predilection. Monarchy remains impregnably entrenched because the crown, in addition to comprising an accustomed feature of the governmental economy, fulfills specific ends which are recognized universally to be eminently worth while, if not indispensable. As a social, moral, and ceremonial agency, and as a visible symbol of the unity of the nation; king and court occupy an immeasurable place in the life and thought of the people; and even within the domain of government, to employ the figure of Lowell, if the crown is no longer the motive power of the ship of state, it is the spar on which the sail is bent, and as such it is not only a useful but an essential part of the vessel.[78] The entire governmental order of Great Britain hinges upon the parliamentary system, and nowhere has that system been reduced to satisfactory operation without the presence of some central, but essentially detached, figure, whether a king or, as in France, a president with the attributes of kingship. It is fundamentally because the English people have discerned that kingship is not necessarily incompatible with popular government that the monarchy has persisted. If royalty had been felt to stand inevitably in the path of democratic progress, it is inconceivable that all the forces of tradition could have pulled it through the past seventy-five or eighty years. As it is, while half a century ago there was in the country a small republican group which was fond of urging that the monarchy was but a source of needless (p. 060) expense, to-day there is hardly a vestige, in any grade of society, of anti-monarchical sentiment.[79] [Footnote 78: Government of England, I., 49.] [Footnote 79: The best brief discussions of the position of the crown in the governmental system are Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap, 1; Moran, English Government, Chaps. 2-3; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 3; Macy, English Constitution, Chap. 5; and Low, Governance of England, Chaps. 14-15. More extended treatment of the subject will be found in Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1, Chaps 1 and 4; Todd, Parliamentary Government in England, I, Pt. 2; Bagehot, English Constitution, Chaps. 2-3; H. D. Traill, Central Government, Chap. 1. Mention may be made of N. Caudel, Le souverain anglais, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1910, and J. Bardoux, Le pouvoir politique de la couronne anglaise, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, May 15, 1911.] IV. PRIVY COUNCIL, MINISTRY, AND CABINET *61. The Privy Council.*--One who would understand the modes by which the powers of the crown are in practice exercised must begin by fixing firmly in mind the nature and relations of three distinct but closely interrelated institutions, the Privy Council, the ministry, and the cabinet. As has appeared, the Privy Council through a long period of English history comprised the body of men who advised the crown and assisted to some extent in the supervision of administration. The number of councillors from time to time varied widely, but it tended constantly to be too large to admit of the requisite despatch and secrecy, and by reason principally of this consideration the crown fell into the custom of selecting as advisers a group of persons less numerous, and perhaps more trustworthy, than the whole body of public functionaries collectively designated as the Privy Council. Thus arose the cabinet, which throughout its entire history has been only an inner circle, unknown to the law, of the older and larger body. The Privy Council survives to-day, and in both law and theory it still is the advisory body of the crown. A cabinet member possesses authority and is known to the law only as a privy councillor. In point of fact, however, the Privy Council, once highly influential in affairs of state, is now, as such, all but powerless. Such portions of the dignity of its ancient place in the constitution as remain to it are of a purely formal and ceremonial nature. It holds no meetings of a deliberative character, and although legally its action is still essential to many public measures, as the preparation of proclamations and of orders in council, this action may be taken by as few as three persons.[80] All cabinet members are members of the Council, so that even one-fifth or one-sixth of the cabinet group is competent to meet every legal requirement imposed upon the Council as a whole.[81] (p. 061) All councillors are appointed by the crown and continue in office for life or until dismissed. Their number is unlimited, and the only qualification necessary for appointment is British nativity. Members fall into three groups: (1) members of the cabinet; (2) holders of certain important non-political offices who by custom are entitled to appointment; (3) persons eminent in politics, literature, law, or science, or by reason of service rendered the crown, upon whom the dignity is conferred as an honorary distinction. Members bear regularly the title of Right Honorable. The President of the Council, designated by the crown, takes rank in the House of Lords next after the Chancellor and Treasurer.[82] [Footnote 80: On the nature of orders in council see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1, 147-149.] [Footnote 81: It is to be observed, however, that despite the transfer of the business devolving formerly upon the Council into the hands of the specially constituted departments of government, the Council does still, through the agency of its committees, perform a modicum of actual service. Of principal importance among the committees is the Judicial Committee, which hears appeals in ecclesiastical cases and renders final verdict in all appeals coming from tribunals outside the United Kingdom. See p. 175.] [Footnote 82: Traill, Central Government, Chap. 12.] *62. Ministry and Cabinet.*--Another governmental group which, like the Privy Council, differs from the cabinet while containing it, is the ministry. The ministry comprises a large and variable body of functionaries, some of whom occupy the principal offices of state and divide their efforts between advising the crown, i.e., formulating governmental policy, and administering the affairs of their respective departments, and others of whom, occupying less important executive positions, do not possess, save indirectly, the advisory function. The first group comprises, approximately at least, the cabinet. Most heads of departments are regularly and necessarily in the cabinet. A few are in it as a rule, though not invariably. A few, still less important, may be, but are not likely to be, admitted to it. And, finally, a large number of parliamentary under-secretaries, party "whips," and officers of the royal household are certain not to be admitted.[83] [Footnote 83: On the relations of cabinet and ministry see Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 3.] V. THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS In respect to both origin and legal status the executive departments of the central government of Great Britain exhibit little of the conformity to type which characterizes their counterparts in the logical and self-consistent governmental systems of the majority of continental countries. Under the pressure, however, of custom and (p. 062) of parliamentary control, they have been reduced to essentially a common style of organization and a common mode of administrative procedure. In virtually every instance the department is presided over by a single responsible minister, assisted as a rule by one or more parliamentary under-secretaries and, more remotely, by a greater or lesser body of non-political officials who carry on the actual work of the department and whose tenure is not affected by the political fortunes of their chiefs. *63. The Treasury.*--Among the numerous departments, some represent survivals of great offices of state of an earlier period, some are offshoots of the ancient secretariat, and some comprise boards and commissions established in days comparatively recent. In the first group fall the offices of the Lord High Treasurer, the Lord High Chancellor, and the Lord High Admiral. From the early sixteenth century to the death of Queen Anne the principal official of the Treasury was the Lord High Treasurer. Since 1714, however, the office has been regularly in commission. The duties connected with it have been intrusted to a board composed of certain Lords of the Treasury, and no individual to-day bears the Lord High Treasurer's title. When a ministry is made up the group of Treasury Lords is renewed, and as a rule the post of First Lord is assumed by the premier. In point of fact, however, the board is never called together, some of its members have no actual connection whatsoever with the Treasury, and the functions of this most important of all departments are in practice exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, assisted by the Junior Lords and the under-secretaries. The Exchequer, i.e., the department concerned principally with the collection of the taxes, is in fact, though not in name, a branch of the Treasury Board. Within the Treasury, and immediately under the direction of the Chancellor, is drawn up the annual budget, embodying a statement of the contemplated expenditures of the year and a programme of taxation calculated to produce the requisite revenue. The Treasury exercises general control over all other departments of the public service, e.g., the Post-office and the Board of Customs, in which public money is collected or expended.[84] [Footnote 84: On the organization and workings of the Treasury see Lowell, Government of England, I, Chap. 5; Dicey, Law of the Constitution, Chap. 10; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1, 173-190; Traill, Central Government, Chap. 3.] *64. The Admiralty Board and the Lord High Chancellorship.*--A second of the ancient offices of state which survives only in commission is (p. 063) that of the Lord High Admiral. The functions of this important post devolve to-day upon an Admiralty Board, consisting strictly of a First Lord, four Naval Lords (naval experts, usually of high rank), and a Civil Lord, with whom, however, sit a number of parliamentary and permanent secretaries. The First Lord is invariably a member of the cabinet, and while legally the status of the six Lords is identical, in practice the position of the First Lord approximates closely that of the minister of marine in continental countries. Unlike the Treasury Lords, the Lords of the Admiralty actually meet, and transact business. The third of the executive offices which comprise survivals from early times is that of the Lord High Chancellor. There is in Great Britain no single official who fills even approximately the position occupied elsewhere by a minister of justice or an attorney-general, but the most important of several officers who supply the lack is the Lord Chancellor. "The greatest dignitary," says Lowell, "in the British government, the one endowed by law with the most exalted and most diverse functions, the only great officer of state who has retained his ancient rights, the man who defies the doctrine of the separation of powers more than any other personage on earth, is the Lord Chancellor."[85] The Lord Chancellor is invariably a member of the Cabinet. He is the chief judge in the High Court of Justice and in the Court of Appeal. He appoints and removes the justices of the peace and the judges of the county courts and wields large influence in appointments to higher judicial posts. He affixes the Great Seal where it is required to give validity to the acts of the crown and he performs a wide variety of other more or less formal services. Finally, it is the Lord High Chancellor who presides in the House of Lords. [Footnote 85: Government of England, I., 131.] *65. The Five Secretaries of State.*--Five of the great departments to-day represent the product of a curious evolution of the ancient secretariat of state. Originally there was but a single official who bore the designation of secretary of state. In the earlier eighteenth century a second official was added, although no new office was created. At the close of the century a third was added, after the Crimean War a fourth, and after the Indian Mutiny of 1857 a fifth. There are now, accordingly, five "principal secretaries of state," all in theory occupying the same office and each, save for a few statutory restrictions, competent legally to exercise the functions of any or all of the others. In practice each of the five holds strictly to his own domain. The group comprises: (1) the Secretary of State for the Home Department, assisted by a parliamentary under-secretary and a large staff of permanent officials, and possessing functions of a highly miscellaneous sort--those, in general, belonging to the (p. 064) ancient secretariat which have not been assigned to the care of other departments; (2) the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, at the head of a department which not only conducts foreign relations but administers the affairs of such protectorates as are not closely connected with any of the colonies; (3) the Secretary of State for the Colonies; (4) the Secretary of State for War; and (5) the Secretary of State for India, assisted by a special India Council of ten to fourteen members. *66. The Administrative Boards.*--The third general group of departments comprises those which have arisen through the establishment in comparatively recent years of a variety of administrative boards or commissions. Two--the Board of Trade and the Board of Education--originated as committees of the Privy Council. Three others--the Board of Agriculture, the Board of Works, and the Local Government Board--represent the development of administrative commissions not conceived of originally as vested with political character. All are in effect independent and co-ordinate governmental departments. The composition and functions of the Board of Trade are regulated by order in council at the opening of each reign, but the character of the other four is determined wholly by statute. At the head of each is a president (save that the chief of the Board of Works is known as First Commissioner), and the membership embraces the five secretaries of state and a variable number of other important dignitaries. This membership, however, is but nominal. No one of the Boards actually meets, and the work of each is performed entirely by its president, with, in some instances, the assistance of a parliamentary under-secretary. "In practice, therefore, these boards are legal phantoms that provide imaginary colleagues for a single responsible minister."[86] Very commonly the presidents are admitted to the cabinet, but sometimes they are not.[87] [Footnote 86: Lowell, Government of England, I., 84.] [Footnote 87: On the organization and workings of the executive departments see Lowell, _op. cit._, I., Chaps. 4-6; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 5; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1, Chap. 3; Traill, Central Government, Chaps. 3-11.] VI. THE CABINET: COMPOSITION AND CHARACTER *67. Regular and Occasional Members.*--The cabinet comprises a variable group of the principal ministers of state upon whom devolves singly the task of administering the affairs of their respective departments and, collectively, that of shaping the policy and directing the conduct of the government as a whole. The position occupied by the cabinet (p. 065) in the constitutional system is anomalous, but transcendently important. As has been pointed out, the cabinet as such is unknown to English law. Legally, the cabinet member derives his administrative function from the fact of his appointment to a ministerial post, and his advisory function from his membership in the Privy Council. The cabinet exists as an informal, extra-legal ministerial group into whose hands, through prolonged historical development, has fallen the supreme direction of both the executive and the legislative activities of the state. The composition of the body is determined largely by custom, but in part by passing circumstance. Certain ministerial heads are invariably included: the First Lord of the Treasury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the five Secretaries of State, and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Two dignitaries who possess no administrative function, i.e., the Lord President of the Privy Council and the Lord Privy Seal,[88] are likewise always included. Beyond this, the make-up of the cabinet group is left to the discretion of the premier. The importance of a given office at the moment and the wishes of the appointee, together with general considerations of party expediency, may well enter into a decision relative to the seating of individual departmental heads. In recent years the presidents of the Board of Trade, the Board of Education, and the Local Government Board have regularly been included, together with the Lord Lieutenant or the Chief Secretary for Ireland.[89] The Secretary for Scotland and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster are usually included; the Postmaster-General and the President of the Board of Agriculture frequently, and the First Commissioner of Works and the Lord Chancellor for Ireland occasionally. [Footnote 88: The functions of this official are but nominal. In 1870 Sir Charles Dilke moved to abolish the office as useless, but Gladstone urged the desirability of having in the cabinet at least one man who should not be burdened with the management of a department, and the motion was lost. The presidency of the Council is a post likewise of dignity but of meager governmental power or responsibility.] [Footnote 89: In theory the powers of the executive are exercised in Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant, but in practice they devolve almost entirely upon the nominally inferior official, the Chief Secretary.] *68. Increasing Size.*--The trend is distinctly in the direction of an increase in the size of the body. The more notable cabinets of the eighteenth century contained, as a rule, not above seven to ten members. In the first half of the nineteenth century the number ran up to thirteen or fourteen, and throughout the Gladstone-Disraeli period it seldom fell below this level. The second Salisbury cabinet, at its fall in 1892, numbered seventeen, and when, following the elections of 1900, the third Salisbury government was reconstructed, the cabinet attained a membership of twenty.[90] The Balfour cabinet of 1905 (p. 066) and the succeeding Campbell-Bannerman cabinet likewise numbered twenty. The increase is attributable to several causes, especially the pressure which comes from ambitious statesmen for admission to the influential circle, the growing necessity of according representation to varied elements and interests within the dominant party, the multiplication of state activities which call for direction under new and important departments, and the disposition to accord to every considerable branch of the administrative system at least one representative. The effect is to produce a certain unwieldiness, to avoid which, it will be recalled, the cabinet was originally instituted. Only through the domination of the cabinet by a few of its most influential members can expeditiousness be preserved, and during recent years there has been a tendency toward the differentiation of an inner circle which shall bear to the whole cabinet a relation somewhat analogous to that which the cabinet now bears to the ministry. Development in this direction is viewed apprehensively by many people who regard that the concentration of power in the hands of an "inner cabinet" might well fail to be accompanied by a corresponding concentration of recognized responsibility. During more than a decade criticism of the inordinate size of the cabinet group has been voiced freely upon numerous occasions and by many observers.[91] [Footnote 90: Lord Salisbury at this point retired from the Foreign Office, which was assigned to Lord Lansdowne, and assumed in conjunction with the premiership the less exacting post of Lord Privy Seal.] [Footnote 91: Lowell, Government of England, I., 59; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1, 211.] *69. Appointment of the Premier.*--When a new cabinet is to be made up the first step is the designation of the prime minister. Legally the choice rests with the crown, but considerations of practical politics leave, as a rule, no room whatsoever for the exercise of discretion. The crown sends as a matter of course for the statesman who is able to command the support of the majority in the House of Commons. If the retiring ministry has "fallen," i.e., has lost its parliamentary majority, the new premier is certain to be the recognized leader of the party which formerly has played the rôle of opposition. If there has not occurred a shift in party status, the premiership will be bestowed upon some one of the colleagues, at least upon one of the fellow-partisans, of the retiring premier, nominated, if need be, by the chiefs of the party. Thus, when in 1894 Gladstone retired from office by reason of physical infirmity, the Liberal leaders in the two houses conferred upon the question as to whether he should be succeeded by Sir William Vernon-Harcourt or by Lord Rosebery. They (p. 067) recommended Lord Rosebery, who was forthwith appointed by the Queen. If, by any circumstance, the premiership should fall to the Opposition at a moment when the leadership of this element is in doubt, the crown would be guided, similarly, by the informally expressed will of the more influential party members. While, therefore, the appointment of the prime minister remains the sole important governmental act which is performed directly by the sovereign, even here the substance of power has been lost and only the form survives. *70. Selection of Other Members.*--The remaining members of the cabinet are selected by the premier, in consultation, as a rule, with leading members of the party. Technically, what happens is that the first minister places in the hands of the sovereign a list of the men whom he recommends for appointment to the principal offices of state. The crown accepts the list and there appears forthwith in the London Gazette an announcement to the effect that the persons named have been chosen by the crown to preside over the several departments. Officially, there is no mention of the "cabinet." In the selection of his colleagues the premier theoretically has a free hand. Practically he is bound by the necessity of complying with numerous principles and of observing various precedents and practical conditions. Two principles, in particular, must be adhered to in determining the structure of every cabinet. All of the members must have seats in one or the other of the two houses of Parliament, and all must be identified with the party in power, or, at the least, with an allied political group. There was a time, when the personal government of the king was yet a reality, when the House of Commons refused to admit to its membership persons who held office under the crown, and this disqualification found legal expression as late as the Act of Settlement of 1701.[92] With the ripening of parliamentary government in the eighteenth century, however, the thing that once had been regarded properly enough as objectionable became a matter of unquestionable expediency, if not a necessity. When once the ministers comprised the real executive of the nation it was but logical that they should be authorized to appear on the floor of the two houses to introduce and advocate measures and to explain the acts of the government. Ministers had occupied regularly seats in the upper chamber, and not only was all objection to their occupying seats in the lower chamber removed, but by custom it came to be an inflexible rule that cabinet officers, and indeed the ministers generally, should be drawn exclusively from the membership of the two houses.[93] (p. 068) Under provision of an act of 1707 it is still obligatory upon commoners who are tendered a cabinet appointment, with a few exceptions, to vacate their seats and to offer themselves to their constituents for re-election. But re-election almost invariably follows as a matter of course and without opposition.[94] It is to be observed that there are two expedients by which it is possible to bring into the cabinet a desirable member who at the time of his appointment does not possess a seat in Parliament. The appointee may be created a peer; or he may stand for election to the Commons and, winning, qualify himself for a cabinet post. [Footnote 92: The clause of this measure which bore upon the point in hand was repealed, however, before it went into operation.] [Footnote 93: The one notable instance in which this rule has been departed from within the past seventy-five years was Gladstone's tenure of the post of Secretary of State for the Colonies during the last six months of the Peel administration in 1846.] [Footnote 94: On the reasons for the requirement of re-election and the movement for the abolition of the requirement see Moran, The English Government, 108-109.] *71. Distribution Between the Houses of Parliament.*--Since the middle of the eighteenth century the tenure of the premiership has been divided approximately equally between peers and commoners, but the apportionment of cabinet seats between the two houses has been extremely variable. The first cabinet of the reign of George III. contained fourteen members, thirteen of whom had seats in the House of Lords, and, in general, throughout the eighteenth century the peers were apt greatly to preponderate. With the growth in importance of the House of Commons, however, and especially after the Reform Act of 1832, the tendency was to draw an ever increasing proportion of the cabinet officers from the chamber in which lies the storm center of English politics. By legal stipulation one of the secretaries of state must sit in the upper house; and the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord President of the Council are all but invariably peers. Beyond this, there is no positive requirement, in either law or custom. In the ministries of recent times the number of peers and of commoners has generally been not far from equal. To fill the various posts the premier must bring together the best men he can secure--not necessarily the ablest, but those who will work together most effectively--with but secondary regard to the question of whether they sit in the one or the other of the legislative houses. A department whose chief sits in the Commons is certain to be represented in the Lords by an under-secretary or other spokesman, and _vice versa_.[95] [Footnote 95: In France and other continental countries in which the parliamentary system obtains an executive department is represented in Parliament by its presiding official only. But this official is privileged, as the English minister is not, to appear and to speak and otherwise participate in proceedings on the floor of either chamber.] *72. Political Solidarity.*--A second fundamental principle which (p. 069) dominates the structure of the cabinet is that which requires that the members be men of one political faith. William III. sought to govern with a cabinet in which there were both Whigs and Tories, but the result was confusion and the experiment was abandoned. Except during the ascendancy of Walpole, the cabinets of the eighteenth century very generally embraced men of more or less diverse political affiliations, but gradually the conviction took root that in the interest of unity and efficiency the political solidarity of the cabinet group is indispensable. The last occasion upon which it was proposed to make up a cabinet from utterly diverse political elements was in 1812. The scheme was rejected, and from that day to this cabinets have been composed regularly, not necessarily of men identified with a common political party, but at least of men who are in substantial agreement upon the larger questions of policy and who have expressed their willingness to co-operate in the carrying out of a given programme of action. The fundamental requisite is unity. A Liberal Unionist may occupy a post in a Conservative cabinet and a Laborite in a Liberal administration, but he may not oppose the Government upon any important question and expect to continue a member of it, save by the express permission of the premier. It is the obligation of every cabinet member to agree, or to appear to agree, with his colleagues. If he is unable to do this, no course is open to him save resignation. *73. Other Considerations Determining Appointment.*--In the selection of his colleagues the premier works under still other practical restrictions. One of them is the well-established rule that surviving members of the last cabinet of the party, in so far as they are in active public life and desirous of appointment, shall be given prior consideration. Members of the party, furthermore, who have come into special prominence and influence in Parliament must usually be included. In truth, as Bagehot points out, the premier's independent choice is apt to find scope not so much in the determination of the cabinet's personnel as in the distribution of offices among the members selected; and even here he will often be obliged to subordinate his wishes to the inclinations, susceptibilities, and capacities of his prospective colleagues. In the expressive simile of Lowell, the premier's task is "like that of constructing a figure out of blocks which are too numerous for the purpose, and which are not of shapes to fit perfectly together."[96] [Footnote 96: Government of England, I., 57. See MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 148-183.] VII. THE CABINET IN ACTION (p. 070) *74. Ministerial Responsibility.*--In its actual operation the English cabinet system involves the unvarying application of three principles: (1) the responsibility of cabinet ministers to Parliament; (2) the non-publicity of cabinet proceedings; and (3) the close co-ordination of the cabinet group under the leadership of the premier. Every minister whether or not in the cabinet, is responsible individually to Parliament, which in effect means to the House of Commons, for all of his public acts. If he is accorded a vote of censure he must retire. In the earlier eighteenth century the resignation of a cabinet officer did not affect the tenure of his colleagues, the first of cabinets to retire as a unit being that of Lord North in 1782. Subsequently, however, the ministerial body so developed in compactness that in relation to the outside world, and even to Parliament, the individual officer came to be effectually subordinated to the group. Not since 1866 has a cabinet member retired singly in consequence of an adverse parliamentary vote. If an individual minister falls into serious disfavor one of two things almost certainly happens. Either the offending member is persuaded by his colleagues to modify his course or to resign before formal parliamentary censure shall have been passed, or the cabinet as a whole rallies to the support of the minister in question and stands or falls with him. This is but another way of saying that, in practice, the responsibility of the cabinet is collective rather than individual, a condition by which the seriousness and effectiveness of it are vastly increased. This responsibility covers the entire range of acts of the executive department of the government, whether regarded as acts of the crown or of the ministers themselves, and it constitutes the most distinctive feature of the English parliamentary system. Formerly the only means by which ministers could be held to account by Parliament was that of impeachment. With the development, however, of the principle of ministerial responsibility as a necessary adjunct to parliamentary government, the occasional and violent process of impeachment was superseded by continuous, inescapable, and pacific legislative supervision. The impeachment of cabinet ministers may be regarded, indeed, as obsolete. *75. How a Ministry may Be Overthrown.*--A fundamental maxim of the constitution to-day is that a cabinet shall continue in office only so long as it enjoys the confidence and support of a majority in the House of Commons. There are at least four ways in which a parliamentary majority may manifest its dissatisfaction with a cabinet, and so compel its resignation. It may pass a simple vote (p. 071) of "want of confidence," assigning therefor no definite reason. It may pass a vote of censure, criticising the cabinet for some specific act. It may defeat a measure which the cabinet advocates and declares to be of vital importance. Or it may pass a bill in opposition to the advice of the ministers. The cabinet is not obliged to give heed to an adverse vote in the Lords; but when any of the four votes indicated is carried in the lower chamber the premier and his colleagues must do one of two things--resign or appeal to the country. If it is clear that the cabinet has lost the support, not only of Parliament, but also of the electorate, the only honorable course for the ministry is that of resignation. If, on the other hand, there is doubt as to whether the parliamentary majority really represents the country upon the matters at issue, the ministers are warranted in requesting the sovereign to dissolve Parliament and to order a general election. In such a situation the ministry continues tentatively in office. If at the elections there is returned a majority disposed to support the ministers, the cabinet is given a new lease of life. If, on the other hand, the new parliamentary majority is adverse, no course is open to the ministry save to retire. The new parliament will be convoked at the earliest practicable date; but in advance of its assembling the defeated cabinet will generally have resigned and a new government, presided over by the leader of the late Opposition, will have assumed the reins. During the interval required for the transfer of power none save routine business is likely to be undertaken. *76. Secrecy of Proceedings.*--Perpetually responsible to the House of Commons and imperatively obligated to resign collectively when no longer able to command a working majority in that body, the cabinet must at all times employ every device by which it may be enabled to present a solid and imposing front. Two such devices are those of secrecy and the leadership of the premier. It is a sufficiently familiar principle that a group of men brought together to agree upon and execute a common policy in behalf of a widespread and diverse constituency will be more likely to succeed if the differences that must inevitably appear within their ranks are not published to the world. It is in deference to this principle that the German Bundesrath transacts its business to this day behind closed doors, and it was for an analogous reason that the public was excluded from the sittings of the convention by which the present constitution of the United States was framed. Notices of meetings of the English cabinet and the names of members present appear regularly in the press, but respecting the subjects discussed, the opinions expressed, and the conclusions arrived at not a word is given out, officially or unofficially. (p. 072) The oath of secrecy, required of all privy councillors, is binding in a special degree upon the cabinet officer. Not even the sovereign is favored with more than a statement of the topics considered, together with occasionally a formal draft of such decisions as require his assent. In the earlier part of the nineteenth century meager minutes of the proceedings were preserved, but nowadays no clerical employee is allowed to be present and no record whatsoever is kept.[97] For knowledge of past transactions members rely upon their own or their colleagues' memories, supplemented at times by privately kept notes. The meetings, which are held only as occasion requires (usually as often as once a week when Parliament is in session) are notably informal. There is not even a fixed place where meetings are held, the members being gathered sometimes at the Foreign Office, sometimes at the premier's house, and, as circumstance may arise, at almost any convenient place. [Footnote 97: The same thing is true of the President's cabinet in the United States. The reasons for the policy are obvious and ample; but the preservation of cabinet records, whether in Great Britain or the United States, would, if such records were to be made accessible, facilitate enormously the task of the historian and of the student of practical government.] *77. Leadership of the Premier.*--The unity of the cabinet is further safeguarded and emphasized by the leadership of the prime minister. Long after the rise of the cabinet to controlling influence in the state the members of the ministerial body continued supposedly upon a common footing in respect both to rank and authority. The habitual abstention of the early Hanoverians from attendance at cabinet meetings, however, left the group essentially leaderless, and by a natural process of development the members came gradually to recognize a virtual presidency on the part of one of their own number. In time what was a mere presidency was converted into a thoroughgoing leadership, in short, into the premier's office of to-day. It is commonly regarded that the first person who fulfilled the functions of prime minister in the modern sense was Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of the Treasury from 1715 to 1717 and from 1721 to 1742. The phrase "prime minister" was not at that time in use, but that the realities of the office existed is indicated by a motion made in the Commons attacking Walpole on the ground that he had "grasped in his own hands every branch of government; had attained the sole direction of affairs; had monopolized all the powers of the crown; had compassed the disposal of all places, pensions, titles, and rewards"--almost precisely, as one writer puts it, what the present premier is doing and is expected to do.[98] By the time of the establishment of (p. 073) the ministry of the younger Pitt, in 1783, the ascendancy of the premier among his colleagues was an accomplished fact and was recognized as altogether legitimate. The enormous power of the premier, arising immediately upon the ruins of the royal prerogative, was brought virtually to completion when, during the later years of George III., the rule became fixed that in constituting a ministry the king should but ratify the choice of officials made by the premier. [Footnote 98: Moran, The English Government, 99.] Not until 1906 was the premier's office recognized by law,[99] but through more than a century no other public position in the nation has been comparable with it in volume of actual ruling power. Within the ministry, more particularly the cabinet, the premier is the guiding force. He presides, as a rule, at cabinet meetings; he advises with colleagues upon all matters of consequence to the administration's welfare; and, although he will shrink from doing it, he may require of his colleagues that they acquiesce in his views, with the alternative of his resignation.[100] He occupies one of the high offices of state, usually that of First Lord of the Treasury; and, although ordinarily his own portfolio will not require much of his time or energy, he must maintain as close a watch as may be over the affairs of every one of the departments in which his appointees have been placed. The prime minister, is, furthermore, the link between the cabinet and, on the one hand, the crown, and, on the other, Parliament. On behalf of the cabinet he advises with the sovereign, communicating information respecting ministerial acts and synopses of the daily debates in Parliament. In the house of which he is a member he represents (p. 074) the cabinet as a whole, makes such statements as are necessary relative to general aspects of the government's policy, and speaks, as a rule, upon every general or important projected piece of legislation. As a matter of both theory and historical fact, the premier who belongs to the House of Commons is more advantageously situated than one who sits in the Lords.[101] [Footnote 99: In a statute fixing the order of precedence of public dignitaries. The premier's position, however, was defined by a royal warrant of December, 1905.] [Footnote 100: The resignation of the premier terminates _ipso facto_ the life of the ministry. An excellent illustration of the accustomed subordination of individual differences of opinion to the interests of cabinet solidarity is afforded by some remarks made by Mr. Asquith, December 4, 1911, to a deputation of the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage. The deputation had called to protest against the Government's announced purpose to attach a suffrage amendment (if carried in the House of Commons) to a forthcoming measure of franchise reform. The Premier explained that he was, and always had been, of the opinion that "the grant of the parliamentary franchise to women in this country would be a political mistake of a very grievous kind." "So far," he continued, "we are in complete harmony with one another. On the other hand, I am, as you know, for the time being the head of the Government, in which a majority of my colleagues, a _considerable_ majority of my colleagues--I may say that without violating the obligation of cabinet secrecy...--are of a different opinion; and the Government in those circumstances has announced a policy which is the result of their combined deliberations, and by which it is the duty of all their members, and myself not least, to abide loyally. That is the position, so far as I am personally concerned."] [Footnote 101: Low, The Governance of England, Chap. 9; M. Sibert, Étude sur le premier ministre en Angleterre depuis ses origines jusqu'à l'époque contemporaine (Paris, 1909).] *78. The Cabinet's Central Position.*--In the English governmental system the cabinet is in every sense the keystone of the arch. Its functions are both executive and legislative, and indeed, to employ the figure of Bagehot, it comprises the hyphen that joins, the buckle that fastens, the executive and the legislative departments together.[102] As has been pointed out, the uses of the crown are by no means wholly ornamental. None the less, the actual executive of the nation is the cabinet. It is within the cabinet circle that administrative policies are decided upon, and it is by the cabinet ministers and their subordinates in the several departments that these policies, and the laws of the land generally, are carried into effect. On the other side, the cabinet members not only occupy seats in one or the other of the houses of Parliament; collectively they direct the processes of legislation. They--primarily the prime minister--prepare the Speech from the Throne, in which at the opening of a parliamentary session the state of the country is reviewed and a programme of legislation is outlined. They formulate, introduce, explain, and advocate needful legislative measures upon all manner of subjects; and although bills may be submitted in either house by private members it is a recognized principle that all measures of large importance shall emanate directly or indirectly from the cabinet. Statistics demonstrate that measures introduced by private members have but an infinitesimal chance of enactment. [Footnote 102: The English Constitution (new ed.), 79.] In effect, the cabinet comprises a parliamentary committee chosen, as Bagehot bluntly puts it, to rule the nation. If a cabinet group does not represent the ideas and purposes of Parliament as a whole, it at least represents those of the majority of the preponderating chamber; and that is ample to give it, during the space of its tenure of office, a thoroughgoing command of the situation. The basal fact of the political system is the control of party, and within the party the power that governs is the cabinet. "The machinery," says Lowell, "is one of wheels within wheels; the outside ring consisting of the (p. 075) party that has a majority in the House of Commons; the next ring being the ministry, which contains the men who are most active within that party; and the smallest of all being the cabinet, containing the real leaders or chiefs. By this means is secured that unity of party action which depends upon placing the directing power in the hands of a body small enough to agree, and influential enough to control."[103] [Footnote 103: Government of England, I., 56. The best discussion of the organization, functions, and relationships of the cabinet is contained in Lowell, _op. cit._, I., Chaps. 2-3, 17-18, 22-23. Other good general accounts are Low, Governance of England, Chaps. 2-4, 8-9; Moran, English Government, Chaps. 4-9; Macy, English Constitution, Chap. 6; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1, Chap. 2; and Maitland, Constitutional History of England, 387-430. A detailed and still valuable survey is in Todd, Parliamentary Government, Parts 3-4. A brilliant study is Bagehot, English Constitution, especially Chaps. 1, 6-9. The growth of the cabinet is well described in Blauvelt, The Development of Cabinet Government in England; and a monograph of value is P. le Vasseur, Le cabinet britannique sous la reine Victoria (Paris, 1902). For an extended bibliography see Select List of Books on the Cabinets of England and America (Washington, 1903), compiled in the Library of Congress under the direction of A. P. C. Griffin.] CHAPTER IV (p. 076) PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS *79. Antiquity and Importance.*--The British Parliament is at once the oldest, the most comprehensive in jurisdiction, and the most powerful among modern legislative assemblages. In structure, and to some extent in function, it is a product, as has appeared, of the Middle Ages. The term "parliament," employed originally to denote a discussion or conference, was applied officially to the Great Council in 1275;[104] and by the opening of the fourteenth century the institution which the English know to-day by that name had come clearly into existence, being then, indeed, what technically it still is--the king and the three estates of the realm, i.e., the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons. During upwards of a hundred years the three estates sat and deliberated separately. By the close of the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377), however, the bicameral principle had become fixed, and throughout the whole of its subsequent history (save during the Cromwellian era of experimentation) Parliament has comprised uninterruptedly, aside from the king, the two branches which exist at the present time, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, or, strictly, the Lords of Parliament and the Representatives of the Commons. [Footnote 104: In the First Statute of Westminster.] The range of jurisdiction which, step by step, these chambers, both separately and conjointly, have acquired has been broadened until, so far as the dominions of the British crown extend, it covers all but the whole of the domain of human government. And within this enormous expanse of political control the competence of the chambers knows, in neither theory nor fact, any restriction. "The British Parliament, ..." writes Mr. Bryce, "can make and unmake any and every law, change the form of government or the succession to the crown, interfere with the course of justice, extinguish the most sacred private rights of the citizen. Between it and the people at large there is no legal distinction, because the whole plenitude of the people's rights and powers resides in it, just as if the whole nation were present within the chamber where it sits. In point of legal theory it is the nation, being the historical successor of the Folk Moot of our Teutonic forefathers. Both practically and legally, it is to-day the only (p. 077) and the sufficient depository of the authority of the nation; and it is therefore, within the sphere of law, irresponsible and omnipotent."[105] Whether the business in hand be constituent or legislative, whether ecclesiastical or temporal, the right of Parliament--or, more accurately "the King in Parliament"--to discuss and to dispose is indisputable. [Footnote 105: The American Commonwealth (3d ed.), I., 35-36.] I. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PRIOR TO 1832 *80. Present Ascendancy.*--Legally, as has been explained, Parliament consists of the king, the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the commons. For practical purposes, however, it is the House of Commons alone. "When," as Spencer Walpole wrote a quarter of a century ago, "a minister consults Parliament he consults the House of Commons; when the Queen dissolves Parliament she dissolves the House of Commons. A new Parliament is simply a new House of Commons."[106] The gathering of the "representatives of the commons" at Westminster is, and has long been, without question the most important agency of government in the kingdom. The House of Commons consists at the present day of 670 members, of whom 465 sit for English constituencies, 30 for Welsh, 72 for Scottish, and 103 for Irish. Nine of the members are chosen, under somewhat special conditions, by the universities, but the remaining 661 are elected in county or borough constituencies under franchise arrangements, which, while based upon residence and property qualifications, fall not far short of manhood suffrage. The chamber is at the same time the preponderating repository of power in the national government and the prime organ of the popular will. It is in consequence of its prolonged and arduous development that Great Britain has attained democracy in national government; and the influence of English democracy as actualized in the House of Commons upon the political ideas and the governmental agencies of the outlying world, both English-speaking and non-English-speaking, is simply incalculable. [Footnote 106: The Electorate and the Legislature (London, 1892), 48.] *81. Undemocratic Character at the Opening of the Nineteenth Century.*--"The virtue, the spirit, the essence of the House of Commons," once declared Edmund Burke, "consists in its being the express image of the nation." In the eighteenth century, however, when this assertion was made, the House of Commons was, in point of fact, far from constituting such an "image." Until, indeed, the nineteenth century was well advanced the nominally popular parliamentary branch was in reality representative, not of the mass of the nation, but (p. 078) of the aristocratic and governing elements, at best of the well-to-do middle classes; and a correct appreciation of the composition and character of the chamber as it to-day exists requires some allusion to the process by which its democratization was accomplished. In 1832--the year of the first great Reform Act--the House of Commons consisted of 658 members, of whom 186 represented the forty counties and 472 sat for two hundred three boroughs. The apportionment of both county and borough members was haphazard and grossly inequitable. In the Unites States, and in many European countries, it is required by constitutional provision that following a decennial census there shall be a reapportionment of seats in the popular legislative chamber, the purpose being, of course, to preserve substantial equality among the electoral constituencies and, ultimately, an essential parity of political power among the voters. At no time, however, has there been in Great Britain either legislation or the semblance of a tradition in respect to this matter. Reapportionment has taken place only partially and at irregular intervals, and at but a few times in the history of the nation have constituencies represented at Westminster been even approximately equal. Save that, in 1707, forty-five members were added to represent Scotland and, in 1801, one hundred to sit for Ireland, the identity of the constituencies represented in the Commons continued all but unchanged from the reign of Charles II. to the reform of 1832. *82. Need of a Redistribution of Seats.*--The population changes, in respect to both growth and distribution, falling within this extended period were, however, enormous. In 1689 the population of England and Wales was not in excess of 5,500,000. The census of 1831 revealed in these countries a population of 14,000,000. In the seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries the great mass of the English people lived in the south and east. Liverpool was but an insignificant town, Manchester a village, and Birmingham a sand-hill. But the industrial revolution had the effect of bringing coal, iron, and water-power into enormous demand, and after 1775 the industrial center, and likewise the population center, of the country was shifted rapidly toward the north. In the hitherto almost uninhabited valleys of Lancashire and Yorkshire sprang up a multitude of factory towns and cities. In Parliament these fast-growing populations were either glaringly under-represented or not represented at all. In 1831 the ten southernmost counties of England contained a population of 3,260,000 and returned to Parliament 235 members.[107] At the same time the six northernmost counties contained a population of 3,594,000, but (p. 079) returned only 68 members. Cornwall, with 300,000 inhabitants, had 42 representatives; Lancashire, with 1,330,000, had 14. Among towns, Birmingham and Manchester, each with upwards of 100,000 people, and Leeds and Sheffield, each with 50,000, had no representation whatever. On the other hand, boroughs were entitled to representation which contained ridiculously scant populations, or even no population at all. Gatto, in Surrey, was a park; Old Sarum, in Wiltshire, was a deserted hill; the remains of what once was Dunwich were under the waves of the North Sea. Bosseney, in Cornwall, was a hamlet of three cottages, eight of whose nine electors belonged to a single family. But Bosseney sent two members to the House of Commons. [Footnote 107: That is to say, the quota of members mentioned was returned by the counties and by the boroughs contained geographically within them.] *83. County and Borough Franchise in 1831.*--Not only was there, thus, the most glaring lack of adjustment of parliamentary representation to the distribution of population; where the right of representation existed, the franchise arrangements under which members were elected were hopelessly heterogeneous and illiberal. Originally, as has been pointed out,[108] the representatives of the counties were chosen in the county court by all persons who were entitled to attend and to take part in the proceedings of that body. In 1429, during the reign of Henry VI., an act was passed ostensibly to prevent riotous and disorderly elections, wherein it was stipulated that county electors should thereafter comprise only such male residents of the county as possessed free land or tenement which would rent for as much as forty shillings a year above all charges.[109] Leaseholders, copyholders, small freeholders, and all non-landholders were denied the suffrage altogether. Even in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the number of forty-shilling freeholders was small. With the concentration of land in fewer hands, incident to the agrarian revolution of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it bore an increasingly diminutive ratio to the aggregate county population, and by 1832 the county electors comprised, as a rule, only a handful of large landed proprietors. Within the boroughs the franchise arrangements existing at the date mentioned were complicated and diverse beyond the possibility of general characterization. Many of the boroughs had been accorded parliamentary representation by the most arbitrary and haphazard methods, and at no time prior to 1830 was there legislation which so much as attempted to regulate the conditions of voting within them. There were "scot and lot" boroughs, "potwalloper" boroughs, burgage boroughs, corporation or "close" boroughs, and "freemen" boroughs, to mention only the more important of the types that (p. 080) can be distinguished.[110] In some of these the franchise was, at least in theory, fairly democratic; but in most of them it was restricted by custom or local regulation to petty groups of property-holders or taxpayers, to members of the municipal corporations, or even to members of a favored guild. With few exceptions, the borough franchise was illogical, exclusive, and non-expansive. [Footnote 108: See p. 23.] [Footnote 109: Equivalent in present values to £30 or £40.] [Footnote 110: See p. 23.] *84. Political Corruption.*--A third fact respecting electoral conditions in the earlier nineteenth century is the astounding prevalence of illegitimate political influence and of sheer corruption. Borough members were very commonly not true representatives at all, but nominees of peers, of influential commoners, or of the government. It has been estimated that of the 472 borough members not more than 137 may be regarded as having been in any proper sense elected. The remainder sat for "rotten" boroughs, or for "pocket" boroughs whose populations were so meager or so docile that the borough might, as it were, be carried about in a magnate's pocket. In the whole of Cornwall there were only one thousand voters. Of the forty-two seats possessed by that section of the country twenty were controlled by seven peers, twenty-one were similarly controlled by eleven commoners, and but one was filled by free election. In 1780 it was asserted by the Duke of Richmond that a clear majority of the House of Commons was returned by six thousand persons. Bribery and other forms of corruption were so common that only the most shameless instances attracted public attention. Not merely votes, but seats, were bought and sold openly, and it was a matter of general understanding that £5,000 to £7,000 was the amount which a political aspirant might expect to be obliged to pay a borough-monger for bringing about his election. Seats were not infrequently advertised for sale in the public prints, and even for hire for a term of years.[111] [Footnote 111: The monumental treatise on the House of Commons prior to 1832 is E. Porritt, The Unreformed House of Commons: Parliamentary Representation before 1832, 2 vols. (2d ed., Cambridge, 1909). On the prevalence of corruption see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., 224-238, 254-262.] II. PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, 1832-1885 *85. Demand for Reform Prior to 1832.*--Active demand for a reformation of the conditions that have been described antedated the nineteenth century. As early as 1690, indeed, John Locke denounced the absurdities of the prevailing electoral system,[112] although at the time they were inconsiderable in comparison with what they became by 1832; and during the second half of the eighteenth century a (p. 081) number of interesting reform proposals--notably that of the elder Pitt in 1766, that of Wilkes in 1776, and that of the younger Pitt in 1785--were widely though fruitlessly discussed. In 1780 a group of public-spirited men established a Society for Constitutional Information which during the ensuing decade carried on actively a propaganda in behalf of parliamentary regeneration, and at a meeting under the auspices of this organization and presided over by Charles James Fox a programme was drawn up insisting upon innovations no less sweeping than the establishment of manhood suffrage, the creation of equal electoral districts, the payment of members, the abolition of property qualifications for members, and adoption of the secret ballot.[113] The revolution in France and the prolonged contest with Napoleon stayed the reform movement, but after 1815 agitation was actively renewed. The economic and social ills of the nation in the decade following the restoration of peace were many, and the idea took hold widely that only through a reconstitution of Parliament could adequate measures of amelioration be attained. The disposition of the Tory governments of the period was to resist the popular demand, or, at the most, to concede changes which would not affect the aristocratic character of the parliamentary chambers. But the reformers refused to be diverted from their fundamental object, and in the end the forces of tradition, conservatism, and vested interest were obliged to give way.[114] [Footnote 112: Treatises of Government, II., Chap. 13, § 157.] [Footnote 113: It is of interest to observe that every one of the demands enumerated found a place half a century later among the "six points" of the Chartists. See pp. 82-83. A bill embodying the proposed reforms was introduced by the Duke of Richmond in 1780, but met with small favor. A second society--The Friends of the People--was formed in 1792 to promote the cause.] [Footnote 114: The reform movement prior to 1832 is admirably sketched in May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., 264-280. See also G. L. Dickinson, The Development of Parliament during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1895), Chap. 1; J. H. Rose, The Rise and Growth of Democracy in Great Britain (London, 1897), Chap. 1; C. B. R. Kent, The English Radicals (London, 1899), Chaps. 1-2; and W. P. Hall, British Radicalism, 1791-1797 (New York, 1912).] *86. The Reform Act of 1832.*--The first notable triumph was the enactment of the Reform Bill of 1832. The changes wrought by this memorable piece of legislation were two-fold, the first relating to the distribution of seats in Parliament, the second to the extension of the franchise. The number of Scottish members was increased from 45 to 54; that of Irish, from 100 to 105; that of English and Welsh was reduced from 513 to 499. There was no general reapportionment of seats, no effort to bring the parliamentary constituencies into precise and uniform relation to the census returns. But the most glaringly inequitable of former conditions were remedied. Fifty-six (p. 082) boroughs, of populations under 2,000, were deprived entirely of representation,[115] thirty-one, of populations between 2,000 and 4,000, were reduced from two members to one, and one was reduced from four members to two. The 143 seats thus made available were redistributed, and the aggregate number (658) continued as before. Twenty-two large boroughs hitherto unrepresented were given two members each; twenty-one others were given one additional member each; and a total of sixty-five seats were allotted to twenty-seven of the English counties, the remaining thirteen being given to Scotland and Ireland. The redistribution had the effect of increasing markedly the political power of the northern and north-central portions of the country. The alterations introduced in the franchise were numerous and important. In the counties the forty-shilling freehold franchise, with some limitations, was retained; but the voting privilege was extended to all leaseholders and copyholders of land renting for as much as £10 a year, and to tenants-at-will holding an estate worth £50 a year. In the boroughs the right to vote was conferred upon all "occupiers" of houses worth £10 a year. The total number of persons enfranchised was approximately 455,000. By basing the franchise exclusively upon the ownership or occupancy of property of considerable value the reform fell short of admitting to political power the great mass of factory employees and of agricultural laborers, and for this reason it was roundly opposed by the more advanced liberal elements. If, however, the voting privilege had not been extended to the masses it had been brought appreciably nearer them; and--what was almost equally important--it had been made substantially uniform, for the first time, throughout the realm.[116] [Footnote 115: Of the fifty-six all save one had returned two members.] [Footnote 116: The more important parts of the text of the Reform Bill of 1832 are printed in Robertson, Statutes, Cases and Documents, 197-212.] *87. The Chartist Movement.*--The act of 1832 possessed none of the elements of finality. Its authors were in general content, but with the lapse of time it was made increasingly manifest that the nation was not. Political power was still confined to the magnates of the kingdom, the townsfolk who were able to pay a £10 annual rental, and the well-to-do copyholders and leaseholders of rural districts. Whigs and Tories of influence alike insisted that further innovation could not be contemplated, but the radicals and the laboring masses insisted no less resolutely that the reformation which had been begun should be carried to its logical conclusion. The demands upon which emphasis was especially placed were gathered up in the "six points" of the People's Charter, promulgated in final form May 8, 1838. The six points were: (1) universal suffrage for males over twenty-one years of age, (p. 083) (2) equal electoral districts, (3) voting by secret ballot, (4) annual sessions of Parliament, (5) the abolition of property qualifications for members of the House of Commons, and (6) payment of members. The barest enumeration of these demands is sufficient to reveal the political backwardness of the England of three-quarters of a century ago. Not only was the suffrage still severely restricted and the basis of representation antiquated and unfair; voting was oral and public, and only men who were qualified by the possession of property were eligible for election.[117] [Footnote 117: Rose, Rise and Growth of Democracy, Chaps. 6-8; Kent, The English Radicals, Chap. 3; and R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, 1837-1854 (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1894).] *88. The Representation of the People Act of 1867.*--After a decade of spectacular propaganda Chartism collapsed, without having attained tangible results. None the less, the day was not long postponed when the forces of reform, sobered and led by practical statesmen, were enabled to realize one after another of their fundamental purposes. In 1858 the second Derby government acquiesced in the enactment of a measure by which all property qualifications hitherto required of English, Welsh, and Irish members were abolished,[118] and after 1860 projects for franchise extension were considered with increasing seriousness. In 1867 the third Derby government, whose guiding spirit was Disraeli, carried a bill providing for an electoral reform of a more thoroughgoing character than any persons save the most uncompromising of the radicals had ever asked or desired. This Representation of the People Act modified but slightly the distribution of parliamentary seats. The total number of seats remained unchanged, as did Ireland's quota of 105; Scotland's apportionment was increased from 54 to 60, while that of England and Wales was decreased from 499 to 493; and in the course of the re-allotment that was made eleven boroughs lost the right of representation and thirty-five others were reduced from two members to one. The fifty-two seats thus vacated were utilized to enfranchise twelve new borough and three university constituencies and to increase the representation of a number of the more populous towns and counties. [Footnote 118: By law of 1710 it had been required that county members should possess landed property worth £600, and borough members worth £300, a year. These qualifications were very commonly evaded, but they were not abolished until 1858.] The most important provisions of the Act were, however, those relating to the franchise. In England and Wales the county franchise was guaranteed to men whose freehold was of the value of forty shillings a year, to copyholders and leaseholders of the annual value of £5, and to householders whose rent amounted to not less than £12 a year. (p. 084) The twelve pound occupation franchise was new,[119] and the qualification for copyholders and leaseholders was reduced from £10 to £5; otherwise the county franchise was unchanged. The borough franchise was modified profoundly. Heretofore persons were qualified to vote as householders only in the event that their house was worth as much as £10 a year. Now the right was conferred upon every man who occupied, as owner or as tenant, for twelve months, a dwelling-house, or any portion thereof utilized as a separate dwelling, without regard to its value. Another newly established franchise admitted to the voting privilege all lodgers occupying for as much as a year rooms of the clear value, unfurnished, of £10 a year. The effect of these provisions was to enfranchise the urban working population, even as the act of 1832 had enfranchised principally the urban middle class. So broad, indeed, did the urban franchise at this point become that little room was left for its modification subsequently. As originally planned, Disraeli's measure would have enlarged the electorate by not more than 100,000; as amended and carried, it practically doubled the voting population, raising it from 1,370,793 immediately prior to 1867 to 2,526,423 in 1871.[120] By the act of 1832 the middle classes had been enfranchised; by that of 1867 political power was thrown in no small degree into the hands of the masses. Only two large groups of people remained now outside the pale of political influence, i.e., the agricultural laborers and the miners. [Footnote 119: It may be regarded, however, as taking the place of the £50 rental franchise.] [Footnote 120: It is to be observed that these figures are for the United Kingdom as a whole, embracing the results not merely of the act of 1867 applying to England and Wales but of the two acts of 1868 introducing similar, though not identical, changes in Scotland and Ireland.] *89. The Representation of the People Act of 1884.*--That the qualifications for voting in one class of constituencies should be conspicuously more liberal than in another class was an anomaly, and in a period when anomalies were at last being eliminated from the English electoral system remedy could not be long delayed. February 5, 1884, the second Gladstone ministry redeemed a campaign pledge by introducing a bill extending to the counties the same electoral regulations that had been established in 1867 in the towns. The measure passed the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords by reason of the fact that it was not accompanied by a bill for the redistribution of seats. By an agreement between the two houses a threatened deadlock was averted, and the upshot was that before the end of the year the Lords accepted the Government's bill, on the understanding that its enactment was to be followed immediately by the introduction of a redistribution measure. The Representation of the People Act of (p. 085) 1884 is in form disjointed and difficult to understand, but the effect of it is easy to state. By it there was established a uniform household franchise and a uniform lodger franchise in all counties and boroughs of the United Kingdom. The occupation of any land or tenement of a clear annual value of £10 was made a qualification in boroughs and counties alike; and persons occupying a house by virtue of office or employment were to be deemed "occupiers" for the purpose of the act. The measure doubled the county electorate and increased the total electorate by some 2,000,000, or approximately forty per cent. Its most important effect was to enfranchise the workingman in the country, as the act of 1867 had enfranchised the workingman in the town. *90. The Redistribution of Seats Act, 1885.*--In 1885, the two great parties co-operating, there was passed the Redistribution of Seats Act which had been promised. Now for the first time in English history attempt was made to apportion representation in the House of Commons in something like strict accordance with population densities. In the first place, the total number of members was increased from 658[121] to 670, and of the number 103 were allotted to Ireland, 72 to Scotland, and 495 to England and Wales. In the next place, the method by which former redistributions had been accomplished, i.e., transferring seats more or less arbitrarily from flagrantly over-represented boroughs to more populous boroughs and counties, was replaced by a method based upon the principle of equal electoral constituencies, each returning one member. In theory a constituency was made to comprise 50,000 people. Boroughs containing fewer than 15,000 inhabitants were disfranchised as boroughs, becoming for electorial purposes portions of the counties in which they were situated. Boroughs of between 15,000 and 50,000 inhabitants were allowed to retain, or if previously unrepresented were given, one member each. Those of between 50,000 and 165,000 were given two members, and those of more than 165,000 three, with one in addition for every additional 50,000 people. The same general principle was followed in the counties. Thus the city of Liverpool, which prior to 1885 sent three members to Parliament, fell into nine distinct constituencies, each returning one member, and the great northern county of Lancashire, which since 1867 had been divided into four portions each returning two members, was now split into twenty-three divisions with one member each. The boroughs which prior to 1885 elected two members, and at the redistribution retained that number, remained single constituencies for the election of those two members. Of these boroughs there are to-day twenty-three. They, together (p. 086) with the city of London and the three universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, comprise the existing twenty-seven two-member constituencies. By partition of the counties, of the old boroughs having more than two members, and of the new boroughs with only two members, all save these twenty-seven constituencies have been erected into separate, single-member electoral divisions, each with its own name and identity.[122] [Footnote 121: Strictly 652, since after 1867 four boroughs, returning six members, were disfranchised.] [Footnote 122: On the reforms of the period 1832-1885 see Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 18, and XI., Chap. 12; Dickinson, Development of Parliament, Chap. 2; Rose, Rise and Growth of Democracy, Chaps. 2, 10-13; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 10. An excellent survey is May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., Chap. 6, and III., Chap. 1. Mention may be made of H. Cox, A History of the Reform Bills of 1866 and 1867 (London, 1868); J. S. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (London, 1861); and T. Hare, The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal (3d ed., London, 1865). An excellent survey by a Swiss scholar is contained in C. Borgeaud, The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England, trans. by B. Hill (London, 1894), and a useful volume is J. Murdock, A History of Constitutional Reform in Great Britain and Ireland (Glasgow, 1885). The various phases of the subject are covered, of course, in the general histories of the period, notably S. Walpole, History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815, 6 vols. (new ed., London, 1902); W. N. Molesworth, History of England from the year 1830-1874, 3 vols. (London, 1874); J. F. Bright, History of England, 5 vols. (London, 1875-1894); H. Paul, History of Modern England, 5 vols. (London, 1904-1906); and S. Low and L. C. Sanders, History of England during the Reign of Victoria (London, 1907). Three biographical works are of special service: S. Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols. (London, 1889); J. Morley, Life of William E. Gladstone, 3 vols. (London, 1903); and W. F. Monypenny, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, vols. 1-2 (London and New York, 1910-1912).] III. THE FRANCHISE AND THE ELECTORAL QUESTIONS OF TO-DAY *91. The Franchise as It Is.*--By the measures of 1884 and 1885 the House of Commons was placed upon a broadly democratic basis. Both measures stand to-day upon the statute-books, and neither has been amended in any important particular. With respect to the existing franchises there are two preponderating facts. One of them is that individuals, as such, do not possess the privilege of voting; on the contrary, the possession of the privilege is determined all but invariably in relation to the ownership or occupation of property. The other is that the franchise system, while substantially uniform throughout the kingdom, is none the less the most complicated in Europe. There are three important franchises which are universal and two which are not. In the first group are included: (1) occupancy, as owner or tenant, of land or tenement of a clear yearly value of £10; (2) occupancy, as owner or tenant, of a dwelling-house, or part of a house used as a separate dwelling, without regard to its value; (p. 087) and (3) occupancy of lodgings of the value, unfurnished, of £10 a year. The two franchises which are not universal are (1) ownership of land of forty shillings yearly value or occupation of land under certain other specified conditions--this being applicable only to counties and, to a small extent, to boroughs which are counties in themselves; and (2) residence of freemen in those towns in which they had a right to vote prior to 1832. The conditions and exceptions by which these various franchises are attended are so numerous that few people in England save lawyers make a pretense of knowing them all, and the volume of litigation which arises from the attempted distinction between "householder" and "lodger," and from other technicalities of the subject, is enormous. Voters must be twenty-one years of age, and there are several complicated requirements in respect to the period of occupation of land and of residence, and likewise in respect to the fulfillment of the formalities of registration.[123] There are also various incidental disqualifications. No peer, other than a peer of Ireland who is in possession of a seat in the House of Commons, may vote; persons employed as election agents, canvassers, clerks, or messengers may not vote, nor may the returning officers of the constituencies, save when necessary to break a tie between two candidates; and aliens, felons, and, under stipulated conditions, persons in receipt of public charity, are similarly debarred. In the aggregate, however, the existing franchises approach measurably near manhood suffrage. It has been computed that the ratio of electors to population is approximately one in six, whereas, the normal proportion of males above the age of twenty-one, making no allowance for paupers, criminals, and other persons commonly disqualified by law, is somewhat less than one in four. The only classes of adult males at present excluded regularly from the voting privilege are domestic servants, bachelors living with their parents and occupying no premises on their own account, and persons whose change of abode periodically deprives them of a vote. [Footnote 123: On the process of registration see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 134-137, and M. Caudel, L'enregistrement des électeurs en Angleterre, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1906.] "The present condition of the franchise," asserts Lowell, "is, indeed, historical rather than rational. It is complicated, uncertain, expensive in the machinery required, and excludes a certain number of people whom there is no reason for excluding, while it admits many people who ought not to be admitted if any one is to be debarred."[124] During the past generation there has been demand from a variety (p. 088) of quarters that the conditions of the franchise, and, indeed, the electoral system as a whole, be overhauled, co-ordinated, and liberalized; and at the date of writing (1912) there is pending in Parliament a measure of fundamental importance looking in this direction. The electoral changes which have been most widely advocated, at least in recent years, are four in number: (1) a fresh apportionment of seats in the Commons in accordance with the distribution of population; (2) the extension of the franchise to classes of men at present debarred; (3) the abolition of the plural vote; and (4) the enfranchisement of women. [Footnote 124: Government of England, I., 213. On the franchise system see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., Chap. 4 and Lowell, _op. cit._, I., Chap. 9.] *92. The Question of Redistribution of Seats.*--As has been pointed out, the Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885 established constituencies in which there was some approach to equality. The principle was far from completely carried out. For example, the newly created borough of Chelsea contained upwards of 90,000 people, while the old borough of Windsor had fewer than 20,000. But the inequalities left untouched by the act were slight in comparison with those which have arisen during a quarter of a century in which there has been no reapportionment whatsoever. In 1901 the least populous constituency of the United Kingdom, the borough of Newry in Ireland, contained but 13,137 people, while the southern division of the county of Essex contained 217,030; yet each was represented by a single member. This means, of course, a gross disparity in the weight of popular votes, and, in effect, the over-representation of certain sets of opinions and interests. In January, 1902, an amendment to a parliamentary address urging the desirability of redistribution was warmly debated in the Commons, and, on the eve of its fall, in the summer of 1905, the Balfour government submitted a Redistribution Resolution designed to meet the demands of the "one vote, one value" propagandists. At this time it was pointed out that whereas immediately after the reform of 1885 the greatest ratio of disparity among the constituencies was 5.8 to 1, in twenty years it had risen to 16.5 to 1. The plan proposed provided for the fixing of the average population to be represented by a member at from 50,000 to 65,000, the giving of eighteen additional seats to England and Wales and of four to Scotland, the reduction of Ireland's quota by twenty-two, and such further readjustments as would bring down the ratio of greatest disparity to 6.8 to 1. Under a ruling of the Speaker to the effect that the resolution required to be divided into eight or nine parts, to be debated separately, the proposal was withdrawn. It was announced that a bill upon the subject would be brought in, but the early retirement of the ministry rendered this impossible, (p. 089) and throughout succeeding years this aspect of electoral reform yielded precedence to other matters.[125] [Footnote 125: _Annual Register_ (1905), 193.] A special difficulty inherent in the subject is imposed by the peculiar situation of Ireland. By reason of the decline of Ireland's population during the past half century that portion of the United Kingdom has come to be markedly over-represented at Westminster. The average Irish commoner sits for but 44,147 people, while the average English member represents 66,971. If a new distribution were to be made in strict proportion to members Ireland would lose 30 seats and Wales three, while Scotland would gain one and England about 30. It is contended by the Irish people, however, that the Act of Union of 1800, whereby Ireland was guaranteed as many as one hundred parliamentary seats, is in the nature of a treaty, whose stipulations cannot be violated save by the consent of both contracting parties; and so long as the Irish are not allowed a separate parliament they may be depended upon to resist, as they did resist in 1905, any proposal contemplating the reduction of their voting strength in the parliament of the United Kingdom. *93. The Problem of the Plural Vote.*--Aside from the enfranchisement of women, the principal suffrage questions in Great Britain to-day are those pertaining to the conferring of the voting privilege upon adult males who are still debarred, the abolition of the plural vote, and a general simplification and unification of franchise arrangements. The problem of the plural vote is an old one. Under existing law an elector may not vote more than once in a single constituency, nor in more than one division of the same borough; but aside from this, and except in so far as is not prohibited by residence requirements, he is entitled to vote in every constituency in which he possesses a qualification. In the United States and in the majority of European countries a man is possessed of but one vote, and any arrangement other than this would seem to contravene the principle of civic equality which lies at the root of popular government. In England there have been repeated attempts to bring about the establishment of an unvarying rule of "one man, one vote," but never as yet with success. The number of plural voters--some 525,000--is relatively small, but when it is remembered that a single voter may cast during a parliamentary election as many as fifteen or twenty votes it will be observed that the number quite suffices to turn the scale in many closely contested constituencies. An overwhelming proportion of the plural voters are identified with the Conservative party, whence it arises that the Liberals are, and long have been, hostile to the privilege. Following the Liberal triumph at the elections of 1906 (p. 090) a Plural Voting Bill was introduced requiring that every elector possessed of more than one vote should be registered in the constituency of his choice and in no other one. The measure passed the Commons, by a vote of 333 to 104, but the Conservative majority in the Lords compassed its defeat, alleging that while it was willing to consider a complete scheme of electoral reform the proposed bill was not of such character.[126] [Footnote 126: May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 48-49. It may be noted that an able royal commission, appointed in December, 1908, to study foreign electoral systems and to recommend modifications of the English system, reported in 1910 adversely to the early adoption of any form of proportional representation.] *94. The Franchise Bill of 1912.*--Soon after the final enactment, in August, 1911, of the Parliament Bill whereby the complete ascendancy of the Commons was secured in both finance and legislation[127] the Liberal government of Mr. Asquith made known its intention to bring forward at an early date a comprehensive measure of franchise reform. During the winter of 1911-1912 the project was formulated, and in the early summer of 1912 the bill was introduced. The adoption of the measure in its essentials is not improbable, although at the date of writing[128] it is by no means assured. In the main, the bill makes provision for three reforms. In the first place, it substitutes for the present complicated and illogical network of suffrages a simple residential or occupational qualification, thereby extending the voting privilege to practically all adult males. In the second place, it simplifies the process of registration and, in effect, enfranchises large numbers of men who in the past have been unable to vote because of change of residence or of the difficulties of the registration process. Finally, it abolishes absolutely both the plural vote and the separate representation of the universities. The effect of the first two of these provisions, it is estimated, would be to enlarge the electorate by 2,500,000 votes, that of the third, to reduce it by upwards of 600,000;[129] so that the net result of the three would be to raise an existing electorate of eight millions to one of ten millions. A total of twenty-eight franchise statutes are totally, and forty-four others are partially, repealed by the bill. The ground upon which the measure, in its earlier stages, was attacked principally was its lack of provision for a redistribution of seats. The defense of the Government has been that, while the imperative need of redistribution is recognized, such redistribution can be effected only after it shall be known precisely what the franchise arrangements (p. 091) of the kingdom are to be.[130] [Footnote 127: See pp. 110-113.] [Footnote 128: October, 1912.] [Footnote 129: The number of plural voters is placed at 525,000; that of graduates who elect the university representatives, at 49,614.] [Footnote 130: A timely volume is J. King and F. W. Raffety, Our Electoral System; the Demand for Reform (London, 1912).] *95. The Question of Woman's Suffrage.*--It will be observed that the Franchise Bill restricts the franchise to adult males. The measure was shaped deliberately, however, to permit the incorporation of an amendment providing for the enfranchisement of women. It is a fact not familiarly known that English women of requisite qualifications were at one time in possession of the suffrage at national elections. They were not themselves allowed to vote, but a woman was privileged to pass on her qualifications temporarily to any man, and, prior to the seventeenth century, the privilege was occasionally exercised. It was not indeed, until the Reform Act of 1832 that the law of elections, by introducing the phrase "male persons," in effect vested the parliamentary franchise exclusively in men.[131] The first notable attempt made in Parliament to restore and extend the female franchise was that of John Stuart Mill in 1867. His proposed amendment to the reform bill of that year was defeated by a vote of 196 to 73. In 1870 a woman's suffrage measure drafted by Dr. Pankhurst and introduced in the Commons by John Bright passed its second reading by a majority of thirty-three, but was subsequently rejected. During the seventies and early eighties a vigorous propaganda was maintained and almost every session produced its crop of woman's suffrage bills. A determined attempt was made to secure the inclusion of a woman's suffrage clause in the Reform Bill of 1884. The proposed amendment was supported very generally by the press, but in consequence of a threat by Gladstone to the effect that if the amendment were carried the entire measure would be withdrawn the project was abandoned. The next chapter of importance in the history of the movement was inaugurated by the organization, in 1903, of the Women's Social and Political Union. In 1904 a suffrage bill was introduced but failed to become law. Within the past decade, however, the cause has made substantial headway, and by the spectacular character which it has assumed it has attracted wide attention. In March, 1912, a Woman's Enfranchisement measure was rejected in the House of Commons by the narrow margin of 222 to 208 votes. Premier Asquith is opposed to female enfranchisement, but his colleagues in the ministry are almost evenly divided upon the issue, and it is not inconceivable that a woman's suffrage measure may be carried through in the guise of an amendment to the pending Franchise Bill. If it were to be, and the qualifications should be made (p. 092) identical with those of men, the number of women voters would be approximately 10,500,000.[132] [Footnote 131: May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 61.] [Footnote 132: K. Schirmacher, The Modern Woman's Rights Movement, trans. by C. C. Eckhardt (New York, 1912), 58-96; B. Mason, The Story of the Woman's Suffrage Movement (London, 1911); E. S. Pankhurst, The Suffragette; the History of the Woman's Militant Suffrage Movement, 1905-1910 (London, 1911). The subject is surveyed briefly in May and Holland, Constitutional History, III., 59-66.] *96. Qualifications for Election.*--The regulations governing the qualifications essential for election to Parliament are to-day, on the whole, simple and liberal. The qualification of residence was replaced in the eighteenth century by a property qualification; but, as has been pointed out, in 1858 this likewise was swept away. Oaths of allegiance and oaths imposing religious tests once operated to debar many, but all that is now required of a member is a very simple oath or affirmation of allegiance, in a form compatible with any shade of religious belief or unbelief. Any male British subject who is of age is qualified for election, unless he belongs to one of a few small groups--notably peers (except Irish); clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, and the Church of Scotland; certain office-holders; bankrupts; and persons convicted of treason, felony, or corrupt practices. A member is not required to be a resident of the electoral district which he represents. Once elected, a man properly qualified cannot escape membership by resignation. He may be expelled, but the only means by which he can retire from the House voluntarily is the acceptance of some public post whose occupant is _ipso facto_ disqualified. To serve this end two or three sinecures are maintained, the best known being the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds. The member who desires to give up his seat accomplishes his purpose by applying for one of these offices, receiving it, and after having disqualified himself, resigning it. IV. ELECTORAL PROCEDURE AND REGULATIONS *97. Writs and Election Days.*--When a parliament is dissolved the royal proclamation wherein the dissolution is declared expresses the desire of the crown to have the advice of the people and announces the sovereign's will and pleasure to call a new parliament. With this proclamation as a warrant, the chancellors of Great Britain and Ireland forthwith issue writs of election, addressed to the returning officers of the counties and boroughs, i.e., in all Scotch and Irish constituencies and in the English counties the sheriffs, or their deputies, and in the English boroughs the mayors. The form of these writs, as well as the nature of the electoral procedure generally, is prescribed in the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Act, commonly known as the Ballot Act, of 1872.[133] Upon receipt of the proper (p. 093) writ the returning officer gives notice of the day and place of the election, and of the poll if it is known that the election will be contested. In the counties the election must take place within nine days, in the boroughs within four days, after receipt of the writ, but within these limits the date is fixed in each constituency by the returning officer. What actually happens on election day is: (1) all candidates for seats are placed formally in nomination; (2) if within an hour of the time fixed for the election the number of nominated candidates does not exceed the number of places to be filled, the election of these candidates is forthwith declared; and (3) if there is a contest the election is postponed to a polling day, to be fixed by the returning officer, in the counties from two to six, and in the boroughs not more than three, days distant. [Footnote 133: For the form of the writ see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 57.] *98. The Polling.*--Prior to 1872 candidates were nominated _viva voce_ at the "hustings," an outdoor platform erected for the purpose; but nowadays nominations are made in writing. It is required that a candidate shall be proposed by a registered elector of the constituency and that his nomination shall be assented to formally by nine other electors. The number of uncontested elections is invariably large (especially in Ireland, where, in many instances, it is useless to oppose a candidate to the Nationalists), the proportion reaching sometimes one-fourth, and even one-third. Polling is completed within an individual constituency during the course of a single day, the hours being from eight o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock in the evening, but under the arrangements that have been described it falls out that a national election is extended invariably through a period of more than two weeks. The system operates, of course, to the advantage of the plural voter, who is enabled to present himself at the polls from day to day in widely separated constituencies. For the convenience of voters constituencies are divided regularly into districts, or precincts. When the properly qualified and registered elector appears at the polls a ballot paper is presented to him containing the names of the candidates. He takes this to a screened compartment and places a cross-mark opposite the name or names of those for whom he desires to vote, after which the paper is deposited in a box. At the conclusion of the polling, the boxes are transmitted to the returning officer of the constituency, the votes are counted, and the result is declared. The writ which served as the returning officer's authority is indorsed with a certificate of the election and returned to the clerk of the Crown in Chancery. It is to be observed, however, that in the universities the Ballot Act does not apply. In these constituencies an elector may deliver his vote orally, or (p. 094) he may transmit it by proxy from his place of residence.[134] [Footnote 134: On electoral procedure see Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 10; M. MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament (London, 1897), 24-50; H. J. Bushby, Manual of the Practice of Elections for the United Kingdom (4th ed., London, 1874); W. Woodings, The Conduct and Management of Parliamentary Elections (4th ed., London, 1900); E. T. Powell, The Essentials of Self-Government, England and Wales (London, 1909); P. J. Blair, A Handbook of Parliamentary Elections (Edinburgh, 1909); and H. Fraser, The Law of Parliamentary Elections and Election Petitions (2d ed., London, 1910). A volume filled with interesting information is J. Grego, History of Parliamentary Elections and Electioneering from the Stuarts to Queen Victoria (new ed., London, 1892). The monumental work upon the entire subject is M. Powell (ed.), Rogers on Elections, 3 vols. (16th ed., London, 1897).] *99. Frequency of Elections: the Campaign.*--General elections do not take place in Great Britain with periodic regularity. The only positive requirement in the matter is that an election must be ordered when a parliament has attained the maximum lifetime allowed it by law. Prior to 1694 there was no stipulation upon this subject and the king could keep a parliament in existence as long as he liked. Charles II. retained for seventeen years the parliament called at his accession. From 1694 to 1716, however, the maximum term of a parliament was three years; from 1716 to 1911 it was seven years; to-day it is five years.[135] In point of fact, parliaments never last through the maximum period, and an average interval of three or four years between elections has been the rule. In most instances an election is precipitated more or less unexpectedly on an appeal to the country by a defeated ministry, and it not infrequently happens that an election turns all but completely upon a single issue and thus assumes the character of a national referendum upon the subject in hand. This was pre-eminently true of the last general election, that of December, 1910, at which the country was asked to sustain the Asquith government in its purpose to curb the independent authority of the House of Lords. In any event, the campaign by which the election is preceded is brief, although it continues throughout the electoral period, and, if the outcome is doubtful, tends to increase rather than to diminish in intensity. Appeals to the voters are made principally through public speaking, the controversial and illustrated press, the circulation of pamphlets and handbills, parades and mass-meetings, and the generous use of placards, cartoons, and other devices designed to attract and focus attention. Plans are laid, arguments are formulated, and (p. 095) leadership in public appeal is assumed by the members of the Government, led by the premier, and, on the other side, by the men who are the recognized leaders of the parliamentary Opposition.[136] [Footnote 135: The Representation of the People Act of 1867 made the duration of a parliament independent of a demise of the crown. The text of the Septennial Act and that of the Lords' Protest against the measure are printed in Robertson, Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 117-119.] [Footnote 136: M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, trans. by F. Clarke, 2 vols. (London, 1902), I., 442-501; MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 1-23. Among numerous articles descriptive of English parliamentary elections mention may be made of H. W. Lucy, The Methods of a British General Election, in _Forum_, Oct., 1900; S. Brooks, English and American Elections, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1910; W. T. Stead, The General Election in Great Britain, in _American Review of Reviews_, Feb., 1910; and d'Haussonville, Dix jours en Angleterre pendant les élections, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Feb. 1, 1910.] *100. The Regulation of Electoral Expenditure.*--Time was, and within the memory of men still living, when an English parliamentary election was attended by corrupt practices so universal and so shameless as to appear almost more ludicrous than culpable. Voters as a matter of course accepted the bribes that were tendered them and ate and drank and smoked and rollicked at the candidate's expense throughout the electoral period and were considered men of conscience indeed if they did not end by going over to the opposition. The notorious Northampton election of 1768, in the course of which a body of voters numbering under a thousand were the recipients of hospitalities from the backers of three candidates which aggregated upwards of a million pounds, was, of course, exceptional; but the history of countless other cases differed from it only in the amounts laid out. To-day an altogether different state of things obtains. From having been one of the most corrupt, Great Britain has become one of the most exemplary of nations in all that pertains to the proprieties of electoral procedure. The Ballot Act of 1872 contained provisions calculated to strengthen pre-existing corrupt practices acts, but the real turning point was the adoption of the comprehensive Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883. By this measure bribery (in seven enumerated forms) and treating were made punishable by imprisonment or fine and, under varying conditions, political disqualification. The number and functions of the persons who may be employed by the candidate to assist in a campaign were prescribed, every candidate being required to have a single authorized agent charged with the disbursement of all moneys (save certain specified "personal" expenditures) in the candidate's behalf and with the duty of submitting to the returning officer within thirty-five days after the election a sworn statement covering all receipts and expenditures. And, finally, the act fixed, upon a sliding scale in proportion to the size of the constituencies, the maximum amounts which candidates may legitimately expend. In boroughs containing not more than 2,000 registered voters the amount is (p. 096) £350, with an additional £30 for every thousand voters above the number mentioned. In rural constituencies, where proper outlays will normally be larger, the sum of £650 is allowed when the number of registered electors falls under 2,000, with £60 for each additional thousand. Beyond these sums the candidate is allowed an outlay of £100 for expenses of a purely personal character. The range of expenditure which is thus permitted by law is, of course, considerable, and the records of election cases brought into the courts demonstrate that not infrequently in practice its limits are exceeded. None the less, the effect of the law has been undeniably to restrain the outpouring of money by candidates, to purify politics, and at the same time to enable men of moderate means to stand for election who otherwise would be at grave disadvantage as against their wealthier and more lavish competitors. It is of interest to observe that by reason of the non-participation of the state in electoral costs there fall upon candidates certain charges which are unknown in the United States and other countries. The bills submitted by the returning officer must be paid by the candidates within the constituency, and these bills cover the publishing of notices of the election, the preparing and supplying of nomination papers, the cost of dies, ballot-paper, polling-stations, and printing, the fees of clerks, and, finally, the travelling expenses and fee of the returning officer himself. The candidate's share of this outlay may be as small as £25, but it is likely to be from £200 to £300 and may rise to as much as £600.[137] [Footnote 137: On the adoption of the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883 see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 31-33. The actual operation of the system established may be illustrated by citing a specific case. At the election of 1906 the maximum expenditure legally possible for Mr. Lloyd-George in his sparsely populated Carnarvon constituency was £470. His authorized agent, after the election, reported an outlay of £50 on agents, £27 on clerks and messengers, £189 on printing, postage, etc., £30 on public meetings, £25 on committee rooms, and £40 on miscellaneous matters--a total of £361. The candidate's personal expenditure amounted to £92, so that the total outlay of £462 fell short by a scant £8 of the sum that might legally have been laid out. Divided among the 3,221 votes that Mr. Lloyd-George received, his outlay per vote was 2s., 10d. At the same election Mr. Asquith's expenditure was £727; Mr. Winston Churchill's, £844; Mr. John Morley's, £479; Mr. Keir Hardie's, £623; Mr. James Bryce's, £480. In non-contested constituencies expenditures are small. In 1906 Mr. Redmond's was reported to be £25 and Mr. William O'Brien's, £20. In 1900 a total of 1,103 candidates for 670 seats expended £777,429 in getting 3,579,345 votes; in 1906, 1,273 candidates for the same 670 seats expended £1,166,858 in getting 5,645,104 votes; in January, 1910, 1,311 candidates laid out £1,296,382 in getting 6,667,394 votes. A well-informed article is E. Porritt, Political Corruption in England, in _North American Review_, Nov. 16, 1906.] CHAPTER V (p. 097) PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF LORDS I. COMPOSITION *101. Origins.*--With the possible exception of the Hungarian Table of Magnates, the British House of Lords is the most ancient second chamber among parliamentary bodies. It is, furthermore, among second chambers the largest and the most purely hereditary. Its descent can be traced directly from the Great Council of the Plantagenet period and, in the opinion of some scholars, from the witenagemot of Anglo-Saxon times.[138] To the Council belonged originally the nobility, and the clergy, greater and lesser. Practically, the body was composed of the more influential churchmen and the more powerful tenants-in-chief of the crown. In the course of time the lesser clergy found it convenient to confine their attention to the proceedings of the ecclesiastical assemblage known as Convocation; while the lesser nobles, i.e., the poorer and more uninfluential ones, found it to their interest to cast in their lot, not as formerly with the great barons and earls, but with the well-to-do though non-noble knights of the shire. From the elements that remained--the higher clergy and the greater nobles--developed directly the House of Lords. The lesser barons, the knights of the shire, and the burgesses, on the other hand, combined to form the House of Commons. [Footnote 138: "The House of Lords not only springs out of, it actually is, the ancient Witenagemot. I can see no break between the two." Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, 62. Professor Freeman, it must be remembered, was prone to glorify Anglo-Saxon institutions and to under-estimate the changes that were introduced in England through the agency of the Norman Conquest. For the most recent statement of the opposing view see Adams, Origin of the English Constitution, Chaps. 1-4.] *102. Princes of the Blood and Hereditary Peers.*--In respect to its fundamental constitution the House of Lords has undergone but slight modification during the many centuries of its existence. In respect, however, to the composition and size of the body changes have been numerous and important. There are in the chamber to-day at least six distinct groups of members, sitting by various rights and possessing a status which is by no means identical. The first comprises (p. 098) princes of the royal blood who are of age. The number of these is variable, but of course never large. They take precedence of the other nobility, but in point of fact seldom participate in the proceedings of the Chamber. The second group is the most important of all. It comprises the peers with hereditary seats and is itself divided properly into three groups: the peers of England created before the union with Scotland in 1707, the peers of Great Britain created between the date mentioned and the union with Ireland in 1801, and the peers of the United Kingdom created since that date. Technically, peers are created by the crown; but in practice their creation is controlled largely by the premier; and the act may be performed for the purpose of honoring men of distinction in law, letters, science, or business, or for the more practical purpose of altering the political complexion of the upper chamber.[139] The power to create peerages is unlimited[140] and, this being the only means by which the membership of the body can be increased at discretion, the power is one which is not infrequently exercised. Originally the right to sit as a peer was conferred simply by an individual writ of summons, or by the fact that such a writ had been issued to one's ancestor, but this method has long since been replaced by a formal grant of letters patent, accompanied by bestowal of the requisite writ. With exceptions to be noted, peerages are hereditary, and the heir assumes his parliamentary seat at the age of twenty-one. Peers are of five ranks--dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, and barons. The complicated rules governing the precedence of these classes are of large social, but of minor political, interest. [Footnote 139: The first peerage bestowed purely in recognition of literary distinction was that of Lord Tennyson in 1884, the peerages bestowed upon Macaulay and Bulwer Lytton having been determined upon in part under the influence of political considerations. The first professional artist to be honored with a peerage was Lord Leighton, in 1896. Lord Kelvin and Lord Lister are among well-known men of science who have been so honored. Lord Goschen's viscountcy was conferred, with universal approval, as the fitting reward of a great business career. The earldom of General Roberts and the viscountcies of Generals Wolseley and Kitchener were bestowed in recognition of military distinction. With some aptness the House of Lords has been denominated "the Westminster Abbey of living celebrities."] [Footnote 140: Except that, under existing law, the crown cannot (1) create a peer of Scotland, (2) create a peer of Ireland otherwise than as allowed by the Act of Union with Ireland, and (3) direct the devolution of a dignity otherwise than in accordance with limitations applying in the case of grants of real estate.] *103. Representative Peers of Scotland and of Ireland.*--A third group of members comprises the representative peers of Scotland. Under provision of the Act of Union of 1707, when a new parliament is summoned the whole body of Scottish peers elects sixteen of their number to sit as their representatives at Westminster. By custom (p. 099) the election takes place at Holyrood Palace in the city of Edinburgh.[141] The act of 1707 made no provision for the creation of Scottish peers, with the consequence that, through the extinction of noble families and the occasional conferring of a peerage of the United Kingdom upon a Scottish peer, the total number of Scottish peerages has been reduced from 165 to 33.[142] The tenure of a Scottish representative peer at Westminster expires with the termination of a parliament. A fourth group of members is the Irish. By the Act of Union of 1800 it was provided that not all of the peers of Ireland should be accorded seats in the House of Lords, but only twenty-eight of them, to be elected for life by the whole number of Irish peers. The number of Irish peerages was put in the course of gradual reduction and it is now under the prescribed maximum of one hundred.[143] Unlike the English and Scottish peers, Irish peers, if not elected to the House of Lords, may stand for election to the House of Commons, though they may not represent Irish constituencies.[144] While members of the Commons, however, they may not be elected to the Lords, nor may they participate in the choice of representative peers. [Footnote 141: For a statement of the process of election see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution (4th ed.), I., 219-229.] [Footnote 142: In 1909. Lowell, Government of England, I., 395.] [Footnote 143: The crown was authorized to create one Irish peerage only for every three such peerages that should become extinct. During the thirty years preceding the conferring of an Irish peerage upon Mr. Curzon, in 1898, the creation of Irish peerages was entirely suspended.] [Footnote 144: Lord Palmerston, for example, was an Irish peer, but sat in the House of Commons.] *104. The Lords of Appeal.*--A fifth group of members comprises the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who differ from other peers created by the crown in that their seats are not hereditary. One of the functions of the House of Lords is to serve as the highest national court of appeal. It is but logical that there should be included within the membership of the body a certain number of the most eminent jurists of the realm, and, further, that the judicial business of the chamber should be transacted largely by this corps of experts. In 1876 an Appellate Jurisdiction Act was passed authorizing the appointment of two (subsequently increased to four) "law lords" with the title of baron, and by legislation of 1887 the tenure of these members, hitherto conditioned upon the continued exercise of judicial functions, was made perpetual for life. At the present day these four justices, presided over by the Lord Chancellor, comprise in reality the supreme tribunal of the kingdom. Three of them are sufficient to constitute a quorum for the transaction of judicial business, and (p. 100) although other legal-minded members of the chamber may participate, and technically every member has a right to do so, in most instances this inner circle discharges the judicial function quite alone.[145] [Footnote 145: The recognized advisability of strengthening the judicial element in the Lords precipitated at one time a serious issue respecting the power of the crown to create life peerages. In 1856, upon the advice of her ministers, Queen Victoria conferred upon a distinguished judge, Sir James Parke, a patent as Baron Wensleydale for life. The purpose was to introduce into the chamber desirable legal talent without further augmenting the peerage. For the creation of life peerages there was some precedent, but none later than the reign of Henry VI., and the House of Lords, maintaining that the right had lapsed and that the peerage had become entirely hereditary, refused to admit Baron Wensleydale until his patent was so modified that his peerage was made hereditary.] *105. The Lords Spiritual.*--Finally, there are the ecclesiastical members--not peers, but "lords spiritual." In the fifteenth century the lords spiritual outnumbered the lords temporal; but upon the dissolution of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII., resulting in the dropping out of the abbots, the spiritual contingent fell permanently into the minority. At the present day the quota of ecclesiastical members is restricted, under statutory regulation, to 26. Scotland, whose established church is the Presbyterian, has none. Between 1801 and 1869 Ireland had four, but since the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869 there have been none. In England five ecclesiastics, by statute, are entitled invariably to seats, i.e., the archbishops of Canterbury and York and the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester. Among the remaining bishops the law allows seats to twenty-one, in the order of seniority. There are always, therefore, some English bishops--in 1909, ten--who are not members of the chamber.[146] All ecclesiastical members retain their seats during tenure of their several sees, but do not, of course, transmit their rights to their heirs, nor, necessarily, save in the case of the five mentioned, to their successors in office. Bishops and archbishops are elected, nominally, by the dean and chapter of the diocese; but when a vacancy arises the sovereign transmits a _congé d'élire_ containing the name of the person to be elected, so that, practically, appointment is made by the crown, acting under the advice of the prime minister. Bishoprics are created by act of Parliament.[147] [Footnote 146: The Bishop of Sodor and Man is entitled to a seat, but not to take part in the chamber's proceedings. His status has been compared to that of a territorial delegate in the United States. Moran, The English Government, 170.] [Footnote 147: On the composition of the House of Lords see Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 21; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., Chap. 5; May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., Chap. 5; Moran, English Government, Chap. 10; Low, Governance of England, Chap. 12; Courtney, Working Constitution of the United Kingdom, Chap. 11; Macy, English Constitution, Chap. 4; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chaps. 6-7; and Walpole, The Electorate and the Legislature, Chap. 2. The subject is treated in greater detail in Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, especially Chap. 15.] *106. Qualifications and Number of Members.*--A peer may be (p. 101) prevented from occupying a seat in the chamber by any one of several disqualifications. He must have attained the age of twenty-one; he must not be an alien; he must not be a bankrupt; he must not be under sentence for felony. On the other hand, a man who inherits a peerage cannot renounce the inheritance. Upon more than one occasion this rule has been a matter of political consequence, for its operation has sometimes meant that an able and ambitious commoner has been compelled to surrender his seat in the more important chamber and to assume a wholly undesired place in the upper house. In 1895 Mr. William W. Palmer, later Lord Selbourne, inheriting a peerage but desiring to continue for a time in the Commons, put this rule to a definite test by neglecting to apply for a writ of summons as a peer. The decision of the Commons, however, was that he was obligated to accept membership in the upper chamber, and hence to yield the place which he occupied in the lower. The House of Lords numbers to-day 620 members. In earlier periods of its history it was a very much smaller body, and, indeed, its most notable growth has taken place within the past one hundred and fifty years. During the reign of Henry VII. there were never more than eighty members, the majority of whom were ecclesiastics. To the first parliament of Charles II. there were summoned 139 persons. At the death of William III. the roll of the upper chamber comprised 192 names. At the death of Queen Anne the number was 209: at that of George I. it was 216; at that of George II., 229; at that of George III., 339; at that of George IV., 396; at that of William IV., 456. Between 1830 and 1898 there were conferred 364 peerages--222 under Liberal ministries (covering, in the aggregate, forty years) and 142 under the Conservatives (covering twenty-seven years). More than one-half of the peerages of to-day have been created within the past fifty years, and of the remainder only an insignificant proportion can be termed ancient. II. THE REFORM OF THE LORDS: THE QUESTION PRIOR TO 1909 *107. The Status of the Chamber.*--As a law-making body the House of Lords antedates the House of Commons. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the theory was that the magnates assented to legislation while the Commons merely petitioned for it. In a statute of 1322, however, the legislative character of Parliament as a (p. 102) whole was effectively recognized, and at the same time the legislative parity of the commons with the magnates. Thenceforth, until very nearly the present day, the two chambers were legally co-ordinate and every act of legislation required the assent of both. It is true that during the course of the nineteenth century there was a remarkable growth of legislative preponderance on the part of the House of Commons, until, indeed, the point was reached where all important measures were first presented in that chamber and the Lords were very certain not to thwart the ultimate adoption of any project of which the nation as represented in the popular branch unmistakably approved. Yet upon numerous occasions bills, and sometimes--as in the case of Gladstone's Home Rule Bill in 1893--highly important ones, were defeated outright; and at all times the chamber imposed a check upon the lower house and exercised a powerful influence upon the actual course of legislative business. Under the provisions of the act of 1911, however, the status and the legislative functions of the House of Lords have been profoundly altered, and an adequate understanding of the workings of the British parliament to-day requires some review of the changes wrought by that remarkable piece of legislation. Throughout upwards of a century the "mending or ending" of the Lords has been among the most widely discussed of public issues in the United Kingdom. The question has been principally one of "mending," for the number of persons who have advocated seriously the total abolition of the chamber has been small and their influence has been slight. The utility of a second chamber, in a democratic no less than in an illiberal constitutional system, is very generally admitted,[148] and no one supposes that the House of Lords will ever be swept completely out of existence to make room for the establishment of a new and entirely different parliamentary body. If it were to devolve upon the people of Great Britain to-day to adopt for themselves _de novo_ a complete governmental system, they might well not incorporate in that system an institution of the nature of the present House of Lords; but since the chamber exists and is rooted in centuries of national usage and tradition, the perpetuation of it, in some form, may be taken to be assured. [Footnote 148: There are, of course, Englishmen who concur in the dictum of Sieyès that "if a second chamber dissents from the first, it is mischievous; if it agrees, it is superfluous." An able exponent of this doctrine, within recent years, is Sir Charles Dilke.] *108. The Breach Between the Lords and the Nation.*--The indictments which have been brought against the House of Lords have been sweeping and varied. They have been based upon the all but exclusively hereditary character of the membership, upon the meagerness of (p. 103) attendance at the sittings and the small interest displayed by a majority of the members, and upon the hurried and frequently perfunctory nature of the consideration which is accorded public measures. Fundamentally, however, the tremendous attack which has been levelled against the Lords has had as its impetus the conviction of large masses of people that the chamber as constituted stands persistently and deliberately for interests which are not those of the nation at large. Prior to the parliamentary reforms of the nineteenth century the House of Commons was hardly more representative of the people than was the upper chamber. Both were controlled by the landed aristocracy, and between the two there was as a rule substantial accord. After 1832, however, the territorial interests, while yet powerful, were not dominant in the Commons, and a cleavage between the Lords, on the one hand, and the Commons, increasingly representative of the mass of the nation, on the other, became a serious factor in the politics and government of the realm. The reform measures of 1867 and 1884, establishing in substance a system of manhood suffrage in parliamentary elections, converted the House of Commons into an organ of thoroughgoing democracy. The development of the cabinet system brought the working executive, likewise, within the power of the people to control. But the House of Lords underwent no corresponding transformation. It remained, and still is, an inherently and necessarily conservative body, representative, in the main, of the interests of landed property, adverse to changes which seem to menace property and established order, and identified with all the forces that tend to perpetuate the nobility and the Anglican Church as pillars of the state. By simply standing still while the remaining departments of the governmental system were undergoing democratization the second chamber became, in effect, a political anomaly.[149] [Footnote 149: Dickinson, Development of Parliament during the Nineteenth Century, Chap. 3.] *109. Earlier Projects of Reform.*--Projects for the reform of the Lords were not unknown before 1832, but it has been since that date, and, more particularly during the past half-century, that the reform question has been agitated most vigorously. Some of the notable proposals that have been made relate to the composition of the chamber, others to the powers and functions of it, and still others to both of these things. In respect to the composition of the body, the suggestions that have been brought forward have contemplated most commonly the reduction of the chamber's size, the dropping out of the ecclesiastical members, and the substitution, wholly or in part, of specially designated members in the stead of the members who at present sit by hereditary right. As early as 1834 it was advocated that (p. 104) the archbishops and bishops of the Established Church should "be relieved from their legislative and judicial duties," and this demand, arising principally from the Non-conformists, has been voiced repeatedly in later years. In 1835 the opposition of the peers to measures passed by the Commons incited a storm of popular disapproval of such proportions that more than one of the members of the chamber gloomily predicted the early demolition of the body, and throughout succeeding decades the idea took increasing hold, within the membership as well as without, that change was inevitable. In 1869 a bill of Lord Russell providing for the gradual infiltration of life peers was defeated on the third reading, and in the same year a project of Earl Grey, and in 1874 proposals of Lord Rosebery and Lord Inchiquin, came to naught. The rejection by the Lords of measures supported by Gladstone's government in 1881-1883 brought the chamber afresh into popular disfavor, and in 1884 Lord Rosebery introduced a motion "that a select committee be appointed to consider the best means of promoting the efficiency of this House," with the thought that there might be brought into the chamber representatives of the nation at large, and even of the laboring classes. The motion was rejected overwhelmingly, but in 1888 it was renewed, and in that year the Salisbury government introduced two reform bills, one providing for the gradual creation of fifty life peerages, to be conferred upon men of attainment in law, diplomacy, and administrative service, and the other (popularly known as the "Black Sheep Bill") providing for the discontinuance of writs of summons to undesirable members of the peerage. The bills, however, were withdrawn after their second reading and an attempt on the part of Lord Carnarvon, in 1889, to revive the second of them failed. *110. The Lords and the Liberal Government, 1906-1907.*--Thence-forward until 1907 the issue was largely quiescent. During a considerable portion of this period the Unionist party was in power, and between the upper chamber, four-fifths of whose members were Unionists, and the Unionist majority in the Commons substantial harmony was easily maintained. During the Liberal administration of 1893-1894 the Lords rejected Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill and mutilated and defeated other measures; but, although the Liberal leaders urged that the will of the people had been frustrated, the appeal for second chamber reform failed utterly to strike fire. With the establishment of the Campbell-Bannerman ministry, in December, 1905, the Liberals entered upon what has proved a prolonged tenure of power and the issue of the Lords was brought again inevitably into the forefront of public controversy. In consequence of the Lords' insistence upon an amendment of the fundamentals of the Government's Education Bill, late in (p. 105) 1906, and the openly manifested disposition of the Unionist upper chamber to obstruct the Liberal programme in a variety of directions,[150] the warfare between the houses once more assumed threatening proportions. A resolution introduced by the premier June 24, 1907, was adopted in the Commons after a three days' debate by a vote of 385 to 100, as follows: "That, in order to give effect to the will of the people as expressed by elected representatives it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject bills passed by this House shall be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail." It was announced that a bill carrying into effect the substance of this declaration would be introduced, and it was understood that the Government's plan contemplated a reduction of the maximum life of a parliament from seven years to five and the institution of a system of conference committees whereby agreement might be effected upon occasion between the two houses, reserving the eventual right of the Commons, after a third rejection by the Lords, to enact a measure into law alone. Preoccupied, however, with projects of general legislation, the Government postponed and eventually abandoned the introduction of its bill. [Footnote 150: Notably in respect to legislation abolishing the plural vote and regulating the liquor traffic. The Lords rejected a Plural Voting Bill and an Aliens Bill in 1906, a Land Values Bill in 1907, and a Licensing Bill in 1908. In the interest of accuracy it should be observed that during the first session of 1906 a total of 121 bills became law, that only four (including the Education Bill) passed by the Commons were rejected by the Lords, and that fifteen passed by the Lords were rejected in the Commons. The proportions at most sessions during the period under review were substantially similar. But, of course, measures rejected by the Lords were likely to be those in which the interest of the Liberal government was chiefly centered.] In the upper chamber a measure introduced by Lord Newton, providing for (1) a reduction of the hereditary element by requiring that a peer by descent alone should have a right to sit only if he were elected (for a single parliament) as a representative peer or possessed other stipulated qualifications and (2) the appointment by the crown of a maximum of one hundred life peers, was discussed at some length. The bill was withdrawn, but it was decided to create a Select Committee on the House of Lords, under the chairmanship of Lord Rosebery, and in December, 1908, this committee reported a scheme of reform in accordance with which (1) a peerage alone should not entitle the holder to a seat in the chamber; (2) the hereditary peers, including those of Scotland and Ireland, should elect two hundred representatives to sit in the upper house for each parliament; (3) hereditary peers who had occupied certain posts of eminence in the government and the army and navy should be entitled to sit without election; (4) the (p. 106) bishops should elect eight representatives, while the archbishops should sit as of right; and (5) the crown should be empowered to summon four life peers annually, so long as the total did not exceed forty. This series of proposals failed utterly to meet the Liberal demand and no action was taken upon it. But it is to be noted that the Lords' Reconstruction Bill of 1911, to be described presently, was based in no small measure upon information and recommendations forthcoming from the Rosebery committee.[151] [Footnote 151: May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 343-349. For references on the general subject of the reform of the Lords see pp. 115-116.] III. THE QUESTION OF THE LORDS, 1909-1911 *111. The Lords and Money Bills.*--In November, 1909, the issue was reopened in an unexpected manner by the Lords' rejection of the Government's Finance Bill, in which were included far-reaching proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd-George, respecting the readjustment of national taxation. This act of the upper chamber, while not contrary to positive law, contravened in so serious a manner long established custom that it was declared by those who opposed it to be in effect revolutionary. Certainly the result was to precipitate an alteration of first-rate importance in the constitution of the kingdom. The priority of the Commons within the domain of finance was established at an early period of parliamentary history; and priority, in time, was converted into thoroughgoing dominance. As early as 1407 Henry IV. recognized the principle that money grants should be initiated in the Commons, assented to by the Lords, and subsequently reported to the crown. This procedure was not always observed, but after the resumption by the two houses of their normal functions following the Restoration in 1660 the right of the commoners to take precedence in fiscal business was forcefully and continuously asserted. In 1671 the Commons resolved "that in all aids given to the king by the Commons, the rate or tax ought not to be altered by the Lords," and a resolution of 1678 reaffirmed that all bills granting supplies "ought to begin with the Commons." At no time did the Lords admit formally the validity of these principles; but, by refusing to consider fiscal measures originated in the upper chamber and to accept financial amendments there proposed, the Commons successfully enforced observance of them. The rules in this connection upon which the Commons insisted have been summarized as follows: (1) The Lords ought not to initiate any (p. 107) legislative proposal embodied in a public bill and imposing a charge on the people, whether by taxes, rates, or otherwise, or regulating the administration or application of money raised by such a charge, and (2) the Lords ought not to amend any such legislative proposal by altering the amount of a charge, or its incidence, duration, mode of assessment, levy or collection, or the administration or application of money raised by such a charge.[152] These rules, although not embodied in any law or standing order, were through centuries so generally observed in the usage of the two houses that they became for all practical purposes, a part of the constitutional system--conventional, it is true, but none the less binding. From their observance it resulted (1) that the upper chamber was never consulted about the annual estimates, about the amounts of money to be raised, or about the purposes to which those amounts should be appropriated; (2) that proposals of taxation came before it only in matured form and under circumstances which discouraged criticism; and (3) that, since the policy of the executive is controlled largely through the medium of the power of the purse, the upper house lost entirely the means of exercising such control. In 1860 the Lords, as has been mentioned, made bold to reject a bill for the repeal of the duties on paper; but the occasion was seized by the Commons to pass a resolution reaffirming vigorously the subordination of the second chamber in finance, and the next year the repeal of the paper duties was incorporated in the annual budget and forced through. Thereafter it became the invariable practice to give place to all proposals of taxation in the one grand Finance Bill of the year, with the effect, of course, of depriving the Lords of the opportunity to defeat a proposal of the kind save by rejecting the whole of the measure of which it formed a part.[153] [Footnote 152: Ilbert, Parliament, 205.] [Footnote 153: It was in pursuance of this policy that Sir William Vernon-Harcourt incorporated in the Finance Bill of 1894, extensive changes in the death duties and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in 1899, included proposals for altering the permanent provisions made for the reduction of the national debt.] *112. The Finance Bill of 1909 and the Asquith Resolutions.*--The rejection of the Finance Bill in 1909,[154] following as it did the rejection of other important measures which the Liberal majority in the Commons had approved, raised in an acute form the question of the power of the Lords over money bills and precipitated a crisis in (p. 108) the relations between the two houses. On the one hand the House of Commons adopted, by a vote of 349 to 134, a memorable resolution to the effect that "the action of the House of Lords in refusing to pass into law the provision made by the House of Commons for the finances of the year is a breach of the constitution, and a usurpation of the privileges of the House of Commons"; and, on the other, the Asquith ministry came instantly to the decision that the situation demanded an appeal to the country. In January, 1910, a general election took place, with the result that the Government was continued in power, though with a reduced majority; and at the convening of the new parliament, in February, the Speech from the Throne promised that proposals should speedily be submitted "to define the relations between the houses of Parliament, so as to secure the undivided authority of the House of Commons over finance, and its predominance in legislation." The Finance Bill of the year was reintroduced and this time successfully carried through; but in advance of its reappearance the premier laid before the House of Commons a series of resolutions to the following effect:[155] (1) that the House of Lords should be disabled by law from rejecting or amending a money bill; (2) that the power of the chamber to veto other bills should be restricted by law; and (3) that the duration of a parliament should be limited to a maximum period of five years. During the course of the debate upon these resolutions it was made clear that the Government did not desire the abolition of the Lords, but wished merely to have the legislative competence of the house confined to consultation, revision, and, subject to proper safeguards, delay. April 14, 1910, the resolutions were adopted in the Commons by substantial majorities,[156] and with them as a basis the Government proceeded with the framing of its bill upon the subject. [Footnote 154: Strictly, the Lords declined to assent to the Budget until it should have been submitted to the judgment of the people. On the nature of the Government's finance proposals see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 350-355; G. L. Fox, The British Budget of 1909, in _Yale Review_, Feb., 1910; and D. Lloyd-George, The People's Budget (London, 1909), containing extracts from the Chancellor's speeches on the subject.] [Footnote 155: The Finance Bill passed its third reading in the House of Commons April 27, was passed in the Lords April 28, without division, and received the royal assent April 29.] [Footnote 156: The votes on the three resolutions were, respectively, 339 to 237, 351 to 246, and 334 to 236.] Meanwhile, March 14, there had been introduced in the House of Lords by Lord Rosebery an independent series of resolutions, as follows: (1) that a strong and efficient second chamber is not merely a part of the British constitution but is necessary to the well-being of the state and the balance of Parliament; (2) that such a chamber may best be obtained by the reform and reconstitution of the House of Lords; and (3) that a necessary preliminary to such a reform and reconstitution is the acceptance of the principle that the possession of a peerage should no longer of itself involve the right to sit and vote in (p. 109) the House. The first two of these resolutions were agreed to without division; the third, although vigorously opposed, was carried eventually by a vote of 175 to 17. *113. The Unionists and the Referendum.*--The death of the king, May 6, halted consideration of the subject, and through the succeeding summer hope was centered in a "constitutional conference" participated in by eight representatives of the two houses and of the two principal parties. A total of twenty-one meetings were held, but all effort to reach an agreement proved futile and at the reassembling of Parliament, November 15, the problem was thrown back for solution upon the houses and the country. November 17 there was carried in the Lords, without division, a new resolution introduced by Lord Rosebery to the effect that in future the House of Lords should consist of Lords of Parliament in part chosen by the whole body of hereditary peers from among themselves and by nomination of the crown, in part sitting by virtue of offices held and qualifications possessed, and in part designated from outside the ranks of the peerage. A few days subsequently, the Government's Parliament Bill having been presented in the second chamber (November 21), Lord Lansdowne, leader of the Opposition in that chamber, came forward with a fresh series of resolutions designed to clarify the Unionist position in anticipation of the elections which were announced for the ensuing month. With respect to money bills it was declared that the Lords were "prepared to forego their constitutional right to reject or amend money bills which are purely financial in character," provided that adequate provision should be made against tacking, that questions as to whether a bill or any provision thereof were purely financial should be referred to a joint committee of the two houses (the Speaker of the Commons presiding and possessing a casting vote), and that a bill decided by such a committee to be not purely financial should be dealt with in a joint sitting of the two houses. With respect to all measures other than those thus provided for the resolutions declared that "if a difference arises between the two houses with regard to any bill other than a money bill in two successive sessions, and with an interval of not less than one year, and such difference cannot be adjusted by any other means, it shall be settled in a joint sitting composed of members of the two houses; provided that if the difference relates to a matter which is of great gravity, and has not been adequately submitted for the judgment of the people, it shall not be referred to the joint sitting, but shall be submitted for decision to the electors by referendum." It will be observed that these resolutions were hardly less drastic than were those carried through the (p. 110) Commons by the ministry. Their adoption involved the abolition of the absolute veto of the second chamber and might well involve the intrusting of interests which the peers held dear to the hazards of a nation-wide referendum.[157] None the less, the resolutions were agreed to without division, and, both parties having in effect pronounced the existing legislative system unsatisfactory, the electorate was asked to choose between the two elaborate substitutes thus proposed. [Footnote 157: For the growth of the idea of the referendum see H. W. Horwill, The Referendum in Great Britain, in _Political Science Quarterly_, Sept., 1911.] *114. The Enactment of the Parliament Bill, 1911.*--The appeal to the country, in December, yielded results all but exactly identical with those of the elections of the previous January. The Government secured a majority of 127, and in the new parliament, which met February 6, the Parliament Bill was reintroduced without alteration. On the ground that the measure had been submitted specifically to the people and had been approved by them, the ministry demanded its early enactment by the two houses. May 15 the bill passed its third reading in the Commons by a vote of 362 to 241. During the committee stage upwards of one thousand amendments were suggested. But the Government stood firm for the instrument as originally drawn and, while it accepted a few incidental changes, in the end it got essentially its own way. Meanwhile, early in May, Lord Lansdowne introduced in the upper chamber a comprehensive bill which put in form for legislation the programme of reconstruction to which the more moderate elements in that chamber were ready, under the circumstances, to subscribe. The Lansdowne Reconstruction Bill proposed, at the outset, a reduction of the membership of the chamber to 350. Princes of the blood and the two archbishops should retain membership, but the number of bishops entitled to sit should be reduced to five, these to be chosen triennially by the whole body of higher prelates upon the principle of proportional representation. The remainder of the membership should comprise lords of parliament, as follows: (1) 100 elected from the peers possessing carefully stipulated qualifications, for a term of twelve years, on the principle of proportional representation, by the whole body of hereditary peers (including the Scotch and Irish), one-fourth of the number retiring triennially; (2) 120 members chosen by electoral colleges composed of members of the House of Commons divided for the purpose into local groups, each returning from three to twelve, under conditions of tenure similar to those prevailing in the first class; and (3) 100 appointed, from the peerage or outside, by the crown on nomination by the premier, with regard to the strength of parties in the House (p. 111) of Commons, and under the before-mentioned conditions of tenure. It was stipulated, further, that peers not sitting in the House of Lords should be eligible for election to the House of Commons, and that, except in event of the "indispensable" elevation of a cabinet minister or ex-minister to the peerage, it should be unlawful for the crown to confer the dignity of an hereditary peerage upon more than five persons during the course of any single year. This body of proposals, it will be observed, related exclusively to the _composition_ of the upper chamber. The Liberal leaders preferred to approach the problem from the other side and to assure the preponderance of the Commons by the imposition of positive restrictions upon the _powers_ which the Lords, under given conditions, might exercise. Lord Lansdowne's bill--sadly characterized by its author as the "deathblow to the House of Lords, as many of us have known it for so long"--came too late, and the chamber, after allowing it to be read a second time without division, was constrained to drop it for the Government's measure. July 20 the Parliament Bill, amended in such a manner as to exclude from its operation legislation affecting the constitution and other matters of "great gravity," was adopted without division. The proposed amendments were highly objectionable to the Liberals and, relying upon an understanding entered into with the king during the previous November relative to the creation of peers favorable to the Government's programme, the ministry let it be understood that no compromise upon essentials could be considered.[158] Confronted with the prospect of a wholesale "swamping,"[159] the Opposition fell back upon the policy of abstention and, although a considerable number of "last-ditchers" held out to the end, a group of Unionists adequate to carry the measure joined the supporters of the Government, August 10, in a vote not to insist upon the Lords' amendments, which meant, in effect, to approve the bill as adopted in the lower house.[160] The royal assent was extended August 18. [Footnote 158: When, July 24, Premier Asquith rose in the Commons to reply to the Lords' amendments there resulted such confusion that for the first time in generations, save upon one occasion in 1905, the Speaker was obliged to adjourn a sitting on account of the disorderly conduct of members.] [Footnote 159: Had the Unionists maintained to the end their attitude of opposition the number of peers which would have had to be created to ensure the enactment of the bill would have been some 400.] [Footnote 160: The final vote in the Lords was 131 to 114. The Unionist peers who voted with the Government numbered 37.] IV. THE PARLIAMENT ACT OF 1911 AND AFTER (p. 112) *115. Provisions Relating to Money Bills.*--In its preamble the Parliament Act promises further legislation which will define both the composition and the powers of a second chamber "constituted on a popular instead of an hereditary basis"; but the act itself relates exclusively to the powers of the chamber as it is at present constituted. The general purport of the measure is to define the conditions under which, while the normal methods of legislation remain unchanged, financial bills and proposals of general legislation may nevertheless be enacted into law without the concurrence of the upper house. The first signal provision is that a public bill passed by the House of Commons and certified by the Speaker to be, within the terms of the act, a "money bill" shall, unless the Commons direct to the contrary, become an act of Parliament on the royal assent being signified, notwithstanding that the House of Lords may not have consented to the bill, within one month after it shall have been sent up to that house. A money bill is defined as "a public bill which, in the judgment of the Speaker, contains only provisions dealing with all or any of the following subjects: the imposition, repeal, remission, alteration, or regulation of taxation; the imposition for the payment of debt or other financial purposes of charges on the Consolidated Fund, or on money provided by Parliament, or the variation or repeal of any such charges; supply; the appropriation, receipt, custody, issue or audit of accounts of public money; the raising or guarantee of any loan or the payment thereof; or subordinate matters incidental to those subjects or any of them." A certificate of the Speaker given under this act is made conclusive for all purposes. It may not be questioned in any court of law.[161] [Footnote 161: An incidental effect of the act is to exalt the power and importance of the Speaker, although it should be observed that the Speaker has long been accustomed to state at the introduction of a public bill whether in his judgment the rights or privileges claimed by the House of Commons in respect to finance had been infringed. If he were of the opinion that there had been infringement, it remained for the House to determine whether it would insist upon or waive its privilege Ilbert, Parliament, 207.] *116. Provisions Relating to Other Public Bills.*--The second fundamental stipulation is that any other public bill (except one to confirm a provisional order or one to extend the maximum duration of Parliament beyond five years) which is passed by the House of Commons in three successive sessions, whether or not of the same parliament, and which, having been sent up to the House of Lords at least one (p. 113) month, in each case, before the end of the session, is rejected by that chamber in each of those sessions, shall, unless the House of Commons direct to the contrary, become an act of Parliament on the royal assent being signified thereto, notwithstanding the fact that the House of Lords has not consented to the bill. It is required that at least two years shall have elapsed between the date of the second reading of such a bill (i.e., the first real opportunity for its discussion) in the first of these sessions of the House of Commons and the final passage of the bill in the third of the sessions. To come within the provisions of this act the measure must be, at its initial and its final appearances, the "same bill;" that is, it must exhibit no alterations save such as are rendered necessary by the lapse of time. And a bill is to be construed to be "rejected" by the Lords if it is not passed, or if amendments are introduced to which the House of Commons does not agree, or which the House of Commons does not suggest to the House of Lords at the second or third passage of the bill. *117. Effects of the Act.*--By the provisions which have been enumerated the co-ordinate and independent position which, in law if not in fact, the British upper chamber, as a legislative body, has occupied through the centuries has been effectually subverted. Within the domain of legislation, it is true, the Lords may yet exercise influence of no inconsiderable moment. To the chamber must be submitted every project of finance and of legislation which it is proposed to enact into law, and there is still nothing save a certain measure of custom to prevent the introduction of even the most important of non-financial measures first of all in that house. But a single presentation of any money bill fulfills the legal requirement and ensures that the measure will become law. For such a bill will not be presented until it has been passed by the Commons, and, emanating from the cabinet, it will not be introduced in that chamber until the assent of the executive is assured. The upper house is allowed one month in which to approve or to reject, but, so far as the enactment of the bill is concerned, the result is the same in any case. Upon ordinary legislation the House of Lords possesses still a veto--a veto, however, which is no longer absolute but only suspensive. The conditions which are required for the enactment of non-fiscal legislation without the concurrence of the Lords are not easy to bring about, but their realization is not at all an impossibility. By the repeated rejection of proposed measures the Lords may influence public sentiment or bring about otherwise a change of circumstances and thus compass the defeat of the original intent of the Commons, and this is the more possible since a minimum period of two years is required to elapse before a non-fiscal measure can be (p. 114) carried over the Lords' veto. But the continuity of political alignments and of legislative policy is normally such in Great Britain that the remarkable legislative precedence which has been accorded the Commons must mean in effect little less than absolute law-making authority. *118. Possible Further Changes and the Difficulties Involved.*--What the future holds in store for the House of Lords cannot be discerned. The Parliament Act, as has been pointed out, promises further legislation which will define both the composition and the powers of a second chamber constituted on a popular instead of an hereditary basis; but no steps have as yet (1912) been taken publicly in this direction, nor has any authoritative announcement of purpose been made.[162] Many Englishmen to-day are of the opinion that, as John Bright declared, "a hereditary House of Lords is not and cannot be perpetual in a free country." None the less, it is recognized that the chamber as it is at present constituted contains a large number of conscientious, eminent, and able men, that upon numerous occasions the body has imposed a wholesome check upon the popular branch, and that sometimes it has interpreted the will of the nation more correctly than has the popular branch itself. The most reasonable programme of reform would seem to be, not a total reconstitution of the chamber upon a non-hereditary basis, but (1) the adoption of the Rosebery principle that the possession of a peerage shall not of itself entitle the possessor to sit, (2) the admission to membership of a considerable number of persons representative of the whole body of peers, and (3) the introduction of a goodly quota of life peers, appointed by reason of legal attainments, governmental experience, and other qualities of fitness and eminence.[163] [Footnote 162: The Parliament Act is the handiwork, of course, of the Liberal party, and only that party is likely to acknowledge the obligation to follow up the reform of the Lords which the measure imposes. But the Unionists may be regarded as committed by Lord Lansdowne's bill to some measure of popularization of the chamber.] [Footnote 163: During the discussions of 1910 an interesting suggestion was offered (April 25) by Lord Wemyss to the effect that the representative character of the chamber should be given emphasis by the admission of three members designated by each of some twenty-one commercial, professional, and educational societies of the kingdom, such as the Royal Academy of Arts, the Society of Engineers, the Shipping Federation, and the Royal Institute of British Architects.] It is to be observed, however, that neither this programme nor any other that can be offered, unless it be that of popular election, affords much ground upon which to hope for harmonious relations between the upper chamber and a Liberal Government. The House of Lords--_any_ House of Lords in which members sit for life or in heredity--is inevitably conservative in its political tendencies (p. 115) and sympathies, which means, as conditions are to-day, that the chamber is certain to be dominated by adherents of the Unionist party. History shows that even men who are appointed to the upper house as Liberals become adherents almost invariably, in time, of Unionism. The consequence is that, while a Unionist administration is certain to have the support of a working majority in both of the houses, a Liberal government cannot expect ever to find itself in the ascendancy in the Lords. Its measures will be easy to carry in the lower house but difficult or impossible to carry in the upper one. This was the central fact in the situation from which sprang the Parliament Act of 1911. By this piece of legislation the Liberals sought to provide for themselves a mode of escape from the _impasse_ in which the opposition of the Lords so frequently has involved them. The extent, however, to which the arrangements effected will fulfill the purpose for which they were intended remains to be ascertained.[164] "An upper house in a true parliamentary system," says Lowell, "cannot be brought into constant accord with the dominant party of the day without destroying its independence altogether; and to make the House of Lords a mere tool in the hands of every cabinet would be well-nigh impossible and politically absurd."[165] Therein must be adjudged still to lie (p. 116) the essential dilemma of English politics. [Footnote 164: The literature of the question of second chamber reform in England is voluminous and but a few of the more important titles can be mentioned here. The subject is discussed briefly in Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 22; Moran, English Government, Chap. 11; Low, Governance of England, Chap. 13; and H. W. V. Temperley, Senates and Upper Chambers (London, 1910), Chap. 5. Important books include W. C. Macpherson, The Baronage and the Senate; or the House of Lords in the Past, the Present, and the Future (London, 1893); T. A. Spalding, The House of Lords: a Retrospect and a Forecast (London, 1894); J. W. Wylie, The House of Lords (London, 1908); W. S. McKechnie, The Reform of the House of Lords (Glasgow, 1909); W. L. Wilson, The Case for the House of Lords (London, 1910); and J. H. Morgan, The House of Lords and the Constitution (London, 1910). Of these, the first constitutes one of the most forceful defenses and the second one of the most incisive criticisms of the upper chamber that have been written. A brief review by an able French writer is A. Esmein, La Chambre des Lords et la démocratie (Paris, 1910). Among articles in periodicals may be mentioned H. W. Horwill, The Problem of The House of Lords, in _Political Science Quarterly_, March, 1908; E. Porritt, The Collapse of the Movement against the Lords, in _North American Review_, June, 1908; ibid., Recent and Pending Constitutional Changes in England, in _American Political Science Review_, May, 1910; J. L. Garvin, The British Elections and their Meaning, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1910; J. A. R. Marriott, The Constitutional Crisis, in _Nineteenth Century_, Jan., 1910. A readable sketch is A. L. P. Dennis, Impressions of British Party Politics, 1909-1911, in _American Political Science Review_, Nov., 1911; and the best accounts of the Parliament Act and of its history are: Dennis, The Parliament Act of 1911, ibid., May and Aug., 1912; May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 343-384; Lowell, Government of England (rev. ed., New York, 1912), Chap. 23a; _Annual Register_ for the years 1910 and 1911; M. Sibert, Le vote du Parliament Act, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Jan.-March, 1912; and La réforme de la Chambre des Lords, ibid., July-Sept., 1912. A book of some value is C. T. King, The Asquith Parliament, 1906-1909; a Popular Sketch of its Men and its Measures (London, 1910).] [Footnote 165: Government of England, I., 418-419.] CHAPTER VI (p. 117) PARLIAMENT: ORGANIZATION, FUNCTIONS, PROCEDURE I. THE ASSEMBLING OF THE CHAMBERS *119. Sessions.*--Parliament is required by statute to meet at least once in three years;[166] but, by reason of the enormous pressure of business and, in particular, the custom which forbids the voting of supplies for a period longer than one year, meetings are, in point of fact, annual. A session begins ordinarily near the first of February and continues, with brief adjournments at holiday seasons, until August or September. It is required that the two houses shall invariably be summoned together. Either may adjourn without the other, and the crown can compel an adjournment of neither. A prorogation, which brings a session to a close, and a dissolution, which brings the existence of a parliament to an end, must be ordered for the two houses conjointly. Both take place technically at the command of the crown, actually upon the decision of the ministry. A prorogation is to a specified date, and it terminates all pending business; but the reassembling of the houses may be either postponed or hastened by royal proclamation. [Footnote 166: Triennial Act of December 22, 1694.] *120. The Opening of a Parliament.*--At the beginning of a session the members of the two houses gather first of all in their respective chambers. The commoners are summoned thereupon to the chamber of the Lords, where the letters patent authorizing the session are read and the Lord Chancellor makes known the desire of the crown that the Commons proceed with the choosing of a Speaker. The Commons withdraw to attend to this matter, and on the next day the newly elected official, accompanied by the members, presents himself at the bar of the House of Lords, announces his election, and, through the Lord Chancellor, receives the royal approbation. Having demanded and received guarantee of the "ancient and undoubted rights and privileges of the Commons," the Speaker and the members then retire to their own quarters, where the necessary oaths are administered. If, as is not unusual, the king meets Parliament in person, he goes in state, (p. 118) probably the next day, to the House of Lords and takes his seat upon the throne, and the Lord Chamberlain is instructed to desire the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod to _command_ the attendance once more of the Commons. If the sovereign does not attend, the Lords Commissioners bid the Usher to _desire_ the Commons' presence. In any case, the commoners present themselves and the king (or, in his absence, the Lord Chancellor) reads the Speech from the Throne, in which is communicated succinctly the nature of the business to which attention is to be directed. Following the retirement of the sovereign, the Commons again withdraw, the Throne Speech is reread and an address in reply voted in each house, and the Government begins the introduction of fiscal and legislative proposals. In the event that a session is not the first one of a parliament, the election of a Speaker and the administration of oaths are omitted.[167] [Footnote 167: On the ceremonies involved in the opening, adjournment, prorogation, and dissolution of a parliament see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 61-77; J. Redlich, The Procedure of the House of Commons; a Study of its History and Present Form, trans. by A. E. Steinthal, 3 vols. (London, 1908), II., 51-67; T. E. May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament (11th ed., London, 1906), Chap. 7; A. Wright and P. Smith, Parliament, Past and Present, 2 vols. (London, 1902), II., Chap. 25; MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 96-114, 132-147, 184-203; and H. Graham, The Mother of Parliaments (Boston, 1911), 135-157.] *121. The Palace of Westminster.*--From the beginning of parliamentary history the meeting-place of the houses has been regularly Westminster, on the left bank of the Thames. The last parliament which sat at any other spot was the third Oxford Parliament of Charles II., in 1681. The Palace of Westminster, in mediæval times outside, though near, the principal city of the kingdom, was long the most important of the royal residences, and it was natural that its great halls and chambers, together with the adjoining abbey, should be utilized habitually for parliamentary sittings. Of the enormous structure known as Westminster to-day (still, technically, a royal palace, though not a royal residence), practically all portions save old Westminster Hall were constructed after the fire of 1834. The Lords first occupied their present quarters in 1847 and the Commons theirs in 1850.[168] [Footnote 168: MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 79-95; Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 60-80; Wright and Smith, Parliament, Past and Present, I., Chaps. 11-13. The classic history of the old Palace of Westminster is E. W. Brayley and J. Britton, History of the Ancient Palace and Late Houses of Parliament at Westminster (London, 1836).] *122. The Chambers of the Commons and the Lords.*--From opposite sides of a central lobby corridors lead to the halls in which the sittings of the two bodies are held, these halls facing each other in such (p. 119) a manner that the King's throne at the south end of the House of Lords is visible from the Speaker's chair at the north end of the House of Commons. The room occupied by the Commons is not large, being but seventy-five feet in length by forty-five in breadth. It is bisected by a broad aisle, at the upper end of which is a large table for the use of the clerk and his assistants and beyond this the raised and canopied chair of the Speaker. "Facing the aisle on each side long rows of high-backed benches, covered with dark green leather, slope upward tier above tier to the walls of the room; and through them, at right angles to the aisle, a narrow passage known as the gangway, cuts across the House. There is also a gallery running all around the room, the part of it facing the Speaker being given up to visitors, while the front rows at the opposite end belong to the reporters, and behind them there stands, before a still higher gallery, a heavy screen, like those erected in Turkish mosques to conceal the presence of women, and used here for the same purpose."[169] The rows of benches on the gallery sides are reserved for members, but they do not afford a very desirable location and are rarely occupied, save upon occasions of special interest. In the body of the house there are fewer than 350 seats for 670 members. As a rule, not even all of these are occupied, for there are no desks and the member who wishes to read, write, or otherwise occupy himself seeks the library or other rooms adjoining. The front bench at the upper end of the aisle, at the right of the Speaker, is known as the Treasury Bench and is reserved for members of the Government. The corresponding bench at the Speaker's left is reserved similarly for the leaders of the Opposition. In so far as is possible in the lack of a definite assignment of seats, members of avowed party allegiance range themselves behind their leaders, while members of more independent attitude seek places below the gangway. "The accident that the House of Commons sits in a narrow room with benches facing each other, and not, like most continental legislatures, in a (p. 120) semi-circular space, with seats arranged like those of a theatre, makes for the two-party system and against groups shading into each other."[170] [Footnote 169: Lowell, Government of England, I., 249. Visitors, technically "strangers," are present only on sufferance and may be excluded at any time; but the ladies' gallery is not supposed to be within the chamber, so that an order of exclusion does not reach the occupants of it. In the autumn of 1908, however, the disorderly conduct of persons in the ladies' and strangers' galleries caused the Speaker to close these galleries during the remainder of the session. In 1738 the House declared the publication of its proceedings "a high indignity and a notorious breach of privilege," and, technically, such publication is still illegal. In 1771, however, the reporters' gallery was fitted up, and through a century and a quarter the proceedings have been reported and printed as a matter of course. On the status of the public and the press in the chamber see Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 8; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons; II., 28-38; MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 310-329, 350-365; and H. Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 259-287.] [Footnote 170: Ilbert, Parliament, 124. The chamber is described fully in Wright and Smith, Parliament, Past and Present, Chap. 19.] The hall occupied by the Lords is smaller and more elaborately decorated than that occupied by the Commons. It contains cross benches, but in the main the arrangements that have been described are duplicated in it. For social and ceremonial purposes there exists among the members a fixed order of precedence.[171] In the chamber, however, the seating is arranged without regard to this order, save that the bishops sit in a group. The Government peers occupy the benches on the right of the woolsack and the Opposition those on the left, while members who prefer to remain neutral take their places on the cross benches between the table and the bar.[172] [Footnote 171: This order runs: Prince of Wales, other princes of the royal blood, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of York, Lord President of the Council, Lord Privy Seal, the dukes, the marquises, the earls, the viscounts, the bishops, and the barons.] [Footnote 172: For full description, with illustrations, see Wright and Smith, Parliament, Past and Present, Chap. 18.] II. ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS *123. Hours of Sittings.*--In the seventeenth century the sittings of the Commons began regularly at 8.30 or 9 o'clock in the morning and terminated with nightfall. In the eighteenth century, and far into the nineteenth, they were apt to begin as late as 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon and to be prolonged, at least not infrequently, until toward daybreak. In 1888, however, a standing order fixed midnight as the hour for the "interrupting" of ordinary business, and in 1906 the hour was made 11 o'clock. Nowadays the House meets regularly on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 2.45 and continues in session throughout the evening, the interval formerly allowed for dinner having been abolished in 1906. On Fridays, set apart, until late in the session, for the consideration of private members' bills, the hour of convening is 12 o'clock. At sittings on days other than Friday the first hour or more is consumed usually with small items of formal business and with the asking and answering of questions addressed to the ministers, so that the public business set for the day is reached at approximately 4 o'clock.[173] [Footnote 173: Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, II., 68-77.] *124. Officers.*--The principal officers of the House are the (p. 121) Speaker, the Clerk and his two assistants, the Sergeant-at-Arms and his deputies, the Chaplain, and the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means. The Clerk and the Sergeant-at-Arms, together with their assistants, are appointed for life by the crown, on nomination of the premier, but the Speaker and the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means are elected for a single parliament by the House.[174] All save the Chairman and his deputy are, strictly, non-political officers. The Clerk signs all orders of the House, indorses bills sent or returned to the Lords, reads whatever is required to be read during the sittings, records the proceedings of the chamber, and, with the concurrence of the Speaker, supervises the preparation of the official Journal. The Sergeant-at-Arms attends the Speaker, enforces the House's orders, and presents at the bar of the House persons ordered or qualified to be so presented. The Chairman of Ways and Means (in his absence the Deputy Chairman) presides over the deliberations of the House when the body sits as a committee of the whole[175] and exercises supervision over private bill legislation. Although a political official, he preserves, in both capacities, a strictly non-partisan attitude. [Footnote 174: In point of fact, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman retire when the ministry by which they have been nominated goes out of office.] [Footnote 175: On this account he is referred to ordinarily as the Chairman of Committees.] *125. The Speakership.*--The speakership arose from the need of the House when it was merely a petitioning body for a recognized spokesman, and although the known succession of Speakers begins with Sir Thomas Hungerford, who held the office in the last parliament of Edward III. (1377), there is every reason to suppose that at even an earlier date there were men whose functions were substantially equivalent. The Speaker is elected at the beginning of a parliament by and from the members of the House, and his tenure of office, unless terminated by resignation or death, continues through the term of that parliament. The choice of the House is subject to the approval of the crown; but, whereas in earlier days the king's will was at this point very influential, the last occasion upon which a Speaker-elect was rejected by the crown was in 1679. Though nominally elected, the Speaker is in fact chosen by the ministry, and he is pretty certain to be taken, in the first instance, from the party in power. During the nineteenth century, however, it became customary to re-elect a Speaker as long as he should be willing to serve, regardless of party affiliation. *126. The Speaker's Functions and Powers.*--The functions of the Speaker are regulated in part by custom, in part by rules of the House, and in part by general legislation. They are numerous and, in the (p. 122) aggregate, highly important. The Speaker is, first of all, the presiding officer of the House. In this capacity he is a strictly non-partisan moderator whose business it is to maintain decorum in deliberations, decide points of order, put questions, and announce the result of divisions. The non-partisan aspect of the English speakership sets the office off in sharp contrast with its American counterpart. "It makes little difference to any English party in Parliament," says Mr. Bryce, "whether the occupant of the chair has come from their own or from hostile ranks.... A custom as strong as law forbids him to render help to his own side even by private advice. Whatever information as to parliamentary law he may feel free to give must be equally at the disposal of every member."[176] Except in the event of a tie, the Speaker does not vote, even when, the House being in committee, he is not occupying the chair. In the second place, the Speaker is the spokesman and representative of the House, whether in demanding privileges, communicating resolutions, or issuing warrants. There was a time when he was hardly less the spokesman of the king than the spokesman of the Commons, but the growth of independence of the popular chamber enabled him long ago to cast off this dual and extremely difficult rôle. The Speaker, furthermore, declares and interprets, though he in no case makes, the law of the House. "Where," says Ilbert, "precedents, rulings, and the orders of the House are insufficient or uncertain guides, he has to consider what course would be most consistent with the usages, traditions, and dignity of the House, and the rights and interests of its members, and on these points his advice is usually followed, and his decisions are very rarely questioned.... For many generations the deference habitually paid to the occupant of the chair has been the theme of admiring comment by foreign observers."[177] Finally, the fact should be noted that by the Parliament Act of 1911 the Speaker is given sole power, when question arises, to determine whether a given measure is or is not to be considered a money bill.[178] Upon his decision may hinge the entire policy of the Government respecting a measure, and even the fate of the measure itself. The Speaker's symbol of authority is the mace, which is carried before him when he formally enters or leaves the House and lies on the table before him when he is in the chair. He has an official residence in Westminster, and he receives a salary of £5,000 a year which is paid from the Consolidated Fund, being on that account not subject to change when the annual appropriation bills (p. 123) are under consideration. At retirement from office a Speaker is likely to be pensioned and to be elevated to the peerage.[179] [Footnote 176: American Commonwealth, I., 135.] [Footnote 177: Parliament, 140-141.] [Footnote 178: See p. 112.] [Footnote 179: On the officers of the House of Commons see Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 12; on the speakership, Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, II., 131-171; Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 119-134; MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 115-132; Porritt, Unreformed House of Commons, I., Chaps. 21-22; A. I. Dasent, The Speakers of the House of Commons from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York, 1911); and G. Mer, Les speakers: étude de la fonction présidentielle en Angleterre et aux États-Unis (Paris, 1910).] *127. Quorum.*--As fixed by a resolution of 1640, a quorum for the transaction of business in the Commons is forty. If at any time during a sitting the attention of the Speaker is directed to the fact that there are not forty members present, the two-minute sand-glass which stands upon the Clerk's table is inverted and the members are summoned from all portions of the building as for a division. At the close of the allotted two minutes the Speaker counts the members present, and if there be not forty the House adjourns until the time fixed for the next regular sitting. Except upon occasions of special interest, the number of members actually occupying the benches is likely to be less than two hundred, although most of the remaining members are within the building or, in any case, not far distant. *128. Kinds of Committees.*--Like all important and numerous legislative bodies, the House of Commons expedites the transaction of the business which devolves upon it through the employment of committees. As early as the period of Elizabeth the reference of a bill, after its second reading, to a select committee was an established practice, and in the reign of Charles I. it became not uncommon to refer measures to committees of the whole house. The committees of the House to-day may be grouped in five categories: (1) the Committee of the Whole; (2) select committees on public bills; (3) sessional committees; (4) standing committees on public bills; and (5) committees on private bills. Until 1907 a public bill, after its second reading, went normally to the Committee of the Whole; since the date mentioned, it goes there only if the House so determines. The Committee of the Whole is simply the House of Commons, presided over by the Chairman of Committees in the place of the Speaker, and acting under rules of procedure which permit virtually unrestricted discussion and in other ways lend themselves to the free consideration of the details of a measure. When the subject in hand relates to the providing of revenue the body is known, technically, as the Committee of Ways and Means; when to appropriations, it is styled the Committee of the Whole on Supply, or simply the Committee of Supply. *129. Select and Sessional Committees.*--Select committees (p. 124) consist, as a rule, of fifteen members and are constituted to investigate and report upon specific subjects or measures. It is through them that the House collects evidence, examines witnesses, and otherwise obtains the information required for intelligent legislation. After a select committee has fulfilled the immediate purpose for which it was constituted it passes out of existence. Each such committee chooses its chairman, and each keeps detailed records of its proceedings, which are included, along with its formal report, in the published parliamentary papers of the session. The members may be elected by the House, but in practice the appointment of some or all is left to the Committee of Selection, which itself consists of eleven members chosen by the House at the beginning of each session. This Committee of Selection, which appoints members not only of select committees but also of standing committees and of committees on private and local bills, is made up after conference between the leaders of the Government and of the Opposition; and the committees whose members it designates are always so constituted that they contain a majority favorable to the Government. The number of select committees is, of course, variable, but it is never small. A few are constituted for an entire year and are known as sessional committees. Of these, the Committee of Selection is itself an example; others are the Committee on Public Accounts and the Committee on Public Petitions. *130. Standing Committees.*--Beginning in 1882, certain great standing committees have been created, to the general end that the time of the House may be further economized. Through a change of the standing orders of the chamber effected in 1907 the number of such committees was raised from two to four, and all bills except money bills, private bills, and bills for confirming provisional orders--that is to say, all public non-fiscal proposals--are required to be referred to one of these committees (the Speaker to determine which one) unless the House otherwise directs. It is expected that measures so referred will be so fully considered in committee that they will consume but little of the time of the House. Each of the four committees consists of from sixty to eighty members, who are named by the Committee of Selection in such a manner that in personnel they will represent faithfully the composition of the House as a whole. One of them, consisting of all the representatives of Scotch constituencies and fifteen other members, is constituted with a special view to the transaction of business relating to Scotland. The chairmen of the four are selected (from its own ranks) by a "chairman's panel" of not more than eight members designated by the Committee of Selection. The procedure (p. 125) of the standing committees is closely assimilated to that of the Committee of the Whole, and, in truth, they serve essentially as substitutes for the larger body.[180] [Footnote 180: On committees on private bills see p. 137. The committees of the House of Commons are described in Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 13; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 11; Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 6; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, II., 180-214; and May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chaps. 13-14.] III. ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS *131. Sittings and Attendance.*--It is required that the two houses of Parliament shall be convened invariably together, and one may not be prorogued without the other. The actual sittings of the Lords are, however, very much briefer and more leisurely than are those of the Commons. Normally the upper chamber meets but four times a week--on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 4.30 o'clock and on Tuesdays at 5.30. By reason of lack of business or indisposition to consume time in the consideration of measures whose eventual enactment is assured, sittings not infrequently are concluded within an hour, although, of course, there are occasions upon which the chamber deliberates seriously and at much length. A quorum for the transaction of business is fixed at the number three; although it is but fair to observe that if a division occurs upon a bill and it is found that there are not thirty members present the question is declared not to be decided. Save upon formal occasions and at times when there is under consideration a measure in whose fate the members are immediately interested, attendance is always meager. There are members who after complying with the formalities incident to the assumption of a seat, rarely, and in some instances never, reappear among their colleagues. It thus comes about that despite the fact that nominally the House of Lords is one of the largest of the world's law-making assemblies, the chamber exhibits in reality little of the unwieldiness ordinarily characteristic of deliberative bodies of such magnitude. The efficiency of the chamber is more likely to be impaired by paucity of attendance than otherwise. *132. Officers.*--The officers of the House of Lords are largely appointive, though in part elective. Except during the trial of a peer,[181] the presiding official is the Lord Chancellor, appointed by the crown on the advice of the premier. The duty of presiding in the Lords, as has been explained, is but one of many that fall to this remarkable dignitary.[182] If at the time of his appointment an (p. 126) incumbent is not a peer he is reasonably certain to be created one, although there is no legal requirement to this effect. The theory is that the woolsack which comprises the presiding official's seat is not within the chamber proper[183] and that the official himself, as such, is not a member of the body. The powers allowed him are not even those commonly possessed by a moderator. In the event that two or more peers request the privilege of addressing the chamber, the peers themselves decide which shall have the floor. Order in debate is enforced, not by the Chancellor, but by the members, and when they speak they address, not the chair, but "My Lords." Although, if a peer, the Chancellor may speak and vote as any other member, he possesses as presiding officer no power of the casting vote. In short, the position which the Chancellor occupies in the chamber is all but purely formal. In addition to "deputy speakers," designated to preside in the Chancellor's absence, the remaining officials of the Lords who owe their positions to governmental appointment are the Clerk of Parliament, who keeps the records; the Sergeant-at-Arms, who attends personally the presiding officer and acts as custodian of the mace; and the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, a pompous dignitary whose function it is to summon the Commons when their attendance is required and to play a more or less useful part upon other ceremonial occasions. The one important official whom the House itself elects is the Lord Chairman of Committees, whose duty it is to preside in Committee of the Whole. [Footnote 181: See p. 127.] [Footnote 182: See p. 63.] [Footnote 183: In the days of Elizabeth the presiding official sat upon a sack actually filled with wool. He sits now, as a matter of fact, upon an ottoman, upholstered in red. But the ancient designation of the seat survives.] IV. PRIVILEGES OF THE HOUSES AND OF MEMBERS *133. Nature and Extent of Privileges.*--On the basis in part of custom and in part of statute there exists a body of definitely established privileges, some of which appertain to the Commons as a chamber, some similarly to the Lords, and some to the individual members of both houses. The privileges which at the opening of a parliament the newly-elected Speaker requests and, as a matter of course, obtains for the chamber over which he presides include principally those of freedom from arrest, freedom of speech, access to the sovereign, and a "favorable construction" upon the proceedings of the House. Freedom from arrest is enjoyed by members during a session and a period of forty days before and after it, but it does not protect a member (p. 127) from the consequences of any indictable offense nor, in civil actions, from any process save arrest. Freedom of speech, finally guaranteed effectually in the Bill of Rights, means simply that a member may not be held to account by legal process outside Parliament for anything he may have said in the course of the debates or proceedings of the chamber to which he belongs. The right of access to the sovereign belongs to the Commons collectively through the Speaker, but to the Lords individually. With the growth of parliamentary government both it and the privilege of "favorable construction" have ceased to possess practical importance. Another privilege which survives is that of exemption from jury duty, though no longer of refusing to attend court in the capacity of a witness. Each house enjoys the privilege--for all practical purposes now the right--of regulating its own proceedings, of committing persons for contempt, and of deciding contested elections. The last-mentioned function the House of Commons, however, has delegated to the courts. A privilege jealously retained by the Lords is that of trial in all cases of treason or felony by the upper chamber itself, under the presidency of a Lord High Steward appointed by the crown. The Lords are exempt from arrest in civil causes, not merely during and immediately preceding and succeeding sessions, but at all times, and they enjoy all the rights, privileges, and distinctions which, through law or custom, have become inherent in their several dignities. *134. Payment of Members of the Commons.*--Until recently the fact that there was no salary attached to service in Parliament operated to debar from election to the Commons men who were not of independent means. Through some years the Labor Party was accustomed to provide funds wherewith its representatives were enabled to maintain themselves at the capital,[184] but this arrangement affected only a small group of members and was of an entirely private and casual nature. Public and systematic payment of members, to the end that poor but capable men might not be kept out of the Commons, was demanded by the Chartists three-quarters of a century ago, and from time to time after 1870 there was agitation in behalf of such a policy. In 1893, and again in 1895, a resolution in favor of the payment of members was adopted in the Commons, and March 7, 1906, a resolution was carried to the effect that every member should be paid a salary of £300 annually. But it was not until 1911 that a measure of the kind could be got through the upper chamber. Fresh impetus was afforded by the Osborne Judgment, in which, on an appeal from the lower courts, the House of Lords ruled in December, 1909, that the payment of parliamentary (p. 128) members as such from the dues collected by labor organizations was contrary to law. The announcement of the Judgment was followed by persistent agitation for legislation to reverse the ruling. In connection with the budget presented to the Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer May 16, 1911, the proposition was made, not to take action one way or the other upon the Lords' decision, but to provide for the payment to all non-official members of the House of Commons of a yearly salary of £400; and with little delay and no great amount of opposition the proposal was enacted into law. The amount of the salary provided is not large, but it is ample to render candidacy for seats possible for numbers of men who formerly could not under any circumstances have contemplated a public career.[185] [Footnote 184: The sum provided from the party funds was ordinarily £200 a year.] [Footnote 185: On the privileges of the Commons see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 153-189; Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 11; Walpole, Electorate and Legislature, Chap. 5; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, III., 42-50. A standard work in which the subject is dealt with at length is May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chaps. 3-6.] V. THE FUNCTIONS OF PARLIAMENT When the king summons the two chambers he does so, "being desirous and resolved as soon as may be to meet his people, and to have their advice in Parliament." No mention is made of legislative or financial business, and, technically, Parliament is still essentially what originally it was exclusively, i.e., a purely deliberative assemblage. Practically, however, the mere discussion of public questions and the giving of advice to the crown has become but one of several distinctive parliamentary functions. The newer functions which, with the passing of time, have acquired ever increasing importance are, in effect, three. The first is that of criticism, involving the habitual scrutiny and control of the measures of the executive and administrative organs. The second is the exercise, under limitations to be described, of the power of judicature. The third, and much the most important, is the function of public and private legislation and of fiscal control. *135. Criticism: Ministerial Responsibility.*--Parliament does not govern and is not intended to govern. Never save when the Long Parliament undertook the administration of public affairs through committees of its members has Parliament asserted a disposition to gather immediately into its own hands those powers of state which are executive in character. At the same time, the growth of parliamentary government has meant the establishment of a connection between the executive and the parliamentary chambers (principally the Commons) (p. 129) as close as may be so long as separateness of organization is still maintained. The officials who comprise the working executive are invariably members of Parliament. They initiate public measures, introduce them, advocate and defend them, and, in general, guide and control the conduct of public business both inside and outside the chambers. But for every act they are responsible directly to the House of Commons. They may continue in power only so long as they are supported by a majority in that chamber. And their conduct is subject continually to review and criticism, through the instrumentality of questions, formal inquiries, and, if need be, judicial procedure. It is within the competence of any member to address a question to any minister of the crown who is also a member, to obtain information. Except in special cases, notice of questions must be given at least one day in advance, and a period of approximately three-quarters of an hour is set apart at four sittings every week for the asking and answering of such questions. A minister may answer or decline to answer, but unless a declination can be shown to arise from legitimate considerations of public interest its effect politically may be embarrassing. In any event, there is no debate, and in this respect the English practice differs from the French "interpellation."[186] The asking of questions is liable to abuse but, as is pointed out by Ilbert, "there is no more valuable safeguard against maladministration, no more effective method of bringing the searchlight of criticism to bear on the action or inaction of the executive government and its subordinates. A minister has to be constantly asking himself, not merely whether his proceedings and the proceedings of those for whom he is responsible are legally or technically defensible, but what kind of answer he can give if questioned about them in the House, and how that answer will be received."[187] Any member is privileged to bring forward a motion censuring the Government or any member or department thereof, and a motion of this sort, when emanating from the leader of the Opposition, constitutes a vote of confidence upon whose result may depend the continued tenure of the ministry. By a call upon the Government or a given department for information, by the constitution of parliamentary committees, departmental committees, or royal commissions, and, in particular by taking advantage of the numberless opportunities afforded by the enactment of appropriation bills, the House of Commons may further impose upon the executive the most thoroughgoing responsibility and control. "A strong executive (p. 130) government, tempered and controlled by constant, vigilant, and representative criticism," is the ideal at which the parliamentary institutions of Great Britain are aimed.[188] [Footnote 186: See p. 314.] [Footnote 187: Parliament, 113-114.] [Footnote 188: Ilbert, Parliament, 119. On the Commons' control of the Government see Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 17; Moran, English Government, Chap. 8; Low, The Governance of England, Chap. 5; Todd, Parliamentary Government, II., 164-185.] *136. Judicial Powers: Impeachment and Attainder.*--The functions of a judicial character which, in the capacity of the High Court of Parliament, the two chambers fulfill are of secondary importance and do not call for extended discussion. So far as the law of the subject goes, they comprise (1) the powers possessed by each of the houses to deal with the constitution and conduct of its own membership; (2) the power of the Lords to try their own members when charged with treason or felony; (3) the jurisdiction of the Lords in the capacity of a final court of appeal for the United Kingdom; (4) the power of the two houses, acting jointly, to carry through impeachments of public officers and to enact bills of attainder; and (5) the effecting of the removal of certain kinds of public officers through the agency of an address from both houses to the crown. In days when the king and the ministers were disposed to defy the law and to evade responsibility the power of impeachment by the Commons at the bar of the Lords, originated as early as the reign of Edward III., was of the utmost importance. When, however, the House of Commons progressed in competence to the point where it was able to review and control the conduct of ministers with such thoroughness and continuity as to make it impossible for them to conduct business without a parliamentary majority, impeachment lost its value and fell into disuse. The last occasion upon which impeachment proceedings were instituted was in 1805.[189] Procedure by bill of attainder, arising from the legislative omnipotence of Parliament and following the ordinary course of legislation, is also obsolete. [Footnote 189: Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 362-366; Moran, English Government, 327-332.] *137. The House of Lords as a Court.*--Most important among surviving parliamentary functions of a judicial character is the exercise of appellate jurisdiction by the House of Lords. The judicial authority of the Lords is an anomaly, although as it is actually exercised it does not seriously contravene the principle which forbids the bringing together of judicial and legislative powers in the same hands. Historically, it arose from a confusion of the functions of two groups of men which were long largely identical in personnel, i.e., the Great Council, on the one hand, and the Lords of Parliament, on (p. 131) the other. In the reign of Henry IV. the Commons asked specifically to be relieved from judicial business, and the parliamentary jurisdiction which survived was recognized thereafter to be vested in the House of Lords alone. From an early date this jurisdiction was, as it is to-day, both original and appellate. As a court of first instance the chamber acquired the right to try peers charged with treason and felony and, on the accusation of the House of Commons, to bring to justice, through the process of impeachment, offenders who were not of the peerage. Nowadays these powers are of no practical consequence. The position of the Lords as an appellate tribunal, however, is still a fundamental fact in the judicial system. Starting with control, by way of appeal, over the courts of common law in England, the chamber acquired in time a similar control over the English courts of chancery, and eventually over the courts of both Scotland and Ireland. Its jurisdiction has stopped short only of the ecclesiastical courts, and of the courts of the outlying portions of the Empire, appeals from which are heard in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. By the Supreme Court of Judicature Act of 1873, whereby the higher tribunals of the realm were remodelled, the appellate jurisdiction of the Lords was abolished outright; but in 1876, before the measure had been put in operation the plan was modified and there was passed the Appellate Jurisdiction Act whereby the appellate functions of the Lords were restored and provision was made for the creation at first of two, later of three, and eventually of four, salaried life peers, to be selected from men of eminence in the law, and to be known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. In so far as it is controlled by statute at all, the appellate jurisdiction of the chamber is regulated to-day by this measure. Nominally, judicial business is transacted by the House as a whole, and every member has a right not only to be present but to participate in the rendering of decisions. Actually, such business is transacted by a little group of law lords (the attendance of but three being necessary) under the presidency of the Lord Chancellor, and the unwritten rule which prohibits the presence at judicial sessions of any persons save the law lords is quite as strictly observed as is any one of a score of other important conventions of the constitution.[190] Under the act of 1876 it is within the competence of the law lords to sit and to pronounce judgments in the name of the House at any time, regardless of whether Parliament is in session.[191] A sitting of the Court is, technically, a sitting of the Lords, and all actions (p. 132) taken are entered in the Journal of the House as a part of its proceedings.[192] [Footnote 190: Lowell, Government of England, II., 465.] [Footnote 191: When Parliament is in session the sittings of the law lords are held, as a rule, prior to the beginning of the regular sitting at 4.30 p.m.] [Footnote 192: The judicial functions of Parliament are described at some length in Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., Chap. 9. The principal work on the subject is C. H. McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and its Supremacy (New Haven, 1910). On the House of Lords as a court see MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 300-309; A. T. Carter, History of English Legal Institutions (London, 1902), 96-109; and W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, I., 170-193.] *138. Control of Legislation and Finance.*--The principal and altogether most indispensable ends which Parliament to-day subserves are those of legislation and of financial control. Many of the measures, important and unimportant, under which the affairs of the realm are regulated are but temporary and require annual re-enactment, and the volume of fresh legislation which is unceasingly demanded is all but limitless. Similarly, to employ the words of Anson, the revenues which accrue to the crown and can be dealt with independently of Parliament would hardly carry on the business of government for a day,[193] and not only does Parliament (in effect, the House of Commons) by its appropriation acts make possible the legal expenditure of virtually all public moneys; it provides, by its measures of taxation, the funds from which appropriations are made. [Footnote 193: Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 52.] VI. GENERAL ASPECTS OF PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE By reason of the supreme importance which attaches to the legislative and fiscal activities of the two chambers it is necessary that attention be directed at this point to the character of the procedure which these activities involve. For the purpose in hand it will be sufficient to speak of only the more important principles of procedure in relation to the three fundamental phases of legislative work: (1) the enactment of non-financial public bills, (2) the adoption of money bills, and (3) the passage of private bills. And within at least the first two of these domains the preponderance of the Commons is such that the procedure of that chamber alone need be described. The procedure of the two chambers upon bills is substantially the same, although, as is illustrated by the fact that amendments to bills may be introduced in the Lords at any stage but in the Commons at only stipulated stages, the methods of conducting business in the upper house are more elastic than those prevailing in the lower. *139. Fundamental Principles.*--The legislative omnipotence of Parliament has been emphasized sufficiently.[194] Any sort of measure upon any conceivable subject may be introduced and, if a sufficient number of the members are so minded, enacted into law. No measure (p. 133) may become law until it has been submitted for the consideration of both houses, but under the terms of the Parliament Act of 1911 it has been rendered easy for money bills, and not impossible for bills of other sorts, to be made law without the assent of the House of Lords. In the ordinary course of things, a measure is introduced in one house, put through three readings, sent to the other house, put there through the same routine, deposited with the House of Lords to await the royal assent,[195] and, after having been assented to as a matter of course, proclaimed as law. Bills, as a rule, may be introduced in either house, by the Government or by a private member. It is important to observe, however, in the first place, that certain classes of measures must originate in one or the other of the houses, e.g., money bills in the Commons and bills of attainder and other judicial bills in the Lords, and, in the second place, that with the growth of the leadership of the Government in legislation the importance, if not the number, of privately introduced bills has tended steadily to be decreased, and likewise the chances of their enactment. [Footnote 194: See p. 45.] [Footnote 195: Except that money bills remain in the custody of the Commons.] *140. Public Bills: First and Second Readings.*--The steps through which a public bill, whether introduced by the Government or by a private member, must pass in the Commons are still numerous, but by the reduction of some of them to sheer formalities which involve neither debate nor vote the actual legislative process has been made much more expeditious than once it was. The necessary stages in the enactment of a bill in either house are, as a rule, five: first reading, second reading, consideration by committee, report from committee, and third reading. Formerly the introduction of a measure involved almost invariably a speech explaining at length the nature of the proposal, followed by a debate and a vote, sometimes consuming, in all, several sittings. Nowadays only very important Government bills are introduced in this manner. In the case of all other bills the first reading has become a mere formality, involving nothing more than a motion on the part of a member, official or private, for permission to bring in a measure and the giving of leave by the House, almost invariably without discussion. Upon all measures save the most important Government projects, opportunity for debate is first afforded at the second reading, although the discussion at this stage must relate to general principles rather than to details. By the adoption of a motion that the bill be read a second time "this day six months" (or at some other date falling beyond the anticipated limits of the session) a measure may at this point be killed. *141. Public Bills: Later Stages.*--A bill which survives the (p. 134) second reading is "committed." Prior to 1907 it would go normally to the Committee of the Whole. Nowadays it goes there if it is a money bill or a bill for confirming a provisional order,[196] or if, on other grounds, the House so directs; otherwise it goes to one of the four standing committees, assignment being made by the Speaker. This is the stage at which the provisions of the measure are considered in detail and amendments are introduced. After the second reading, however, a bill may be referred to a select committee, and in the event that this is done a step is added to the process, for after being returned by the select committee the measure goes to the Committee of the Whole or to one of the standing committees. Eventually the bill is reported back to the House. If reported by a standing committee or, in amended form by the Committee of the Whole, it is considered by the House afresh and in some detail; otherwise, the "report stage" is omitted. Finally comes the third reading, the question now being whether the House approves the measure as a whole. At this stage any amendment beyond verbal changes necessitates recommitment. The carrying of a measure through these successive stages is spread over, as a rule, several days, and sometimes several weeks, but it is not impossible that the entire process be completed during the period of a sitting. Having been adopted by the originating house, a bill is taken by a clerk to the other house, there to be subjected to substantially the same procedure. If amendments are introduced, it is sent back in order that the suggested changes may be considered by the first house. If they are agreed to, the measure is sent up for the royal approval. If they are rejected and an agreement between the two houses cannot be reached, the measure falls.[197] [Footnote 196: See p. 138.] [Footnote 197: The legislative process is summed up aptly by Lowell as follows: "Leaving out of account the first reading, which rarely involves a real debate, the ordinary course of a public bill through the House of Commons gives, therefore, an opportunity for two debates upon its general merits, and between them two discussions of its details, or one debate upon the details if that one results in no changes, or if the bill has been referred to a standing committee. When the House desires to collect evidence it does so after approving of the general principle, and before taking up the details. Stated in this way the whole matter is plain and rational enough. It is, in fact, one of the many striking examples of adaptation in the English political system. A collection of rules that appear cumbrous and antiquated, and that even now are well-nigh incomprehensible when described in all their involved technicality, have been pruned away until they furnish a procedure almost as simple, direct, and appropriate as any one could devise." Government of England, I., 277-278. The procedure of the House of Commons on public bills is described in Lowell, Government of England, I., Chaps. 13, 17, 19; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 240-267; Low, Governance of England, Chap. 4; Moran, English Government, Chap. 14; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 113; Todd, Parliamentary Government, II., 138-163; Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 3; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, III., 85-112; and May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chap. 18. See also G. Walpole, House of Commons Procedure, with Notes on American Practice (London, 1902), and C. P. Ilbert, Legislative Methods and Forms (Oxford, 1901), 77-121.] *142. Money Bills: Appropriation and Finance Acts.*--The (p. 135) procedure followed in the handling of money bills differs materially from that which has been described. Underlying it are two fundamental principles, incorporated in the standing orders of the House of Commons during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. One of them prescribes that no petition or motion for the granting of money shall be proceeded upon save in Committee of the Whole. The other forbids the receiving of any petition, or the proceeding upon any motion, for a charge upon the public revenue unless recommended from the crown. Although these principles apply technically only to appropriations, they have long been observed with equal fidelity in respect to the raising of revenue. All specific measures for the expending of money and all proposals for the imposing of fresh taxation or the increase of existing taxation must emanate from the crown, i.e., in practice from the cabinet. A private member may go no further in this direction than to introduce resolutions of a wholly general character favoring some particular kind of expenditure, except that it is within his right to move to repeal or to reduce taxes which the Government has not proposed to modify. Two great fiscal measures are introduced and carried through annually: the Appropriation Act, in which are brought together all the grants for the public services for the year, and the Finance Act in which are comprised all regulations relating to the revenue and the national debt. Before the close of the fiscal year (March 31) the ministry submits to the Commons a body of estimates for the "supply services," drawn up originally by the government departments, scrutinized by the Treasury, and approved by the cabinet. Early in the session the House resolves itself into a Committee of the Whole on Supply, by which resolutions of supply are discussed, adopted, and reported. These resolutions are embodied in bills which, for purposes of convenience, are passed at intervals during the session. But at the close all of them are consolidated in one grand Appropriation Act.[198] Upwards of half of the public expenditures, it is to be observed, e.g., the Civil List, the salaries of judges, pensions, and interest on the national debt, are provided for by permanent acts imposing charges (p. 136) upon the Consolidated Fund and do not come annually under parliamentary review. [Footnote 198: Before the lapse of a twelvemonth unforeseen contingencies require invariably the voting of "supplementary grants."] *143. The Budget.*--As soon as practicable after the close of the fiscal year the House, resolved for the purpose into Committee of Ways and Means, receives from the Chancellor of the Exchequer his Budget, or annual statement of accounts. The statement comprises regularly three parts: a review of revenue and expenditure during the year just closed, a provisional balance-sheet for the year to come, and a series of proposals for the remission, modification, or fresh imposition of taxes. Revenues, as expenditures, are in large part "permanent," yet a very considerable proportion are provided for through the medium of yearly votes. In Committee of Ways and Means the House considers the Chancellor's proposals, and after they have been reported back and embodied in a bill they are carried with the assent of the crown, though no longer necessarily of the Lords, into law. Prior to 1861 it was customary to include in the fiscal resolutions and in the bill in which they were embodied only the annual and temporary taxes, but in consequence of the Lords' rejection, in 1860, of a separate finance bill repealing the duties on paper it was made the practice to incorporate in a single bill--the so-called Finance Bill--provision for all taxes, whether temporary or permanent. In practice the House of Commons rarely refuses to approve the financial measures recommended by the Government. The chamber has no power to propose either expenditure or taxation, and the right which it possesses to refuse or to reduce the levies and the appropriations asked for is seldom used. "Financially," says Lowell, "its work is rather supervision than direction; and its real usefulness consists in securing publicity and criticism rather than in controlling expenditure."[199] The theory underlying fiscal procedure has been summed up lucidly as follows: "The Crown demands money, the Commons grant it, and the Lords assent to the grant;[200] but the Commons do not vote money unless it be required by the Crown; nor impose or augment taxes unless they be necessary for meeting the supplies which they have voted or are about to vote, and for supplying general deficiencies in the revenue. The Crown has no concern in the nature or distribution of the taxes; but the foundation of all Parliamentary taxation is its necessity for the public service as declared by the Crown through its constitutional advisers."[201] [Footnote 199: Government of England, I., 288.] [Footnote 200: Since the enactment of the Parliament Bill of 1911, as has been observed, the assent of the Lords is not necessary. See p. 112.] [Footnote 201: The procedure involved in the handling of money bills is described in Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 14; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 268-281; Walpole, Electorate and Legislature, Chap. 7; Todd, Parliamentary Government, II., 186-271; Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 4; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, III., 113-174; May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chap. 21. See also E. Porritt, Amendments in the House of Commons Procedure since 1881, in _American Political Science Review_, Nov., 1908. Among numerous works on taxation in England the standard authority is S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes in England from the Earliest Times to the Year 1885, 4 vols. (2d ed., London, 1888).] *144. Private Bills: Nature and Procedure.*--In the matter of (p. 137) procedure there is no distinction between a Government bill and a private member's bill. Both are public bills. But a private bill is handled in a manner largely peculiar to itself. A public bill is one which affects the general interests of the state, and which has for its object presumably the promotion of the common good. A private bill is one which has in view the interest of some particular locality, person, or collection of persons. The commonest object of private bills is to enable private individuals to enter into combination to undertake works of public utility--the building of railways or tramways, the construction of harbors or piers, the draining of swamps, the supplying of water, gas, or electricity, and the embarking upon a wide variety of other enterprises which in the United States would be regulated chiefly by state legislatures and city councils--at their own risk and, in part at least, for their own profit. All private bills originate in petitions, which must be submitted in advance of the opening of the session during which they are to be considered. Their presentation and the various stages of their progress are governed by very detailed and stringent regulations, and fees are required from both promoters and opponents, so that the enactment of a private bill of importance becomes for the parties directly concerned an expensive process, and for the Exchequer a source of no inconsiderable amount of revenue. After having been scrutinized and approved by parliamentary officials known as Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, a private bill is introduced in one of the two houses.[202] Its introduction is equivalent to its first reading. At its second reading debate may take place upon the principle of the measure, after which the bill, if opposed, is referred to a Private Bill Committee consisting of four members and a disinterested referee. If the bill be not opposed, i.e., if no adverse petition has been filed by property owners, corporations, or other interests, the committee of reference, under a standing order of 1903, consists of the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means, two other members of the House, appointed by (p. 138) the Committee of Selection, and the Counsel to Mr. Speaker. The committee stage of a contested bill assumes an essentially judicial aspect. Promoters and opponents are represented by counsel, witnesses are examined, and expert testimony is taken. After being reported by committee, the measure goes its way under the same regulations as those controlling the progress of public bills. [Footnote 202: To facilitate their consideration, such measures are distributed approximately equally between the two houses. This is done through conference of the Chairmen of Committees of the two houses, or their counsel, prior to the assembling of Parliament.] *145. Provisional Orders.*--Two things are, however, to be noted. The first one is that while in theory the distinction between a public and a private bill is clear, in point of fact there is no little difficulty in drawing a line of demarcation, and the result has been the recognition of an indefinite class of "hybrid" bills, partly public and partly private in content and handled under some circumstances as the one and under others as the other, or even under a procedure combining features of both. The second fact to be observed is that, in part to reduce expense and in part to procure the good-will of the executive department concerned, it has become common for the promoters of enterprises requiring parliamentary sanction to make use of the device known as provisional orders. A provisional order is an order issued, after minute investigation, by a government department authorizing provisionally the undertaking of a project in behalf of which application has been made. It requires eventually the sanction of Parliament, but such orders are laid before the houses in groups by the several departments and their ratification is virtually assured in advance. It is pointed out by Lowell that during the years 1898-1901 not one-tenth of the provisional orders laid before Parliament were opposed, and but one failed of adoption.[203] [Footnote 203: Government of England, I., 385. On private bill legislation see Lowell, I., Chap. 20; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I, 291-300; May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chaps. 24-29; Courtney, Working Constitution of the United Kingdom, Chap. 18; MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 398-420. The standard treatise upon the subject is F. Clifford, History of Private Bill Legislation, 2 vols. (London, 1885-1887). A recent book of value is F. H. Spencer, Municipal Origins; an Account of English Private Bill Legislation relating to Local Government, 1740-1835, with a Chapter on Private Bill Procedure (London, 1911).] VII. THE CONDUCT OF BUSINESS IN THE TWO HOUSES "How can I learn the rules of the Commons?" was a question once put by an Irish member to Mr. Parnell. "By breaking them," was the philosophic reply. Representing, as it does, an accumulation through centuries of deliberately adopted regulations, interwoven and overlaid with unwritten custom, the code of procedure by which the conduct of business in the House of Commons is governed is indeed intricate (p. 139) and forbidding. Lord Palmerston admitted that he never fully mastered it, and Gladstone was not infrequently an inadvertent offender against the "rules of the House." Prior to the nineteenth century the rules were devised, as is pointed out by Anson, with two objects in view: to protect the House from hasty and ill-considered action pressed forward by the king's ministers, and to secure fair play between the parties in the chamber and a hearing for all. It was not until 1811 that business of the Government was permitted to obtain recognized precedence on certain days; but the history of the procedure of the Commons since that date is a record of (1) the general reduction of the time during which private members may indulge in the discussion of subjects or measures lying outside the Government's legislative programme, (2) increasing limitation of the opportunity for raising general questions at the various stages of Government business, and (3) the cutting down of the time allowed for discussing at all the projects to which the Government asks the chambers' assent.[204] [Footnote 204: Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 253.] *146. Rules.*--The rules governing debate and decorum are not only elaborate but, in some instances, of great antiquity. In so far as they have been reduced to writing they may be said to comprise (1) "standing orders" of a permanent character, (2) "sessional orders," operative during a session only, and (3) "general orders," indeterminate in respect to period of application. In the course of debate all remarks are addressed to the Speaker and in the event that the floor is desired by more than one member it rests with the Speaker to designate, with scrupulous impartiality, who shall have it. When a "division" is in progress and the doors are closed members speak seated and covered, but at all other times they speak standing and uncovered. A speech may not be read from manuscript, and it is within the competence of the Speaker not only to warn a member against irrelevance or repetition but to compel him to terminate his remarks.[205] A member whose conduct is reprehensible may be ordered to withdraw and, upon vote of the House, may be suspended from service. Except in committee, a member may not speak twice upon the same question, although he may be allowed the floor a second time to explain a portion of his speech which has been misunderstood. Undue obstruction is not tolerated, and the Speaker may decline to put a motion which he considers dilatory. [Footnote 205: On parliamentary oratory see Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 203-224.] *147. Closure and the Guillotine.*--For the further limitation of debate two important and drastic devices are at all times available. One is ordinary closure and the other is "the guillotine." Closure dates originally from 1881. It was introduced in the standing orders of (p. 140) the House in 1882, and it assumed its present form in 1888.[206] It sprang from the efforts of the House to curb the intolerably obstructionist tactics employed a generation ago by the Irish Nationalists, but by reason of the increasing mass of business to be disposed of and the tendency of large deliberative bodies to waste time, it has been found too useful to be given up. "After a question has been proposed," reads Standing Order 26, "a member rising in his place may claim to move 'that the Question be now put,' and unless it shall appear to the Chair that such motion is an abuse of the Rules of the House, or an infringement of the rights of the minority, the Question 'that the Question be now put' shall be put forthwith and decided without amendment or debate." Discussion may thus be cut off instantly and a vote precipitated. Closure is inoperative, however, unless the number of members voting in the majority for its adoption is at least one hundred, or, in a standing committee, twenty. A more generally effective device by which discussion is limited and the transaction of business is facilitated is that known as "closure by compartments," or "the guillotine." When this is employed the House in advance of the consideration of a bill agrees upon an allotment of time to the various parts or stages of the measure, and at the expiration of each period debate, whether concluded or not, is closed, a vote is taken, and a majority adopts that portion of the bill upon which the guillotine has fallen. In recent years this device has been employed almost invariably when an important Government bill is reserved for consideration in Committee of the Whole. Its advantage is the saving of time and the ensuring that by a given date final action upon a measure shall have been taken. Prior to the middle of the nineteenth century liberty of discussion in the Commons was all but unrestrained, save by what an able authority on English parliamentary practice has termed "the self-imposed parliamentary discipline of the parties."[206] The enormous change which has come about is attributable to two principal causes, congestion of business and the rise of obstructionism. The effect has been, among other things, to accentuate party differences and to involve occasional disregard of the rights of minorities.[207] [Footnote 206: The name was first employed in 1887.] [Footnote 207: Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, I., 133-212; Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 158-172. An excellent illustration of the use of the guillotine is afforded by the history of the passage of the National Insurance Bill of 1911. See _Annual Register_ (1911), 232-236.] *148. Votes and Divisions.*--When debate upon the whole or a portion of a measure is terminated there takes place a vote, which may or may not involve, technically, a "division." The Speaker or Chairman (p. 141) states the question to be voted upon and calls for the ayes and noes. He announces the apparent result and, if his decision is not challenged, the vote is so recorded. If, however, any member objects, strangers are asked to withdraw (save from the places reserved for them), electric bells are rung throughout the building, the two-minute sand-glass is turned, and at the expiration of the time the doors are locked. The question is then repeated and another oral vote is taken. If there is still lack of acquiescence in the announced result, the Speaker orders a division. The ayes pass into the lobby at the Speaker's right and the noes into that at his left, and all are counted by four tellers designated by the Speaker, two from each side, as the members return to their places in the chamber. This method of taking a division has undergone but little change since 1836. Under a standing order of 1888 the Speaker is empowered, in the event that he considers a demand for a division dilatory or irresponsible, to call upon the ayes and noes to rise in their places and be counted; but there is seldom occasion for resort to this variation from the established practice. The device of "pairing" is not unknown, and when the question is one of political moment the fact is made obvious by the activity of the party "whips" in behalf of the interests which they represent.[208] [Footnote 208: On the conduct of business in the Commons see Lowell, Government of England, I, Chaps. 15-16; Moran, English Government, Chap. 15; Walpole, Electorate and Legislature, Chap. 8; Ilbert, Parliament, Chap. 5; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons, II., 215-264, III., 1-41; May, Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings, and Usage of Parliament, Chaps, 8-12; Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History, 231-284; Graham, The Mother of Parliaments, 225-258; and MacDonaugh, The Book of Parliament, 217-247.] *149. Procedure in the Lords.*--The rules of procedure of the House of Lords are in theory simple, and in practice yet more so. Nominally, all measures of importance, after being read twice, are considered in Committee of the Whole, referred to a standing committee for textual revision, reported, and accorded final adoption or rejection. In practice the process is likely to be abbreviated. Few bills, for example, are actually referred to the revision committee. For the examination of such measures as seem to require it committees are constituted for the session, and others are created from time to time as need of them appears, but the comparative leisure of the chamber permits debate within the Committee of the Whole upon any measure which the members really care to discuss. Willful obstruction is all but unknown, so that there has never been occasion for the adoption of any form of closure. Important questions are decided, as a rule, by a division. When the question is put those members who desire to register an affirmative vote repair to the lobby at the right of (p. 142) the woolsack, those who are opposed to the proposal take their places in the corresponding lobby at the left, and both groups are counted by tellers appointed by the presiding officer. A member may abstain from voting by taking his station on "the steps of the throne," technically accounted outside the chamber. Prior to 1868 absent members were allowed to vote by proxy, but this indefensible privilege, abolished by standing order in the year mentioned, is likely never to be revived.[209] [Footnote 209: On the conduct of business in the Lords see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, I., 281-291.] CHAPTER VII (p. 143) POLITICAL PARTIES I. PARLIAMENTARISM AND THE PARTY SYSTEM *150. Government by Party.*--Intimately connected with the parliamentary scheme of government which has been described is the characteristic British system of government by party. Indeed, not merely is there between the two an intimate connection; they are but different aspects of the same working arrangement. The public affairs of the kingdom at any given time, as has appeared, are managed by the body of ministers, acting with and through a supporting majority in the House of Commons. These ministers belong to one or the other of the two great political parties, with only occasional and incidental representation of minor affiliated political groups. Their supporters in the Commons are, in the main, their fellow-partisans, and their tenure of power is dependent upon the fortunes of their party in Parliament and throughout the country. They are at once the working executive, the guiding agency in legislation, and the leaders and spokesmen of this party. Confronting them constantly is the Opposition, consisting of influential exponents of the contrary political faith who, in turn, lead the rank and file of their party organization; and if at any time the ministers in power lose their supporting majority in the Commons, whether through adverse results of a national election or otherwise, they retire and the Opposition assumes office. The parliamentary system and the party system are thus inextricably related, the one being, indeed, historically the product of the other. It was principally through the agency of party spirit, party contest, and party unity that there was established by degrees that single and collective responsibility of ministers which lies at the root of parliamentary government; and, but for the coherence and stability with which political activity is invested by party organization, the operation of the parliamentary system would be an impossibility. The law of the British constitution does not demand the existence of parties; on the contrary, it affords them no recognition or place. The conventions, however, both assume and require them. *151. Two-Party Organization.*--The relationship which subsists (p. 144) between parliamentarism and party government is to be accounted for in no small measure by the fact that the number of great parties in the United Kingdom is but two. Certain continental nations, notably France and Italy, possess the forms of parliamentary government, adopted within times comparatively recent and taken over largely from Great Britain. In these countries, however, the multiplicity of parties effectually prevents the operation of the parliamentary system in the fashion in which that system operates across the Channel. Ministries must be made up invariably of representatives of a number of essentially independent groups. They are apt to be in-harmonious, to be able to execute but indifferently the composite will of the Government coalition in the popular chamber, and, accordingly, to be short-lived. Despite the rise in recent decades of the Irish Nationalist and Labor groups, it is still true in Great Britain, as it has been since political parties first made their appearance there, that two leading party affiliations divide between themselves the allegiance of the mass of the nation. The defeat of one means the triumph of the other, and either alone is competent normally to govern independently if elevated to power. This means, on the one hand, a much more thoroughgoing predominance of the governing party than can be acquired by a single party in France or Italy and, on the other hand, a unique concentration of responsibility and, in turn, an increased responsiveness to the public will. The leaders of the one party for the time in the ascendancy govern the nation, by reason of the fact that, _being_ the leaders of this party, they are selected without doubt or equivocation to fill the principal offices of state.[210] [Footnote 210: For a fuller exposition of the relations of party and the parliamentary system see Lowell, Government of England, I., Chap. 24. The best description of English parties and party machinery is that contained in Chaps. 24-37 of President Lowell's volumes. The growth of parties and of party organization is discussed with fullness and with admirable temper in M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, trans. by F. Clarke, 2 vols. (London, 1902). A valuable monograph is A. L. Lowell, The Influence of Party upon Legislation in England and America, in _Annual Report of American Historical Association for 1901_ (Washington, 1902), I., 319-542. An informing study is E. Porritt, The Break-up of the English Party System, in _Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science_, V., No. 4 (Jan., 1895), and an incisive criticism is H. Belloc and H. Chesterton, The Party System (London, 1911). There is no adequate history of English political parties from their origins to the present day. G. W. Cooke, The History of Party from the Rise of the Whig and Tory factions in the Reign of Charles II. to the Passing of the Reform Bill, 3 vols. (London, 1836-1837) covers the subject satisfactorily to the end of the last unreformed parliament. Other party histories--as T. E. Kebbel, History of Toryism (London, 1886); C. B. R. Kent, The English Radicals (London, 1899); W. Harris, History of the Radical Party in Parliament (London, 1885); and J. B. Daly, The Dawn of Radicalism (London, 1892)--cover important but restricted fields. An admirable work which deals with party organization as well as with party principles is R. S. Watson, The National Liberal Federation from its Commencement to the General Election of 1906 (London, 1907). For further party histories see p. 160, 166.] II. PARTIES IN THE LATER EIGHTEENTH AND EARLIER NINETEENTH (p. 145) CENTURIES *152. Whigs and Tories.*--The seventeenth-century origins of political parties in England, the development of Whigs and Tories following the Revolution of 1688-1689, and the prolonged Whig supremacy during the reigns of George I. and George II., have been alluded to in another place.[211] During the eighteenth century the parliamentary system was but slowly coming into its own, and again and again party lines all but disappeared. The recurring rivalry of Whig and Tory elements, however, brought about gradually a habitual recognition of the responsibility of ministers, and this responsibility, in turn, reacted to accentuate party demarcation. The efforts of George III. to revive the royal prerogative had the effect of calling into existence a body of new Tories, not Jacobite, but Hanoverian, who supported the king in his purpose, and at the same time, of driving the forces of opposition to a closer union and more constant vigilance. Throughout the century the tone of party politics was continuously low. Bribery and other forms of corruption were rife, and the powers of government, both national and local, were in the hands regularly of an aristocratic minority which ruled in its own interest. The high-water mark of intrigue was reached in 1783 when the old Tories, led by Lord North, allied themselves with the old Whigs, led by Charles James Fox, to retain power and to curtail the influence of the king. The coalition was unsuccessful, and the defeat of Fox's India Bill, in December, 1783, became the occasion of the younger Pitt's elevation to the premiership, followed within three months by a national election which precipitated an end of the seventy years of Whig ascendancy. [Footnote 211: See p. 39.] *153. The Tory Ascendancy, 1783-1830.*--Throughout the ensuing forty-six years, or until 1830, the new Tory party continued almost uninterruptedly in power, although it is to be observed that after 1790 the composition and character of this party underwent important modification. The first decade of the period covered by the Pitt ministry (1784-1801) was a time of incipient but active propaganda in behalf of constitutional, financial, and social reform, and the government was not disinclined to favor a number of the changes which were projected. The outbreak and progress of the Revolution in (p. 146) France, however, completely altered the situation. The great landowners, who constituted the dominating element in the Whig party, detested the principles of the Revolution and were insistent in season and out upon war with France. They secured the support of the parliamentary classes generally, and Pitt and his colleagues were forced to surrender to the apprehensions and demands of these elements. The war was declared by France, but it was provoked mainly by the hostile attitude of the English people and government. At home all reform propaganda was stamped out, and Tories and Whigs alike throughout the quarter-century of international conflict pointed habitually to the abuses by which the upheaval in France was accompanied as indicative of what might be expected in England, or anywhere, when once the way was thrown open for unrestrained innovation. The Tories were in power during most of the war period and in 1815 their position was seemingly impregnable. During the years covered by the ministry of Lord Liverpool (1812-1827), however, their hold was gradually relaxed. They sought to secure for themselves the support of the masses and talked much of the aristocratic exclusiveness of the Whigs, yet they made it their first concern to maintain absolutely intact the constitution of the kingdom and the political and social order by which it was buttressed. As long as England was engaged in a life and death contest with Napoleon the staying of innovation was easy, but after 1815 the task became one of rapidly increasing difficulty. In the reign of George IV. (1820-1830) the more progressive of the Tory leaders, notably Canning, Huskisson, and Peel, recognized that the demands of the nation would have to be met at some points, and a number of liberalizing measures were suffered to be carried through Parliament, though none which touched directly the most serious problems of the day. In 1830 the resignation of the ministry of the Duke of Wellington marked the end of the prolonged Tory ascendancy, and with a ministry presided over by Earl Grey the Whigs returned to power. With the exception of a few brief intervals they and their successors, the Liberals, held office thereafter until 1874.[212] [Footnote 212: The party history of the period 1700-1792 is related admirably and in much detail in W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 7 vols. (new ed., New York, 1903). Beginning with 1815, the best work on English political history in the earlier nineteenth century is S. Walpole, History of England from the Conclusion of the Great War in 1815, 6 vols. (new ed., London, 1902). A good general account is contained in I. S. Leadam, The History of England from the Accession of Anne to the Death of George II. (London, 1909), and W. Hunt, The History of England from the Accession of George III. to the Close of Pitt's First Administration (London, 1905). Briefer accounts of the period 1783-1830 will be found in May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., 409-440, and in Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 22 and X., Chaps. 18-20 (see bibliography, pp. 856-870). Important biographies of political leaders include A. von Ruville, William Pitt, Graf von Chatham, 3 vols. (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1905); W. D. Green, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London, 1901); E. Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 3 vols. (London, 1875-1876); Lord P. H. Stanhope, Life of Pitt, 4 vols. (London, 1861-1862); Lord Rosebery, Pitt (London, 1891); and Lord J. Russell, Life of Charles James Fox, 3 vols. (1859-1867).] III. THE SECOND ERA OF WHIG [LIBERAL] ASCENDANCY, 1830-1874 (p. 147) *154. The Liberals and Reform.*--The political history of this second great era of Whig ascendancy falls into some four or five stages. The first, extending from the accession of the Grey ministry in 1830 to the parliamentary elections of 1841, was an epoch of notable reforms, undertaken and carried through mainly by the Whigs, with the co-operation of various radical elements and of discontented Tories. This was the period of the first Reform Act (1832), the emancipation of slaves in the British colonies (1833), the beginning of parliamentary appropriations for public education (1833), the Factory Act of 1833, the New Poor Law (1834), the Municipal Corporations Act (1835), and a number of other measures designed to meet urgent demands of humanity and of public interest. This was the time, furthermore, at which the party nomenclature of later days was brought into use. The name Whig was superseded altogether by that of Liberal, while the name Tory, though not wholly discontinued in everyday usage, was replaced largely by the term Conservative.[213] The Liberals were in these years peculiarly the party of reform, but it must not be inferred that the Conservatives resisted all change or withheld support from all measures of amelioration. [Footnote 213: The name Conservative was employed by Canning as early as 1824. Its use was already becoming common when, in January, 1835, Peel, in his manifesto to the electors of Tamworth, undertook an exposition of the principles of what he declared should be known henceforth as the Conservative--not the Tory--party.] *155. From Peel to Palmerston.*--The second stage of the period under survey was that comprised by the Conservative ministry of Sir Robert Peel, 1841-1846, established in consequence of the decisive defeat of the Whigs at the elections of 1841. The memorable achievement of the Peel government was the repeal of the Corn Laws and the casting off of substantially the whole of the protective system; but the tariff policy of the premier divided the Conservative party into the protectionists or old Conservatives, led by Disraeli and Lord Derby, and the free trade or liberal Conservatives, led by Aberdeen and (p. 148) Gladstone, and the breach enabled the Liberals, under Lord John Russell, to recover office in 1847. A third stage of the period, i.e., 1847 to 1859, was one of ministerial instability. Disputes between Russell and Palmerston, the foreign minister, undermined the Liberal position, and in 1852 the Conservatives, under the leadership of Derby, returned to power. In 1853, however, the free trade Conservatives joined the Liberals, overthrew Derby, and placed in office a coalition ministry under Aberdeen. This government maintained itself until 1855, when, by reason of discontent aroused by his management of England's part in the Crimean War, Aberdeen resigned and was succeeded by Palmerston, at the head of another Liberal ministry. Foreign difficulties drove Palmerston from office early in 1858, and the establishment of a second Derby ministry marked a brief return of the Conservatives to control. Defeated, however, on a resolution censuring the Government for the inadequacy of the reform bill introduced by it in 1859, and also for the failure of Lord Derby to prevent the war between France and Austria, the ministry resigned, in April, 1859, and Lord Palmerston returned to power, with Gladstone and Lord John Russell as colleagues. Gladstone's acceptance of office under Palmerston marked the final severance of the Peelites from the Conservative party and the abandonment of all hope of the reconstruction for which both Gladstone and Derby had labored. *156. Party Regeneration.*--A fourth, and final, stage of the Liberal period covered the years 1859 to 1874. Its importance arises not merely from the fact that the culmination of the power of the Liberals during the nineteenth century was attained at this point, but from the further fact that it was during these years that the Liberal party was transformed and popularized so as to be made for the first time really worthy of the name which it bears. As long as Palmerston lived the Liberals of the old school, men who disliked radicalism and were content with the reform of 1832, were in the ascendancy, but after the premier's death, October 18, 1865, new ideas and influences asserted themselves and a new Liberal party came rapidly to the fore. This regenerated party, whose leader was Gladstone, rejected definitely the ideal of _laissez-faire_, took over numerous principles of the Radicals, and, with the watchwords of "peace, retrenchment, and reform," began to insist upon a broader parliamentary franchise and upon fresh legislation for the protection and general betterment of the masses. The new liberalism was paralleled, however, by a new conservatism, whose principal exponent was Disraeli. The new Conservatives likewise advocated franchise reform and legislation for the people, although they put more emphasis upon the latter than upon the former; and they especially favored a firm foreign policy, (p. 149) an extension of British interests in all parts of the world, and the adoption of a scheme of colonial federation. They appeared, at least, to have less regard for peace and for economy than had the Liberals. The temper and tendencies of the parties as they gradually assumed shape during the third quarter of the nineteenth century have been characterized effectively by a recent writer as follows: "The parties of which Gladstone and Disraeli were the chiefs were linked by continuous historical succession with the two great sections or factions of the aristocracy, or hereditary oligarchy, which ruled Great Britain in the eighteenth century. But each had been transformed by national changes since the Reform Bill. The Whigs had become Liberals, the Tories had become Conservatives. The Liberal party had absorbed part of the principles of the French Revolution. They stood now for individual liberty, laying especial stress on freedom of trade, freedom of contract, and freedom of competition. They had set themselves to break down the rule of the landowner and the Church, to shake off the fetters of Protection, and to establish equality before the law. Their acceptance of egalitarian principles led them to adopt democratic ideals, to advocate extension of the suffrage, and the emancipation of the working classes. Such principles, though not revolutionary, are to some extent disruptive in their tendency; and their adoption by the Liberals had forced the Tory party to range themselves in defense of the existing order of things. They professed to stand for the Crown, the Church, and the Constitution. They were compelled by the irresistible trend of events to accept democratic principles and to carry out democratic reforms. They preferred, in fact, to carry out such reforms themselves, in order that the safeguards which they considered necessary might be respected. Democratic principles having been adopted, both parties made it their object to redress grievances; but the Conservatives showed a natural predisposition to redress those grievances which arose from excessive freedom of competition, the Liberals were the more anxious to redress those which were the result of hereditary or customary privilege. The harmony of the State consists in the equilibrium between the two opposing forces of liberty and order. The Liberals laid more stress upon liberty, the Conservatives attached more importance to order and established authority."[214] [Footnote 214: S. Leathes, in Cambridge Modern History, XII., 30-31.] *157. The First Gladstone Ministry.*--Upon the death of Palmerston in 1865 Lord John Russell became premier a second time, but in the course of the following year a franchise reform bill brought forward by the Government was defeated in the Commons, through the instrumentality chiefly of a group of old Liberals (the "Adullamites") who (p. 150) opposed modification of the electoral system, and by curious circumstance it fell to the purely Conservative Derby-Disraeli ministry of 1866-1868 not only to carry the first electoral reform since 1832 but to impart to that reform a degree of thoroughness upon which none save the most advanced radicals had cared to insist. The results of the doubling of the electorate were manifest in the substantial majority which the new Liberals acquired at the elections of 1868, and the Disraeli ministry (Derby had retired early in the year) gave place to a government presided over by the indubitable leader of the new Liberal forces, Gladstone. The years 1868-1874, covered by the first Gladstone ministry, were given distinction by a remarkable series of reforms, including the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland (1869), the enactment of an Irish land bill (1870), the institution of national control of elementary education (1870), and the adoption of the Australian ballot in parliamentary elections (1872). Defeated at last, however, on an Irish university bill, the ministry resigned, and when, at the elections of 1874, the country was appealed to, the Conservatives obtained a clear parliamentary majority of fifty seats. This was the first really dependable majority, indeed, which the party had possessed since 1842. Disraeli became prime minister and Derby minister for foreign affairs.[215] [Footnote 215: The political history of the period 1830-1874 is covered very satisfactorily in W. N, Molesworth, History of England from the Year 1830-1874, 3 vols. (London, 1874). Other general works include: Walpole, History of England, vols. 3-6, extending to 1856; H. Paul, History of Modern England, 5 vols. (London, 1904-1906), vols. 1-3, beginning with 1845; J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times from the Accession of Queen Victoria, 7 vols. (1877-1905), vols. 1-3, beginning with the events of 1837; J. F. Bright, History of England, 5 vols. (London, 1875-1894), vol. 4; and S. Low and L. C. Sanders, History of England during the Reign of Victoria (London, 1907). Briefer treatment will be found in May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, I., 440-468, III., 67-88, and in Cambridge Modern History, XI., chaps. 1, 11, 12 (see bibliography, pp. 867-873). Biographies of importance include S. Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols. (London, 1889); H. Maxwell, Life of the Duke of Wellington, 2 vols. (London, 1899); J. Morley, Life of William E. Gladstone, 3 vols. (London, 1903); J. R. Thursfield, Peel (London, 1907); W. F. Monypenny, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (London, 1910-1912), vols. 1-2, covering the years 1804-1846; and S. Lee, Queen Victoria, a Biography (rev. ed., London, 1904).] IV. THE SECOND ERA OF CONSERVATIVE ASCENDANCY, 1874-1905 *158. The Question of Irish Home Rule.*--During the five years covered by the life of the second Disraeli ministry British imperialism reached flood tide. The reforms of the Gladstone government were (p. 151) not undone, but the Conservative leaders interested themselves principally in foreign and colonial questions, and home affairs received but scant attention. The result was public discontent, and at the elections of 1880 the Liberals obtained a parliamentary majority of more than one hundred seats. It remained for the second Gladstone government, established at this point, to adjust a number of difficulties on the frontiers of the Empire; but the heart of the ministry was not in this sort of work and the way was cleared as speedily as possible for a return to the consideration of problems of a domestic nature. In 1884 the Representation of the People Act was carried, and in 1885 the Redistribution of Seats Act. But now, and throughout a decade and a half following, the question which overshadowed all others was that of Home Rule for Ireland. Upon this issue, in its variety of aspects, governments henceforth rose and fell, parties were disrupted and re-aligned. In 1885 the Parnellites, or Irish Nationalists, incensed because of Gladstone's indifference to Home Rule, and taking advantage of the ministry's unpopularity arising from the failure of its Egyptian policy, compassed the defeat of the Government on a measure relating to the taxing of beer and spirits. The Marquis of Salisbury, who after the death of Lord Beaconsfield, in 1881, had become leader of the Conservatives, made up a government; but, absolutely dependent upon the Irish Nationalist alliance and yet irrevocably committed against Home Rule, the Salisbury ministry found itself from the outset in an impossible position. *159. The Liberal Unionists.*--The elections at the end of 1885 yielded the Conservatives 249 seats, the Irish Nationalists 86, and the Liberals 335, and January 28, 1880, the Salisbury ministry retired. Gladstone returned to power and Home Rule took its place in the formal programme of the Liberal party. Then followed, April 8, 1886, the introduction of the first of Gladstone's memorable Home Rule bills. The measure accorded the Irish a separate parliament at Dublin, cut them off from representation at Westminster, and required them to bear a proportionate share of the expenses of the Imperial Government. It was thrown out by the Commons on the second reading. The Conservatives opposed it solidly, many of the Irish Nationalists were dissatisfied with it, and upwards of a hundred Liberal members, led by Joseph Chamberlain, flatly refused to follow the majority of their fellow-partisans in voting for it. Under the name of Liberal Unionists these dissenters eventually broke entirely from their earlier affiliation; and, inclining more and more toward the position occupied by the Conservatives, they ended by losing their identity in the ranks of that party. Their accession, however, brought the Conservatives new vigor, new issues, and even a new name, for in more recent (p. 152) days the term Conservative has been supplanted very generally by that of Unionist. *160. Second Salisbury and Fourth Gladstone Ministries.*--The defeat of Home Rule was followed by a national election, the result of which was the return of 316 Conservatives, 78 Liberal Unionists, 191 Gladstonian Liberals, and 85 Irish Nationalists. The combined unionists had a majority of 118, and July 26, 1886, the short-lived third Gladstone government was succeeded by a second ministry presided over by the Marquis of Salisbury. Home Rule, however, was not dead. During the years of the Salisbury ministry (1886-1892) the authorities were obliged to devote much attention to Irish affairs, and in 1892 the Liberals were returned to office on a platform which stipulated expressly Home Rule for Ireland.[216] The Conservative appeal to the country at this time was made on the ground, first, that Home Rule should be resisted, and, second, that the Government's achievements in reform and constructive legislation entitled the party to continuance in power; but in the new parliament there was an adverse majority of forty, and August 18 Gladstone, for the fourth time, was requested to form a ministry.[217] The elections of 1892 are of interest by reason of the fact that they marked the first appearance of independent labor representatives in Parliament. Miners' delegates and an agricultural laborer had been elected before, but they had identified themselves in all instances with the radical wing of the Liberals. There were now returned, however, four members, including John Burns and Keir Hardie, who chose to hold aloof and, as they expressed it, "to sit in opposition until they should cross the house to form a labor government." The Home Rule bill which Gladstone introduced February 13, 1893, differed from its predecessor of 1886 principally in not excluding the Irish from representation at Westminster. It was passed in the House of Commons, although by an ultimate majority of but thirty-four, but in the Lords it was rejected by a vote of 419 to 41. In the face of an obstacle so formidable as that imposed by the adverse majority in the upper chamber it appeared useless to press the issue. The Lords, whose power in legislation became at this point greater than at any time since 1832, systematically balked the Government at every turn, and March 3, 1894, Gladstone, aged and (p. 153) weary of parliamentary strife, retired from office. His last speech in the Commons comprised a sharp arraignment of the House of Lords, with a forecast of the clash which eventually would lead (and, in point of fact, has led) to the reconstitution of that chamber. [Footnote 216: This was the "Newcastle Programme," drawn up at a convention of the National Liberal Federation at Newcastle in October, 1891. Items in the programme, in addition to Home Rule, included the disestablishment of the Church in Wales and Scotland, a local veto on the sale of intoxicating liquors, the abolition of the plural franchise, and articles defining employers' liability and limiting the hours of labor.] [Footnote 217: C. A. Whitmore, Six Years of Unionist Government, 1886-1892 (London, 1892).] *161. Third and Fourth Salisbury Ministries.*--For the time the Earl of Rosebery, who had been foreign secretary, assumed the premiership and there was no break in the Government's policy. In June, 1895, however, the ministry suffered a defeat on the floor of the Commons, and the Marquis of Salisbury was a third time invited to form a government. The retirement of Gladstone brought to light numerous rifts within the Liberal party, and when the new ministry, in July, appealed to the country, with Home Rule as a preponderating issue, its supporters secured in the Commons a majority of 152 seats over the Liberals and Nationalists combined. The Liberal Unionists returned 71 members, and to cement yet more closely the Conservative-Unionist alliance Lord Salisbury made up a ministry in which the Unionist elements were ably represented by Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary, Viscount Goschen as First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Duke of Devonshire as President of the Council. The premier himself returned to the post of Foreign Secretary, and his nephew, Arthur J. Balfour, now become again Government leader in the Commons, to that of First Lord of the Treasury. The accession of the third Salisbury ministry marked the beginning of a Unionist ascendancy which lasted uninterruptedly a full decade. In 1902 Lord Salisbury, whose fourth ministry, dating from the elections of 1900, was continuous with his third, retired from public life, but he was succeeded in the premiership by Mr. Balfour, and the personnel and policies of the Government continued otherwise unchanged.[218] [Footnote 218: The most useful works on the party history of the period 1874-1895 are Paul, History of Modern England, vols. 4-5, and Morley, Life of W. E. Gladstone, vol. 3. J. McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, vols. 4-6, covers the ground in a popular way. Useful brief accounts are May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., 88-127, and Cambridge Modern History, XII., Chap. 3 (bibliography, pp. 853-855). An excellent book is H. Whates, The Third Salisbury Administration, 1895-1900 (London, 1901).] *162. Unionist Imperialism: the Elections of 1900.*--During the larger part of this Unionist decade the Liberal party, rent by factional disputes and personal rivalries, afforded but ineffective opposition.[219] The Home Rule question fell into the background; and although (p. 154) the Unionists carried through a considerable amount of social and industrial legislation, the interests of the period center largely in the Government's policies and achievements within the domain of foreign and colonial affairs. The most hotly contested issue of the decade was imperialism; the most commanding public figure was Joseph Chamberlain; the most notable enterprise undertaken was the war in South Africa. In 1900 it was resolved by the ministerial leaders to take advantage of the public spirit engendered by the war to procure for the Unionists a fresh lease of power. Parliament was dissolved and, on the eve of the announcement of the annexation of the Transvaal, a general election was held. The Liberals, led since early in 1899 by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, charged the Unionists with neglect of social and industrial matters, pledged themselves to educational, housing, and temperance reform, and sought especially to convince the electorate that they might be intrusted with safety to defend the legitimate interests of the Empire. The Government forced the fight upon the issue of South African policy almost exclusively, and, representing the opposition as "Little-Englanders," went before the people with the argument that from the course that had been entered upon in South Africa there could be no turning back, and that the present ministry was entitled to an opportunity to carry to completion the work that it had begun. The appeal was altogether successful. The Conservatives obtained 334 seats and the Liberal Unionists 68--a total of 402; while the Liberals and Laborites carried but 186 and the Nationalists 82--a total of 268. The Government majority in the new parliament was thus 134, almost precisely that of 1895.[220] [Footnote 219: The two principal aspirants to the Gladstonian succession were Lord Rosebery and Sir William Vernon-Harcourt. Rosebery represented the imperialistic element of Liberalism and advocated a return of the party to the general position which it had occupied prior to the split on Home Rule. Harcourt and the majority of the party opposed imperialism and insisted upon attention rather to a programme of social reform. From Gladstone's retirement, in 1894, to 1896 leadership devolved upon Rosebery, but from 1896 to the beginning of 1899 Harcourt was the nominal leader, although Rosebery, as a private member, continued hardly less influential than before.] [Footnote 220: W. Clarke, The Decline in English Liberalism, in _Political Science Quarterly_, Sept., 1901; P. Hamelle, Les élections anglaises, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Nov., 1900.] After the elections dissension within the Liberal ranks broke out afresh. The Rosebery wing maintained that, the South African war having been begun, it was the duty of all Englishmen to support it, and that the Unionist government should be attacked only on the ground of mismanagement. In July, 1901, Campbell-Bannerman, impelled by the weakness of his position, demanded of his fellow-partisans that they either ratify or repudiate his leadership of the party in the (p. 155) Commons. Approval was accorded, but no progress was realized toward an agreement upon policies. To careful observers it became clear that there could be no effective revival of Liberalism until the war in South Africa should have been terminated and the larger imperial problems involved in it solved. For a time the only clear-cut parliamentary opposition offered the Government was that of the frankly pro-Boer Nationalists. V. THE LIBERAL REVIVAL *163. The Issue of Tariff Reform.*--The rehabilitation of the Liberal party came during the years 1902-1905. It was foreshadowed by the famous Chesterfield speech of Lord Rosebery, delivered December 16, 1901, although the immediate effect of that effort was but to accentuate party cleavages,[221] and it was made possible by a reversion of the national mind from the war to domestic questions and interests. More specifically, it was the product of opposition to the Government's Education Act of 1902, of public disapproval of what seemed to be the growing arrogance of the Unionist majority in the House of Lords, and, above all, of the demoralization which was wrought within the ranks of Unionism by the rise of the issue of preferential tariffs. In a speech to his constituents at Birmingham, May 15, 1903, Mr. Chamberlain, but lately returned from a visit to South Africa and now at the height of his prestige, startled the nation by declaring that the time had come for Great Britain to abandon the free trade doctrines of the Manchester school and to knit the Empire more closely together, and at the same time to promote the economic interests of both the colonies and the mother country, by the adoption of a system of preferential duties on imported foodstuffs. Later in the year the gifted exponent of this revolutionary programme entered upon a vigorous speaking campaign in defense of his proposals, and there was set up a large and representative tariff commission which was charged with the task of framing, after due investigation, a tariff system which would meet the needs alleged to exist. Among the Unionist leaders there arose forthwith a division of opinion which portended open rupture. The rank and file of the party was (p. 156) nonplussed and undecided, and throughout many months the subject engrossed attention to the exclusion of very nearly everything else.[222] [Footnote 221: In this speech, delivered at a great Liberal meeting, there was outlined a programme upon which Rosebery virtually offered to resume the leadership of his party. The question of Boer independence was recognized as settled, but leniency toward the defeated people was advocated. It was maintained that at the close of the war there should be another general election. And the overhauling of the army, of the navy, of the educational system, and of the public finances, was marked out as an issue upon which the Liberals must take an unequivocal stand, as also temperance reform and legislation upon the housing of the poor.] [Footnote 222: The literature of the Tariff Reform movement in Great Britain is voluminous. The nature of the protectionist proposals may be studied at first hand in J. Chamberlain, Imperial Union and Tariff Reform; speeches delivered from May 15 to November 4, 1903 (London, 1903). Worthy of mention are T. W. Mitchell, The Development of Mr. Chamberlain's Fiscal Policy, in _Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science_, XXIII., No. 1 (Jan., 1904); R. Lethbridge, The Evolution of Tariff Reform in the Tory Party, in _Nineteenth Century_, June, 1908; and L. L. Price, An Economic View of Mr. Chamberlain's Proposals, in _Economic Review_, April, 1904. A useful work is S. H. Jeyes, Life of Joseph Chamberlain, 2 vols. (London, 1903).] In this situation the Liberals found their opportunity. All but unanimously opposed to the suggested departure, they assumed with avidity the rôle of defenders of England's "sacred principle of free trade" and utilized to the utmost the appeal which could now be made to the working classes in behalf of cheap bread. Mr. Chamberlain denied that his scheme meant a wholesale reversal of the economic policy of the nation, but in the judgment of most men the issue was joined squarely between the general principle of free trade and that of protection. Throughout 1904 and 1905 the Government found itself increasingly embarrassed by the fiscal question, as well as by difficulties attending the administration of the Education Act, the regulation of Chinese labor in South Africa, and a number of other urgent tasks, and the by-elections resulted so uniformly in Unionist defeats as to presage clearly the eventual return of the Liberals to power. *164. The Liberals in Office: the Elections of 1906.*--Hesitating long, but at the last bowing somewhat abruptly before the gathering storm, Mr. Balfour tendered his resignation December 4, 1905. The Government had in the Commons a working majority of seventy-six, and the Parliament elected in 1900 had still another year of life. In the Lords the Unionists outnumbered their opponents ten to one. The administration, however, had fallen off enormously in popularity, and the obstacles imposed by the fiscal cleavage appeared insuperable. Unable wholly to follow Mr. Chamberlain in his projects, the premier had grown weary of the attempt to balance himself on the tight rope of ambiguity between the free trade and protectionist wings of his party. Not caring, however, to give his opponents the advantage which would accrue from an immediate dissolution of Parliament and the ordering of an election which should turn on clear issues raised by the record of the ten years of Unionist rule, he chose simply to resign and so to compel the formation of a new government which itself should be (p. 157) immediately on trial when the inevitable elections should come. On the day of Mr. Balfour's resignation the king designated as premier the Liberal leader, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who forthwith made up a cabinet of rather exceptional strength in which the premier himself occupied the post of First Lord of the Treasury, Sir Edward Grey that of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Herbert H. Asquith that of the Exchequer, Mr. Richard B. Haldane that of War, Lord Tweedmouth that of the Navy, Mr. David Lloyd-George that of President of the Board of Trade, Mr. John Burns that of President of the Local Government Board, Mr. Augustine Birrell that of President of the Board of Education, and Mr. James Bryce that of Chief Secretary for Ireland. January 8, 1906, the "Khaki Parliament" was dissolved, a general election was ordered, and the new parliament was fixed to meet at the earliest legal date, February 13. The campaign that followed was the most animated, except that of 1910, in recent British history. The Unionists, being themselves divided beyond repair on the question of the tariff, pinned their hope to a disruption of the Liberal forces on the issue of Home Rule. The Liberal leaders, however, steadfastly refused to allow the Irish question to be brought into the foreground. Recognizing that Home Rule in the immediate future was an impossibility, but pledging themselves to a policy contemplating its establishment by degrees, they contrived to force the battle principally upon the issue of free trade _versus_ protection and, in general, to direct their most telling attack upon the fiscal record and fiscal policies of their opponents. The result was an overwhelming Liberal triumph. In a total of 6,555,301 votes,[223] 4,026,704 were cast for Liberal, Nationalist, and Labor candidates, and only 2,528,597 for Conservatives and Unionists. There were returned to the House of Commons 374 Liberals, 84 Nationalists, 54 Laborites, 131 Conservatives, and 27 Liberal Unionists, assuring the Liberals and their allies a clear preponderance of 354.[224] Prior to the elections careful observers believed the return of the Liberals to power inevitable, but a victory of such proportions was not dreamed of by the most ardent of the party's well-wishers.[225] [Footnote 223: The number of electors in the United Kingdom in 1906 was 7,266,708.] [Footnote 224: Of the Opposition 102 were Tariff Reformers of the Chamberlain school, while but 16 were thoroughgoing "Free Fooders."] [Footnote 225: M. Caudel, Les élections générales anglaises (janvier 1906), in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, March, 1906; E. de Noirmont, Les élections anglaises de janvier 1906; les résultats généraux in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, March 1, 1906; E. Porritt, Party Conditions in England, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1906.] VI. THE RULE OF THE LIBERALS, 1906-1912 (p. 158) *165. The Liberal Mandate.*--The Liberal ascendancy, made thus secure by the elections of 1906, has continued uninterruptedly to the date of writing (1912), and the years covered by it have been in many respects the most important in the political history of modern Britain. The significance of the period arises principally from the vast amount of social and economic legislation that has been attempted within it. A considerable portion of this legislation has been successfully carried through and is now in effect. Some important portions, however, have failed of eventual adoption, chiefly in consequence of the opposition of the Unionist majority in the Lords; and a direct outcome of the series of clashes between the Liberals and the Lords has been the important constitutional readjustments comprised within the Parliament Act of 1911 already described. Speaking broadly, the Liberals were restored to power in 1906 because the nation desired the doing of certain things which the Unionists seemed unable or disinclined to do. Most important among these things were: (1) the reduction of public expenditures and the curbing of national extravagance; (2) the remission of taxation imposed during the South African war; (3) the reform of the army; and (4) the undertaking of an extended programme of social reform, embracing the establishment of old age pensions, the remedying of unemployment, the regulation of the liquor traffic, and the liberation of education from ecclesiastical domination. The nation was solicitous, too, that the system of free trade be maintained without impairment. To all of these policies, and more, the Liberals were committed without reserve when they entered office. *166. The Party's Performance.*--During the years intervening between the elections of 1906 and those of 1910 the Liberal governments presided over successively by Mr. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith[226] made honest effort to redeem the election pledges of the party. They stopped the alarming increase of the national debt and made provision for debt reduction at a rate equalled at but two brief periods since the middle of the nineteenth century. They repealed approximately half of the war taxes which were still operative when they assumed office. In the matter of national expenditures they accomplished a momentary reduction, although the normal increase (p. 159) of civil outlays, the adoption of old age pensions, and, above all, the demand of the propertied interests for the maintenance of a two-power naval standard brought about eventually an increase rather than a diminution of the sums carried by the annual budget. In accordance with a scheme worked out by Mr. Haldane they remodelled the army. They maintained free trade. They made no headway toward Home Rule, but they enacted, in 1909, an Irish Universities bill and an Irish Land Purchase bill which were regarded as highly favorable to Irish interests. Above all, they labored to meet the demand of the nation for social legislation. The prevalence of unemployment, the misery occasioned by widespread poverty, the recurrence of strikes and other industrial disorders, the growing volume of emigration, and other related aspects of England's present social unsettlement, have served to fix unshakably in the public mind the idea that the state must plan, undertake, and bear the cost of huge projects of social and industrial amelioration and of democratization and reform. In the realization of those portions of their programme which relate to these matters the Liberals have been only partially successful. They enacted important labor legislation, including an eight-hour working day in mines, a Labor Exchanges act, and a Trades Disputes act, and they established, by act of 1908, an elaborate system of old age pensions. By reason of the opposition of the House of Lords, however, they failed to enact the bill of 1906 for the abolition of plural voting, the hotly contested measure of 1906 providing for the undenominationalizing of the schools, the Aliens Bill of 1906, the Land Values Bill of 1907, the Licensing Bill of 1908, the London Elections Bill of 1909, and, finally, the Finance Bill of 1909, whose rejection by the Lords precipitated a dissolution of Parliament and the ordering of the elections of January, 1910. [Footnote 226: Mr. Campbell-Bannerman resigned April 5, 1908. His successor was Mr. Asquith, late Chancellor of the Exchequer. Most of the ministers were continued in their respective offices, but Mr. Lloyd-George became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Winston Churchill President of the Board of Trade, Lord Tweedmouth President of the Council, and the Earl of Crewe Secretary of State for the Colonies.] *167. The Liberals Versus the Lords: the Elections of January, 1910.*--Four years of conflict with the overpowering Opposition in the upper chamber brought the Liberals to a place from which they neither could nor would go on until certain fundamentals were settled. The first was the assurance of revenues adequate to meet the growing demands upon the treasury. The second was the alteration of the status of the Lords to make certain the predominance of the popular branch of Parliament in finance and legislation. During the two years (1909-1911) while these great issues were pending the nation was stirred to the depths and party conflict was unprecedented in intensity. On the side of finance, Unionists and Liberals were in substantial agreement upon the policies--especially old age pensions and naval aggrandizement--which rendered larger outlays inevitable; they differed, rather, upon the means by which the necessary funds (p. 160) should be obtained. The solution offered in the Lloyd-George budget of 1909 was the imposition of new taxes on land and the increase of liquor license duties and of the taxes on incomes and inheritances. The new burdens were contrived to fall almost wholly upon the propertied, especially the landholding, classes. To this plan the Unionists offered the alternative of Tariff Reform, urging that the needed revenues should be derived from duties laid principally upon imported foodstuffs, although the free trade members of the party could not with consistency lend this proposal their support. The rejection of the Finance Bill by the Lords, November 30, 1909, sweeping aside as it did three centuries of unbroken precedent, brought to a crisis the question of the mending or ending of the Lords, and although the electoral contest of January, 1910, was fought immediately upon the issue of the Government's finance proposals, the question of the Lords could by no means be kept in the background. The results of this election were disappointing to all parties save the Nationalists. The final returns gave the Liberals 274 seats, the Unionists 273, the Nationalists 82, and the Laborites 41. The Asquith government found itself still in power, but absolutely dependent upon the co-operation of the Labor and Nationalist groups. Upon the great issues involved there was no very clear pronouncement, but it was a foregone conclusion that the tax proposals would be enacted, that some reconstitution of the House of Lords would be undertaken, and that free trade would not yet be in any measure abandoned.[227] [Footnote 227: R. G. Lévy, Le budget radical anglais, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Oct. 10, 1909; G. L. Fox, The Lloyd-George Budget, in _Yale Review_ (Feb., 1910); E. Porritt, The Struggle over the Lloyd-George Budget, in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Feb., 1910; P. Hamelle, Les élections anglaises, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, May 15, 1910; S. Brooks, The British Elections, in _North American Review_, March, 1910; W. T. Stead, The General Elections in Great Britain, in _Review of Reviews_, Feb., 1910. A useful survey is Britannicus, Four Years of British Liberalism, in _North American Review_, Feb., 1910, and a more detailed one is C. T. King, The Asquith Parliament, 1906-1909; a Popular History of its Men and Measures (London, 1910). A valuable article is E. Porritt, British Legislation in 1906, in _Yale Review_, Feb., 1907. A French work of some value is P. Millet, La crise anglaise (Paris, 1910). A useful collection of speeches on the public issues of the period 1906-1909 is W. S. Churchill, Liberalism and the Social Problem (London, 1909).] *168. The Liberal Triumph: the Elections of December, 1910.*--The developments of the ensuing year and a half have been sketched elsewhere.[228] They comprised, in the main: (1) the re-introduction and the enactment of the Finance Bill of 1909: (2) the bringing forward by Mr. Asquith of the Government's proposals relative to (p. 161) the alteration of relations between the two houses of Parliament; (3) the adoption by the House of Lords of the principle of Lord Rosebery's projected scheme of upper chamber reform; (4) the interruption and postponement of the contest by reason of the death of Edward VII.; (5) the failure of the Constitutional Conference in the summer of 1910; (6) the adoption by the second chamber of the reform resolutions of Lord Lansdowne; (7) the dissolution of Parliament, after an existence of but ten months, to afford an opportunity for a fresh appeal to the country on the specific issue of second chamber reform; (8) the elections of December, 1910, and the assembling of the new parliament in January, 1911; and (9) the re-introduction and the final enactment, in the summer of 1911, of the Government's momentous Parliament Bill. At the December elections the contending forces were so solidly entrenched that the party quotas in the House of Commons remained all but unchanged. Following the elections they stood as follows: Liberals, 272; Unionists, 272; Nationalists, 76; Independent Nationalists (followers of William O'Brien), 8; and Laborites, 42. The Unionists gained substantially in Lancashire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, but lost ground in London and in several boroughs throughout the country. Still dependent upon the good-will of the minor parties, the Government addressed itself afresh to the limitation of the veto power of the Lords and to the programme of social amelioration which during the recent months of excitement had been accorded meager attention. Effort in the one direction bore fruit in the Parliament Act, approved by the crown August 18, 1911; while upon the other side substantial results were achieved in the enactment, December 16, 1911, of a far-reaching measure instituting a national system of insurance against both sickness and unemployment.[229] [Footnote 228: See pp. 108-111.] [Footnote 229: On the elections of December, 1910, see P. Hamelle, La crise anglaise: les élections de décembre 1910, in _Revue des Sciences Politiques_, July-Aug., 1911; E. T. Cook, The Election--Before and After, in _Contemporary Review_, Jan., 1911; Britannicus, The British Elections, in _North American Review_, Jan., 1911; and A. Kann, Les élections anglaises, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Jan. 16, 1911. The best account of the adoption of the Parliament Bill is A. L. P. Dennis, The Parliament Act of 1911, in _American Political Science Review_, May and Aug., 1912. For other references see p. 115. On the National Insurance Act see E. Porritt The British National Insurance Act, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1912; A. Gigot, La nouvelle loi anglaise sur l'assurance nationale, in _Le Correspondant_, May 10, 1912; O. Clark, The National Insurance Act of 1911 (London, 1912); and A. S. C. Carr, W. H. Stuart, and J. H. Taylor, National Insurance (London, 1912). The text of the Insurance Act is printed in _Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor_, No. 102 (Washington, 1912).] VII. THE PARTIES OF TO-DAY (p. 162) *169. Significance of "Liberal" and "Conservative."*--Of the four political parties of Great Britain to-day one, the Irish Nationalist, is localized in Ireland and has for its essential purpose the attainment of the single end of Irish Home Rule;[230] another, the Labor party, is composed all but exclusively of workingmen, mainly members of trade-unions, and exists to promote the interests of the laboring masses; while the two older and more powerful ones, the Liberal and the Conservative or Unionist, are broadly national in their constituencies and well-nigh universal in the range of their principles and policies. It is essential to observe, however, that while the programme of the Nationalists is, at least to a certain point, perfectly precise, and that of the Laborites is hardly less so, there is no longer, despite the heat of recurring electoral and parliamentary combats, much that is fundamental or permanent in the demarcation which sets off the two major parties the one against the other. Even the names "Liberal" and "Conservative" denote in reality much less than might be supposed. During the generation which began with the Reform Act of 1832 the Liberals, indeed, extended the franchise to the middle classes, reformed the poor law, overhauled the criminal law, introduced a new and more satisfactory scheme of municipal administration, instituted public provision for elementary education, enacted statutes to safeguard the public health, removed the disabilities of dissenters, and assisted in the overthrow of the protective system. But if the Conservatives of the period 1830-1870 played, in general, the rôle implied by their party designation, their attitude none the less was by no means always that of obstructionists, and in the days of the Disraelian leadership they became scarcely less a party of reform than were their opponents. Beginning with the Reform Act of 1867, a long list of progressive and even revolutionizing measures must be credited to them, and in late years they and the Liberals have vied in advocating old age pensions, factory legislation, accident insurance, housing laws, and other sorts of advanced and remedial governmental action. The differences which separate the two parties are not so much those of principle or of (p. 163) political dogma as those of policy respecting immediate and particular measures, and especially those of attitude toward certain important organizations and interests. The Liberals assert themselves to be more trustful of the people and more concerned about the popular welfare, but the Conservatives enter a denial which possesses plausibility. It is probably true that the Liberals have fostered peace and economy with more resoluteness than have their rivals, yet so far as expenditures go the Liberal administration to-day is laying out more money than was ever laid out by a Conservative government in time of peace. The Liberals are seemingly more regardful of the interests of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, but the difference is not so large as is sometimes supposed. [Footnote 230: A recent and important work on party history is F. H. O'Donnell, A History of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 2 vols. (London, 1910). See Earl of Crewe, Ireland and the Liberal Party, in _New Liberal Review_, June, 1901; E. Porritt, Ireland's Representation in Parliament, in _North American Review_, Aug., 1905; J. E. Barker, The Parliamentary Position of the Irish Party, in _Nineteenth Century_, Feb., 1910; and P. Sheehan, William O'Brien and the Irish Centre Party, in _Fortnightly Review_, Dec, 1910.] *170. Present-day Issues.*--Aside from the tariff question (and the Conservatives are far from united upon the Chamberlain programme), the principal issues which separate the two leading parties to-day are those which arise from the Conservative attitude of friendliness toward the House of Lords, the Established Church, the landowners, and the publicans. Most of the political contests of recent years have been waged upon questions pertaining to the constitution of the upper chamber, denominational control of education, disestablishment, the taxation of land, and the regulation of the liquor traffic, and in all of these matters the Liberals have been insisting upon changes which their opponents either disapprove entirely or desire to confine within narrower bounds than those proposed. In the carrying through of the Parliament Bill of 1911, providing a means by which measures may be enacted into law over the protest of the Conservative majority in the Lords, the Liberals achieved their greatest triumph since 1832. The party stands committed to-day to a large number of far-reaching projects, including the extension of social insurance, the revision of the electoral system, the establishment of Home Rule, and, ultimately, a reconstitution of the second chamber as promised in the preamble of the Parliament Act. At the date of writing (October, 1912) there are pending in Parliament a momentous measure for the granting of Home Rule to Ireland[231] and another for the overhauling of the electoral system,[232] an important bill for the disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a measure virtually annulling the principle involved in the Osborne Decision,[233] and several minor Government proposals. The recent victories of the Liberals have been won with the aid of Labor and Irish Nationalist votes, and the concessions which have been, (p. 164) and are being, made to the interests of these auxiliary parties may be expected to affect profoundly the course of legislation during the continuance of the Liberal ascendancy.[234] There are, it may be said, indications that the Liberals possess less strength throughout the country than they exhibited during the critical years 1910-1911. At thirty-eight by-elections contested by the Unionists since December, 1910, the Liberals have suffered a net loss of eight seats; and one of the contests lost was that in Midlothian, long the constituency represented by Gladstone, which returned, in September, 1912, a Conservative member for the first time in thirty-eight years. There is a tradition that when a Liberal government is defeated in Midlothian the end of that government is not far distant. Prophecy in such matters, however, is futile. Meanwhile the Unionists continue to be divided upon the tariff, but in the main they are united in opposition to the overturning of the ancient constitutional system, although they no longer generally oppose a moderate reform of the House of Lords. In a speech delivered at Leeds, November 16, 1911, the new parliamentary leader of the party, Mr. Bonar Law,[235] enumerated as the immediate Unionist purposes (1) to oppose the Government's Welsh Disestablishment scheme, (2) to resist Home Rule, (3) to labor for tariff reform as the only practicable means of solving the problem of unemployment, and (4) to defend at all costs the unity of the Empire. [Footnote 231: W. J. Laprade, The Present Status of the Home Rule Question, in _American Political Science Review_, Nov., 1912.] [Footnote 232: See p. 90.] [Footnote 233: See p. 127.] [Footnote 234: H. Seton-Karr, The Radical Party and Social Reform, in _Nineteenth Century_, Dec, 1910.] [Footnote 235: Mr. Law was chosen Opposition leader in the Commons November 13, 1911, upon the unexpected retirement of Mr. Balfour from that position.] *171. Party Composition.*--Both of the great parties as constituted to-day possess substantial strength in all portions of the kingdom save Ireland, the Liberals being in the preponderance in Scotland, Wales, and northern England, and the Conservatives in the south and southwest. Within the Conservative ranks are found much the greater portion of the people of title, wealth, and social position; nearly all of the clergy of the Established Church, and some of the Dissenters; a majority of the graduates of the universities[236] and of members of the bar; most of the prosperous merchants, manufacturers, and financiers; a majority of clerks and approximately half of the tradesmen and shopkeepers; and a very considerable mass, though not in these days half, of the workingmen. During the second half of the nineteenth century the well-to-do and aristocratic (p. 165) Whig element in the Liberal party was drawn over, in the main, to the ranks of the Conservatives,[237] and to this day the Liberal party contains but a small proportion of the rank and wealth of the kingdom. It is pre-eminently an organization of the middle and popular classes. [Footnote 236: At the election of 1906, 21,505 of the 25,771 votes recorded in the university constituencies were cast for Unionist candidates. Since 1885 not a Liberal member has been returned from any one of the universities.] [Footnote 237: The defection was largest at the time of the Liberal Unionist secession in 1886.] *172. The Independent Labor Party.*--The Labor party of the present day is the product largely of the twin agencies of socialism and trade-unionism. As early as 1868 two persons sought seats in Parliament as representatives of labor, and at the elections of 1874 there were no fewer than thirteen labor candidates, two of whom were successful. Great industrial upheavals of succeeding years, notably the strike of the London dock laborers in 1889, together with the rise of new organizations composed of unskilled labor and pronouncedly infected with socialism, created demand for the interference of the state for the improvement of labor conditions and led eventually to the organization of the Independent Labor Party in 1893. The aim of this party as set forth in its constitution and rules is essentially socialistic, namely, "the establishment of collective ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange"; and the working programme as originally announced includes (1) a universal eight-hour day, (2) the abolition of over-time, piece-work, and the employment of children under fourteen, (3) state provision for the ill, the invalid, and the aged, (4) free, non-sectarian education of all grades, (5) the extinction by taxation of unearned incomes, and (6) universal disarmament. To this programme has been added woman's suffrage, a second ballot in parliamentary elections, municipal control of the liquor traffic and of hospitals, and a number of other proposed innovations. At the elections of 1895 the party named twenty-eight candidates, but no one of them was successful and Keir Hardie, founder and president, lost the seat which he had occupied since 1892. In 1900 it attained, in the re-election of Hardie, its first parliamentary victory, and in 1906 when the tide of radicalism was running high seven of its candidates and sixteen of its members were elected to the House of Commons. *173. The Labor Party To-day.*--The Independent Labor Party has been throughout its history avowedly socialistic. It has sought and obtained the adherence of thousands of laboring men, some of whom are, and some of whom are not, socialists. But its character is too radical to attract the mass of trade-union members and alongside it there has grown up a larger and broader organization known simply as the Labor Party. A trade-union congress held at London in September, 1899, (p. 166) caused to be brought together an assemblage of representatives of all co-operative, trade-union, socialist, and working-class organizations which were willing to share in an effort to increase the representation of labor in Parliament. This body held its first meeting at London in February, 1900, and an organization was formed in which the ruling forces were the politically inclined but non-socialistic trade-unions. The object of the affiliation was asserted to be "to establish a distinct labor group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their own policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of labor." The growth of the organization was rapid, and in 1906 the name which had been employed, i.e., Labor Representation Committee, gave place to that of Labor Party. At the elections of 1906 twenty-nine of the fifty-one candidates of this party were chosen to the House of Commons. Taking into account eleven members connected with miners' organizations and fourteen others who were Independent Laborites or Liberal Laborites ("Lib.-Labs."), the parliament chosen in 1906 contained a labor contingent aggregating fifty-four members. Since 1908 there has been in progress a consolidation of the labor forces represented at Westminster and, although at the elections of 1910 some seats were lost, there are in the House of Commons to-day forty-two labor representatives. The entire group is independent of, but friendly toward, the Liberal Government; and since the Liberals stand in constant need of Labor support, its power in legislation is altogether disproportioned to its numbers.[238] [Footnote 238: Two satisfactory volumes on the political activities of labor in the United Kingdom are C. Noel, The Labour Party, What it is, and What it wants (London, 1906) and A. W. Humphrey, A History of Labor Representation (London, 1912). See E. Porritt, The British Socialist Labor Party, in _Political Science Quarterly_, Sept., 1908, and The British Labor Party in 1910, ibid., June, 1910; M. Alfassa, Le parti ouvrier au parlement anglais, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Jan. 15, 1908; H. W. Horwill, The Payment of Labor Representatives in Parliament, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1910; J. K. Hardie, The Labor Movement, in _Nineteenth Century_, Dec, 1906; and M. Hewlett, The Labor Party of the Future, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1910. Two books of value on English socialism are J. E. Barker, British Socialism; an Examination of its Doctrines, Policy, Aims, and Practical Proposals (London, 1908) and H. O. Arnold-Foster, English Socialism of To-day (London, 1908).] CHAPTER VIII (p. 167) JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT I. ENGLISH LAW The preponderating principle in the governmental system of Great Britain to-day is the rule of law, which means, in effect, two things: first, that no man may be deprived of liberty or property save on account of a breach of the law proved in one of the ordinary courts and, second, that no man stands above the law and that for every violation of the law some reparation may be obtained, whatever the station or character of the offender.[239] Upon these fundamental guarantees has been erected through the centuries a fabric of personal liberty which lends the British nation one of its principal distinctions. The influence of English concepts and forms of law has counted for much, furthermore, in the shaping of continental legal systems; and outside of Europe, and especially in the English-speaking countries of both hemispheres, the law of England has been, within modern times, much the most universal and decisive formative agency in legal development. [Footnote 239: The only exception to this general proposition is afforded by the fact that the sovereign may not be sued or prosecuted in the ordinary courts; but this immunity, as matters now stand, is of no practical consequence.] *174. Statute Law and Common Law.*--From at least the seventeenth century law has been conceived of in England as exclusively the body of rules, of whatsoever origin or nature, which can be enforced in the regular courts. As it has taken form, it falls into two principal categories. The one is statute law, the other is the Common Law. Statute law consists of specific acts of Parliament, supplemented by by-laws, rules, and regulations made under parliamentary sanction by public officials and bodies. Chronologically, it begins in 1235, in the reign of Henry III.; and inasmuch as it is amended and amplified at substantially every parliamentary session, the bulk of it has come to be enormous. The more comprehensive and fundamental part of English law, however, is, and has always been, the Common Law. The Common Law is a product of growth rather than of legislation. No definite time can be assigned for its beginning, for at as early a period as (p. 168) there are reports of judicial decisions the existence of a body of law not emanating from law-makers was taken for granted. Long before the close of the Middle Ages the essentials of the Common Law had acquired not only unquestioned sanction but also thoroughgoing coherence and uniformity. Despite the greatly increased legislative activity of modern times, it still may be said that the rules of the Common Law are fundamental, the laws of Parliament but incidental. Statutes regularly assume the principles of the Common Law, and are largely, as one writer has put it, "the addenda and errata" of this law, incomplete and meaningless save in co-ordination with the legal order by which they are supported and enveloped.[240] Thus no act of Parliament enjoins in general terms that a man shall pay his debts, or fulfill his contracts, or pay damages for trespass or slander. Statutes define the _modes_ in accordance with which these obligations shall be met, but the obligations themselves are derived entirely from the Common Law. It is, however, a fixed rule that where statutes fall in conflict with the Common Law it is the statutes that prevail. The limitless competence of Parliament involves the power to set aside or to modify at any time any Common Law principle or practice, while, on the other hand, no development of the Common Law can repeal an act of Parliament. [Footnote 240: W. M. Geldart, Elements of English Law (London and New York, 1912), 9. As this author further remarks, "if all the statutes of the realm were repealed, we should have a system of law, though, it may be, an unworkable one; if we could imagine the Common Law swept away and the Statute Law preserved, we should have only disjointed rules torn from their context, and no provision at all for many of the most important relations of life."] *175. The Form of the Law.*--Statute law takes invariably, of course, written form. The acts of Parliament are to be found in imposing printed collections, to which a substantial volume is added every year. Of the Common Law, however, there is no single or authoritative text. The Common Law grew up originally as unwritten law, and in a large measure it preserves still that character. The sources, however, from which knowledge of it must be drawn are mainly in writing or in print. The most important are (1) the decisions of the judges of the English courts (reported anonymously in Year Books from the reign of Edward I. to that of Henry VIII., and thereafter by lawyers reporting under their own names) which from at least the sixteenth century acquired weight as precedents and are nowadays all but absolutely decisive in analogous cases; (2) the decisions of courts of other countries in which there is administered a law derived from the English, such decisions being, of course, not binding, yet highly influential; and (3) certain "books of authority" written by learned lawyers (p. 169) of earlier times, such as Coke's seventeenth-century Commentary on Littleton's Tenures and Foster's eighteenth-century treatise on Crown Law. Some small branches of the Common Law have, indeed, been codified in the form of statutes, among them the law of partnership, that of sales, and that of bills of exchange. *176. The Rules of Equity.*--There is one other body of English law which requires mention, namely, the rules of equity. These rules had their origin in the administration of an extraordinary sort of justice by the king's chancellor in mediæval times, a practice which arose from the sheer necessity of redressing grievances occasioned by the omissions or commissions of the regularly constituted tribunals. Interference on the part of the chancellor, which started as a matter of special favor in unusual cases, became gradually an established practice, and, contrary to the original intention, there was brought into existence a body of definite and separate rules of equity which by the seventeenth century acquired systematic character, and likewise a court of chancery in which these rules were at all times enforceable. Reports of equity cases became continuous, and lawyers of eminence began to specialize in equity procedure. The rules of equity thus developed partake largely of the nature of the Common Law, of which, indeed, they are to be considered, in effect, a supplement or appendix; and practically, though not theoretically, they prevail as against any provisions of the ordinary Common Law with which they may be inconsistent. Their general purpose is to afford means of safeguarding rights which exist in morals, but which the Common Law courts cannot or will not protect. Until 1875 they were administered by tribunals separate from the ordinary courts. Nowadays they are not separately administered, but they preserve, none the less, their highly distinctive character.[241] [Footnote 241: Two monumental works dealing with the earlier portions of English legal development are F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law to the Time of Edward I., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898) and W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law, 3 vols. (London, 1903-1909). The first volume of Holdsworth contains a history of English courts from the Norman Conquest to the present day; the other volumes deal exhaustively with the growth of the law itself. Books of value include H. Brunner, The Sources of the Law of England, trans. by W. Hastie (Edinburgh, 1888); R. K. Wilson, History of Modern English Law (London, 1875). J. F. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, 3 vols. (London, 1883); Ibid., Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (London, 1908); O. W. Holmes, The Common Law (Boston, 1881); and H. Broom and E. A. Hadley, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (London, 1869). A recent treatise by a German authority is J. Hatschek, Englisches Staatsrecht mit Berücksichtigung der für Schottland und Irland geltenden Sonderheiten (Tübingen, 1905). An incisive work is A. V. Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905). A good single volume history of the law is E. Jenks, Short History of the English Law (Boston, 1912). A satisfactory introduction to both the history and the character of the law is W. M. Geldart, Elements of English Law (London and New York, 1912). Another is F. W. Maitland, Outlines of English Legal History, in Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1911), II., 417-496. Other excellent introductory treatises are Maitland, Lectures on Equity (Cambridge, 1909), and C. S. Kenny, Outlines of Criminal Law (New York, 1907). Maitland's article on English Law in the Encyclopædia Britannica, IX., 600-607, is valuable for its brevity and its clearness. On the English conception of law and the effects thereof see Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 61-62. The character and forms of the statute law are sketched to advantage in C. P. Ilbert, Legislative Methods and Forms (Oxford, 1901), 1-76.] II. THE INFERIOR COURTS (p. 170) *177. The Hierarchy of Tribunals.*--In the majority of continental countries a distinction is drawn between ordinary law and what is known as administrative law, i.e., the body of rules governing the conduct of public officials and, more particularly, the adjudication of disputes between these officials, in their public capacity, and private citizens. This differentiation of law entails customarily the maintenance of administrative courts, separate from the ordinary tribunals, in which administrative cases are heard and decided. In Great Britain, however, there is no such thing as administrative law, and in consequence there is no need of administrative courts. Public officials, from the ministers downwards, are amenable to the processes of the ordinary tribunals precisely as are all other classes of people. Simpler, therefore, at this point than the continental systems of courts, the English system is none the less one of the most elaborate and complicated in the world. There are features of it which in origin are mediæval, others which owe their existence to the reforming enterprises of the earlier nineteenth century, and still others which have a history covering hardly more than a generation. Reduced to its simplest aspect, the system comprises, at the bottom, three principal varieties of tribunals--the county courts for civil cases and the courts of the justices of the peace and the borough criminal courts for criminal cases--and, at the top, a Supreme Court of Judicature in two branches, i.e., the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal, in addition to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the House of Lords, and a number of other occasional or special central tribunals.[242] [Footnote 242: It should be noted that the judicial system herein to be described is that of England alone. The systems existing in Scotland and Ireland are at many points unlike it. In Scotland the distinction between law and equity is virtually unknown and the Common Law of England does not prevail. In Ireland, on the other hand, the Common Law is operative and judicial organization and procedure are roughly similar to the English.] *178. The County Courts.*--The county courts of the present day (p. 171) were established under provision of the County Court Act of 1846, and it is to be observed that they are in no manner connected with the historic courts of the shire or county. They are known as county courts, but in point of fact the area of their jurisdiction is a district which not only is smaller than the county but bears no relation to it. There are in England at present some five hundred of these districts, the object of the arrangement being to bring the agencies of justice close to the people and so to reduce the costs and delays incident to litigation.[243] The volume of business to be transacted in a district is insufficient to occupy a judge during any considerable portion of his working time, and the districts are grouped in some fifty circuits, to each of which is assigned by the Lord Chancellor one judge who holds court in each district of his circuit approximately once a month. The judge sits almost invariably without a jury, although unless the amount involved is very small either party to a suit is privileged to request the employment of a jury of eight persons. The jurisdiction of the county courts has been enlarged a number of times, notably by a statute of 1905, but it is still not as extended as many people believe it should be. In a few matters, such as certain claims of workingmen for injuries, this jurisdiction is exclusive, but at most points it is concurrent with the jurisdiction of the High Court of Justice, and Common Law, equity, bankruptcy, probate, and admiralty cases may be brought, at the discretion of the plaintiff, in either tribunal, subject to the restriction that the county court may not assume jurisdiction when the value in dispute exceeds a certain amount, commonly £100 in Common Law cases and £500 in cases of equity. On all points of law appeal lies to the High Court; but appeals are rare.[244] [Footnote 243: Prior to 1846 justice in civil cases could be obtained only at Westminster, or, in any event, by means of an action instituted at Westminster and tried on circuit.] [Footnote 244: A few inferior civil courts of special character have survived from earlier days, but they are anomalous and do not call for comment. It may be added that the judges of the county courts receive a salary of £1,500.] *179. The Justices of the Peace.*--The county courts exist for the adjudication of civil cases exclusively. The corresponding local tribunals for the administration of criminal justice are the courts of the justices of the peace, and, in certain towns, other courts to which the powers of the justices have been transferred. The county is normally the area of the jurisdiction of the justices, and with a few exceptions every county has a separate "commission of the peace,"[245] consisting of all the judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature, all members of the Privy Council, and such other persons as the crown, (p. 172) acting through the Lord Chancellor, may designate as justices on recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant or independently.[246] The Lord Lieutenant is chief of the justices and keeper of the county records. In many counties the list of justices contains three or four hundred names (in Lancashire eight hundred), but it is to be observed that some of the appointees do not take the oaths required to qualify them for magisterial service and that the actual work is performed in each county by a comparatively small number of persons. The justices serve without pay, but the office carries much local distinction and appointments are widely coveted. Until 1906 a property qualification[247] was required of all save certain classes of appointees whose station was deemed a sufficient guarantee of fitness, but in the year mentioned the Liberals brought about its abolition. The justices are drawn still, in large part, from the class of country gentlemen. They are removable by the crown, but tenure is almost invariably for life. [Footnote 245: The three ridings of Yorkshire and the three divisions of Lincolnshire have separate commissions, and there are a few "liberties" or excepted jurisdictions.] [Footnote 246: A royal commission created to consider the mode of appointment reported in 1910; but no important modification of the existing practice was suggested.] [Footnote 247: Ownership of land, or occupation of a house, worth £100 a year.] *180. Powers of the Justices.*--At one time the functions of the justices of the peace were administrative as well as judicial, but by the Local Government Act of 1888 functions of an administrative nature were transferred all but completely to the newly created county councils,[248] and the justices to-day are judicial officials almost exclusively. Their judicial labors may be performed under three conditions, namely, by justices acting singly, by two or more justices meeting in petty sessions, and by the whole body of justices of the county assembled in quarter sessions. The powers of a justice acting alone are those largely of the ordinary police magistrate. He may order the arrest of offenders; he conducts preliminary examinations and releases the accused or commits them for indictment by a grand jury; and he hears cases involving unimportant breaches of the law and imposes small penalties. The justices sitting by twos in petty sessions exercise an extensive summary jurisdiction over offenses specified minutely by the law.[249] They sit without a jury, but appeal can be carried, as a rule, to the justices at quarter sessions and even, on questions of law, to the High Court. Four times a year all of the justices of the county, or such of them as care to be present, meet in quarter sessions. The jurisdiction here exercised is in part appellate and in part original. The court tries, without a jury, all cases appealed from petty sessions, and it tries, with a (p. 173) jury, and after indictment by a grand jury, all cases involving offenses not of a minor nature, save that the most serious offenses, punishable in most instances with death or life imprisonment, are reserved for trial in the assizes, i.e., by judges from Westminster travelling on circuit. By means of the writs of _mandamus_ and _certiorari_ the actual proceedings of quarter sessions are controlled not infrequently by the superior courts.[250] [Footnote 248: See p. 183.] [Footnote 249: Chiefly by the Summary Jurisdiction Act of 1879.] [Footnote 250: Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History, 392-400. An excellent monograph is C. A. Beard, The Office of Justice of the Peace in England, in _Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law_, XX., No. 1. (New York, 1904).] *181. Special Borough Arrangements.*--The smaller boroughs, having no separate commissions of the peace, are for purposes of criminal justice merely portions of the counties in which they lie. In many of the larger ones, however, there have been set up judicial arrangements in consequence of which the borough is withdrawn from the county jurisdiction. Some have a commission of the peace but no quarter sessions. In them the justices can exercise, in addition to the usual functions of police magistrate, only a summary jurisdiction. Others have a court of quarter sessions; though it is to be observed that where this tribunal exists its work is performed actually by the recorder, a barrister appointed by the crown and paid by the borough. III. THE HIGHER COURTS *182. Supreme Court of Judicature: the High Court.*--The higher tribunals within the judicial system were once numerous and extremely complex. As reconstituted, however, by the great Judicature Act of 1873, which, together with an Amending Act, took effect near the close of 1875, they have acquired a considerable degree of orderliness and even of simplicity. The measure of 1873 abolished the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords, but the Amending Act three years later rescinded this modification, and, as has been explained elsewhere, the House of Lords is still a court of very great importance.[251] Aside from the Lords, however, the higher courts of the realm--the Chancery, the three great Common Law courts, the Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce courts, and the intermediate courts of appeal from these tribunals of first instance--were consolidated by the legislation of 1873-1875 to form one grand organization, the Supreme Court of Judicature, which was thereupon cut into two branches, the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal. The High Court of Justice was assigned a general jurisdiction, civil and criminal, as a court of first instance and also as a court of (p. 174) appeal from inferior courts. Its jurisdiction represents essentially the aggregate of jurisdictions of the tribunals which it superseded, and the various divisions into which it falls perpetuate in a measure the names and functions of those tribunals. There were originally five of these divisions. To-day there are three: Chancery, King's Bench (with which the Common Pleas and Exchequer divisions were united by order in council of December 16, 1880), and Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty. Any High Court judge may sit in a tribunal belonging to any one of these divisions. The Lord Chancellor presides over the Chancery division, the Chief Justice over the King's Bench. The number of judges is variable. The Chancery division contains at present six, the King's Bench fifteen, and the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty division but two. All save the Chancellor (who is a cabinet official, owing his position to selection by the premier) are appointed by the crown upon advice of the Chancellor, and all hold office during good behavior but may be dismissed on addresses of the two houses of Parliament. The judges of the High Court sit both singly and in groups. The ordinary trial of cases is conducted, under a variety of stipulated conditions, by a single judge, either at Westminster or on circuit. The judges who go on circuit are taken as a rule from the King's Bench division, and when both civil and criminal cases are to be adjudicated they travel ordinarily in pairs, one attending to the civil and the other to the criminal business. Judges sit also, without juries, in divisional courts, composed of two or more members, to hear appeals from inferior tribunals, motions for new trials, and applications for writs. The High Court never sits as a single body, nor does even the Chancery or the King's Bench division. [Footnote 251: See p. 130.] *183. Supreme Court of Judicature: the Court of Appeals.*--The second branch of the Supreme Court of Judicature is the Court of Appeal. This tribunal is composed of the Master of the Rolls and five Lords Justices of Appeal, all appointed by the crown upon the advice of the Lord Chancellor. The presidents of the three divisions of the High Court are also members, but they rarely participate in the work of the court; and since 1891 men who have occupied the office of Chancellor are _ex-officio_ members, although they sit only if they choose to comply with a request of the Chancellor that they do so. The court performs its functions regularly in two sections of three members each, although for some matters the presence of but two judges is required. Sittings are held only in London. The jurisdiction of the court is exclusively appellate, and its business consists very largely in the hearing of appeals in civil cases carried from the High Court. Prior to 1907 there was no general right of appeal in criminal cases. By the Criminal Appeal Act of that year, however, there was (p. 175) established a Court of Criminal Appeal to which any person convicted may appeal on a question of law and, under stipulated conditions, on a question of fact also. This tribunal is composed of the Lord Chief Justice and eight judges of the King's Bench appointed by him with the assent of the Lord Chancellor. It, therefore, has no immediate connection with the Court of Appeal. *184. The House of Lords and the Judicial Committee.*--Of superior tribunals there are two others of large importance, the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The functions of the House of Lords as a court of last resort have been described elsewhere.[252] By the act of 1876 the appellate jurisdiction of the Lords, withdrawn by the act of 1873, was restored and provision was made for the strengthening of the legal element in the chamber by the creation of life peers to be known as Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. Under existing law appeal lies to the Lords from any order or judgment of the Court of Appeal in England and of all Scottish and Irish courts from which appeals might, prior to 1876, be carried. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was constituted in 1833 to assume jurisdiction over a variety of cases formerly heard and decided nominally by the Council as a whole. The composition of the body has been changed a number of times. The members at present comprise the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, such members of the Privy Council as hold or have held high judicial office, two other Privy Councillors designated at pleasure by the crown, and, as a rule, one or two paid members who have held judicial office in India or the colonies. The membership is thus large, but only four members need be present at the hearing of a case, and it may be pointed out that the working members of the Committee are predominantly the four "law lords" who comprise also the working judicial element in the House of Lords. It is the business of the Judicial Committee to consider and determine any matter that may be referred to it by the crown, but, in the main, to hear final appeals from the ecclesiastical courts, from courts in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, from the courts of the colonies and dependencies, and from English courts established by treaty in foreign countries. Its decisions are tendered under the guise of "advice to the crown" and, unlike the decisions of the Lords, they must bear the appearance, at least of unanimity.[253] [Footnote 252: See p. 130.] [Footnote 253: For brief descriptions of the English judicial system see Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 59-60; Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, II., Pt. 1., Chap. 10; Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 14; and Macy, The English Constitution, Chap. 7. As is stated elsewhere (p. 169), the first volume of Holdsworth's History of English Law contains an excellent history of the English courts. A useful handbook, though much in need of revision, is F. W. Maitland, Justice and Police (London, 1885). Perhaps the best brief account of the development of the English judicial system is A. T. Carter, History of English Legal Institutions (4th ed., London, 1910). Mention may be made of Maitland, Constitutional History of England, 462-484, and Medley, Manual of English Constitutional History, 318-383. Two valuable works by foreign writers are C. de Franqueville, Le système judiciaire de la Grande-Bretagne (Paris, 1898), and H. B. Gerland, Die englische Gerichtsverfassung; eine systematische Darstellung, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1910). On the Judicature Acts of 1873-1876 see Holdsworth, I., 402-417.] IV. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO THE MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS ACT, 1835 (p. 176) *185. Periods in Local Governmental History.*--No description of a governmental system can be adequate which does not take into account the agencies and modes by which the powers of government are brought close to the people, as well as those by which the people in greater or lesser measure regulate locally their own public affairs. More especially is this true in the instance of a government such as the English in which local self-control is a fundamental rather than an incidental fact. The history of local institutions in England covers an enormous stretch of time, as well as a remarkable breadth of public organization and activity, and by no means its least important phases are those which have appeared in most recent times. Speaking broadly, it may be said to fall into four very unequal periods. The first, extending from the settlement of the Saxons to the Norman Conquest, was marked by the establishment of the distinctive English units of administration--shire, hundred, and township--and by the planting of the principle of broadly popular local control. The second, extending from the Conquest to the fourteenth century, was characterized by a general increase of centralization and a corresponding decrease of local autonomy. The third, extending from the fourteenth century to the adoption of the Local Government Act of 1888, was pre-eminently a period of aristocratic control of local affairs, of government by the same squirearchy which prior to 1832, if not 1867, was accustomed to dominate Parliament. The last period, that from 1888 to the present time, has been notable in a special degree for the democratization and systematization of local governing arrangements which has taken place within it. *186. County and Parish before 1832.*--The transformation by which the institutions of local government have been brought to their present status paralleled, and in a large measure sprang from, the revolutionizing of Parliament during the course of the nineteenth century. Two periods of change are especially noteworthy, the one following closely the Reform Act of 1832 and culminating in the adoption of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, the other following similarly the Representation of the People Act of 1884 and (p. 177) attaining fruition in the Local Government Act of 1888 and the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894. At the opening of the century rural administration was carried on principally in the shire or county and the civil or "poor law" parish; urban administration in the corporate towns, or municipal boroughs. The counties were fifty-two in number. Most of them were of Saxon origin, although some were the product of absorptions or delimitations which took place in later centuries. The last to be added were those of Wales. Altered often in respect to their precise functions, the counties retained from first to last a large measure of importance, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were still the principal areas of local governing activity. From Saxon times to the fourteenth century the dominating figure in county administration was the sheriff, but in the reign of Edward III. justices of the peace were created into whose hands during the ensuing five hundred years substantially all administrative and judicial affairs of the county were drawn. These dignitaries were appointed by the crown, chiefly from the ranks of the smaller landowners and rural clergy, and as a rule they comprised in practice a petty oligarchy whose conduct of public business was inspired by aristocratic, far more than by democratic, ideals. The principal division of the county was the civil parish, usually but not always identical with the ecclesiastical parish. The governing bodies of the parish were two--the vestry (either open to all rate-payers or composed of elected representatives), which administered general affairs, and the overseers of the poor who under the Elizabethan statute of 1601 were empowered to find employment for the able-bodied poor, to provide other forms of relief as should be required, and to levy a local rate to meet the costs of their work. Since the passage of Gilbert's Act of 1782 the parishes had been arranged in groups for poor-law purposes, and boards of guardians appointed by the justices of the peace had come to be the real authorities in the administration of poor relief, as well as in most other matters. The abuses arising from poor-law administration were not infrequently appalling. *187. The Borough before 1832.*--The corporate towns in England and Wales numbered, in 1832, 246. They comprised population centers which, on the basis of charters granted by the crown, had become distinct areas of local government. They did not, however, stand entirely apart from the county and parish organization. On the contrary, except in so far as they were exempted specifically by the terms of their charters, they were subject to the authority of the justices of the peace and of the governing agencies of the parishes within whose jurisdiction they were situated. Their style of government was determined largely (p. 178) by the provisions of their charters, and since these instruments exhibited a marked degree of variety, uniformity of organization was entirely lacking. As a rule, however, the borough was a close corporation, and the burgesses, or "freemen," in whom were vested peculiar trading and fiscal rights and an absolute monopoly of the powers of government, comprised but a small fraction of the general body of citizens. The governing authority of the borough was the town council, whose members were either elected by the freemen or recruited by co-optation. Government was regularly oligarchical and irresponsible; sometimes it was inefficient and corrupt. *188. The New Poor Law (1834) and the Municipal Corporations Act (1835).*--The reforms accomplished since 1832 within the domain of parliamentary organization and procedure have been hardly more remarkable than those wrought during the same period within the field of local government. It must suffice to mention but the principal steps by which the local governing system has been brought to its present high degree of democracy and effectiveness. Among the subjects to which the first reformed parliament addressed its attention was the direful condition into which had fallen the relief of the poor, and the initial stage of local government regeneration was marked by the adoption of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, abolishing outdoor relief for the able-bodied, providing for the regrouping of parishes in "poor-law unions," and establishing a national Poor Law Commission. The administration of relief within the unions was intrusted all but exclusively to newly created boards of guardians, composed in part of the justices of the peace sitting _ex-officio_ and in part of members specially elected by the rate-payers. The arrangements set up by the act proved very successful and they survive almost intact at the present day. The second notable change was that effected by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The enfranchising of large numbers of the townspeople in 1832 led inevitably to demand for the democratization of the aristocratic borough governments, and within three years the demand was met in a statute so sweeping as to justify the assertion that with its enactment the modern history of the English town begins.[254] Sixty-nine of the old corporate towns, by reason of their unimportance, were now deprived of the character of boroughs. The city of London was not touched, but elsewhere all municipal corporations were broadened so as to personify legally the entire population of the borough. The time-honored municipal oligarchy was broken down by the giving of the franchise to all rate-payers, the town councils were made wholly elective, trading monopolies and privileges were swept away, and a variety of other reforms were (p. 179) introduced. With the adoption of this important measure, however, the work of reform came for a time to a halt, and the widely assailed system of county government through nominated magistrates in quarter sessions survived until 1888.[255] [Footnote 254: Lowell, Government of England, II., 144.] [Footnote 255: The history of the local institutions of England prior to 1835 is related in detail in two comprehensive works: H. A. Merewether and A. J. Stephens, History of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations of the United Kingdom, 3 vols. (London, 1835) and S. and B. Webb, English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act, 3 vols. (London and New York, 1904-1908). The first of these was written to promote the cause of municipal reform, but is temperate and reliable. The second is especially exhaustive, volume 3 containing probably the best existing treatment of the history of borough government. For a brief sketch see May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, II., Chap. 15.] V. LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM, 1835-1912 *189. Mid-Century Confusion of Areas and Jurisdictions.*--Throughout the earlier and middle portions of the Victorian period legislation respecting local government was abundant, but it was special rather than general. It pertained principally to the care of highways and burial grounds, the laying out and organization of districts for the promotion of sanitation, the establishment of "improvement act" districts, and, notably, the erection and administration of school districts under the Elementary Education Act of 1870. With each successive measure the confusion of jurisdictions and agencies was increased. The prevailing policy was to provide for each fresh need as it arose a special machinery designed to meet that particular need, and arrangements effected were seldom or never uniform throughout the country, nor did they bear any logical relation to arrangements already existing for other purposes. By 1871 the country, as Lowell puts it, was divided into counties, unions, and parishes, and spotted over with boroughs and with highway, burial, sanitary, improvement act, school, and other districts, and of these areas none save the parishes and unions bore any necessary relation to any of the rest.[256] In the effort to adapt the framework of the administrative system to the fast changing conditions of a rapidly growing population Parliament piled act upon act, the result being a sheer jungle of interlacing jurisdictions alike baffling to the student and subversive of orderly and economical administration. It is computed that in 1883 there were in England and Wales no fewer than 27,069 independent local authorities,[257] and that the rate-payer was taxed by eighteen different kinds of rates. [Footnote 256: Government of England, II., 135.] [Footnote 257: These included the 52 counties, the 239 municipal boroughs, the 70 improvement act districts, the 1,006 urban sanitary districts, the 577 rural sanitary districts, the 2,051 school board districts, the 424 highway districts, the 853 burial board districts, the 649 poor-law unions, the 14,946 poor-law parishes, the 5,064 highway parishes not included in urban or highway districts, and the 1,300 ecclesiastical parishes. For the situation in 1888 see G. L. Gomme, Lectures on the Principles of Local Government (London, 1897), 12-13.] *190. Local Government Act of 1888 and District and Parish (p. 180) Councils Act of 1894.*--Soon after the passage of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 reform began to be attempted in the direction both of concentration of local governing authority and the readjustment and simplification of local governing areas. In 1871 the Poor Law Board (which succeeded the Poor Law Commission in 1847) was converted into the Local Government Board, with the purpose of concentrating in a single department the supervision of the laws relating to public health, the relief of the poor, and local government; and when, in 1872, the entire country was divided into urban and rural sanitary districts, the work was done deliberately in such a fashion as to involve the least possible addition to the existing complexities of the administrative system.[258] The two measures, however, by which, in the main, order was brought out of confusion were the Local Government Act of 1888 and the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894. The first of these, referred to commonly as the County Councils Act, was the sequel of the Representation of the People Act of 1884 and was definitely intended to invest the newly enfranchised rural population with a larger control of county affairs. The act created sixty-two administrative counties (some coterminous with pre-existing counties, others comprising subdivisions of them) and some three score "county boroughs," comprising towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants.[259] In each county and county borough there was set up a council, at least two-thirds of whose members were elective, and to this council was transferred the administrative functions of the justices of the peace, leaving to those dignitaries of the old régime little authority save of a judicial character. The democratization of rural government accomplished by the Conservative ministry of Lord Salisbury in 1888 was supplemented by the provisions of the District and Parish Councils Act, carried by a Liberal ministry in 1894.[260] This measure provided (1) that every county should be divided into districts, urban and rural, and every district into (p. 181) parishes, and (2) that in every district and in every rural parish with more than three hundred inhabitants there should be an elected council, while in the smallest parishes there should be a primary assembly of all persons whose names appear on the local government and parliamentary register. To the parish councils and assemblies were transferred all of the civil functions of the vestries, leaving to those bodies the control of ecclesiastical matters only, while to the district councils, whether rural or urban, were committed control of sanitary affairs and highways. [Footnote 258: The arrangements effected at this time were perpetuated in the great Public Health Act of 1875. Lowell, Government of England II., 137.] [Footnote 259: The number of county boroughs had been increased by 1910 to seventy-four. See p. 188.] [Footnote 260: It should be observed that the original intent in 1888 was to deal with district as well as county organization. In its final form the bill carried in that year had to do only, however, with the counties.] The effect of the acts of 1888 and 1894 was two-fold. In the first place, they put the administrative affairs of the rural portions of the country in the hands almost exclusively of popularly elected bodies. In the second place, their adoption afforded opportunity for the immediate or gradual abolition of all local governing authorities except the county, municipal, district, and parish councils, the boards of guardians, and the school boards, and thus they contributed vastly to that gradual simplification of the local governing system which is one of the most satisfactory developments of recent years. The act of 1894 alone abolished some 8,000 authorities. Since 1894 the consolidation of authorities and the elimination of areas have been carried yet further, the most notable step being the abolition of the school boards by the Education Act of 1902 and the transfer of the functions of these bodies to the councils of the counties, boroughs, and districts. Both the majority and minority reports of the recent Poor Law Commission, submitted in 1909, recommend the abolition of the parish union area; but no action has been taken as yet by Parliament upon this subject.[261] [Footnote 261: The history of local government changes since 1870 is well sketched in May and Holland, Constitutional History of England, III., Chap. 5.] VI. LOCAL AND CENTRAL GOVERNMENT The system of local government as it operates at the present time is by no means free from anomalies, but it exhibits, none the less, an orderliness and a simplicity which were altogether lacking a generation ago. The variety of areas of administration has been lessened, the number of officials has been reduced and their relations have been simplified, the guiding hand of the central authorities in local affairs has been strengthened. Stated briefly, the situation is as follows: the entire kingdom is divided into counties and county boroughs; the counties are subdivided into districts, rural and urban, and boroughs; these are subdivided further into parishes, which are regrouped in poor-law unions; while the city of London is organized after a fashion peculiar to itself. In order to make clear the (p. 182) essentials of the system it will be necessary to allude but briefly to the connection which obtains between the local and central administrative agencies, and to point out the principal features of each of the governmental units named. *191. The Five Central Departments.*--Throughout most periods of its history English local government has involved a smaller amount of interference and of direction on the part of the central authorities than have the local governments of the various continental nations. Even to-day the general government is not present in county or borough in any such sense as that in which the French government, in the person of the prefect, is present in the department, or the Prussian, through the agency of the "administration," is present in the district. A noteworthy aspect of English administrative reform during the past three-quarters of a century has been, nevertheless, a large increase of centralized control, if not of technical centralization, in relation to poor-relief, education, finance, and the other varied functions of the local governing agencies. There are to-day five ministerial departments which exercise in greater or lesser measure this kind of control. One, the Home Office, has special surveillance of police and of factory inspection. A second, the Board of Education, directs and supervises all educational agencies which are aided by public funds. A third, the Board of Agriculture, supervises the enforcement of laws relating to markets and to diseases of animals. A fourth, the Board of Trade, investigates and approves enterprises relating to the supply of water, gas, and electricity, and to other forms of "municipal trading." Most important of all, the Local Government Board directs in all that pertains to the execution of the poor laws and the activities of the local health authorities, oversees the financial operations of the local bodies, and fulfills a variety of other supervisory functions too extended to be enumerated. The powers of these departments in relation to local affairs are exercised in a number of ways, but chiefly through the promulgation of orders and regulations, the giving or withholding of assent to proposed measures of the local bodies, and the giving of expert advice and guidance. It need hardly be added that the powers and functions of the local authorities are subject at all times to control by parliamentary legislation.[262] [Footnote 262: On the relations between the central and local agencies of government see Lowell, Government of England, II., Chap. 46; J. Redlich and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England, 2 vols. (London, 1903), II., Pt. 6; Traill, Central Government, Chap. 11; and M. R. Maltbie, English Local Government of To-day; a Study of the Relations of Central and Local Government (New York, 1897).] VII. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO-DAY: RURAL (p. 183) *192. The Administrative County.*--Since the reform of 1888 there have been in England counties of two distinct kinds. There are, in the first place, the historic counties, fifty-two in number, which survive as areas for parliamentary elections and, in some instances, for the organization of the militia and the administration of justice. Their officials--the lord lieutenant, the sheriff, and the justices of the peace--are appointed by the crown. Much more important, however, are the administrative counties, sixty-two in number,[263] created and regulated by the local government legislation of 1888 and 1894. Six of these administrative counties coincide geographically with ancient counties, while most of the remaining ones represent no wide variation from the historic areas upon which they are based. Yorkshire and Lincolnshire were divided into three of the new counties each, and eight others were divided into two. The administrative counties do not include the seventy-four county boroughs which are located geographically within them, but they do include all non-county boroughs and urban districts, so that they are by no means altogether rural. They are extremely unequal in size and population, the smallest being Rutland with 19,709 inhabitants and the largest Lancashire with 1,827,436. [Footnote 263: Including the county of London. See p. 190.] *193. The County Council.*--The governing authority in each administrative county is the county council, a body composed of (1) councillors elected for a term of three years in single-member electoral divisions under franchise qualifications identical with those prevailing in the boroughs, save that plural voting is not permitted, and (2) aldermen chosen for six years by the popularly elected councillors. The number of aldermen is regularly one-third that of the other councillors, and half of the quota retire triennially. Between the two classes of members there is no distinction of power or function. The council elects a chairman and vice-chairman who hold office one year but are commonly re-elected. Other officers are the clerk, the chief constable, the treasurer, the surveyor, the public analyst, inspectors of various kinds, educational officials, and coroners. The tenure of these is not affected by changes in the composition of the council. Legally, the chairman is only a presiding official, though in practice his influence may be, and not infrequently is, greater than that of any other member. In the election of councillors party feeling seldom displays itself, and (p. 184) elections are very commonly uncontested.[264] Members are drawn mainly from the landowners, large farmers, and professional men, though representatives of the lower middle and laboring classes occasionally appear. The councils vary greatly in size, but the average membership is approximately seventy-five. The bringing together of so many men at frequent intervals is not easily accomplished and the bodies do not assemble ordinarily more than the four times a year prescribed by law. The mass of business devolving upon them is transacted largely through the agency of committees. Of these, some, as the committees on finance, education, and asylums, are required by law; others are established as occasion arises. [Footnote 264: At the elections of 1901 there were contests in but 433 of 3,349 divisions. P. Ashley, Local and Central Government; a Comparative Study of England, France, Prussia, and the United States (London, 1906), 25, note.] The powers and duties of the council are many and varied. In the main, though not wholly, they represent the former administrative functions of the justices of the peace. In the act of 1888 they are enumerated in sixteen distinct categories, of which the most important are the raising, expending, and borrowing of money; the care of county property, buildings, bridges, lunatic asylums, reformatory and industrial schools; the appointment of inferior administrative officials; the granting of certain licenses other than for the sale of liquor;[265] the care of main highways and the protection of streams from pollution; and the execution of various regulations relating to animals, fish, birds, and insects. By the Education Act of 1902 the council is given large authority within the domain of education. It must see that adequate provision is made for elementary schools, and it may assist in the maintenance of agencies of education of higher grades. The control of police within the county devolves upon a joint committee representing the council and the justices of the peace. Finally, the council may make by-laws for the county, supervise in a measure the minor rural authorities, and perform the work of these authorities when they prove remiss.[266] [Footnote 265: Liquor licenses are granted by the justices of the peace.] [Footnote 266: Lowell, Government of England, II., 274-275.] *194. The Rural District.*--Within the administrative county are four kinds of local government areas--rural districts, rural parishes, urban districts, and municipal boroughs. Of rural districts there are in England and Wales 672. They are coterminous, as a rule, with rural poor-law unions, or with the rural portions of unions which are both rural and urban; but they may not comprise parts of more than one county. The governing authority of the district is a council, (p. 185) composed of persons (women being eligible) chosen in most instances triennially by the rural parishes in accordance with population. Unless an order is made to the contrary, one-third retire each year. The members at the same time represent on the board of guardians of the union the parishes from which they have been elected, although the two bodies are legally distinct. The council must meet at least once a month. Its chairman, who during his year of office is _ex-officio_ a justice of the peace, may be chosen from among the councillors or from outside; and the same is true of members of committees. The principal salaried and permanent officials are the clerk, the treasurer, a medical officer, a surveyor, and sanitary inspectors. The functions of the councils pertain, in the main, to the administration of sanitation and of highways. The bodies are responsible largely for the execution in the rural localities of the various public health acts, and they have charge of all highways which are not classed as "main roads." To meet in part the costs of this administration they are empowered to levy district rates. *195. The Parish.*--Of parishes there are two types, the rural and the urban, and their aggregate number in England and Wales is approximately 15,000. The urban parishes possess no general administrative importance and further mention need not be made of them here. Under the act of 1894 the rural parish, however, has been revived in a measure from the inert condition into which it had fallen, and it to-day fills an appreciable if humble place in the rural administrative régime. The style of its organization is dependent to a degree upon its population. In each parish there is a meeting in which all persons on the local government and parliamentary registers (including women and lodgers) are privileged to participate. This meeting elects its own chairman, and it likewise chooses a number of overseers whose duty it is to assess and collect certain local rates, to administer the poor-rate, and to make up the electoral and jury lists. All parishes whose population numbers as much as three hundred have a council composed of from five to fifteen members (women being eligible), elected as a rule for a term of three years. The list of powers which the parish authorities may exercise is extended, if not imposing. It includes the maintenance of foot-paths, the management of civil parochial property, the provision of fire protection, the inspection of local sanitation, and the appointment of trustees of civil charities within the parish. The meagerness of the population of large numbers of the parishes, however, together with the severe limitations imposed both by law and by practical conditions upon rate-levying powers, preclude the authorities very generally (p. 186) from undertaking many or large projects. It is regarded commonly that the parishes are too small to be made such areas of public activity as the authors of the act of 1894 had in mind. Practically, the parish is little more than a unit for the election of representatives and the collection of rates.[267] [Footnote 267: Lowell, Government of England, II., 281.] For purposes of poor-law administration, as has been pointed out, there have existed since 1834 poor-law unions, consisting of numbers of parishes grouped together, usually without much effort to obtain equality of size or population. These unions not infrequently comprise both rural and urban parishes, and in cases of this kind the board of guardians is composed of the persons elected as district councillors in the rural parishes of the union, together with other persons who are elected immediately as guardians in the urban parishes and have no other function. The conditions under which poor relief is administered are prescribed rather minutely in general regulations laid down by the Local Government Board at London, so that, save in the matter of levying rates, the range of discretion left to the boards of guardians is closely restricted.[268] [Footnote 268: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 52-60.] VIII. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO-DAY: URBAN *196. The Urban District.*--Of areas within which are administered the local affairs of the urban portions of the kingdom there are several of distinct importance, although in reality the institutions of urban government are less complex than they appear on the surface to be. In the main, the legal basis of urban organization is the Municipal Corporations Consolidation Act of 1882, which comprises a codification of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and a mass of subsequent and amending legislation. This great statute is supplemented at a number of points by the Local Government Act of 1888, the District and Parish Councils Act of 1894, the Education Act of 1902, and other regulative measures of the past thirty years. At the bottom of the scale among urban governmental units stands the urban district, which differs from an ordinary borough principally in that it has no charter and its council possesses less authority than does that of the borough.[269] The number of urban districts is in the neighborhood of eight hundred. Under the terms of the act of 1894 the governing authority in each is a council consisting of members elected for three years, women being eligible. There are no aldermen, and no mayor is chosen. The (p. 187) council elects its own chairman and other officers, and it meets at least once a month. Its functions, of which the most important is the control of sanitation and of highways, are discharged largely through the agency of committees. The district council possesses none of the police and judicial privileges which the borough councils commonly enjoy. It is more closely controlled by the Local Government Board, and, in general, it lacks "the status and ornamental trappings of a municipal authority.[270]" Yet in practice its powers are hardly less extensive than are those of the council of a full-fledged borough. New urban districts may be created in thickly populated localities by joint action of the county council and the Local Government Board. [Footnote 269: Speaking strictly, a borough is an urban district, and something more.] [Footnote 270: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 45.] *197. Boroughs and "Cities."*--The standard type of municipal unit is the borough. Among boroughs there is a certain amount of variation, but the differences which exist are those rather of historic development and of nomenclature than of governmental forms or functions. There are "municipal" boroughs, "county" boroughs, and cities. Any non-rural area upon which has been conferred a charter stipulating rights of local self-government is a borough. Areas of the sort which have been withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the administrative counties in which they are situated are county boroughs; those not so withdrawn are municipal boroughs. The term "city" was once employed to designate exclusively places which were or had been the seat of a bishop. Nowadays the title is borne not only by places of this nature but also by places, as Sheffield and Leeds, upon which it has been conferred by royal patent. Save, however, in the case of the city of London, where alone in England ancient municipal institutions have been generally preserved, the term possesses no political significance.[271] The governments of the cities are identical with those of the non-city boroughs. It is to be observed, further, that whereas formerly the borough as organized for municipal purposes coincided with the borough as constituted for purposes of representation in Parliament, there is now no necessary connection between the two. An addition to a municipal borough does not alter the parliamentary constituency. [Footnote 271: See p. 190.] *198. Kinds of Boroughs.*--The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 made provision for 178 boroughs in England and Wales and stipulated conditions under which the number might be increased from time to time by royal charter. In not a few instances the charters of boroughs at the time existing were of mediæval origin. Since 1875 new charters (p. 188) have been conferred until the number of boroughs has been brought up to approximately 350. For the obtaining of a borough charter no fixed requirement of population is laid down. Each application is considered upon its merits, and while the size and importance of an urban community weigh heavily in the decision other factors not infrequently are influential, with the consequence that some boroughs are very small while some urban centers of size are not yet boroughs. Of the present number of boroughs, seventy-four, or about one-fifth, are county boroughs. By the act of 1888 it was provided that every borough which had or should attain a population of 50,000 should be deemed, for purposes of administration, a separate county, and should therefore be exempt from the supervision exercised over the affairs of the municipal boroughs by the authorities of the administrative counties. Any borough with a population exceeding the figure named may be created a county borough by simple order of the Local Government Board. Unlike the ordinary municipal borough, the county borough is not represented in the council of the county in which the borough lies; on the contrary, the council of the borough exercises substantially an equivalent of the powers exercised normally by the county council, and it is, to all intents and purposes, a council of that variety. Much the larger portion of the English boroughs are, however, simple municipal boroughs, whose activities are subject to a supervision more or less constant upon the part of the county authorities. *199. The Borough Authorities.*--The difference between county and municipal boroughs is thus one of degree of local autonomy, not one of forms or agencies of government. The charters of all boroughs have been brought into substantial agreement and the organs of borough control are everywhere the same. The governing authority is the borough council, which consists of councillors, aldermen, and a mayor, sitting as a single body. The councillors, varying in number from nine to upwards of one hundred, are elected by the voters of the borough, either at large or by wards, for three years, and one-third retire annually. The aldermen, equal in number to one-third of the councillors, are chosen by the entire council for six years, and are selected usually from among the councillors of most prolonged experience. The mayor is elected annually by the councillors and aldermen, frequently from their own number. In boroughs of lesser size re-elections are not uncommon. Service in all of the capacities mentioned is unpaid. The council determines its own rules of procedure, and its work is accomplished in large measure through the agency of committees, some of which are required by statute, others of which are created as occasion demands; but, unlike the county (p. 189) council, the council of the borough cannot delegate any of its powers, save those relating to education, to these committees. The mayor presides over the council meetings, serves commonly as an _ex-officio_ member of committees, and represents the municipality upon ceremonial occasions. The office is not one of power, although it is possible for an aggressive and tactful mayor to wield real influence. The permanent officers of the council include a clerk, a treasurer, a medical official, a secretary for education, and a variable number of inspectors and heads of administrative departments. *200. The Borough Council.*--In the capacity of representative authority of the municipality the council controls corporation property, adopts and executes measures relative to police and education, levies rates, and not infrequently administers waterways, tramways, gas and electric plants, and a variety of other public utilities. The enormously increased activity of the town and urban district councils in respect to "municipal trading" within the past two score years has aroused widespread controversy. The purposes involved have been, in the main, two--to avert the evils of private monopoly and to obtain from remunerative services something to set against the heavy unremunerative expenditures rendered necessary by existing sanitary legislation. And, although opposed by reason of the outlays which it requires and the invasion of the domain of private enterprise which it constitutes, the device of municipal ownership is being ever more widely adopted, as in truth it is also in Germany and other European countries.[272] Aside from its general functions, the borough councils is in particular a sanitary authority, and among its most important tasks is the execution of regulations concerning drainage, housing, markets, hospitals, and indeed the entire category of matters provided for in the long series of Public Health acts. The expenditures of the council as a municipal authority are met from a fund made up of fees, fines, and other proceeds of administration, together with the income from a borough rate, which is levied on the same basis as the poor rate; its expenditures as a sanitary authority are met from a fund raised by a general district rate. To assist in the administration of education, sanitation, and police, grants are made regularly by Parliament.[273] [Footnote 272: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 42.] [Footnote 273: The best of existing works upon the general subject of English local government is J. Redlich, and F. W. Hirst, Local Government in England, 2 vols. (London, 1903). There are several convenient manuals, of which the most useful are P. Ashley, English Local Government (London, 1905); W. B. Odgers, Local Government (London, 1899), based on the older work of M. D. Chalmers; E. Jenks, An Outline of English Local Government (2d ed., London, 1907); R, S. Wright and H. Hobhouse, An Outline of Local Government and Local Taxation in England and Wales (3d ed., London, 1906); and R. C. Maxwell, English Local Government (London, 1900), in Temple Primer Series. The subject is treated admirably in Lowell, Government of England, II., Chaps. 38-46, and a portion of it in W. B. Munro, The Government of European Cities (New York, 1909), Chap. 3 (full bibliography, pp. 395-402). There are good sketches in Ashley, Local and Central Government, Chaps. 1 and 5, and Marriott, English Political Institutions, Chap. 13. A valuable group of papers read at the First International Congress of the Administrative Sciences, held at Brussels in July, 1910, is printed in G. M. Harris, Problems of Local Government (London, 1911). A useful compendium of laws relating to city government is C. Rawlinson, Municipal Corporation Acts, and Other Enactments (9th ed., London, 1903). Two appreciative surveys by American writers are A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (New York, 1898) and F. Howe, The British City (New York, 1907). On the subject of municipal trading the reader may be referred to Lowell, Government of England, II., Chap. 44; Lord Avebury, Municipal and National Trading (London, 1907); L. Darwin, Municipal Ownership in Great Britain (New York, 1906); G. B. Shaw, The Common Sense of Municipal Trading (London, 1904); and C. Hugo, Städteverwaltung und Municipal-Socialismus in England (Stuttgart, 1897). Among works on poor-law administration may be mentioned T. A. Mackay, History of the English Poor Law from 1834 to the Present Time (New York, 1900); P. T. Aschrott and H. P. Thomas, The English Poor Law System, Past and Present (2d ed., London, 1902); and S. and B. Webb, English Poor Law Policy (London, 1910). The best treatise on educational administration is G. Balfour, The Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland (2d ed., London, 1904). Finally must be mentioned C. Gross, Bibliography of British Municipal History (New York, 1897), an invaluable guide to the voluminous literature of an intricate subject.] *201. The Government of London.*--The unique governmental (p. 190) arrangements of London are the product in part of historical survival and in part of special and comparatively recent legislation. Technically, the "city" of London is still what it has been through centuries, i.e., an area with a government of its own comprising but a single square mile on the left bank of the Thames. By a series of measures covering a period of somewhat more than fifty years, however, the entire region occupied by the densely populated metropolis has been drawn into a closely co-ordinated scheme of local administration. London was untouched by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 and the changes by which the governmental system of the present day was brought into being began to be introduced only with the adoption of the Metropolis Management Act of 1855. The government of the city was left unchanged, but the surrounding parishes, hitherto governed independently by their vestries, were at this time brought for certain purposes under the control of a central authority known as the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Local Government Act of 1888 carried the task of organization a stage further. The Board of Works was abolished, extra-city London was transformed into an administrative county of some 120 square miles, and upon the newly created London (p. 191) County Council (elected by the rate-payers) was conferred a varied and highly important group of powers. Finally, in 1899 the London Government Act simplified the situation by sweeping away a mass of surviving authorities and jurisdictions and by creating twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs, each with mayor, aldermen, and councillors such as any provincial borough possesses, though with powers specially defined and, on the side of finance, somewhat restricted. Within each borough are urban parishes, each with its own vestry. At the center of the metropolitan area stands still the historic City, with its lord mayor, its life aldermen, and its annually elected councillors, organized after a fashion which has hardly changed in four and a half centuries. Within the administrative county the county council acts as a central authority, the borough councils and the parish vestries serve as local authorities. While areas of common administration still very much larger than the county comprise, among others, the districts of the Metropolitan Water Board and of the Metropolitan Police. The jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Police extends over all parishes within fifteen miles of Charing Cross, an area of almost 700 square miles.[274] [Footnote 274: For excellent descriptions of the government of London see Munro, Government of European Cities, 339-379 (bibliography, 395-402), and Lowell, Government of England, II., 202-232. Valuable works are G. L. Gomme, Governance of London: Studies on the Place occupied by London in English Institutions (London, 1907); ibid., The London County Council: its Duties and Powers according to the Local Government Act of 1888 (London, 1888); A. MacMorran, The London Government Act (London, 1899); A. B. Hopkins, Boroughs of the Metropolis (London, 1900); and J. R. Seager, Government of London under the London Government Act (London, 1904). A suggestive article is G. L. Fox, The London County Council, in _Yale Review_, May, 1895.] PART II.--GERMANY (p. 193) CHAPTER IX THE EMPIRE AND ITS CONSTITUTION I. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT PRIOR TO 1848 *202. Napoleonic Transformations.*--Among the political achievements of the past hundred years few exceed in importance, and none surpass in interest, the creation of the present German Empire. The task of German unification may be regarded as having been brought formally to completion upon the occasion of the memorable ceremony of January 18, 1871, when, in the presence of a brilliant concourse of princes and generals gathered in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of the French kings at Versailles, William I., king of Prussia, was proclaimed German Emperor. Back of the dramatic episode at Versailles, however, lay a long course of nationalizing development, of which the proclamation of an Imperial sovereign was but the culminating event. The beginnings of the making of the German Empire of to-day are to be traced from a period at least as remote as that of Napoleon. Germany in 1814 was still disunited and comparatively backward, but it was by no means the Germany of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The transformations wrought to the east of the Rhine during the period of the Napoleonic ascendancy were three-fold. In the first place, after more than a thousand years of existence, the Holy Roman Empire was, in 1806, brought to an end, and Germany, never theretofore since the days of barbarism entirely devoid of political unity, was left without even the semblance or name of nationality. In the second place, there was within the period a far-reaching readjustment of the political structure of the German world, involving (1) the reducing of the total number of German states--kingdoms, duchies, principalities, ecclesiastical dominions, and knights' holdings--from above three hundred to two score; (2) the augmenting of the importance of Austria by the acquisition of a separate imperial title,[275] and the (p. 194) raising of Saxony, Bavaria, and Württemberg from duchies to kingdoms; and (3) the bringing into existence of certain new and more or less artificial political aggregates, namely, the kingdom of Westphalia, the grand-duchy of Warsaw, and the Confederation of the Rhine, for the purpose of facilitating the Napoleonic dominance of north-central Europe. Finally, in several of the states, notably Prussia, the overturn occasioned by the Napoleonic conquests prompted systematic attempts at reform, with the consequence of a revolutionizing modernization of social and economic conditions altogether comparable with that which within the generation had been achieved in France. [Footnote 275: In anticipation of the prospective abolition of the dignity of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Emperor Francis II., in 1804, assumed the title of Emperor of Austria, under the name Francis I.] The simple reduction of the German states in number, noteworthy though it was, did not mean necessarily the realization of a larger measure of national unity, for the rivalries of the states which survived tended but to be accentuated. But if the vertical cleavages by which the country was divided were deepened, those of a horizontal character, arising from social and economic privilege, were in this period largely done away. Serfdom was abolished; the knights as a political force disappeared; the free cities were reduced to four; and such distinctions of caste as survived rapidly declined in political importance. By an appreciable levelling of society the way was prepared for co-ordinated national development, while by the extinction of a variety of republican and aristocratic sovereignties monarchy as a form of government acquired new powers of unification and leadership.[276] [Footnote 276: On Germany during the Napoleonic period see Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 11; J. H. Rose, Life of Napoleon I., 2 vols. (new ed., New York, 1910), II., Chaps. 24-25; A. Fournier, Napoleon I., a Biography, trans, by A. E. Adams, 2 vols, (New York, 1911), I., Chaps. 11-12; J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein; or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1878); H. A. L. Fisher, Studies in Napoleonic Statesmanship, Germany (Oxford, 1903).] *203. The Congress of Vienna and the Confederation of 1815.*--The collapse of the dominion of Napoleon was followed in Germany by rather less of a return to earlier arrangements than might have been expected. Indeed, it can hardly be said to have involved any such return at all. The Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved, and both the grand-duchy of Warsaw and the kingdom of Westphalia ceased, as such, to be. But the Holy Roman Empire was not revived; the newly acquired dignities of the sovereigns of Saxony, Bavaria, and other states were perpetuated; despite the clamors of the mediatized princes, the scores of German states which during the decade had been swallowed up by their more powerful neighbors, or had been otherwise blotted out, were not re-established; and--most important of all--the social and economic changes by which the period had been given (p. 195) distinction were, in large part, not undone. As has been pointed out, the close of the Napoleonic period found Germany entirely devoid of political unity, in both name and fact. By the governments which were chiefly influential in the reconstruction of Europe in 1814-1815, it was deemed expedient that there be re-established some degree of German unity, though on the part of most of them, both German and non-German, there was no desire that there be called into existence a united German nation of substantial independence and power. In the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, promulgated under date of June 9, 1815, there was included the draft of a constitution, prepared by a committee of the Congress under the presidency of Count Metternich, in which was laid down the fundamental law of an entirely new German union. Within Germany proper there were recognized to be, when the Congress had completed its work of readjustment, thirty-eight states, of widely varying size, importance, and condition. Under authorization of the Congress, these states were now organized, not into an empire with a common sovereign, but into a _Bund_, or Confederation, whose sole central organ was a _Bundestag_, or Diet, sitting at Frankfort-on-the-Main and composed of delegates commissioned by the sovereigns of the affiliated states and serving under their immediate and absolute direction. Save only in respect to certain matters pertaining to foreign relations and war, each of the thirty-eight states retained its autonomy unimpaired.[277] [Footnote 277: In 1817 the number was brought up to 39 by the adding of Hesse-Homburg, unintentionally omitted when the original list was made up. By successive changes the number was reduced to 33 before the dissolution of the Confederation in 1866.] *204. The Diet.*--The Diet was in no proper sense a parliamentary body, but was rather a congress of sovereign states. Nominally, its powers were large. They included both the regulation of the fundamental law and the performance of the functions of ordinary legislation. But, in practice, the authority of the body was meager and exercise of discretion was absolutely precluded. The members, as delegates of the princes, spoke and voted only as they were instructed. Questions relating to the fundamental laws and the organic institutions of the Confederation and "other arrangements of common interest" were required to be decided by the Diet as a whole (_in Plenum_), with voting power distributed among the states, in rough proportion to their importance. Of the total of 69 votes, six of the principal states possessed four each. The preparation of measures for discussion _in Plenum_ was intrusted to the "ordinary assembly," a smaller (p. 196) gathering in which Austria, Prussia, and nine other states had each one vote, and six _curiæ_, comprising the remaining states in groups had likewise each a single vote. The presidency of the two assemblies was vested permanently in Austria, and the Austrian delegation possessed in each a casting vote. Proposals were carried in the smaller body by simple majority, but _in Plenum_ only by a two-thirds vote. For the enactment of fundamental laws, the modification of organic institutions, the amendment of individual rights, and the regulation of religious affairs, it was declared by the Federal Act that a majority vote should be insufficient, and, although it was not expressly so stipulated, the intent was that in such cases unanimity should be required. Early in the Diet's history, indeed, the president was instructed solemnly to announce that the fundamental law of the Confederation, far from being subject to revision, was to be regarded as absolutely final. The Confederation was, and was intended to be, only the loosest sort of a league of sovereign powers. The party of German unity, represented by Stein and the Liberals generally, began by assuming it to be a _Bundesstaat_, or true federal state; but at the opening of the first session of the Diet (November 5, 1816) the Austrian authorities formally pronounced it a _Staatenbund_, or federation of states, and from this ruling, according strictly with both the facts of the situation and the intent of the founders, there was no possible escape. The powers and functions which were vested in the Confederation were exercised exclusively through and upon states, and with the private individual it had no sort of direct relation, being, in these respects, essentially similar to the federal government of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. The function of the Diet, in effect, came to be little more than that of registering and promulgating the decrees of the authorities at Vienna. *205. Constitutional Progress, 1815-1848.*--Notwithstanding these facts, the decade which terminates with the creation of the Confederation of 1815 contributed enormously to the clearing of the way for the establishment of modern German unity and of vigorous and efficient national government. Among large numbers of the German people there had been engendered a genuine desire, not only for constitutionalism in government, but for a substantial unification of the German-speaking world; and the increased homogeneity and prosperity of the kingdom of Prussia pointed already to the eventual realization of these aspirations under the leadership of that powerful state. The history of Germany during the period from 1815 to 1848 is a story largely of the growth of these twin ideas of constitutionalism and nationality, and of (p. 197) the relentless combat which was waged between their exponents and the entrenched forces of autocracy and particularism. Gradually the results of this conflict found expression through two developments, (1) the promulgation of liberalizing constitutions in a majority of the states and (2) the building of the Zollverein, or customs union. The original draft of the Federal Act of 1815 pledged every member of the Confederation to establish a constitution within a year. In the final form of the instrument, however, the time limit was omitted and what had been a specific injunction became but a general promise. The sovereigns of the two preponderating states, Austria and Prussia, delayed and eventually evaded the obligation altogether. But in a large number of the lesser states the promise that had been made was fulfilled with despatch. In the south the ground had been cleared by the Napoleonic domination, and the influence of French political experimentation was more generally felt, so that, very naturally, the progress of constitutionalism was most rapid in that quarter. The new era of constitution-making was inaugurated by the promulgation of the fundamental law of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, January 8, 1816. In rapid succession followed similar grants in Schaumburg-Lippe, January 15, 1816; Waldeck, April 19, 1816; the grand-duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, May 5, 1816; Saxe-Hildburghausen, March 19, 1818; Bavaria, May 26, 1818; Baden, August 22, 1818; Lichtenstein, November 9, 1818; Württemberg, September 25, 1819; Hanover, December 7, 1819; Brunswick, April 25, 1820, and the grand-duchy of Hesse, December 17, 1820. Instruments promulgated later during the period under review include those of Saxe-Meiningen, in 1829; Hesse-Cassel, Saxe-Altenburg, and Saxony, in 1831; Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, in 1833; Lippe, in 1836; and Lübeck, in 1846. In a number of the states mentioned, including Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Saxony, the constitutions at this time granted are still in operation. Many of them were, and some of them remain, highly illiberal. But, in the aggregate, the ground gained in behalf of constitutional and enlightened government through their promulgation was enormous. The spread of constitutionalism was paralleled by the gradual creation, after 1818, of the Zollverein. This was a customs union, taking its origin in the establishment of free trade throughout the kingdom of Prussia, and extended from state to state until by 1842 the whole of Germany had been included save the Hanseatic towns, Mecklenburg, Hanover, and Austria. The union was maintained for purposes that were primarily commercial, but by accustoming the people to concerted effort and by emphasizing constantly their common interests it must be regarded as having contributed in a very (p. 198) important way to the growth of national consciousness and solidarity. Under its agency the lesser states were schooled deliberately in independence of Austria and in reliance upon Prussian leadership. II. THE CREATION OF THE EMPIRE *206. The Revolution of 1848.*--From 1815 onwards the Liberals advocated, in season and out, the conversion of the Confederation into a more substantial union under a constitutional style of government. Aside from the promulgation of a number of new state constitutions, the effects of the revolutionary movements of 1830 were, in Germany, of little consequence. But during the period 1830-1848 conditions so developed that only the stimulus of a near-by liberal demonstration was required to precipitate to the east of the Rhine a popular uprising of revolutionary proportions. In the constitutional history of the German countries of central Europe few periods are to be assigned larger importance than the years 1848-1849. Taking advantage of the interest created by the contemporary revolution in France, the Liberal leaders began by convening at Heidelberg, March 31, 1848, a _Vorparlament_, or preliminary meeting, by which arrangements were effected for the election, by manhood suffrage, of a national assembly of some six hundred members whose business it should be to draw up a constitution for a united German nation. This assembly, reluctantly authorized by the Diet, convened May 18 in the free city of Frankfort. The task to be accomplished was formidable and much valuable time was consumed in learned but irrelevant disputation. In the end it was decided that not the whole of Austria, but only the German portions, should be admitted to the new union; that there should be established a full-fledged parliamentary system, with a responsible ministry; and that the parliament should consist of two chambers, the lower to be chosen by direct manhood suffrage, the upper to be made up half of members appointed by the princes and half of members elected for six years by the legislative bodies of the several states. As an executive some desired a directory of three princes and some wanted a single president; but the majority voted at length to establish the dignity of German Emperor and to offer it to Frederick William IV., king of Prussia. *207. The Reaction.*--The refusal of the Prussian monarch to accept the proffered title, save upon the impossible condition that all of his brother princes in Germany should give their assent to his so doing, blasted the hopes of the patriots. In May, 1849, the Frankfort assembly broke up. Not long thereafter Prussia, Saxony, and (p. 199) Hanover agreed upon a constitution substantially like that which the Frankfort meeting had proposed. Other states accepted it, and March 20, 1850, a parliament was convened under it at Erfurt. By reason of the recovery of Austria, however, and the subsidence of the revolutionary movement generally throughout Germany the experiment promptly collapsed. The conception of a German empire had been formulated with some definiteness, but for its realization the day had not yet arrived. The old Confederation, under Austrian domination, kept the field. After an upheaval which involved the enforced promulgation of a constitution, the accession of a new emperor (the present Francis Joseph), and the threatened loss of Hungary, Bohemia, and the Italian dependencies, the Austrian monarchy recovered its balance and inaugurated a fresh era of reaction, during the course of which there was revoked not only the constitution conceded at Vienna but also that of almost every one of the German states.[278] [Footnote 278: See pp. 454-456.] In Prussia the outcome was more fortunate. In January, 1850, Frederick William IV, granted a constitution which established a national legislative assembly and admitted a portion of the Prussian people to an active participation in the government. Although the instrument proved a disappointment to the Liberals, it has survived, with some modifications, to the present day as the fundamental law of the Prussian kingdom; and the fact that Prussia had become fixedly a constitutional state, together with the hopeless deadlock which arose between Prussia and Austria in the attempted readjustments of 1848-1849, emphasized the conclusion that the future of Germany lay with Prussia rather than with Austria, and that, indeed, there could be no adequate unification of the German people until one of the two great rival states should have been definitely ejected.[279] [Footnote 279: On the revolution of 1848 in Germany see Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chaps. 3, 6, 7; H. von Sybel, The Founding of the German Empire trans. by M. L. Perrin, 7 vols. (New York, 1890-1898), I., 145-243; H. Blum, Die deutsche Revolution, 1848-1849 (Florence and Leipzig, 1897); P. Matter, La Prusse et la révolution de 1848 (Paris, 1903).] *208. The War of 1866.*--With the elevation of Count von Bismarck, September 23, 1862, to the presidency of the Prussian ministry, affairs began to move rapidly toward the inevitable conclusion. A month prior to Bismarck's appointment there had been held at Frankfort a conference--the so-called _Fürstentag_--whose object was the proposal of a plan for the reconstitution of the Confederation. The scheme suggested contemplated the establishment of a directory, an assembly composed of delegates from the various diets, and a federal court of appeal. The conference was held at the instigation of (p. 200) Austria, and it was intended primarily to promote an alignment of the liberal forces against Prussia. The last-mentioned state refused, naturally, to have part in the proceedings, and the enterprise came to naught. A brief interlude in the fast developing contest was afforded by the Austro-Prussian alliance against Denmark in 1864; but the net result of this episode was only to supply the occasion for war which Bismarck desired. In 1866 Prussia came forward with a project for the reorganization of the Confederation (in reality, a counter-bid for popular support), the more noteworthy features of which were the total exclusion of Austria from the league and the establishment of a parliament elected by manhood suffrage. As was inevitable, the Diet rejected the scheme; whereupon, with the object of forcing Austria into helpless isolation, Bismarck and his royal master, William I., in June, 1866, proclaimed the Confederation to be dissolved and plunged the whole of Germany in civil war. *209. The North German Bund, 1867.*--The conflict was short and sharp. Its outcome was the crushing defeat of Austria, and in the treaty of Prague (August 23, 1866) the proud Hapsburg monarchy was compelled to assent to a reconstitution of the German federation in which Austria should have no part. A number of lesser states which had supported Austria--Hanover, Nassau, Hesse-Cassel, and Frankfort--were forthwith incorporated by Prussia, by decree of September 20, 1866,[280] and among the group of surviving powers the preponderance of Prussia was more than ever indisputable. Realizing, however, that the states of the south--Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt--were not as yet ready to be incorporated under a centralized administration, Prussia contented herself for the moment with setting up a North German _Bund_, comprising the states to the north of the river Main, twenty-two in all. February 24, 1867, there was brought together in Berlin a constitutional diet, representing all of the affiliated states and elected by manhood suffrage and secret ballot. A constitution, drafted previously by a committee of plenipotentiaries, was debated from March 9 to April 16 and was adopted by a vote of 230 to 53. After having been ratified by the legislative bodies of the various states, the instrument was put in operation, July 1. The principal organs of government for which it made provision were three in number: (1) the _Præsidium_, or President, of the Confederation, the dignity being hereditary and vested in the king of Prussia; (2) the _Bundesrath_, or Federal Council, representing the various governments; and (3) the _Bundestag_, or Diet, composed of deputies elected directly by manhood suffrage. For all practical purposes (p. 201) the German Empire, under the hegemony of Prussia, was a reality. [Footnote 280: The disputed districts of Schleswig-Holstein were annexed at the same time.] *210. Establishment of the Empire, 1871.*--For the time being the states to the south of the Main were left to their own devices, though the constitution of the _Bund_ was shaped purposely to permit, and even to encourage, the accession of new members. Very soon these southern states entered the new customs union of 1867, maintained by the northern states, and ere long they were concluding with Prussia treaties of both offensive and defensive alliance. The patriotic fervor engendered by the war with France in 1870-1871 sufficed to complete the work. Contrary to the expectation of Napoleon III., the states of the south contributed troops and otherwise co-operated vigorously with the Prussians throughout the contest, and before its close they let it be known that they were ready to become full-fledged members of the Confederation. On the basis of treaty arrangements, concluded in November, 1870, it was agreed that the North German Confederation should be replaced by a German Empire, and that for the title of President, borne by the Prussian sovereign, should be substituted that of _Deutscher Kaiser_, German Emperor. January 18, 1871, at Versailles, William, king of Prussia and President of the Confederation, was formally proclaimed German Emperor. The siege of Paris was at the time still in progress, and the treaty of Frankfort, by which peace with France was concluded, was not signed until the following May.[281] [Footnote 281: For brief accounts of the founding of the Empire see B. E. Howard, The German Empire (New York, 1906), Chap. 1; E. Henderson, Short History of Germany (New York, 1906). Chaps. 8-10; Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chaps. 15-17, XII., Chap. 6; and Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XI., Chap. 8. A very good book is G. B. Malleson, The Refounding of the German Empire, 1848-1871 (2d ed., London, 1904). More extended presentation of German history in the period 1815-1871 will be found in A. Stern, Geschichte Europas seit den Verträgen von 1815 bis zum Frankfurter Frieden von 1871, 6 vols. (Berlin, 1894-1911), extending at present to 1848; C. F. H. Bulle, Geschichte der neuesten Zeit, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1886-1887), covering the years 1815-1885; H. G. Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1879-1894), covering the period to 1848; H. von Sybel, Die Begründung des deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm I. (Munich and Leipzig, 1890), and in English translation under title of The Founding of the German Empire (New York, 1890); H. von Zwiedeneck-Sudenhorst, Deutsche Geschichte von der Auflösung d. alten bis zur Errichtung d. neuen Kaiserreichs (Stuttgart, 1903-1905); and M. L. Van Deventer, Cinquante années de l'histoire fédérale de l'Allemagne (Brussels, 1870). A book of some value is A. Malet, The Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation by Prussia in 1866 (London, 1870). P. Bigelow, History of the German Struggle for Liberty (New York, 1905) is readable, but not wholly reliable. An excellent biography of Bismarck is that by Headlam (New York, 1899). For full bibliography see Cambridge Modern History, X., 826-832; XI., 879-886, 893-898; XII., 869-875.] III. THE CONSTITUTION: NATURE OF THE EMPIRE (p. 202) *211. The Constitution Framed.*--As ordained in the treaties of November, 1870, ratified subsequently by the _Bundesrath_ and the _Bundestag_ of the North German Confederation, and by the legislative assemblies of the four incoming states, the German Empire came legally into existence January 1, 1871. It consisted fundamentally of the Confederation, which in the process of expansion did not lose its corporate identity, together with the four states, whose treaties bound them severally to it. The _Bund_ was conceived of technically, not as replaced by, but rather as perpetuated in, the new Empire. The accession of the four southern states, however, involved of necessity a considerable modification of the original character of the affiliation; and the innovations that were introduced called for a general reconstitution of the fundamental law upon which the enlarged structure was to be grounded. The elements at hand for the construction of the constitution of the Empire were four: (1) the constitution of the North German Confederation, in operation since 1867; (2) the treaties of November 15, 1870, between the Confederation, on the one hand, and the grand-duchies of Baden and Hesse on the other; (3) the treaty of November 23, 1870, by which was arranged the adhesion of the kingdom of Bavaria; and (4) the treaty of November 25, 1870, between the _Bund_, Baden, and Hesse, on the one side, and the kingdom of Württemberg on the other. Each of these treaties stipulated the precise conditions under which the new affiliation should be maintained, these stipulations comprising, in effect, so many projected amendments of the original constitution of the _Bund_.[282] At the initiative of the Emperor there was prepared, early in 1871, a revised draft of this constitution, and in it were incorporated such modifications as were rendered necessary by the adhesion of the southern states and the creation of the Imperial title. March 31 the Reichstag was convened in Berlin and before it was laid forthwith the constitutional _projet_, to which the Bundesrath had already given its assent. April 14 the instrument was approved by the popular chamber, and two days later it was promulgated as the supreme law of the land. [Footnote 282: The first three of these treaties were concluded at Versailles; the fourth was signed at Berlin.] *212. Contents of the Instrument.*--As it came from the hands of its framers, the new constitution comprised a judicious amalgamation of the various fundamental documents that have been mentioned, i.e., the constitution of the Confederation and the treaties. Within the (p. 203) scope of its seventy-eight articles most subjects which are dealt with ordinarily in such instruments find ample place: the nature and extent of the legislative power; the composition, organization, and procedure of the legislative chambers; the privileges and powers of the executive; the adjustment of disputes and the punishment of offenses against the national authority; the process of constitutional amendment. It is a peculiarity of the German constitution, however, that it contains elaborate provisions relating to a variety of things concerning which constitutions, as a rule, are silent. There is an extended section upon customs and commerce; another upon railways; another upon posts and telegraphs; another upon navigation; another upon finance; and an especially detailed one relating to the military organization of the realm. In part, the elaboration of these essentially legislative subjects within the constitution was determined by the peculiarly federal character of the Empire, by which was entailed the necessity of a minute enumeration of powers. In a greater measure, however, it arose from the underlying purpose of Bismarck and of William I. to smooth the way for the conversion of Germany into the premier militant power of Europe. Beyond a guarantee of a common citizenship for all Germany and of equal protection for all citizens as against foreign powers, the constitution contains little that relates to the status or privileges of the individual. There is in it no bill of rights, and it makes no mention of abstract principles. Among instruments of its kind, none is of a more thoroughly practical character.[283] [Footnote 283: The text of the constitution, in German, is printed in A. L. Lowell, Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, 2 vols. (Boston, 1896), II., 355-377, and in Laband, Deutsches Reichsstaatsrecht, 411-428; in English, in W. F. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1909), I., 325-351, and in Howard, The German Empire, 403-435. Carefully edited German texts are: L. von Rönne, Verfassung des deutschen Reiches (8th ed., Berlin, 1899); A. Arndt, Verfassung des deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1902). On the formation of the Imperial constitution see A. Lebon, Les origines de la constitution allemande, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1888; ibid., Études sur l'Allemagne politique (Paris, 1890).] *213. Federal Character of the Empire.*--The political system of Germany to-day is the product of centuries of particularistic statecraft, capped, in 1871, by a partial centralization of sovereign organs and powers. The Empire is composed of twenty-five states: the four kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg; the six grand-duchies of Baden, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxe-Weimar, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Oldenburg; the five duchies of Brunswick, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Anhalt; the seven (p. 204) principalities of Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Waldeck, Reuss Älterer Linie, Reuss Jüngerer Linie, Lippe, and Schaumburg-Lippe; and the three free cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. These states vary in size from Prussia, with 134,616 square miles, to Bremen, with 99; and in population, from Prussia, with 40,163,333, to Schaumburg-Lippe, with 46,650. There is, in addition, the _Reichsland_, or Imperial domain, of Alsace-Lorraine, whose status until 1911 was that of a purely dependent territory, but which by act of the year mentioned was elevated to a condition of quasi-statehood.[284] [Footnote 284: See p. 285.] Prior to the formation in 1867, of the North German Confederation, each of the twenty-five states was sovereign and essentially independent. Each had its own governmental establishment, and in many instances the existing political system was of considerable antiquity. With the organization of the _Bund_, those states which were identified with the federation yielded their independence, and presumably their sovereignty; and with the establishment of the Empire, all gave up whatever claim they as yet maintained to absolute autonomy. Both the _Bund_ and the Empire were creations, strictly speaking, of the states, not of the people; and, to this day, as one writer has put it, the Empire is "not a juristic person composed of fifty-six million members, but of twenty-five members."[285] At the same time, it is not what the old Confederation of 1815 was, i.e., a league of princes. It is a state established by, and composed of, states.[286] [Footnote 285: P. Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, I., 91.] [Footnote 286: On the more purely juristic aspects of the Empire the best work in English is Howard, The German Empire (Chap. 2, on "The Empire and the Individual States"). A very useful volume covering the governments of Empire and states is Combes de Lestrade, Les monarchies de l'Empire allemand (Paris, 1904). The monumental German treatise is P. Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches (4th ed., Tübingen, 1901), in four volumes. There is a six-volume French translation of this work, Le droit public de L'Empire allemand (Paris, 1900-1904). Other German works of value are: O. Mayer, Deutsches Verwaltungsrecht (Leipzig, 1895-1896); P. Zorn, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches (2d ed., Berlin, 1895-1897); and A. Arndt, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1901). There is a four-volume French translation of Mayer's important work, under the title Le droit administratif allemand (Paris, 1903-1906). Two excellent brief German treatises are: P. Laband, Deutsches Reichsstaatsrecht (3d ed., Tübingen, 1907), and Hue de Grais, Handbuch der Verfassung und Verwaltung in Preussen und dem deutschen Reiche (18th ed., Berlin, 1907). The most recent work upon the subject is F. Fleiner, Institutionen des deutschen Verwaltungsrechts (Tübingen, 1911). A suggestive monograph is J. du Buy, Two Aspects of the German Constitution (New Haven, 1894).] IV. THE EMPIRE AND THE STATES (p. 205) *214. Sovereignty and the Division of Powers.*--The Germans are not themselves altogether agreed concerning the nature and precise location of sovereignty within the Empire, but it is reasonably clear that sovereignty, in the ultimate meaning of that much misused term, is vested in the government of the Empire, and not in that of any state. The embodiment of that sovereignty, as will appear subsequently, is not the national parliament, nor yet the Emperor, but the Bundesrath, which represents the "totality" of the affiliated governments.[287] As in the United States, Switzerland, and federal nations generally, there is a division of powers of government between the central governmental establishment and the states. The powers of the Imperial government, it is important to observe, are specifically enumerated; those of the states are residual. It is within the competence of the Imperial government to bring about an enlargement of the powers that have been confided to it; but until it does so in any particular direction the power of the state governments in that direction is unlimited. On the one hand, there is a considerable field of legislative activity--in respect to citizenship, tariffs, weights, measures, coinage, patents, military and naval establishment of the Empire, etc.--in which the Empire, by virtue of constitutional stipulation, possesses exclusive power to act.[288] On the other, there is a no less extensive domain reserved entirely to the states--the determination of their own forms of government, of laws of succession, of relations of church and state, of questions pertaining to their internal administration; the framing of their own budgets, police regulations, highway laws and laws relating to land tenure; the control of public instruction. Between lies a broad and shifting area, which each may enter, but within which the Imperial authority, in so far as is warranted by the constitution, must be accorded precedence over the authority of a state. "The matters over which the states preserve control," says a great German jurist, "cannot be separated completely from those to which extends the competence of the Empire. The various powers of government are intimately related the one to another. They run together and at the same time impose mutual checks in so many ways, and are so interlaced, that one cannot hope to set them off by a line of demarcation, or to set up among them a Chinese wall of division. In every sphere of their activity the states (p. 206) encounter a superior power to which they are obliged to submit. They are free to move only in the circle which Imperial law-making leaves open to them. That circle does exist. It is delimited, but not wholly occupied, by the Empire.... In a certain sense it may be said that it is only by sufferance of the Empire that the states maintain their political rights at all, and that, at best, their tenure is precarious."[289] [Footnote 287: Howard, German Empire, 21.] [Footnote 288: Matters placed under the supervision of the Empire and made subject to Imperial legislation are enumerated in the sixteen sections of Article 4 of the constitution. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 327-328.] [Footnote 289: Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches (2d ed.), I., 102-103.] In passing, it may be observed that there is, in fact, a distinct tendency toward the reduction of the spheres of authority which formerly were left to the states. One of the means by which this has been brought about is the establishment of uniform codes of law throughout the Empire, containing regulations respecting a multitude of things which otherwise would have been regulated by the states alone. Most important among these is the great Civil Code, which went into effect January 1, 1900. Another means to the same end is the increase in recent years of Imperial legislation relating to workingmen's insurance, factory regulations, industrial conditions, and other matters of a social and economic nature. Not infrequently in recent times have the states, or some of them, raised protest against this centralizing tendency, and especially against the "Prussianization" of the Empire which it seems clearly to involve. In many states, especially those to the south of the Main, the separatist tradition is still very strong. In Bavaria, more than anywhere else, is this true, and in 1903 the new Bavarian premier, Baron Podevils, was able to arouse genuine enthusiasm for his government by a solemn declaration before the diet that he and his colleagues would combat with all their might "any attempt to shape the future of the Empire on lines other than the federative basis laid down in the Imperial constitution." *215. The Interlacing of Governmental Agencies.*--The functions of a legislative character which are delegated to the Imperial government are numerous and comprehensive, and in practice they tend all the while to be increased. Those of an executive and judicial character are very much more restricted. In respect to foreign relations, the navy, and the postal and telegraph service, administration is absolutely centralized in the organs of the Empire; in respect to everything else, administrative functions are performed entirely, or almost entirely, through the agency of the states. In the United States the federal government is essentially complete within itself. It has its own law-makers, administrators, and judges, who carry on the national government largely independently of the governing agencies of the various states. In Germany, where the state occupies in (p. 207) some respects a loftier position in the federation than does its counterpart in America, the central government, in respect to all save the fields that have been mentioned, relies for the execution of its measures upon the officials of the states. The Empire establishes taxes and customs duties, but the imposts are collected by state authorities. Similarly, justice is rendered, not in the name of the Empire, but in the name of the state, and by judges in the employ of the state. In respect to machinery, the Imperial government is, therefore, but a part of a government. Alone, it could not be made to operate. It lacks a judiciary; likewise the larger portion of the administrative agencies without which mere powers of legislative enactment are futile. To put the matter succinctly, the working government of the Empire comprises far more than the organs and functions that are purely Imperial; it comprises the federal organs and functions possessed by the individual states as well.[290] [Footnote 290: Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, § 7-10; Lebon, Études sur l'Allemagne politique, 93-104.] *216. The States: the Prussian Hegemony.*--Legally, the union of the German states is indestructible. The Imperial government is vested with no power to expel a state, to unite it with another state, to divide it, or in any way to alter its status in the federation. On the other hand, no state possesses a right to secede, or to modify its powers or obligations within the Empire. If a state violates its obligations or refuses to be bound by the authority of the Empire, the federal army, on decision of the Bundesrath, may be mobilized by the Emperor against it.[291] [Footnote 291: Art. 19. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 332.] Among the states, however, there is a glaring lack of equality of status and privilege. When the Empire was formed the component states differed widely in area, population, and traditional rights, and there was no attempt to reduce them to a footing that should be absolutely uniform. Prussia, besides comprising the moving spirit in the new affiliation, contained a population considerably in excess of that of the other twenty-four states combined. The consequence was that Prussia became inevitably the preponderating power in the Empire. The king of Prussia is _ex-officio_ German Emperor; the Prussian votes in the Bundesrath can defeat any proposed amendment of the constitution, and likewise any measure looking toward a change in the army, the navy, or the taxes; and Prussia controls the chairmanship of all standing committees in the Bundesrath.[292] [Footnote 292: A. Lebon, La constitution allemande et l'hégémonie prussienne, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, Jan., 1887.] *217. Military Arrangements.*--Other privileges Prussia possesses (p. 208) by virtue, not of the constitution, but of agreements with her sister states. The most important of these relates to the army. By the constitution it was provided at the outset that the armed forces of the Empire should be organized into a single establishment, to be governed by Imperial law and to be under the supreme command of the Emperor.[293] In respect to the appointment of minor officers, and some other matters, powers of jurisdiction were left, however, to the individual states. These powers were in themselves worth little, and in the course of time all of the states save Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg were brought to the point of yielding to Prussia the slender military authority that remained to them.[294] In this manner Prussia acquired the right to recruit, drill, and officer the contingents of twenty-one states--a right which appreciably increased her already preponderant authority in all matters of a military character. Technically, there is no _German_ army, just as there is no _German_ minister of war. Each state maintains its own contingent, and the contingent maintained by the state is stationed normally within that state. By virtue of the treaties, however, all contingents save those of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemburg are administered precisely as if they comprised integral parts of the Prussian establishment.[295] [Footnote 293: Arts. 61, 63, 64. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 345-347.] [Footnote 294: The first of the Prussian military treaties, that concluded with Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, dates from 1861; the last, that with Brunswick, from 1885.] [Footnote 295: Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 12; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 95-113; C. Morhain, De l'empire allemand (Paris, 1886), Chap. 15.] *218. The Sonderrechte.*--In the possession of special privileges Prussia, however, is not alone. When the states of the south became members of the federation all of them stipulated certain _Sonderrechte_, or reserved rights, whose acknowledgment was made the condition upon which they came into the union. Württemberg and Bavaria, for example, retain on this basis the administration of posts and telegraphs within their boundaries, and Württemberg, Bavaria, and Baden possess the exclusive right to tax beers and brandies produced within each state respectively. Bavaria retains the administration of her own railways. At one time it was feared that the special privileges accorded the southern states would constitute a menace to the stability of the Empire. Such apprehension, however, has proved largely groundless.[296] In this connection it is worth pointing out that under the Imperial constitution the right to commission and despatch diplomatic (though not consular) agents is not withdrawn from the individual states. In most instances, however, the maintenance of diplomatic representatives abroad has long since been discontinued. Saxony, Bavaria, and (p. 209) Württemberg retain to-day only their posts at Vienna, St. Petersburg, and the Vatican. [Footnote 296: Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 11-13.] *219. Constitutional Amendment.*--It is stipulated within the Imperial constitution that amendments may be adopted by a process identical with that of ordinary legislative enactment, save that an amendment against which as many as fourteen votes are cast in the Bundesrath is to be considered rejected. The practical operation of this last-mentioned provision is to confer upon Prussia, possessing seventeen votes and controlling twenty in the federal chamber, an absolute veto upon all propositions looking toward constitutional change. Clauses of the constitution whereby special rights are secured to particular states may be amended only with the consent of the states affected.[297] In 1873, 1888, and 1893 the text of the constitution was amended, and upon several other occasions important modifications have been introduced in the working constitution without the formality of altering the letter of the instrument. [Footnote 297: Art. 78. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 351.] CHAPTER X (p. 210) THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT: EMPEROR, CHANCELLOR, AND BUNDESRATH I. THE EMPEROR *220. Status and Privileges.*--Under the North German Confederation of 1867-1871 the king of Prussia was vested with supreme command of the federal navy, the functions of Bundesfeldherr, or commander-in-chief of the federal army, and a large group of purely governmental powers, including the summoning, proroguing, and adjourning of the Bundesrath and Bundestag, the appointment and dismissal of the Chancellor and of other federal officials, the publication of the federal laws, and a general supervision of the federal administration. These powers were exercised by the king in the capacity of _Bundespræsidium_, or chief magistrate, of the federation. Upon the accession of the south German states in 1870-1871 Bismarck and his royal master determined to bring once more into use in Germany the title of Emperor, although between the empire which was now assuming form and the empire which had been terminated in 1806 there was recognized to be no historical connection. The constitution of April 16, 1871, accordingly stipulates that "to the king of Prussia shall belong the presidency of the Confederation, and he shall bear the title of _Deutscher Kaiser_ (German Emperor)."[298] [Footnote 298: Art. II. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 330. It will be observed that the title is not "Emperor of Germany." The phrase selected was intended to denote that the Emperor is only _primus inter pares_ in a confederation of territorial sovereigns (_Landesherren_.) He is a territorial sovereign only in Prussia.] The revival of the Imperial title and dignity involved, and was intended to involve, no modification of the status of the Bundespræsident, save in respect to his official designation and certain of his personal privileges. His relations with the states and with the princes of the federation continued precisely as before. The powers of the Kaiser were, and are, the powers of the old President, and nothing in excess of those. The title might be taken to imply a monarchy of the customary sort; but properly it does not. There is no Imperial crown, no Imperial civil list, no Imperial "office" as such. The king of Prussia, in addition to his purely Prussian prerogatives, is by the Imperial constitution vested with the added prerogative (p. 211) of bearing the Kaiser title and of exercising those powers which under the constitution and laws are conferred upon the bearer of that title. Apart from the Prussian crown the Imperial function does not exist; from which it follows that there is no law of Imperial succession apart from the Prussian law regulating the tenure of the Prussian throne,[299] and that in the event of a regency in Prussia the regent would, _ipso facto_, exercise the functions of Emperor. Chief among the privileges which belong to the Kaiser as such are those of special protection of person and family and of absolute exemption from legal process. Responsible to no superior earthly authority, the Emperor may not be brought for trial before any tribunal, nor be removed from office by any judicial proceeding. Assaults upon his person are punishable with death, and attacks, in speech or writing, which are adjudged to constitute _lèse majesté_ are subject to special and severe penalties.[300] [Footnote 299: Arts. 53-58 of the Prussian Constitution. See p. 253.] [Footnote 300: R. C. Brooks, Lèse Majesté, in _The Bookman_, June, 1904.] *221. Powers: Military and Foreign Affairs.* The king of Prussia being _ipso facto_ Emperor, the royal and Imperial functions which are combined in the hands of the one sovereign are of necessity closely interrelated. There are powers which belong to William II. to-day solely by virtue of his position as king of Prussia. There are others, of an Imperial nature, which he possesses by reason of the fact that, being king of Prussia, he is also Emperor. In practice, if not in law, there are still others which arise from the thoroughgoing preponderance of the Prussian kingdom as a state within the Empire--the power, in general, of imparting a bent to Imperial policy such as would not be possible if, for example, the king of Württemberg were Emperor, rather than the king of Prussia. The functions of the Emperor as such are not numerous, but, so far as they go, they are of fundamental importance. In the first place, the Emperor is commander-in-chief of the army and navy. He may control the organization of the Landwehr, or national defense; determine the strength and composition of the armed contingents; supervise the equipment and drilling of the troops; and mobilize the whole, or any part, of the forces.[301] A second group of Imperial functions are those relating to foreign affairs. "It shall be the duty of the Emperor," says the constitution, "to represent the Empire among nations, to declare war and to conclude peace in the name of the Empire, to enter into alliances and other treaties with foreign countries, to accredit ambassadors and to receive them."[302] The (p. 212) Emperor's power, however, is not in all of these directions absolute. One important limitation arises from the requirement that, under all circumstances save in the event of an attack upon the federal territory or its coasts, war may be declared only with the consent of the Bundesrath. Another is that in so far as treaties with foreign countries relate to matters which are to be regulated by Imperial legislation, "the consent of the Bundesrath shall be required for their conclusion, and the approval of the Reichstag shall be necessary to render them valid."[303] [Footnote 301: Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 12; Laband, Deutsches Reichsstaatsrecht, 345-359.] [Footnote 302: Art. II. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 330.] [Footnote 303: Art. II, clause 3. Dodd, I., 331.] *222. Powers: Legislation and Justice.*--A third group of functions has to do with legislation. By the constitution the Emperor is vested with the right to convene the Bundesrath and the Reichstag, and to open, adjourn, and close them.[304] In accordance with resolutions of the Bundesrath, bills are laid before the Reichstag in the name of the Emperor; and it is the Emperor's duty to prepare and publish the laws of the Empire, as well as to supervise their execution.[305] In so far as is permitted by the constitution, and by laws from time to time enacted, decrees and ordinances may be promulgated by the Emperor, under the countersignature of the Chancellor. Speaking strictly, the Emperor possesses no veto upon measures passed in the Bundesrath and Reichstag, though in practice he may refuse to publish a law in the enactment of which he believes the ordinary formal requirements not to have been complied with. He may not withhold a measure by reason simply of its content. [Footnote 304: Art. 12. Ibid.] [Footnote 305: "The laws of the Empire shall receive their binding force by Imperial promulgation, through the medium of an Imperial Gazette. If no other time is designated for the published law to take effect it shall become effective on the fourteenth day after its publication in the Imperial Gazette at Berlin." Art. 2. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 326.] The Emperor is vested, in the next place, with certain prerogatives in relation to the judiciary. On motion of the Bundesrath, he appoints (though he may not remove) the members of the Reichsgericht, or Imperial Court; and by the Code of Criminal Procedure it is stipulated that in cases in which the Imperial Court shall have rendered judgment as a tribunal of first instance, the Emperor shall possess the power of pardon. The pardoning power is extended likewise to cases adjudged in consular courts, prize courts, and other tribunals specified by law. *223. Powers: Execution of the Law.*--Finally, the execution of the laws is intrusted to the Emperor with, however, this limitation, that, under the German system, the execution of law is committed largely to the states and the officials thereof, so that the measures of the (p. 213) Imperial Government whose execution is not specifically provided for by the constitution and the laws are presumably carried into effect by the constituted authorities of the states. There are, however, Imperial agents whose business it is to inspect the execution of Imperial measures by the states and to report to the Emperor infractions or omissions. When such delinquencies are adjudged sufficiently serious, the Emperor may bring them to the attention of the Bundesrath, and that body may order an "execution," i.e., a show of military force to coerce the erring state. The carrying out of the "execution" is intrusted to the Emperor.[306] Incident to the general executive function is the power to make appointments. By the constitution it is stipulated that the Emperor, in addition to appointing the Imperial Chancellor, shall appoint Imperial officials, require of them the taking of an oath to the Empire, and, when necessary, dismiss them.[307] The position which the Chancellor occupies in the Imperial administrative system is of such weight that the power of appointing to, and of removing from, the chancellorship is in itself of very large importance; and the Kaiser's control of administration is still further increased by his power of appointment and removal of subordinate officials.[308] [Footnote 306: Art. 19. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 332.] [Footnote 307: Art. 18. Ibid.] [Footnote 308: Art. 19. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 332. On the status and functions of the German Emperor see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 3; J. W. Burgess, The German Emperor, in _Political Science Quarterly_, June, 1888; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 24-26; ibid., Das deutsche Kaiserthum (Strassburg, 1896); R. Fischer, Das Recht des deutschen Kaisers (Berlin, 1895); K. Binding, Die rechtliche Stellung des Kaisers (Dresden, 1898); R. Steinbach, Die rechtliche Stellung des deutschen Kaisers verglichen mit des Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Leipzig, 1903).] II. THE CHANCELLOR *224. Non-existence of a Parliamentary System.*--Within the domain of Imperial government the place filled in other governmental systems by a ministry or cabinet of some variety is occupied by a single official, the _Reichskanzler_, or Chancellor. When the Imperial constitution was framed it was the intention of Bismarck to impart to the Imperial administration the fullest facility and harmony by providing the Chancellor with no colleagues, and by making that official responsible solely to the Emperor. Such a scheme would have meant, obviously, a thoroughgoing centralization in all Imperial affairs and the utter negation of anything in the way of a parliamentary system of government. The more liberal members of the constituent Reichstag compelled (p. 214) a modification of the original Bismarckian programme; so that when the constitution assumed its permanent form it contained not merely the stipulation that "the Imperial Chancellor, to be appointed by the Emperor, shall preside in the Bundesrath and supervise the conduct of its business," but the significant provision that "the decrees and ordinances of the Emperor shall be issued in the name of the Empire, and shall require for their validity the countersignature of the Imperial Chancellor, who thereby assumes the responsibility for them."[309] [Footnote 309: Arts. 15 and 17. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 331.] Nominally, this article establishes the principle of ministerial responsibility, even though there is but a single minister to be made responsible. Practically, it does nothing of the sort, for the reason that no machinery whatever is provided for the enforcing of responsibility. There is not even specification of the authority to which responsibility shall lie. The article stipulating responsibility, appropriated from the constitution of Prussia, was merely tacked on the Imperial instrument and has never been brought into organic relation with it. In practice the Imperial Government has always been able to do business without for a moment admitting the right of the Reichstag to unseat the Chancellor by an adverse vote. The Chancellor may be criticised and the proposals which he introduces may be defeated; expediency may even require his removal by his Imperial master; but he has never felt obliged to retire merely by reason of lack of support in the legislative chamber, as would a British or a French minister similarly situated. This does not mean, of course, that the blocking of a governmental programme may not tend to produce the practical effect of a parliamentary vote of "want of confidence." It means simply that the Chancellor, in such a case, is under no admitted obligation to resign. The retirement of Chancellor von Bülow during the crisis of 1908-1909 was more nearly involuntary than that of any one of his three predecessors, but persons most conversant with the circumstances agree that there was involved in it no intention of concession to the parliamentary principle. The Chancellor's fall was, in reality, only his punishment for countenancing the popular indignation occasioned by the Emperor's memorable _Daily Telegraph_ interview, for which the Chancellor himself had been, at least technically, responsible.[310] [Footnote 310: For an excellent discussion of this general subject see W. J. Shepard, Tendencies toward Ministerial Responsibility in Germany, in _American Political Science Review_, Feb., 1911. In the course of an impassioned speech in the Reichstag in 1912, occasioned by a storm of protest against the Emperor's alleged threat to withdraw the newly granted constitution of Alsace-Lorraine, Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg stated the theory and fact of the office which he holds in these sentences: "No situation has been created for which I cannot take the responsibility. As long as I stand in this place I shield the Emperor (_trete ich vor den Kaiser_). This not for courtiers' considerations, of which I know nothing, but as in duty bound. When I cannot satisfy this my duty you will see me no more in this place."] There is a clause of the constitution[311] which confers upon the (p. 215) Chancellor the right to delegate the power to represent him to _any other_ member of the Bundesrath; whence it seems to follow that the Chancellor must be himself a member of that body. The relations of the Empire and the Prussian kingdom practically require, further, that the Chancellor be identified with the Prussian contingent in the federal chamber. Since, however, the Emperor, in his capacity of king of Prussia, designates the Prussian delegates in that body, it is open to him to make such an appointment in this second capacity as will enable him when selecting, in his Imperial capacity, a chancellor to procure the services of the man he wants. [Footnote 311: Art. 15, cl. 2. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 331.] *225. Functions: in the Bundesrath and the Reichstag.*--Speaking broadly, the functions of the Chancellor are two-fold. The first arises from his position within the Bundesrath. Not only does he represent in that body, as do his Prussian colleagues, the king of Prussia; he is vested constitutionally with the presidency of it and with the supervision of its business. He determines the dates of its sessions. Through his hands pass all communications and proposals, from the states as well as from the Reichstag, addressed to it, and he is its representative in all of its external relations. In the name of the Emperor he lays before the Reichstag all measures enacted by the Bundesrath; and as a member of the Bundesrath, though not as Imperial Chancellor, he may appear on the floor of the Reichstag to advocate and explain proposed legislation. Measures which have been enacted into law are binding only after they have been proclaimed by the Chancellor, such proclamation being made regularly through the official organ known as the _Reichsgesetzblatt_. *226. Functions: Administration.*--A second function, so inextricably intertwined with those just mentioned as to be in practice sometimes not clearly distinguishable from them, is that which arises from the Chancellor's position as the principal administrative official of the Empire. As has been pointed out, the work of administration under the German system is largely decentralized, being left to the states; but the ultimate administrative _authority_ is very highly centralized, being gathered in the hands of the Chancellor in a measure not paralleled in any other nation of western Europe. As an administrative official the Chancellor has been described with aptness as the Emperor's "other self." He is appointed by the Emperor; he may be dismissed by him; he performs his functions solely as agent and (p. 216) assistant of the Emperor; and, although according to the letter of the constitution responsible to the Reichstag, he is, in practice, responsible to no one save his Imperial master. Prior to 1870 the administrative functions of the Confederation were vested in a single department, the _Bundeskanzleramt_, or Federal Chancery, which was organized in three sections--the "central office," the postal office, and the bureau of telegraphs. For the time being, affairs pertaining to the army, the navy, and foreign relations were confided to the care of the appropriate ministries of Prussia. In 1870 there was created a separate federal department of foreign affairs, and in the following year a federal department of the marine. One by one other departments were established, until in 1879 the process was completed by the conversion of what remained of the Bundeskanzleramt into a department of the interior. The status of these departments, however, was from the outset totally unlike that of the corresponding branches of most governments. They were, and are, in effect but bureaus of the Imperial Chancellery, and their heads comprise in no degree a collegiate ministry or cabinet. Each official in charge of a department owes his position absolutely to the Chancellor, and is responsible, not to the Reichstag, nor yet to the Emperor directly, but to the Chancellor. Some of the more important officials bear the title of "secretary of state," but in any case they are legally nothing more than expert and essentially non-political functionaries of the administrative hierarchy, answerable to the Chancellor for all that they may do.[312] Of the principal departments there are at present seven: the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the Imperial Home Office, the Department of Justice, the Imperial Treasury, the Imperial Admiralty, and the Imperial Post-Office. In the nature of things some are more important than others; and in addition to them there are several Imperial bureaus, notably those of Railways, the Bank, and the Debt Commission. Throughout all branches of the Imperial administrative service appointments and dismissals are made regularly by the Chancellor, in the name of the Emperor, and by the same authority all administrative regulations are promulgated.[313] [Footnote 312: At the same time it is to be observed that, in practice, the more important state secretaries are apt to sustain a relation with the other organs of government which is somewhat closer than might be inferred from what has been said. Not infrequently they sit in the Bundesrath, and are by reason of that fact privileged to defend their measures in person on the floor of the Reichstag. Not infrequently, too, they are members of the Prussian ministry.] [Footnote 313: Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 41, 64-66.] *227. Delegation of Powers.*--There are two arrangements in accordance with which it is possible for the functions of the Chancellor to (p. 217) be vested in a substitute. By the constitution the Chancellor is authorized, as has been observed, to delegate to any other member of the Bundesrath the power of representing him in that body; and there is a special agreement to the effect that, in such a contingency, should no acceptable Prussian substitute be available, the choice shall fall on a Bavarian. In the second place, under statute of March 17, 1878, the Chancellor is empowered to call for the appointment of a substitute, or substitutes, in his capacity of Imperial minister. The appointment in such a case is made, not by the Chancellor himself, but by the Emperor, and there may be designated either a general substitute (_Generalstellvertreter_) or a substitute for the discharge of the Chancellor's functions in some particular department (_Specialstellvertreter_).[314] In the one case there is no limit upon the Emperor's freedom of choice; in the other, appointments must be made from chiefs of the department or departments affected. The Chancellor may at any time resume functions thus delegated.[315] [Footnote 314: The law of 1878 was enacted on the occasion of Bismarck's prolonged absence from Berlin, during his retirement at Varzin. A _Generalstellvertreter_ takes the title of _Reichsvicekanzler_, or Imperial Vice-Chancellor.] [Footnote 315: On the status and functions of the Chancellor see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 7; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, § 40; L. Dupriez, Les ministres dans les principaux pays d'Europe et d'Amérique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1892), I., 483-548; Hensel, Die stellung des Reichskanzlers nach dem Staatsrechte des deutschen Reiches, in Hirth, _Annalen des deutschen Reiches_, 1882; M. I. Tambaro, La transformation des pouvoirs en Allemagne, in _Revue du Droit Public_, July-Sept., 1910.] III. THE BUNDESRATH If the chancellorship is without a counterpart among modern governments, no less so is the Federal Council, or Bundesrath. No feature of the German political system is more extraordinary; none, as one writer has observed, is more thoroughly native.[316] It is not an "upper house," nor even, in the ordinary sense, a deliberative chamber at all. On the contrary, it is the central institution of the whole Imperial system, and as such it is possessed of a broad combination of functions which are not only legislative, but administrative, consultative, judicial, and diplomatic. [Footnote 316: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 259.] *228. Composition: the Allotment of Votes.*--The Bundesrath is composed of delegates appointed by the princes of the monarchical states and by the senates of the free cities. In the Imperial constitution it is required that the fifty-eight votes to which the twenty-five states of the confederation are entitled shall be distributed in such a (p. 218) manner that Prussia shall have seventeen, Bavaria six, Saxony four, Württemberg four, Baden three, Hesse three, Mecklenburg-Schwerin two, Brunswick two, and the seventeen other states one apiece.[317] Save for the increase of the Bavarian quota from four to six and of the Prussian from four to seventeen, these numbers were simply carried over from the Diet of the Confederation of 1815. The Prussian increase arose, in 1866, from the absorption of Hanover, Hesse Cassel, Holstein-Lauenburg, Nassau, and Frankfort; the Bavarian, from a customs union treaty of July 8, 1867. Subsequent to the adoption of the constitution of 1871 Prussia acquired, by contract, the vote of the government of Waldeck; also, through the establishment in 1884-1885 of a perpetual Prussian regency in Brunswick, the two votes to which that state is entitled; so that the total of the votes controlled by the government of Prussia has been raised, for all practical purposes, to twenty. [Footnote 317: Under the Alsace-Lorraine Constitution Act of 1911 (see p. 285), comprising for all practical purposes an amendment of the Imperial constitution, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine has become nominally a state of the Empire, being accorded three votes in the Bundesrath. The whole number of votes was thus raised to sixty-one. The Alsatian delegates are appointed by the Statthalter, who is the immediate and responsible agent of the Emperor. Their votes are cast, however, under regulations which are inconsistent with full-fledged statehood.] It may be observed that the allocation of votes for which provision was made in the constitution of 1867-1871 was largely arbitrary. That is to say, except for the quotas of Prussia and Bavaria, it was perpetuated from the constitution of 1815 with no attempt to apportion voting power among the several states in exact relation to population, wealth, or importance. Upon any one of these bases Prussia must have been accorded an absolute majority of the aggregate number, rather than a scant third. In 1867 the population of Prussia comprised four-fifths of that of the North German Confederation; in 1871, two-thirds of that of the Empire. That Prussia should intrust to her sister states a total of forty-one votes, retaining but seventeen for herself, was one of the arrangements by which Bismarck sought to assure the lesser members of the federation against too complete domination on the part of the Prussian kingdom. *229. Status of Delegates and Method of Voting.*--Each state is authorized, though not required, to send to the Bundesrath a number of delegates identical with the number of votes to which the state is entitled. The full quota of members is, therefore (since the Alsace-Lorraine Constitution Act of 1911), sixty-one. Legally, and to a large extent practically, the status of the delegate is that, not of a senator, but of a diplomat; and the Emperor is required to (p. 219) extend to the members of the body the "customary diplomatic protection."[318] Delegates are very commonly officials, frequently ministers, of the states which they represent. They are appointed afresh for each session, and they may be recalled or replaced at any time. The purely federal character of the Bundesrath is further emphasized by two principal facts. The members speak and act and vote regularly, not at their own discretion, but under the specific instructions of the governing authorities by whom they are accredited. Only rarely do their instructions allow to them any considerable measure of independence. Strictly, the Bundesrath is not a deliberative assembly at all; though, unlike the former Diet, it is something more than a meeting of ambassadors of the states. In the second place, the votes cast are the votes, not of the individual members, but of the states, and they are cast in indivisible blocks by the delegations of the states, regardless of the number of members in attendance. Thus, Bavaria is entitled to six votes. Whatever the individual opinions of the six Bavarian delegates, the six Bavarian votes are cast solidly upon any question that may arise. It is not even necessary that six delegates actually participate in the decision. A single delegate may cast the entire quota of votes to which his state is entitled. The twenty votes controlled by Prussia are therefore cast invariably in a block, from which it follows that Prussia usually preponderates in the chamber. On several occasions the smaller states have been able to combine in sufficient numbers to defeat a project upon which Prussia was bent, but such a proceeding is distinctly exceptional. [Footnote 318: Art. 10. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 330.] *230. Sessions and Procedure.*--The Bundesrath may be convened by the Emperor, which in effect means by the Chancellor, at any time. The constitution stipulates that there shall be at least one session a year, and, furthermore, that it shall be obligatory upon the Emperor to convene the body whenever a meeting is demanded by one-third of the total number of votes. The Bundesrath may be called together "for the preparation of business" without the Reichstag; but the Reichstag may not be convened without the Bundesrath.[319] The presiding officer at all sessions is the Chancellor, or some other member of the body by him designated as a substitute. It is within the competence of each member of the confederation, i.e., each state, to propose measures and to introduce motions. The phraseology of the constitution debars the Emperor, as Emperor, from introducing proposals. As king of Prussia, however, he may bring forward any project through the (p. 220) medium of the Prussian delegation; and in actual practice it has not always been deemed necessary to resort to this subterfuge. [Footnote 319: Arts. 13 and 14. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 331.] From all sittings of the Bundesrath the public is rigorously excluded; and although ordinarily upon the conclusion of a session a statement regarding the results of the proceedings is given to the press, the chamber may vote to withhold such information altogether. Business left unfinished at the close of a session may be resumed upon the reassembling, precisely as if no lapse of time had occurred. With some exceptions, a simple majority of the sixty-one votes is adequate for the adoption of a measure. In the event of a tie, the Prussian delegation possesses the deciding voice. The principal limitations upon decisions by simple majority are: (1) any proposal to amend the constitution may be rejected by as few as fourteen votes, whence it arises that Prussia has an absolute veto on amendments; and (2) when there is a division upon proposed legislation relating to military affairs, the navy, the tariff, and various consumption taxes, the vote of Prussia prevails if it is cast in favor of maintaining the _status quo_.[320] [Footnote 320: Art. 5. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 328.] *231. Committees.*--The work of the Bundesrath consists largely in the preparation of measures for the consideration of the Reichstag, and a goodly share of its labor is performed in committees. Of permanent committees there are now twelve--eight provided for within the constitution itself and four existing by virtue of standing orders. The committees prescribed by the constitution are those on the army and fortifications; marine; customs and taxes; commerce; railroads, posts and telegraphs; judicial affairs; accounts; and foreign relations. Under certain limitations, each of these committees, constituted for one year, is chosen by the Bundesrath itself, by secret ballot, except that the Emperor appoints the members of the committee on the marine and all but one of the members of the committee on the army and fortifications.[321] The committees existing by virtue of standing orders are those on Alsace-Lorraine, railroad freight rates, standing orders, and the constitution. All committees consist of seven members, save those on foreign affairs and the marine, which have five; and each includes representatives of at least four states. Prussia holds all chairmanships, save that of the committee on foreign affairs, which belongs to Bavaria. [Footnote 321: Art. 8. Ibid., I., 330. Strictly, the Bundesrath but indicates by ballot the states which shall be represented on each committee, leaving to the states themselves the right to name their representatives.] *232. Powers of Legislation.*--By reason of the pivotal position (p. 221) which the Bundesrath occupies in the German constitutional system the functions of the body are fundamental and its powers comprehensive. Its competence is in the main legislative and fiscal, but also in part executive and judicial. By the constitution it is stipulated that the legislative power of the Empire shall be exercised by the Bundesrath and the Reichstag, and that a majority of the votes of both bodies shall be necessary and sufficient for the enactment of a law.[322] The right of initiating legislation is expressly conferred upon the Reichstag, but in practice it is exercised almost exclusively by the Bundesrath. Even finance bills all but invariably originate in the superior chamber. Under the normal procedure bills are prepared, discussed, and voted in the Bundesrath, submitted to the Reichstag for consideration and acceptance, and returned for further scrutiny by the Bundesrath before their promulgation by the Emperor. In any case, the final approval of a measure must take place in the Bundesrath, by whose authority alone the character of law can be imparted. Speaking strictly, it is the Bundesrath that makes law, with merely the assent of the Reichstag. [Footnote 322: Art. 5. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 328.] *233. Executive Authority.*--The Bundesrath's executive functions represent a curious admixture, but the sum total is very considerable. In the first place, the body possesses supplementary administrative powers. By the constitution it is required to take action upon "the general administrative provisions and arrangements necessary for the execution of the Imperial laws, so far as no other provision is made by law," as well as upon "the defects which may be discovered in the execution of the Imperial laws."[323] This function is performed through the issuing of ordinances so devised as not to contravene the constitution, existing law, or the proper prerogatives of any constituted authority, Imperial or state. In the second place, certain powers vested in the Emperor may be exercised only with the Bundesrath's consent. Most important of these are: (1) the declaration of war, save in the event of an attack upon the territory or coasts of the Empire; (2) the concluding of treaties, in so far as they relate to matters falling within the range of Imperial legislation; and (3) the carrying out of an "execution" against a delinquent state. Finally certain relations are maintained with the Reichstag which involve the exercise of authority that is essentially executive. With the assent of the Emperor, the Bundesrath may dissolve the popular chamber; and every member of the Bundesrath has the right to appear in the (p. 222) Reichstag and to be heard there at any time upon his own request, somewhat after the manner of a minister in a parliamentary government.[324] Large functions in connection with public finance, likewise, are vested in the body. By it the annual budget is prepared, the accounts which the Empire carries with the states are audited, and important supervisory relations with the Imperial Bank, the Imperial Debt Commission, and other fiscal agencies, are maintained. Lastly, there is some participation in the power of appointment; for although that power, as such, is vested in the Emperor, officials of some kinds (e.g., judges of the Imperial Court) are actually chosen by the Bundesrath, and in many other instances the body preserves an acknowledged right to approve appointments which are made. [Footnote 323: Art. 7. Dodd, I., 329.] [Footnote 324: Arts. 9 and 24. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 330-333. It should be observed, however, that the members of the Bundesrath are authorized to appear in the Reichstag, not for the purpose of advocating a measure which the Bundesrath has enacted, or would be willing to enact, but simply to voice the interests or demands of their own states.] *234. Judicial Powers.*--In its judicial capacity the Bundesrath sits as a supreme court of appeal, to which cases may be carried from the tribunals of a state, when it can be shown that justice is not to be had in those tribunals.[325] It serves also as a court of last resort for the settlement of disputes between the Imperial Government and a state; or between two states, when the point at issue is not a matter of private law and when a definite request for action is made by one of the parties. Finally, in disputes relating to constitutional questions in states whose constitution does not designate an authority for the settlement of such differences, the Bundesrath is required, at the request of one of the parties, to effect an amicable adjustment; or, if this shall prove impossible, to see to it that the issue is settled by Imperial law.[326] [Footnote 325: Art. 77. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 350.] [Footnote 326: Art. 76. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 350. On the Bundesrath see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 4; J. H. Robinson, The German Bundesrath, in _Publications of University of Pennsylvania_, III. (Philadelphia, 1891); P. Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 27-31; A. Lebon, Études sur l'Allemagne politique, 137-151; Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 505-523; Zorn, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, I., 136-160; E. Kliemke, Die Staatsrechtliche Natur und Stellung des Bundesrathes (Berlin, 1894); A. Herwegen, Reichsverfassung und Bundesrat (Cologne, 1902).] CHAPTER XI (p. 223) THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT: REICHSTAG, PARTIES, JUDICIARY I. COMPOSITION OF THE REICHSTAG--ELECTORAL SYSTEM In complete contrast with the Bundesrath, which is a purely federal institution, the Reichstag is broadly national. It represents, not the states, nor yet the people of the states, but the people of the Empire as a whole. From what has been said regarding the preponderance of the autocratic principle in the German system it follows that there is no room in that system for a parliamentary chamber of the nature of the British House of Commons or of the French Chamber of Deputies. None the less, restricted as are its functions, the Reichstag is one of the world's most vigorous and interesting legislative bodies. *235. Allotment of Seats.*--Members of the Reichstag are chosen for a term of five years,[327] by direct and secret ballot, at an election which takes place on a given day throughout the entire Empire. The number of seats, fixed tentatively by the constitution of 1871 at 382, was, by law of June 25, 1873, providing for the election of fifteen members from Alsace-Lorraine, increased to 397; and it thereafter remained unchanged. The electoral "circles," or districts, each of which returns one member, were laid out originally in such a way as to comprise 100,000 inhabitants each, and also in such a manner that no district would embrace portions of two or more states. Since 1871 there has been no redistricting of the Empire, and the populations comprising the various constituencies have become grossly unequal. Berlin, with more than two million people, is still entitled to but six seats; and the disproportion in other great cities and densely inhabited regions is almost as flagrant.[328] There has long been demand for a redistribution of seats; but, by reason of the proneness of urban constituencies to return to the Reichstag socialists or other radicals, the Government has never been willing to meet the (p. 224) demand. By states, the 397 seats are distributed as follows: Prussia, 236; Bavaria, 48; Saxony, 23; Württemberg, 17; Alsace-Lorraine (Imperial territory), 15; Baden, 14; Hesse, 9; Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 6; Saxe-Weimar, 3; Oldenburg, 3; Brunswick, 3, Hamburg, 3; Saxe-Meiningen, 2; Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 2; Anhalt, 2; and all others, one each. As in the American House of Representatives, a state is entitled to one member regardless of its population. [Footnote 327: The term, originally three years, was made five by a law of 1888. The modification went into effect with the Reichstag elected in February, 1890.] [Footnote 328: In Conservative East Prussia the average number of voters in a district is 121,000; in Socialist Berlin it is 345,000. Twelve of the most populous districts represented in the Reichstag contain 1,950,000 voters; twelve of the least populous, 170,000. The district of Schaumburg-Lippe has but 9,891.] *236. Time and Method of Elections.*--Electoral procedure is regulated by the Election Law of May 31, 1869, amended in minor particulars at subsequent dates, and extended in 1871 and in 1873 to the southern states and to Alsace-Lorraine respectively. Elections are held uniformly throughout the Empire on a day fixed by the Emperor. In the event of a dissolution prior to the end of the five-year term an election is required to take place within a period of sixty days, and the new Reichstag must be convened not later than ninety days after the dissolution.[329] For election on the first ballot an absolute majority of the votes cast within the circle, or district, is required. If no candidate obtains such a majority, there follows a second balloting (_Stichwahl_) a fortnight later, when choice is made between the two candidates who upon the first occasion polled the largest number of votes. In the event of a tie, decision is by lot.[330] Secrecy of the ballot is specially safeguarded by regulations enacted April 28, 1903. Each voter, upon appearing at the polls, is furnished with an envelope and a white voting-paper bearing an official stamp. In a compartment arranged for the purpose in the polling room he marks his ballot and incloses it in the envelope. As he leaves the room he hands the envelope to the presiding officer or deposits it in a voting urn. Once elected, a member, according to constitutional stipulation, is a representative, not of the constituency that chose him, but of the people of the Empire as a whole, and he may not be bound by any order or instruction.[331] [Footnote 329: Art. 25. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 333.] [Footnote 330: By reason of the multiplicity of parties the number of second ballotings required is invariably large. In 1890 it was 138; in 1893, 181; in 1898, 185; in 1903, 180; in 1907, 158; and in 1912, 191. It is calculated that the effect of forty per cent of the second ballotings is to prevent the election of the candidate obtaining originally the largest number of votes. The arrangement operates to the advantage principally of the National Liberals, the Radicals, and other essentially moderate parties, and to the disadvantage especially of the Social Democrats. On this subject see A. N. Holcombe, Direct Primaries and the Second Ballot, in _American Political Science Review_, Nov., 1911.] [Footnote 331: Art. 29. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 333.] *237. The Franchise.*--The franchise is broadly democratic. (p. 225) Every male who, possessing citizenship in the Empire, has completed his twenty-fifth year is entitled to vote in the district in which he has his domicile, provided his name appears on the registration lists. He is not required to be a citizen of the state in which he votes. The only exceptions to the general rule of universal manhood suffrage arise from the disfranchisement of persons under guardianship, bankrupts, beneficiaries of public charity, persons suffering judicial deprivation in respect to certain of their rights as citizens, and persons in active service in the army and navy. Any male citizen, possessed of the right to vote, twenty-five years of age or over, and a resident of a state of the Empire during at least one year, is eligible as a candidate. He is not required to be a citizen of the state from which he aspires to be elected.[332] [Footnote 332: On the German Imperial electoral system see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 5; Lebon, Études sur l'Allemagne politique, 70-83; ibid., Étude sur la législation électorale de l'empire d'Allemagne, in _Bulletin de Législation Comparée_, 1879; G. Below, Das parlamentarische Wahlrecht in Deutschland (Berlin, 1909); and M. H. Nézard, L'Évolution du suffrage universel en Prusse et dans l'Empire allemand, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Oct.-Dec., 1904.] *238. Privileges of Members.*--Solicitous lest if members of the Reichstag should be entitled to remuneration for their services the poorer classes would arrive at a preponderance in the chamber, Bismarck insisted in season and out upon the non-payment of representatives, and by the constitution of 1871 salaries were specifically forbidden.[333] During the eighties the Imperial Court of Appeal ruled that the payment of socialist members by their supporters was illegal,[334] though such payment has been in recent times not unknown. Again and again measures providing for the payment of all members from the Imperial treasury were passed in the Reichstag, only to be thrown out by the Bundesrath. May 21, 1906, such a measure was at last enacted by both chambers, providing for a payment of 3,000 marks a session (with a deduction of twenty-five marks for each day's absence), and in addition free passes over German railways during, and for eight days before and after, sessions. Upon the taking effect of this measure, Germany became one of the several European countries in which, within years comparatively recent, the members of the popular legislative chamber have been given a right to public compensation. Special privileges enjoyed by members are of the customary sort. No member may at any time be held legally to account outside the chamber by reason of his utterances or his votes within it. Unless taken (p. 226) in the commission of a misdemeanor, or during the ensuing day, a member may not be arrested for any penal offense, or for debt, without the consent of the chamber; and at the request of the chamber all criminal proceedings instituted against a member, and any detention for judicial investigation or in civil cases, must be suspended during a session.[335] [Footnote 333: "The members of the Reichstag, as such, shall draw no salary or compensation." Art. 32. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 334.] [Footnote 334: Cf. the Osborne Judgment of 1909 in England (see p. 127).] [Footnote 335: Arts. 30 and 31. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 334.] II. ORGANIZATION AND POWERS OF THE REICHSTAG *239. Sessions and Officers.*--The constitution stipulates that the Reichstag and the Bundesrath shall meet annually. Beyond this, and the further requirement that the Reichstag shall never be in session when the Bundesrath is not, the Imperial Government is left entirely free in respect to the convening of the representative body.[336] The summons is issued by the Emperor and the sessions are opened by him, in person or by proxy. By him the assembly may be prorogued (though not more than once during a session, and never for a longer period than thirty days without its own consent); by him also, with the assent of the Bundesrath, it may be dissolved.[337] The chamber validates the election of its members, regulates its own procedure and discipline, and elects its president, vice-presidents, and secretaries.[338] Under standing orders adopted February 10, 1876, the president and vice-president are chosen at the opening of the first session following a general election for a temporary term of four weeks, and upon the expiration of this period an election takes place for the remainder of the session. At the opening of each succeeding session an election of these officials for the session takes place at once. The secretary is chosen at the beginning of each session for the entire session. [Footnote 336: Mention has been made of the regulation that, following a dissolution prior to the end of the five-year term, the chamber shall be convoked within ninety days. It will be recalled, also, that the Bundesrath may be convoked without the Reichstag.] [Footnote 337: Nominally by a resolution of the Bundesrath, with the consent of the Emperor. Art. 24. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 333.] [Footnote 338: Art. 27. Ibid.] *240. Abtheilungen and Committees.*--At the opening of a session the entire membership of the Reichstag is divided by lot into seven Abtheilungen, or bureaus, as nearly equal as it is possible to make them. The bureaus of the French Chamber of Deputies are reconstituted once a month, and those of the Italian once in two months, but those of the Reichstag are maintained unchanged throughout a session, unless upon motion of as many as thirty members the body decides upon a fresh distribution. The functions of the bureaus comprise, in the main, (p. 227) the passing upon the credentials of members of the chamber and the designating of members of committees. There is in the Reichstag but one standing committee--that on elections. It is perpetuated throughout a session. All other committees are made up, as occasion requires, by the appointment by ballot of an equal number of members by each of the seven bureaus; although, in point of fact, the preparation of committee lists falls largely to the party leaders of the chamber. The function of committees is the preliminary consideration of measures and the reporting of them and of evidence relating to them, to the chamber, Bills are not, however, in all cases referred to committees. *241. Methods of Business.*--Measures proposed for enactment pass through the three readings which have come to be customary among modern legislative assemblies. Debate is carried on under regulations closely resembling those which prevail in the British House of Commons and distinctly less restrictive than those in vogue in the French Chamber of Deputies. Members of the Bundesrath, to whom is assigned a special bench, possess the right to appear and to speak at pleasure. Debaters address the chamber from the tribune or from their seats as they choose, and they speak whenever they can secure the recognition of the presiding official, not, as in France, in the hard and fast order indicated by a previously prepared written list. Like the Speaker of the House of Commons, the president of the Reichstag is a strictly non-partisan moderator. A fixed tradition of the office is that during debate the chair shall recognize alternately the supporters and the opponents of the measure under consideration. As a general rule, closure of debate may be ordered upon the initiative of thirty members. Unlike the sittings of the Bundesrath, which take place invariably behind closed doors, those of the Reichstag are, by constitutional provision, public. Under the standing orders, however, the body may go into secret session, on motion of the president, or of ten members. Publicity is further assured by the constitutional stipulation that "no one shall be held responsible for truthful reports of the proceedings of the public sessions of the Reichstag."[339] Measures are carried by absolute majority; and, while discussion may proceed in the absence of a quorum, no vote or other action is valid unless there is present a majority of the full membership of the body, that is, since 1873, 199. [Footnote 339: Art. 22. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 333.] *242. Powers.*--The legislative power of the Empire is vested in the Reichstag and the Bundesrath conjointly, and a majority of the votes of both bodies is necessary for the enactment of a law. So declares the constitution. The legislative functions of the popular chamber (p. 228) are, however, in practice distinctly subordinate to those of the Bundesrath. The Reichstag possesses no such power of legislative initiative and discretion as is possessed by the popular chambers of Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. Its consent is necessary for the enactment of every law, for the adoption of every constitutional amendment, and for the ratification of every treaty affecting matters within the domain of Imperial legislation. But bills, including those relating to finance, originate ordinarily with the Chancellor and the Bundesrath; the procedure followed in the shaping of revenue and military measures puts the Reichstag distinctly at a disadvantage; and, at the best, the part which the chamber can play in the public policy of the Empire is negative and subsidiary. It can block legislation and discuss at length the policy of the Government, but it is not vested by the constitution with power sufficient to make it an effective instrument of control. It is within the competence of the Bundesrath, with the assent of the Emperor, to dissolve the popular chamber at any time, and, as has been pointed out, such action is taken without an iota of the ministerial responsibility which in other nations ordinarily accompanies the right of dissolution. On several occasions since 1871 the Reichstag has been dissolved with the sheer intent of putting an end to its obstructionism.[340] [Footnote 340: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 257.] The standing orders of the chamber make mention of the right of interpellation, and resort is occasionally had to this characteristic continental legislative practice. There are no ministers, however, to whom an interpellation may be addressed except the Chancellor, and even he has no right to appear in the Reichstag save as a member of the Bundesrath. The consequence is that interpellations are addressed, in practice, to the Bundesrath. It is only where the parliamentary system prevails, as in France and Italy, that the device of interpellation can be made to assume much importance. The possibility of a larger opportunity for interpellation, which should involve the right of the chamber to adopt resolutions declaring satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the answer made, was warmly, but on the whole inconclusively, discussed in the Reichstag in 1912.[341] [Footnote 341: On the Reichstag see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 5; A. Lebon, Le Reichstag allemand, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, April, 1889; ibid., Études sur l'Allemagne politique, Chap. 2; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 32-38; H. Robalsky, Der deutsche Reichstag (Berlin, 1897); G. Leser, Untersuchungen über das Wahlprüfungsrecht des deutschen Reichstags (Leipzig, 1908). There is a full discussion of German methods of legislation in Laband, _op. cit._, §§ 54-59.] III. THE RISE OF POLITICAL PARTIES (p. 229) In Germany, as in continental countries generally, the number of political groups is legion. Many are too small and unstable to be entitled properly to the designation of parties; and, in truth, of even the larger ones none has ever become so formidable numerically as to acquire a majority in the popular chamber. For the enactment of measures the Government is obliged to rely always upon some sort of coalition, or, at best, upon the members of a group which for the time being holds the balance between two opposing alignments. *243. Conservatives and Progressives.*--The party situation of the present day has been reached in consequence of the gradual disintegration of the two great political groups with which Prussia entered upon the period of Bismarck's ministry; and to this day the parties of the German Empire and those of the Prussian kingdom are largely identical.[342] The two original Prussian groups were the Conservatives and the Fortschritt, or Progressives, of which the one comprised, throughout the middle portion of the nineteenth century, the supporters of the Government and the other its opponents. The Conservatives were pre-eminently the party of the landed aristocracy of northern and eastern Germany. During twenty years prior to 1867 they dominated completely the Prussian court and army. Following the Austrian war of 1866, however, the Conservative ascendancy was broken and there set in that long process of party dissolution by which German political life has been brought to its present confused condition. To begin with, each of the two original parties broke into two distinct groups. From the Conservatives sprang the Frei Conservativen, or Free Conservatives; from the Fortschritt, the National-Liberal-Partei, or National Liberals. In the one case the new group comprised the more advanced element of the old one; in the other, the more moderate; so that, in the order of radicalism, the parties of the decade following 1866 were the Conservatives, the Free Conservatives, the National Liberals, and the Fortschrittspartei, or Radicals. Among these four groups Bismarck was able to win for his policy of German unification the support of the more moderate, that is to say, the second and third. The ultra-Conservatives clung to the particularistic régime of earlier days, and with them the genius of "blood and iron" broke definitely in 1866. The Free Conservatives comprised at the outset simply those elements of the original (p. 230) Conservative party who were willing to follow Bismarck. [Footnote 342: To so great an extent is this true that, having described in this place the parties of the Empire, it will not be necessary subsequently to allude at length to those of Prussia.] *244. Rise and Preponderance of the National Liberals.*--Similarly among the Progressives there was division upon the attitude to be assumed toward the Bismarckian programme. The more radical wing of the party, i.e., that which maintained the name and the policies of the original Fortschritt, refused to abandon its opposition to militarism and monarchism, opposed the constitution of 1867 for its illiberality, and withheld from Bismarck's government all substantial support. The larger portion of the party members, however were willing to subordinate for a time to Bismarck's nationalizing projects the contest which the united Fortschritt had long been waging in behalf of constitutionalism. The party of no compromise was strongest in Berlin and the towns of east Prussia. It was almost exclusively Prussian. The National Liberals, on the contrary, became early an essentially German, rather than simply a Prussian, party. Even before 1871 they comprised, in point both of numbers and of power, the preponderating party in both Prussia and the Confederation as a whole; and after 1871, when the Nationalists of the southern states cast in their lot with the National Liberals, the predominance of that party was effectually assured. Upon the National Liberals as the party of unity and uniformity Bismarck relied absolutely for support in the upbuilding of the Empire. It was only in 1878, after the party had lost control of the Reichstag, in consequence of the reaction against Liberalism attending the great religious contest known as the Kulturkampf, that the Chancellor was in a position to throw off the not infrequently galling bonds of the Liberal alliance. *245. The Newer Groups: the Centre.*--Meanwhile the field occupied by the various parties that have been named was, from an early date, cut into by an increasing number of newly organized parties and groups. Most important among these were the Clericals, or Centre, and the Social Democrats. The origins of the Centre may be traced to the project which was formulated in December, 1870, to found a new party, a party which should be essentially Catholic, and which should have for its purpose the defense of society against radicalism, of the states against the central government, and of the schools against secularization. A favorite saying of the founders was that "at the birth of the Empire Justice was not present." The party, gaining strength first in the Rhenish and Polish provinces of Prussia and in Bavaria, was able in the elections of 1871 to win a total of sixty seats. Employed by the Catholic clergy during the decade that followed to maintain the cause of the papacy against the machinations of Bismarck, the party early struck root deeply; and by reason of (p. 231) the absolute identification in the public mind of its interests with the interests of the Catholic Church, ensuring its preponderance in the states of the south, and also by reason of the fact that it has always been more successful than any of its rivals in maintaining compactness of organization, it became, and has continued almost uninterruptedly to the present time, the strongest numerically of all political groups within the Reichstag. *246. The Newer Groups: the Social Democrats.*--The Social Democratic party was founded in 1869 under the leadership of Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel. In 1863 there had been organized at Leipzig, under the inspiration of the eloquent Marxist Ferdinand Lassalle, a Universal German Workingman's Association. Between the two bodies there was for a time keen rivalry, but at a congress held at Gotha, in May, 1875, they (together with a number of other socialistic societies) were merged in one organization, which has continued to this day to be known as the Social Democratic party. The development of socialism in the Empire between 1870 and 1880, in respect to both numbers and efficiency of organization, was phenomenal. At the parliamentary elections of 1871 the Social Democratic vote was 124,655 (three per cent of the total) and two Social Democrats were chosen to the Reichstag. In 1874 the popular vote was 351,952, and nine members were elected; in 1877 it was 493,288, and the number of successful candidates was twelve. By the Emperor William I. and by his chancellor; Bismarck, as indeed by the governing and well-to-do classes generally, the progress of the movement was viewed with frankly avowed apprehension. Most of the great projects of the Imperial Government were opposed by the Social Democrats, and the members of the party were understood to be enemies of the entire existing order, and even of civilization itself. Two attempts in 1878 upon the life of the Emperor, made by men who were socialists, but disavowed by the socialists as a body, afforded the authorities an opportunity to enter upon a campaign of socialist repression, and from 1878 to 1890 anti-socialist legislation of the most thoroughgoing character was regularly on the statute books and was in no slight measure enforced. At the same time that effort was being made to stamp out socialist propaganda a remarkable series of social reforms was undertaken with the deliberate purpose not only of promoting the public well-being, but of cutting the ground from under the socialists' feet, or, as some one has observed, of "curing the Empire of socialism by inoculation." The most important steps taken in this direction comprised the inauguration of sickness insurance in 1883, of accident insurance in 1884, and of old-age and invalidity insurance in 1889. For a time the measures of the government seemed to accomplish (p. 232) their purpose, and the official press loudly proclaimed that socialism in Germany was extinct. In reality, however, socialism thrived on persecution. In the hour of Bismarck's apparent triumph the socialist propaganda was being pushed covertly in every corner of the Empire. A party organ known as the _Social Democrat_ was published in Switzerland, and every week thousands of copies found their way across the border and were passed from hand to hand among determined readers and converts. A compact organization was maintained, a treasury was established and kept well filled, and with truth the Social Democrats aver to-day that in no small measure they owe their superb organization to the Bismarckian era of repression. At the elections of 1878 the party cast but 437,158 votes, but in 1884 its vote was 549,990 (9.7 per cent of the whole) and the contingent of representatives returned to the Reichstag numbered twenty-four. In 1890 the socialist vote attained the enormous total of 1,427,298 (19.7 per cent of the whole), and the number of representatives was increased to thirty-five. Repression was manifestly a failure, and in 1890 the Reichstag, with the sanction of the new emperor, William II., wisely declined to renew the statute under which proscription had been employed. *247. Minor Parties.*--Aside from the Centre and the Social Democrats, the newer party groups in Germany--the Guelfs, the Poles, the Danes, the Alsatians, the Antisemites, etc.--are small and relatively unimportant. All are particularistic and irreconcilable; all are organized on the basis of local, racial, or religious interests. Apart, indeed, from the National Liberals and the Socialists, it cannot be said that any one of the German political groups, large or small, is broadly national, in either its tenets or its constituency. The Guelfs, or Hanoverische Rechtspartei, comprise the irreconcilables among the old Hanoverian nobility who refuse to recognize the validity of the extinction of the ancient Hanoverian dynasty by the deposing of George V. in 1866. As late as 1898 they returned to the Reichstag nine members. In 1903 they elected but five, and in 1907 their representation was reduced to a single deputy. In 1912 their quota became again five. The Poles comprise the Slavic voters of the districts of West Prussia, Posen, and Silesia, who continue to send to the Reichstag members who protest against the incorporation of the Poles in Prussia and in the Empire. At the elections of 1903 they secured sixteen seats, at those of 1907 twenty, and at those of 1912 eighteen. The Danes of northern Schleswig keep up some demand for annexation to Denmark, and measures looking toward Germanization are warmly resented; but the number of people concerned--not more than 150,000--is so small that their political power is almost _nil_. (p. 233) They have, as a rule, but a single spokesman in the Reichstag. The Alsatians comprise the autonomists of Alsace-Lorraine, and the Antisemites form a group whose original purpose was resistance to Jewish influence and interests. IV. PARTY POLITICS AFTER 1878 *248. Shifting "Government" Parties.*--To rehearse here the details of German party history during the period since the Government's break with the Liberals in 1878 is impossible. A few of the larger facts only may be mentioned. Between 1878 and 1887 there was in the Reichstag no one great party, nor even any stable coalition of parties, upon which the Government could rely for support. For the time being, in 1879, Bismarck allied with the Centre to bring about the adoption of his newly-framed policy of protection and of the famous Frankenstein clause relative to the matricular contributions of the states.[343] The National Liberals, left in the lurch, broke up, and in 1881 the remnant of the party was able to obtain only forty-five seats. After the elections of that year the Centre commanded in the Reichstag a plurality of forty. The upshot was that, in the effort to procure the dependable support of the Centre, the Government gradually abandoned the Kulturkampf, and for a time the Centre virtually succeeded to the position occupied prior to 1878 by the National Liberals. The elections of 1887, however, again changed the situation. The Centre retained a plurality of some twenty seats, but the Conservatives, Free Conservatives, and National Liberals formed a coalition and between them obtained a total of 220 seats and, accordingly, the control of the Reichstag. Thereupon the Conservatives became the Government's principal reliance and the Centre dropped for a time into a position of neutrality. At the elections of 1890 the coalition, which in truth had been built up by the Government on the basis of a cartel, or agreement, suffered heavy losses. Of 397 seats it carried only 130,[344] while the Centre alone procured 116. Coincident with the overturn came the dismissal of Bismarck and the elevation to the chancellorship of General von Caprivi. Throughout his years of office (1890-1894) Caprivi was able to rely habitually upon the support of no single party or group of parties, and for the enactment of its measures the Government was obliged to seek (p. 234) assistance now in one quarter and now in another, according as circumstances dictated. [Footnote 343: This measure provided that each year all proceeds from the Imperial customs and tobacco tax in excess of 130,000,000 marks should be distributed among the several states in proportion to their population. Its author was Frankenstein, a leader of the Centre.] [Footnote 344: Conservatives 65, Free Conservatives 24, National Liberals 41.] *249. The Agrarian Movement and the Rise of the Bloc.*--Two or three developments of the period stand out with some distinctness. One was the break-up, apparently for all time, of the Fortschrittspartei, or Radical party, in consequence of the elections of 1893. A second was the rise of the Government's prolonged contest with the Agrarians. The Agrarian group, of which indeed one hears as early as 1876, comprised principally the grain-growing landholders of northern and eastern Germany. By treaties concluded in 1892-1894 with Austria-Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Russia, and other nations, German import duties on grain were considerably reduced in return for advantages given to German manufacturers. Low duties meant cheap foodstuffs, and in the negotiation of these treaties the Government found itself supported with enthusiasm not only by the Centre, but also by the Social Democrats and the surviving Radicals. The Conservatives were divided. Those of Agrarian sympathies (especially the Prussian landholders) allied themselves with the forces of opposition. But the remainder gave the Government some measure of support. And from this last-mentioned fact arose a final political development of large significance during the Caprivi period, namely, the creation of that _bloc_, or affiliation, of Centre and Conservatives (popularly referred to as the "blue-black" _bloc_) upon which the Government was destined regularly to rely through upwards of a decade and a half. During the chancellorship of Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst (1894-1900) the struggle with the Agrarians was continued and the preponderance of the _bloc_ became an established fact. Finally, should be mentioned the rapidly accelerating growth of the Social Democracy. In 1893 the popular party cast a total of 1,876,738 votes and elected forty-four representatives. In 1896 its vote was 2,007,076 and the number of members elected was fifty-seven. In 1903 its vote rose to the enormous proportions of 3,008,000 (24 per cent of the total, and larger than that of any other single party), and the quota in the Reichstag was increased to seventy-nine. *250. The Elections of 1903 and 1907.*--At the elections of 1903 the _bloc_ suffered numerically a loss of strength. The Centre obtained 102 seats, the Conservatives 53, and the Free Conservatives, or "Party of the Empire," 22--an aggregate of only 177. By deft management, however, Chancellor von Bülow (1900-1908) contrived to play off through several years the opposing forces, and so to preserve, for all practical purposes, the working efficiency of the Government coalition. The elections of January, 1907, brought on by a dissolution of the Reichstag after the refusal of that body to vote the (p. 235) Government's colonial estimates, were of interest principally by reason of the continued show of strength of the Centre and the falling off of the Social Democrats in their representation in the Reichstag. In the practical working out of political forces it had come about that the Centre occupied in the chamber a pivotal position of such consequence that the Government was in effect absolutely dependent upon the vote of that party for the enactment of its measures. Naturally enough, the party, realizing its power, was prone to put its support upon a contractual basis and to drive with the Government a hard bargain for the votes which it commanded. While hardly in a position to get on without Clerical assistance, the Government in 1907 would have been willing enough to see the Centre's power and independence broken. Not only, however, did the Centre not lose seats by that contest; it in fact realized a gain of two. On the other hand, there was compensation for the Government in the fact that the Social Democrats fell back. They polled a total of 3,250,000 popular votes, as compared with 3,008,000 in 1903; but by reason of the antiquated distribution of seats which prevails in the Empire, the unusual vote polled by other parties, and also the unusual co-operation of the party groups opposed to the Social Democrats, their representation in the Reichstag was cut from 79 to 43.[345] [Footnote 345: The total number of popular votes cast in the election was 10,857,000, of which number government candidates received 4,962,000, and opposition candidates 5,895,000. The numerical strength of the various elements composing the Reichstag consequent upon the elections of 1903 and 1907 was as follows: _1903_ _1907_ _Seats_ _Seats_ _gained_ _lost_ Centre 102 104 2 0 Conservatives 53 58 5 0 Free Conservatives 22 22 0 0 National Liberals 51 56 5 0 Social Democrats 79 43 0 36 Radicals 42 50 8 0 Antisemites and Economic Union 22 30 8 0 Poles 16 20 4 0 Liberal Union 10 13 3 0 Volkspartei (Democrats of South) 6 7 1 0 Alsatians 10 7 0 3 Guelfs or Hanoverians 5 1 0 4 Danes 1 1 6 0 Independents 0 7 7 0 Total 397 397 43 43] V. PARTIES SINCE 1907 (p. 236) *251. The Bülow Bloc.*--The period covered by the life of the Reichstag elected in 1907 was remarkable in German political history chiefly by reason of the prolonged struggle for the establishment of parliamentary government which took place within it--a struggle which had its beginning, indeed, in the deadlock by which the dissolution of 1906 was occasioned, which reached its climax in the fiscal debates of 1908-1909, and which during the years that followed gradually subsided, leaving both the status of parties and the constitutional order of the Empire essentially as they were at the beginning. Even before the dissolution of 1906 the Conservative-Centre _bloc_ was effectually dissolved, principally by the defection of the Centre, and through upwards of three years it was replaced by an affiliation, known commonly as the "_Bülow bloc_," of the Conservatives and the Liberals. This combination, however, was never substantial, and in the course of the conflict over the Government's proposed budget of November, 1908, there was a return to the old alignment, and throughout ensuing years the Conservative-Clerical _bloc_ remained a preponderating factor in the political situation. *252. The Elections of 1912: Parties and Issues.*--The Reichstag of 1907 was dissolved at the termination of its five-year period, and in January, 1912, there was elected a new chamber, the thirteenth since the creation of the Empire. The contest was pre-eminently one of measures rather than of men, but the public interest which it excited was extraordinary. Broadly, the line was drawn between the Government and the parties of the _bloc_, on the one hand, and the more purely popular parties, especially the National Liberals, the Radicals, and the Social Democrats, on the other;[346] and the issues were chiefly such as were supplied by the spirit, purposes, and methods of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and his Conservative-Clerical allies. Of the alleged reactionism of the Government parties there was widespread complaint. They were held responsible for the fiscal reform of 1909 which imposed burdens unduly heavy on industry and commerce, while sparing land and invested capital; they were charged with re-establishing the yoke of the Catholic Centre upon the Lutheran (p. 237) majority; and they were reproached for having failed to redeem their promise to liberalize the antiquated franchise arrangements of Prussia. The Conservatives in particular were attacked on the ground of their continued monopoly of patronage and of power. On the whole, however, the most important of practical issues was that of the tariff. Throughout a twelvemonth discontent occasioned by the high cost of living had been general and the Government had been besought by municipalities, workingmen's organizations, and political societies to inaugurate a project for the reduction of the duties imposed upon imported foodstuffs. The demand was in vain and the country was given to understand by the Chancellor that the Government, under Conservative-Agrarian mastery, would stand or fall with "protection for the nation's work" as its battle-cry. Upon this question the National Liberals, being protectionist by inclination, stood with the Government, but the Radicals, the Social Democrats, and some of the minor groups assumed an attitude of clear-cut opposition. [Footnote 346: The gravest abuse in connection with the conduct of campaigns and elections in Germany is the pressure which the Government brings to bear systematically upon the enormous official population and upon railway employees (alone numbering 600,000) to vote Conservative, or, in districts where there is no Conservative candidate, Centrist. This pressure is applied through the local bureaucratic organs, principally the Landrath of the Kreis, who not uncommonly is a youthful official of noble origin, related to some important landed family, and a rigid Conservative. It has been estimated that official influence controls a million votes at every national election.] *253. The Results and Their Significance.*--The total number of candidates in the 397 constituencies was 1,428. The Social Democrats alone had a candidate in every constituency, a fact which emphasizes the broadly national character which that party has acquired. The National Liberals had candidates in 200 constituencies, the Centre in 183, the Radicals in 175, and the Conservatives in 132. A second ballot was required in 191 constituencies, or nearly one-half of the whole number. The final results of the election justified completely the general expectation of observers that the Social Democrats would realize enormous gains. The appeal of von Bethmann-Hollweg for solidarity against the Socialists had no such effect as did the similar appeal of von Bülow in 1907. The tactfulness and personal hold of the Chancellor was inferior to that of his predecessor, and the mass of the nation was aroused in 1912 as it was not upon the earlier occasion. The results may be tabulated as follows: _Seats_ _Seats acquired_ _at dissolution_ _by elections of 1912_ Centre 103 90 Conservatives 58 45 Free Conservatives 25 13 Social Democrats 53 110 National Liberals 51 44 Radicals 49 41 Poles 20 18 Antisemites and Economic Union 20 11 Guelfs or Hanoverians 1 5 Alsatians, Danes, and Independents 16 20 ___ ___ Total 397 397 Two of the three parties of the Left, i.e., the National Liberals (p. 238) and the Radicals, suffered substantial losses, but the victory of the Social Democrats was so sweeping that there accrued to the Left as a whole a net gain of forty-two seats.[347] On the other hand, the three parties of the _bloc_ lost heavily--in the aggregate thirty-eight seats. The number of popular votes cast for candidates of the _bloc_ was approximately 4,500,000; that for candidates of the Left approximately 7,500,000.[348] In Berlin, five of whose six constituencies were represented already by Social Democrats, there was a notable attempt on the part of the socialists to carry the "Kaiser district" in which is located the Kaiserhof, or Imperial residence, and the seat of the Government itself. The attempt failed, but it was only at the second ballot, and by the narrow margin of seven votes, that the socialist candidate was defeated by his Radical opponent. As has been pointed out, the parties of the Left are entirely separate and they are by no means able always to combine in action upon a public question. The ideal voiced by the publicist Naumann, "from Bassermann to Bebel," meaning that the National Liberals under the leadership of Bassermann should, through the medium of the Radicals, amalgamate for political purposes with the Social Democrats under Bebel, has not as yet been realized. None the less there has long been community of interest and of policy, and the elections of 1912 made it possible for the first time for a combination of the three groups and their allies to outweigh decisively any combination which the parties of the _bloc_ and their allies can oppose. Before the election there was a clear Government majority of eighty-nine; after it, an opposition majority of, at the least, fourteen. When, in February, 1912, the new Reichstag was opened, it was only by the most dexterous tactics on the part of the _bloc_ that the election of the socialist leader Bebel to the presidency of the chamber was averted. [Footnote 347: Many of the socialist victories were, of course, at the expense of the National Liberals and Radicals.] [Footnote 348: The number of electors inscribed on the lists was 14,236,722. The number who actually voted was 12,188,337. The exact vote of the Social Democrats was 4,238,919; of the National Liberals, 1,671,297; of the Radicals, 1,556,549; of the Centre, 2,012,990; and of the Conservatives, 1,149,916.] *254. The Parties To-day: Conservatives and Centre.*--The principal effect of the election would seem to be to accentuate the already manifest tendency of Germany to become divided between two great hostile camps, the one representative of the military, bureaucratic, agrarian, financial classes and, in general, the forces of resistance to change, the other representative of modern democratic forces, extreme and in principle even revolutionary. Leaving out of account the minor particularist groups, the most reactionary of existing parties is the Conservatives, whose strength lies principally in (p. 239) the rural provinces of Prussia along the Baltic. The most radical is the Social Democrats, whose strength is pretty well diffused through the states of the Empire but is massed, in the main, in the cities. Between the two stand the Centre, the Radicals, and the National Liberals. The Centre has always included both an aristocratic and a popular element, being, indeed, more nearly representative of all classes of people in the Empire than is any other party. Its numerical strength is drawn from the peasants and the workingmen, and in order to maintain its hold in the teeth of the appeal of socialism it has been obliged to make large concessions in the direction of liberalism. At all points except in respect to the interests of the Catholic Church it has sought to be moderate and progressive, and it should be observed that it has abandoned long since its irreconcilable attitude on religion. Geographically, its strength lies principally in the south, especially in Bavaria. *255. The Social Democrats.*--Nominally revolutionary, the German Social Democracy comprises in fact a very orderly organization whose economic-political tenets are at many points so rational that they command wide support among people who do not bear the party name. Throughout a generation the party has grown steadily more practical in its demands and more opportunist in its tactics. Instead of opposing reforms undertaken on the basis of existing institutions, as it once was accustomed to do, in the hope of bringing about the establishment of a socialistic state by one grand _coup_, it labors for such reforms as are adjudged attainable and contents itself with recurring only occasionally and incidentally to its ultimate ideal. The supreme governing authority of the party is a congress composed of six delegates from each electoral district of the Empire, the socialist members of the Reichstag, and the members of the party's executive committee. This congress convenes annually to regulate the organization of the party, to discuss party policies, and to take action upon questions submitted by the party members. Nominally, the principles of the party are those of Karl Marx, and its platform is the "Erfurt programme" of 1891, contemplating the abolition of class government and of classes themselves, the termination of every kind of exploitation of labor and oppression of men, the destruction of capitalism, and the inauguration of an economic régime under which the production and distribution of goods shall be controlled by the state exclusively. The Radical Socialists, i.e., the old-line members of the party, cling to these time-honored articles of faith. But the mass of the younger element of the party, ably led by Edward Bernstein--the "Revisionists," as they call themselves--consider that the Marxist doctrines are in numerous respects erroneous, and they are insisting that the Erfurt programme shall be overhauled and brought into (p. 240) accord with the practical and positive spirit of the party to-day. Except Bebel and Kautsky, every socialist leader of note in Germany at the present time is identified with the revisionist movement.[349] The political significance of this situation arises from the fact that the "new socialists" stand ready to co-operate systematically with progressive elements of whatsoever name or antecedents. Already the socialists of Baden, Württemberg, and Bavaria have voted for the local state budgets and have participated in court functions, and upon numerous occasions they have worked hand in hand, not only at elections but in the Reichstag and in diets and councils, with the National Liberals and the Radicals. For the future of sane liberalism in Germany this trend of the party in the direction of co-operative and constructive effort augurs well. At the annual congress held at Chemnitz in September, 1912, the issue of revisionism was debated at length and with much feeling, but an open breach within the party was averted and Herr Bebel was again elected party president. It was shown upon this occasion that the party membership numbered 970,112, a gain of 133,550 during the previous year. It need hardly be observed that of the millions of men who in these days vote for Social Democratic candidates for office hardly a fourth are identified with the formal party organization.[350] [Footnote 349: Herr Bebel died August 13, 1913.] [Footnote 350: Two important works of recent date dealing with the history and character of political parties in Germany are C. Grotewald, Die Parteien des deutschen Reichstags. Band I. Der Politik des deutschen Reiches in Einzeldarstellungen (Leipzig, 1908); and O. Stillich, Die politischen Parteien in Deutschland. Band I. Die Konservativen (Leipzig, 1908), Band II. Der Liberalismus (Leipzig, 1911). The second is a portion of a scholarly work planned to be in five volumes. A brief treatise is F. Wegener, Die deutschkonservative Partei und ihre Aufgaben für die Gegenwart (Berlin, 1908). An admirable study of the Centre is L. Goetze, Das Zentrum, eine Konfessionelle Partie; Beiträge zur seiner Geschichte (Bonn, 1906). The rise of the Centre is well described in L. Hahn, Geschichte des Kulturkampfes (Berlin, 1881). On the rise and progress of the Social Democracy see E. Milhaud, La démocratie socialiste allemande (Paris, 1903); C. Andler, Origines du socialisme d'état en Allemagne (Paris, 1906); E. Kirkup, History of Socialism (London, 1906); W. Sombart, Socialism (New York, 1898); W. Dawson, Bismarck and State Socialism (London, 1891); J. Perrin, The German Social Democracy, in _North American Review_, Oct., 1910. Under the title "Chroniques politiques" there is printed in the _Annales_ (since 1911 the _Revue_) _des Sciences Politiques_ every year an excellent review of the current politics of Germany, as of other European nations. Other articles of value are: M. Caudel, Les élections allemandes du 16 juin, 1898, et le nouveau Reichstag, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, Nov., 1898; J. Hahn, Une élection au Reichstag allemand, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Nov., 1903; G. Isambert, Le parti du centre en Allemagne et les élections de janvier-février 1907, ibid., March, 1907; P. Matter, La crise du chancelier en Allemagne, ibid., Sept., 1909; A. Marvaud, La presse politique allemande, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, March 16 and April 1, 1910. There are valuable chapters on German politics in W. Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany (London, 1908) and O. Eltzbacher (or J. Ellis Barker), Modern Germany, her Political and Economic Problems (new ed., London, 1912). For a sketch of party history during the period 1871-1894 see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., Chap. 7. An excellent survey of the period 1906-1911 is contained in P. Matter, D'un Reichstag à l'autre, in _Revue des Sciences Politiques_, July-Aug., 1911. On the elections of 1912 see G. Blondel, Les élections au Reichstag et la situation nouvelle des partis, in _Le Correspondant_, Jan. 25, 1912; J. W. Jenks, The German Elections, in _Review of Reviews_, Jan., 1912; A. Quist, Les élections du Reichstag allemand, in _Revue Socialiste_, Feb. 15, 1912; and W. Martin, La crise constitutionelle et politique en Allemagne, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Aug. 10, 1912.] VI. LAW AND JUSTICE (p. 241) *256. Dual Character.*--Upon the subject of the administration of justice the Imperial constitution of 1871 contained but a single clause, by which there was vested in the Empire power of "general legislation concerning the law of obligations, criminal law, commercial law and commercial paper, and judicial procedure." By an amendment adopted December 20, 1873, the clause was modified to read, "general legislation as to the whole domain of civil and criminal law, and of judicial procedure."[351] Each of the federated states has always had, and still has, its own judicial system, and justice is administered all but exclusively in courts that belong to the states. These courts, however, have been declared to be also courts of the Empire, and, to the end that they may be systematized and that conditions of justice may be made uniform throughout the land, the federal government has not hesitated to avail itself of the regulative powers conferred in 1871 and amplified in 1873 in the constitutional provisions which have been cited. [Footnote 351: Art. 4. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 328.] *257. Diversity of Law Prior to 1871.*--In the first place, there has been brought about within the past generation a unification of German law so thoroughgoing in character as to be worthy of comparison with the systematization of the law of France which was accomplished through the agency of the Code Napoléon. In 1871 there were comprised within the Empire more than two score districts each of which possessed an essentially distinct body of civil and criminal law; and, to add to the confusion, the boundaries of these districts, though at one time coincident with the limits of the various political divisions of the country, were no longer so. The case of Prussia was typical. In 1871 the older Prussian provinces were living under a Prussian code promulgated in 1794; the Rhenish provinces maintained the Code Napoléon, established by Napoleon in all Germany west of the Rhine; in the Pomeranian districts there were large survivals of Swedish law; while the territories acquired after the war of 1866 had each its (p. 242) indigenous legal system. Two German states only in 1871 possessed a fairly uniform body of law. Baden had adopted a German version of the Code Napoléon, and Saxony, in 1865, had put in operation a code of her own devising. At no period of German history had there been either effective law-making or legal codification which was applicable to the whole of the territory contained within the Empire. In the domain of the civil law, in that of the criminal law, and in that of procedure the diversity was alike obvious and annoying. *258. Preparation of the Codes.*--German legal reform since 1871 has consisted principally in the formation and adoption of successive codes, each of which has aimed at essential completeness within a given branch of law. The task had been begun, indeed, before 1871. As early as 1861 the states had agreed upon a code relating to trade and banking, and this code had been readopted, in 1869, by the Confederation of 1867.[352] In 1869 a code of criminal law had been worked out for the Confederation, and in 1870 a code relating to manufactures and labor. Upon the establishment of the Empire, in 1871, there was created a commission to which was assigned the task of drawing up regulations for civil procedure and for criminal procedure, and also a plan for the reorganization of the courts. Beginning with a scheme of civil procedure, published in December, 1872, the commission brought in an elaborate project upon each of the three subjects. The code of civil procedure, by which many important reforms were introduced in the interest of publicity and speed, was well received. That relating to criminal procedure, proposing as it did to abolish throughout the Empire trial by jury, was, however, vigorously opposed, and the upshot was that all three reports were referred to a new commission, by which the original projects relating to criminal procedure and to the organization of the courts were completely remodelled. In the end the revised projects were adopted. October 1, 1879, there went into effect a group of fundamental laws under which the administration of justice throughout the Empire has been controlled from that day to the present. The most important of these was the Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz, or Law of Judicial Organization, enacted January 27, 1877; the Civilprozessordnung, or Code of Civil Procedure, of January 30, 1877; and the Strafprozessordnung, or Code of Criminal Procedure, of February 1, 1877. [Footnote 352: It was replaced by a new code May 10, 1897.] It remained only to effect a codification of the civil law. A committee constituted for the purpose completed its work in 1887, and the draft submitted by it was placed for revision in the hands of a new commission, by which it was reported in 1895. In an amended form the Civil Code was approved by the Reichstag, August 18, 1896, and (p. 243) it was put in operation January 1, 1900. Excluding matters pertaining to land tenure (which are left to be regulated by the states), the Code deals not only with all of the usual subjects of civil law but also with subjects arising from the contact of private law and public law.[353] [Footnote 353: A convenient manual for English readers is E. M. Borchard, Guide to the Law and Legal Literature of Germany (Washington, 1912), the first of a series of guides to European law in preparation in the Library of Congress.] *259. The Inferior Courts.*--By these and other measures it has been brought about that throughout the Empire justice is administered in tribunals whose officials are appointed by the local governments and which render decisions in their name, but whose organization, powers, and rules of procedure are regulated minutely by federal law. The hierarchy of tribunals provided for in the Law of Judicial Organization comprises courts of four grades. At the bottom are the Amtsgerichte, of which there are approximately two thousand in the Empire. These are courts of first instance, consisting ordinarily of but a single judge. In civil cases their jurisdiction extends to the sum of three hundred marks; in criminal, to matters involving a fine of not more than six hundred marks or imprisonment of not over three months. In criminal cases the judge sits with two Schöffen (sheriffs) selected by lot from the jury lists. Besides litigious business the Amtsgerichte have charge of the registration of land titles, the drawing up of wills, guardianship, and other local interests. Next above the Amtsgerichte are the 173 district courts, or Landgerichte, each composed of a president and a variable number of associate judges. Each Landgericht is divided into a civil and a criminal chamber. There may, indeed, be other chambers, as for example a Kammer für Handelssachen, or chamber for commercial cases. The president presides over a full bench; a director over each chamber. The Landgericht exercises a revisory jurisdiction over judgments of the Amtsgerichte, and possesses a more extended original jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters. The criminal chamber, consisting of five judges (of whom four are necessary to convict), is competent, for example, to try cases of felony punishable with imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. For the trial of many sorts of criminal cases there are special Schwurgerichte, or jury courts, which sit under the presidency of three judges of the Landgerichte. A jury consists of twelve members, of whom eight are necessary to convict. Still above the Landgerichte are the Oberlandesgerichte, of which there are twenty-eight in the Empire, each consisting of seven judges. The Oberlandesgerichte are courts of appellate jurisdiction largely. Each is divided into a civil and a criminal senate. There is a (p. 244) president of the full court and a similar official for each senate.[354] [Footnote 354: In Bavaria alone there is an Oberste Landesgericht, with twenty-one judges. Its relation to the Bavarian Oberlandesgerichte is that of an appellate tribunal.] *260. The Reichsgericht.*--At the apex of the system stands the Reichsgericht (created by law of October i, 1879), which, apart from certain administrative, military, and consular courts,[355] is the only German tribunal of an exclusively Imperial, or federal, character. It exercises original jurisdiction in cases involving treason against the Empire and hears appeals from the consular courts and from the state courts on questions of Imperial law. Its members, ninety-two in number, are appointed by the Emperor for life, on nomination of the Bundesrath, and they are organized in six civil and four criminal senates. Sittings are held invariably at Leipzig, in the kingdom of Saxony. [Footnote 355: The highest administrative court is the Oberverwaltungsgericht, whose members are appointed for life. Under specified conditions, the "committees" of circles, cities, and districts exercise inferior administrative jurisdiction. For the adjustment of disputed or doubtful jurisdictions there stands between the ordinary and the administrative tribunals a Gerichtshof für Kompetenz-konflikte, or Court of Conflicts, consisting of eleven judges appointed for life.] All judges in the courts of the states are appointed by the sovereigns of the respective states. The Imperial law prescribes a minimum of qualifications based on professional study and experience, the state being left free to impose any additional qualifications that may be desired. All judges are appointed for life and all receive a salary which may not be reduced; and there are important guarantees against arbitrary transfer from one position to another, as well as other practices that might operate to diminish the judge's impartiality and independence.[356] [Footnote 356: On the German judiciary see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 9; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 83-94; C. Morhain, De l'empire allemand (Paris, 1886), Chap. 9.] CHAPTER XII (p. 245) THE CONSTITUTION OF PRUSSIA-THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY I. THE GERMAN STATES AND THEIR GOVERNMENTS *261. Variations of Type.*--Within the bounds of Germany to-day there are twenty-five states and one Imperial territory with certain attributes of statehood, Alsace-Lorraine. During the larger portion of the nineteenth century each of these states (and of the several which no longer exist) was possessed of substantial sovereignty, and each maintained its own arrangements, respecting governmental forms and procedure. Under the leadership of Prussia, as has been pointed out, the loose Confederation of 1815 was transformed, during the years 1866-1871, into an Imperial union, federal but yet vigorous and indestructible, and to the constituted authorities of this Empire was intrusted an enormous aggregate of governmental powers. The powers conferred were, however, not wholly abstracted from the original prerogatives of the individual states. In a very appreciable measure they were powers, rather, of a supplementary character, by virtue of which the newly created central government was enabled to do, on a broadly national scale, what, in the lack of any such central government, there would have been neither means of doing, nor occasion for doing, at all. Only at certain points, as, for example, in respect to the levying of customs duties and of taxes, was the original independence of the individual state seriously impaired by the terms of the new arrangement. The consequence is that, speaking broadly, each of the German states maintains to this day a government which is essentially complete within itself. No one of these governments covers quite all of the ground which falls within the range of jurisdiction of a sovereign state; each is cut into at various points by the superior authority of the Empire; but each is sufficiently ample to be capable of continuing to run, were all of the other governments of Germany instantly to be blotted out.[357] Of the twenty-five state governments, three--those of the free cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck--are aristocratic (p. 246) republics; all the others are monarchies. Among the monarchies there are four kingdoms: Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg; six grand-duchies: Baden, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Oldenburg, and Saxe-Weimar; five duchies: Anhalt, Brunswick, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Saxe-Meiningen; and seven principalities: Lippe, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen, Schaumburg-Lippe, Reuss Älterer Linie, Reuss Jüngerer Linie, and Waldeck-Pyrmont. [Footnote 357: The best survey in English of the governments of the German states is that in Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., Chap. 6. Fuller and more recent is G. Combes de Lestrade, Les monarchies de l'empire allemand (Paris, 1904). The most elaborate treatment of the subject is to be found in an excellent series of studies edited by H. von Marquardsen and M. von Seydel under the title Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart in Monographien (Freiburg and Tübingen, 1883-1909). A new series of monographs, comprising substantially a revision of this collection, is at present in course of publication by J. C. B. Mohr at Tübingen. The texts of the various constitutions are printed in F. Stoerk, Handbuch der deutschen Verfassungen (Leipzig, 1884).] *262. The Preponderance of Prussia.*--From whatever angle one approaches German public affairs, the fact that stands out with greatest distinctness is the preponderant position occupied by the kingdom of Prussia. How it was that Prussia became the virtual creator of the Empire, and how it is that Prussia so dominates the Imperial government that that government and the Prussian are at times all but inextricable, has already been pointed out.[358] Wholly apart from the sheer physical fact that 134,616 square miles of Germany's 208,780, and 40,163,333 people of the Empire's 64,903,423, are Prussian, the very conditions under which the Imperial organization of the present day came into being predetermined that Prussia and things Prussian should enjoy unfailing pre-eminence in all that pertains to German government and politics. Both because they are extended immediately over a country almost two-thirds as large as France, and because of their peculiar relation to the political system of the Empire, the institutions of Prussia call for somewhat detailed consideration. [Footnote 358: See pp. 200-201, 207.] II. THE RISE OF CONSTITUTIONALISM IN PRUSSIA *263. Regeneration in the Napoleonic Period.*--By reason of the vacillating policies of her sovereign, Frederick William III., the successive defeats of her armies at Jena, Auerstädt, and elsewhere, and the loss, by the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, of half of her territory, Prussia realized from the first decade of the Napoleonic period little save humiliation and disaster. Through the years 1807-1815, however, her lot was wonderfully improved. Upon the failure of the Russian expedition of Napoleon in 1812, Frederick William (p. 247) shook off his apprehensions and allied himself openly with the sovereigns of Russia and Austria. The people rose _en masse_, and in the titanic struggle which ensued Prussia played a part scarcely second in importance to that of any other power. At the end she was rewarded, through the agency of the Congress of Vienna, by being assigned the northern portion of Saxony, Swedish Pomerania, her old possessions west of the Elbe, the duchies of Berg and Julich, and a number of other districts in Westphalia and on the Rhine. Her area in 1815 was 108,000 square miles, as compared with 122,000 at the beginning of 1806; but her loss of territory was more than compensated by the substitution that had been made of German lands for Slavic.[359] The homogeneity of her population was thereby increased, her essentially Germanic character emphasized, and her capacity for German leadership enhanced. [Footnote 359: L. A. Himly, Histoire de la formation territoriale des états de l'Europe centrale, 2 vols. (Paris, 1876), I., 93-110.] It was not merely in respect to territory and population that the Prussia of 1815 was different from the Prussia of a decade earlier. Consequent upon the humiliating disasters of 1806 there set in a moral regeneration by which there was wrought one of the speediest and one of the most thoroughgoing national transformations recorded in history. In 1807 Frederick William's statesmanlike minister Stein accomplished the abolition of serfdom and of all legal distinctions which separated the various classes of society.[360] In 1808 he reformed the municipalities and gave them important powers of self-government. By a series of sweeping measures he reconstructed the ministerial departments, the governments of the provinces, and the local administrative machinery, with the result of creating an executive system which has required but little modification to the present day. In numerous directions, especially in relation to economic conditions, the work of Stein was continued by that of the succeeding minister, Prince Hardenberg. By Scharnhorst and Gneisenau the military régime was overhauled and a body of spiritless soldiery kept in order by fear was converted into "a union of all the moral and physical energies of the nation." By Wilhelm von Humboldt the modern Prussian school system was created; while by Fichte, Arndt, and a galaxy of other writers there was imparted a stimulus by which the patriotism and aspiration of the Prussian people were raised to (p. 248) an unprecedented pitch.[361] [Footnote 360: It is to be observed that while Stein was officially the author of this reform, the substance of the changes introduced had been agreed upon by the king and his advisers before Stein's accession to office (October 4, 1807). The Edict of Emancipation was promulgated October 9, 1807. It made the abolition of serfdom final and absolute on and after October 8, 1810.] [Footnote 361: E. Meier, Reform der Verwaltungsorganisation unter Stein und Hardenberg (Leipzig, 1881); J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, 3 vols. (Boston, 1879), Pt. III., Chaps. 3-4, Pt. V., Chaps. 1-3.] *264. Obstacles to the Establishment of a Constitution.*--Such an epoch of regeneration could not fail to be a favorable period for the growth of liberal principles of government. In June, 1814, and again in May, 1815, King Frederick William promised, through the medium of a cabinet order, to give consideration to the question of the establishment of a constitution in which provision should be made not merely for the estates of the provinces but also for a national diet. After the Congress of Vienna the task of framing such a constitution was actually taken in hand. But the time was not ripe. Liberalism had gained headway as yet among only the professional classes, while the highly influential body of ultra-conservative landholders were unalterably opposed. Between the eastern provinces, still essentially feudal in spirit, and the western ones, visibly affected by French revolutionary ideas, there was, furthermore, meager community of interest. So keen was the particularistic spirit that not infrequently the various provinces of the kingdom were referred to in contemporary documents as "nations." Among these provinces some retained the system of estates which had prevailed throughout Germany since the Middle Ages, but in some of those which had fallen under the control of Napoleon the estates had been abolished, and in others they were in abeyance. In a few they had never existed. Votes were taken in the assemblages of the estates by orders, not by individuals, and the function of the bodies rarely extended beyond the approving of projects of taxation. Within the provinces there existed no sub-structure of popular institutions capable of being made the basis of a national parliamentary system. Notwithstanding these deterring circumstances, it is not improbable that some sort of constitution might have been established but for the excesses of the more zealous Liberals, culminating in the murder of the dramatist Kotzebue in 1819, whereby the king was thrown into an attitude, first of apprehension, and finally of uncompromising reaction. By assuming joint responsibility for the Carlsbad Decrees of October 17, 1819, he surrendered completely to the régime of "stability" which all the while had been urged upon him by Metternich. June 11, 1821, he summoned a commission to organize a system of provincial estates;[362] but at the same time the project of a national constitution and a national diet was definitely abandoned. Under (p. 249) repression Prussian liberalism languished, and throughout the remainder of the reign, i.e., to 1840, the issue of constitutionalism was not frequently raised. In Prussia, as in Austria, the widespread revolutionary demonstrations of 1830 elicited little response. [Footnote 362: The system was created by royal patent June 5, 1823.] *265. The Diet of 1847.*--Upon the accession of Frederick William IV., son of Frederick William III., in 1840, the hopes of the Liberals were revived. The new sovereign was believed to be a man of advanced ideas. To a degree he was such, as was manifested by his speedy reversal of his father's narrow ecclesiastical policy, and by other enlightened acts. But time demonstrated that his liberalism was not without certain very definite limits. February 13, 1847, he went so far as to summon a Vereinigter Landtag, or "united diet," of Prussia, comprising all members of the existing eight provincial assemblies, and organized in two chambers--a house of lords and a house containing the three estates of the knights, burghers, and peasants. But the issue was unhappy. As Metternich had predicted, the meeting of the Diet but afforded opportunity for a forceful reassertion of constitutional aspirations, and the assemblage refused to sanction loans upon which the sovereign was bent until its representative character should have been more completely recognized. The king, on his part, declared he would never allow "to come between Almighty God in heaven and this land a blotted parchment, to rule us with paragraphs, and to replace the ancient, sacred bond of loyalty." The deadlock was absolute, and, June 26, the Diet was dissolved. *266. The Revolution of 1848.*--The dawn of constitutionalism was, however, near. The fundamental law under which Prussia still is governed was a product--one of the few which endured--of the widespread revolutionary movement of 1848. Upon the arrival in Berlin of the news of the overthrow of Louis Philippe (February 24) at Paris and of the fall of Metternich (May 13) at Vienna, the Prussian Liberals renewed with vigor their clamor for the establishment in Prussia of a government of a constitutional type. The demand was closely related to, yet was essentially distinct from, the contemporary project for the inauguration of a new constitutional German Empire. As was proved by the vagaries of the Frankfort Parliament (May, 1848, to June, 1849), conditions were not yet ripe for the creation of a closely-knit empire;[363] and one of the reasons why this was true was that a necessary step toward that culmination was only now about to be taken, i.e., the introduction of constitutional government in the important kingdom of Prussia. Apprehensive lest (p. 250) the scenes of violence reported from Paris should be re-enacted in his own capital, Frederick William acquiesced in the demands of his subjects in so far as to issue letters patent, May 13, 1848, convoking a national assembly[364] for the consideration of a proposed constitution. Every male citizen over twenty-five years of age was given the right to participate in the choice of electors, by whom in turn were chosen the members of this assembly. May 22, 1848, the assembly met in Berlin and entered upon consideration of the sketch of a fundamental law which the king laid before it. The meeting was attended by disorders in the city, and the more radical deputies further inflamed public feeling by persisting in the discussion of the abolition of the nobility, and of a variety of other more or less impracticable and revolutionary projects. The king took offense because the assembly presumed to exercise constituent functions independently and, after compelling a removal of the sittings to the neighboring city of Brandenburg, he in disgust dissolved the body, December 5, and promulgated of his own right the constitutional charter which he had drawn. [Footnote 363: See p. 198.] [Footnote 364: Known technically as Versammlung zur Vereinbarung der preussischen Verfassung.] *267. Formation of the Constitution.*--At an earlier date it had been promised that the constitution to be established should be "agreed upon with an assembly of the nation's representatives freely chosen and invested with full powers;" but it had been suggested to the king that the way out of the existing difficulty lay in issuing a constitutional instrument independently and subsequently allowing the Landtag first elected under it to submit it to a legislative revision, and this was the course of procedure which was adopted.[365] Elections were held and, February 26, 1849, the chambers were assembled. Having recognized formally the instrument of December 5, 1848, as the law of the land, the two bodies addressed themselves forthwith to the task of revising it. The result was disagreement and, in the end, the dissolution of the lower house. The constitution of 1848 had been accompanied by an electoral law establishing voting by secret ballot and conferring upon all male citizens equal suffrage. Upon the dissolution of 1849 there was promulgated by the king a thoroughgoing modification of this democratic measure, whereby voting by ballot was abolished and parliamentary electors were divided into three classes whose voting power was determined by property qualifications or by (p. 251) official and professional status. In other words, there was introduced that peculiar three-class system which was already not unknown in the Prussian municipalities, and which, in both national and city elections, persists throughout the kingdom to the present day. In the elections which were held in the summer of 1849 in accordance with this system the democrats refused to participate. The upshot was that the new chambers, convened August 7, 1849, proved tractable enough, and by them the text of the constitution, after being discussed and revised article by article, was at last accorded formal approval. On the last day of January, 1850, the instrument was duly promulgated at Charlottenburg.[366] By Austria, Russia, and other reactionary powers persistent effort was made during the ensuing decade to influence the king to rescind the concession which he had made. He refused, however, to do so, and, with certain modifications, the constitution of 1850 remains the fundamental law of the Prussian kingdom to-day.[367] [Footnote 365: The confusion of constitutional and ordinary statutory law inherent in this arrangement has influenced profoundly the thought of German jurists.] [Footnote 366: On the establishment of constitutionalism in Prussia see (in addition to works mentioned on p. 201) P. Matter, La Prusse et la révolution de 1848, in _Revue Historique_, Sept.-Oct., 1902; P. Devinat, Le mouvement constitutionnel en Prusse de 1840 à 1847, ibid., Sept.-Oct. and Nov.-Dec., 1911; Klaczko, L'agitation allemande et la Prusse, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Dec., 1862, and Jan., 1863; C. Bornhak, Preussische Staats-und Rechtsgeschichte (Berlin, 1903); H. von Petersdorff, König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. (Stuttgart, 1900); and H. G. Prutz, Preussische Geschichte, 4 vols. to 1888 (Stuttgart, 1900-1902). For full bibliography see Cambridge Modern History, XI., 893-898.] [Footnote 367: As is true in governmental systems generally, by no means all of the essential features of the working constitution are to be found in the formal documents, much less in the written constitution alone. In Prussia ordinances, legislative acts, and administrative procedure, dating from both before and after 1850, have to be taken into account continually if one would understand the constitutional order in its entirety.] *268. Nature of the Constitution.*--The constitution of Prussia is modelled upon that of Belgium. Provisions relating to the powers of the crown, the competence of the chambers, and the functions of the ministers are reproduced almost literally from the older instrument. None the less, the two rest upon widely differing bases. The Belgian fundamental law begins with the assertion that "all powers emanate from the nation." That of Prussia voices no such sentiment, and the governmental system for which it provides has as its cornerstone the thoroughgoing supremacy of the crown.[368] The Liberals of the mid-century period were by no means satisfied with it; and, sixty years after, it stands out among the great constitutional documents of the European world so conspicuous by reason of its disregard of fundamental democratic principle as to justify completely the (p. 252) charges of anachronism which reformers in Prussia and elsewhere are in these days bringing against it. It provides for the responsibility of ministers, without stipulating a means whereby that responsibility may be enforced. There is maintained under it one of the most antiquated and undemocratic electoral systems in Europe. And, as is pointed out by Lowell, even where, on paper, it appears to be liberal, it is sometimes much less so than its text would lead one to suppose. It contains, for example, a bill of rights, which alone comprises no fewer than forty of the one hundred eleven permanent articles of the instrument.[369] In it are guaranteed the personal liberty of the subject, the security of property, the inviolability of personal correspondence, immunity from domiciliary visitation, freedom of the press, toleration of religious sects, liberty of migration, and the right of association and public meeting. But there is an almost total lack of machinery by which effect can be given to some of the most important provisions relating to these subjects. Some guarantees of what would seem the most fundamental rights, as those of public assemblage and of liberty of teaching, are reduced in practice to empty phrases.[370] [Footnote 368: Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 350.] [Footnote 369: Arts. 3-42. Robinson, Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia, 27-34.] [Footnote 370: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 286.] The process of constitutional amendment in Prussia is easy. With the approval of the king, an amendment may at any time be adopted by a simple majority of the two legislative chambers, with the special requirement only that an amendment, unlike a statute, must be voted upon twice, with an interval of three weeks between the two votes. During the first ten years of its existence the constitution was amended no fewer than ten times. Of later amendments there have been six, but none more recent than that of May 27, 1888. The Prussian system of amendment by simple legislative process was incorporated, in 1867, in the fundamental law of the North German Confederation (except that in the Bundesrath a two-thirds vote was required); and in 1871 it was perpetuated in the constitution of the Empire.[371] [Footnote 371: There is an annotated English version of the Prussian constitution, edited by J. H. Robinson, in the _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, Supplement, Sept., 1894. The original text will be found in F. Stoerk, Handbuch der deutschen Verfassungen (Leipzig, 1884), 44-63; also, with elaborate notes, in A. Arndt, Die Verfassungs-Urkunde für den preussischen Staat nebst Erganzungs-und Ausführungs-Gesetzen, mit Einleitung, Kommentar und Sachregister (Berlin, 1889). The principal treatises on the Prussian constitutional system are H. Schulze, Das preussisches Staatsrecht, auf Grundlage des deutschen Staatsrechtes (Leipzig, 1872-1874); ibid., Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Preussen, in Marquardsen's Handbuch (Freiburg, 1884); L. von Rönne, Das Staatsrecht der preussischen Monarchie (Leipzig, 1881-1884); and H. de Grais, Handbuch der Verfassung und Verwaltung in Preussen und dem deutschen Reiche (11th ed., Berlin, 1896). A good brief account is that in A. Lebon, Études sur l'Allemagne politique, Chap. 4.] III. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY (p. 253) *269. Status of the Crown.*--At the head of the state stands the king, in whom is vested the executive, and a considerable share in the legislative, power. The crown is hereditary in the male line of the house of Hohenzollern, following the principle of primogeniture. An heir to the throne is regarded as attaining his majority on the completion of his eighteenth year. It has been pointed out that the German Emperor, as such, has no civil list. He has no need of one, for the reason that in the capacity of king of Prussia he is entitled to one of the largest civil lists known to European governments. Since the increase provided for by law of February 20, 1889, the "Krondotations Rente," as it appears in the annual Prussian budget, aggregates 15,719,296 marks; besides which the king enjoys the revenues from a vast amount of private property, comprising castles, forests, and estates in various parts of the realm. There are also certain special funds the income from which is available for the needs of the royal family. *270. Powers.*--The powers of the crown are very comprehensive.[372] It is perhaps not too much to say that they exceed those exercised by any other European sovereign. The king is head of the army and of the church, and in him are vested, directly or indirectly, all functions of an executive and administrative character. All appointments to offices of state are made by him immediately or under his authority. The upper legislative chamber is recruited almost exclusively by royal nomination. And all measures, before they become law, require the king's assent; though, by reason of the sovereign's absolute control of the upper chamber, no measure of which he disapproves can ever be enacted by that body, so that there is never an occasion for the exercise of the formal veto. To employ the language of a celebrated German jurist, the king possesses "the whole and undivided power of the state in all its plenitude. It would, therefore, be contrary to the nature of the monarchical constitutional law of Germany to enumerate all individual powers of the king.... His sovereign right embraces, on the contrary, all branches of the government. Everything which is decided or carried out in the state takes place in the name of the king. He is the personified power of the state."[373] (p. 254) Except in so far as the competence of the sovereign is expressly limited or regulated by the constitution, it is to be regarded as absolute. [Footnote 372: They are enumerated in articles 45-52 of the constitution. Robinson, Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia, 36-37.] [Footnote 373: Schulze, Preussisches Staatsrecht, I., 158.] *271. The Ministry: Composition and Status.*--The organization of the executive--the creation of ministerial portfolios, the appointment of ministers, and the delimitation of departmental functions--rests absolutely with the king, save, of course, for the necessity of procuring from the Landtag the requisite appropriations. Beginning in the days of Stein with five, the number of ministries was gradually increased until since 1878 there have been nine, as follows: Foreign Affairs;[374] the Interior; Ecclesiastical, Educational, and Sanitary Affairs; Commerce and Industry; Finance; War; Justice; Public Works; and Agriculture, Public Domains, and Forests. Each ministry rests upon an essentially independent basis and there has been little attempt to reduce the group to the uniformity or symmetry of organization that characterizes the ministries of France, Italy, and other continental monarchies. Departmental heads, as well as subordinates, are appointed with reference solely to their administrative efficiency, not, as in parliamentary governments, in consideration of their politics or of their status in the existing political situation. They need not be, and usually are not, members of either of the legislative chambers. [Footnote 374: The Minister of Foreign Affairs is at the same time the Minister-President of Prussia and the Chancellor of the Empire. On the functions of the various ministries see Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 448-462.] For it is essential to observe that in Prussia ministers are responsible only to the sovereign, which means that the parliamentary system, in the proper sense, does not exist. The constitution, it is true, prescribes that every act of the king shall be countersigned by a minister, who thereby assumes responsibility for it.[375] But there is no machinery whereby this nominal responsibility can be made, in practice, to mean anything. Ministers do not retire by reason of an adverse vote in the Landtag; and, although upon vote of either legislative chamber, they may be prosecuted for treason, bribery, or violation of the constitution, no penalties are prescribed in the event of conviction, so that the provision is of no practical effect.[376] Every minister possesses the right to appear on the (p. 255) floor of either chamber, and to be heard at any time when no member of the house is actually speaking. In the exercise of this privilege the minister is the immediate spokesman of the crown, a fact which is apt to be apparent from the tenor of his utterances. [Footnote 375: Art. 44.] [Footnote 376: Art. 61. Robinson, Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia, 40. In the words of a German jurist, "the anomaly continues to exist in Prussia of ministerial responsibility solemnly enunciated in the constitution, the character of the responsibility, the accuser and the court specified, and at the same time a complete lack of any legal means by which the representatives of the people can protect even the constitution itself against the most flagrant violations and the most dangerous attacks." Schulze, Preussisches Staatsrecht, II., 694.] *272. The Ministry: Organization and Workings.*--The Prussian ministry exhibits little solidarity. There is a "president of the council of ministers," who is invariably the Minister for Foreign Affairs and at the same time the Chancellor of the Empire, but his functions are by no means those of the corresponding dignitary in France and Italy. Over his colleagues he possesses, as president, no substantial authority whatsoever.[377] In the lack of responsibility to the Landtag, there is no occasion for an attempt to hold the ministry solidly together in the support of a single, consistent programme. The ministers are severally controlled by, and responsible to, the crown, and the views or policies of one need not at all be those of another. At the same time, of course, in the interest of efficiency it is desirable that there shall be a certain amount of unity and of concerted action. To attain this there was established by Count Hardenberg a Staats-Ministerium, or Ministry of State, which occupies in the Prussian executive system a position somewhat similar to that occupied in the French by the Council of Ministers.[378] The Ministry of State is composed of the nine ministerial heads, together with the Imperial secretaries of state for the Interior, Foreign Affairs, and the Navy. It holds meetings at least as frequently as once a week for the discussion of matters of common administrative interest, the drafting of laws or of constitutional amendments, the supervision of local administration, and, in emergencies, the promulgation of ordinances which have the force of law until the ensuing session of the Landtag. There are certain acts, as the proclaiming of a state of siege, which may be performed only with the sanction of this body. The fact remains, none the less, that, normally, the work of the several departments is carried on independently and that the ministry exhibits less cohesion than any other in a state of Prussia's size and importance. It is to be observed that there is likewise a Staatsrath, or Council of State (dating originally from 1604 and revived in (p. 256) 1817), composed of princes, high officials of state, ministers, judges, and other persons of influence designated by the crown. It may be consulted on legislative proposals, disputes as to the spheres of the various ministries, and other important matters. In barrenness of function, however, as in structure, it bears a close resemblance to-day to the British Privy Council.[379] [Footnote 377: The office of Chancellor was discontinued with the death of Hardenberg and that of Minister-President substituted. The Chancellor possessed substantial authority over his colleagues. Since 1871, the Minister-President has been a Chancellor, but of the Empire, not of Prussia.] [Footnote 378: The Staats-Ministerium was called into being, to replace the old Council of State, by an ordinance of October 27, 1810. Its functions were further elaborated in cabinet orders of June 3, 1814, and November 3, 1817. The constitution of 1850 preserved it and assigned it some new duties.] [Footnote 379: On the organization and functions of the Prussian ministry see Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 345-462; von Seydel, Preussisches Staatsrecht, 91-104; von Rönne, Das Staatsrecht der preussischen Monarchie, 4th ed., III.; Schulze, Das preussische Staatsrecht, II.] *273. Subsidiary Executive Bodies.*--Two other executive organs possess considerable importance. These are the Oberrechnungskammer, or Supreme Chamber of Accounts, and the Volkswirthschaftsrath, or Economic Council. The Oberrechnungskammer has existed continuously since 1714. Its function is the oversight and revision of the finances of the departments, the administration of the state debt, and the acquisition and disposal of state property. Its president is appointed by the crown, on nomination of the Staats-Ministerium. Its remaining members are designated by the crown on nomination of its own president, countersigned by the president of the Staats-Ministerium. All enjoy the tenure and the immunities of judges, and the body collectively is responsible, not to the Ministry of State, but to the crown immediately. In status and function it resembles somewhat closely the French Cour des Comptes. The same group of men, with additional members appointed by the Bundesrath, serves as the Chamber of Accounts of the Empire. The Volkswirthschaftsrath consists of seventy-five members named by the king for a term of five years. Its business is to give preliminary consideration to measures vitally affecting large economic interests, to determine what should be Prussia's position in the Bundesrath upon these measures, and to recommend to the crown definite courses of action regarding them. Its function is purely consultative. CHAPTER XIII (p. 257) THE PRUSSIAN LANDTAG--LOCAL GOVERNMENT I. COMPOSITION OF THE LANDTAG *274. The House of Lords: Law of 1853.*--Legislative authority in the kingdom of Prussia is shared by the king with a national assembly, the Landtag, composed of two chambers, of which the upper is known as the Herrenhaus, or House of Lords, and the lower as the Abgeordnetenhaus, or House of Representatives. Under the original provisions of the constitution, the House of Lords was composed of (1) adult princes of the royal family; (2) heads of Prussian houses deriving directly from the earlier Empire; (3) heads of families designated by royal ordinance, with regard to rights of primogeniture and lineal descent; (4) 90 members chosen by the principal taxpayers of the kingdom; and (5) 30 members elected by the municipal councils of the larger towns. By law of May 7, 1853, this arrangement was set aside and in its stead it was enacted that the chamber should be made up entirely of persons appointed by the crown in heredity or for life; and, on the authorization of this measure, there was promulgated, October 12, 1854, a royal ordinance by which the composition of the body was fixed substantially as it is to-day. The act of 1853 forbids that the system thus brought into operation be further modified, save with the assent of the Landtag; but this does not alter the fact that the present composition of the Prussian upper house is determined, not by the constitution of the kingdom, but by royal ordinance authorized by legislative enactment. *275. The House of Lords To-day.*--The component elements of the House of Lords to-day are: (1) princes of the royal family who are of age; (2) scions of the Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and sixteen other once sovereign families of Prussia; (3) heads of the territorial nobility created by the king, and numbering some fifty members; (4) a number of life peers, chosen by the king from among wealthy landowners, great manufacturers, and men of renown; (5) eight titled noblemen appointed by the king on the nomination of the resident landowners of the eight older provinces of the kingdom; (6) representatives of the universities, of religious bodies, and of towns of over 50,000 inhabitants, presented by these various organizations respectively, but appointed ultimately by the king; and (7) an (p. 258) indefinite number of members, chosen by the king for life on any ground whatsoever, and under no restriction except that peers must have attained the age of thirty years. The composition of the chamber is thus extremely complex. There are members _ex-officio_, members by royal appointment, members by hereditary right. But the appointing power of the crown is so comprehensive that the body partakes largely of the character of a royal creation. Its membership is recruited almost exclusively from the rigidly conservative landowning aristocracy, so that in attitude and policy it is apt to be in no degree representative of the mass of the nation, at least of the industrial classes. As a rule, though not invariably, it is ready to support cordially the measures of the crown. In any event, through exercise of the unrestricted power of creating peers, the crown is in a position at all times to control its acts. The number of members varies, but is ordinarily about 300.[380] [Footnote 380: Lebon, Études sur l'Allemagne politique, 187-197.] *276. The House of Representatives.*--The Abgeordnetenhaus, or House of Representatives, consists of 443 members--362 for the old kingdom, 80 added in 1867 to represent the newly acquired provinces, and one added in 1876 to represent Lauenburg. Representatives are elected for a five-year term, and every Prussian is eligible who has completed his thirtieth year, who has paid taxes to the state during as much as three years, and whose civil rights have not been impaired by judicial sentence. Every Prussian who has attained his twenty-fifth year, and who is qualified to vote in the municipal elections of his place of domicile, is entitled to participate in the choice of a deputy. At first glance the Prussian franchise appears distinctly liberal. It is so, however, only in the sense that comparatively few adult males are excluded from the exercise of it. In its actual workings it is one of the most undemocratic in Europe. *277. The Electoral System.*--Representatives are chosen in electoral districts, each of which returns from one to three members--as a rule, two. There has been no general redistribution of seats since 1860 (although some changes were made in 1906), so that in many districts, especially in the urban centers whose growth has fallen largely within the past fifty years, the quota of representatives is grossly disproportioned to population. Until 1906 the entire city of Berlin returned but nine members, and its quota now is only twelve.[381] The enfranchised inhabitants of the district do not, moreover, vote (p. 259) for a representative directly. The essential characteristics of the Prussian electoral system are, first, that the suffrage is indirect, and, second, that it is unequal. The precise method by which a representative is elected[382] may be indicated as follows: (1) each circle, or district, is divided into a number of Urwahlbezirke, or sub-districts; (2) in each Urwahlbezirk one Wahlman, or elector, is allotted to every 250 inhabitants; (3) for the choosing of these Wahlmänner the voters of the sub-district are divided into three classes, arranged in such a fashion that the first class will be composed of the payers of direct taxes, beginning with the largest contributors, who collectively pay one-third of the tax-quota of the sub-district, the second class will include the payers next in importance who as a group pay the second third, and the last class will comprise the remainder; (4) each of these classes chooses, by absolute majority, one-third of the electors to which the Urwahlbezirk is entitled; finally (5) all the electors thus chosen in the various Urwahlbezirke of the district come together as an electoral college and choose, by absolute majority, a representative to sit in the Abgeordnetenhaus at Berlin.[383] [Footnote 381: Prior to 1906 the Berlin representatives were chosen in four electoral districts, but in the year mentioned the city was divided into twelve single-member constituencies.] [Footnote 382: As stipulated in articles 69-75 of the constitution. Robinson, The Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia, 42-44.] [Footnote 383: In the event that, between elections, a seat falls vacant, a new member is chosen forthwith by this same body of Wahlmänner without a fresh appeal to the original electorate of the district.] *278. Origins and Operation of the System.*--The principal features of this unique system were devised as a compromise between a thoroughgoing democracy based on universal suffrage and a government exclusively by the landholding aristocracy. The three-class arrangement originated in the Rhine Province where, by the local government code of 1845, it was put in operation in the elections of the municipalities. In the constitution of 1850 it was adopted for use in the national elections, and in subsequent years it was extended to municipal elections in virtually all parts of the kingdom, so that it came to be a characteristic and well-nigh universal Prussian institution. It need hardly be pointed out that the scheme throws the bulk of political power, whether in municipality or in nation, into the hands of the men of wealth. In not fewer than 2,214 Urwahlbezirke a third of the direct taxes is paid by a single individual, who therefore comprises alone the first electoral class; and in 1703 precincts the first class consists of but two persons. In most cases the number of the least considerable taxpayers who in the aggregate pay the last third of the tax-quota is relatively large. Taking the kingdom as a whole, it was estimated in 1907 that approximately (p. 260) three per cent of the electorate belonged to the first class, about 9.5 per cent to the second, and the remaining 87.5 to the third. In the individual precinct, as in the nation at large, the little group at the top, however, possesses precisely as much political weight as the large group at the bottom, because it is entitled to choose an equal number of Wahlmänner. The result is a segregation of classes which, whatever its merits at certain points, is of very questionable utility as a basis of government. The effect politically is to give an enormous advantage to the conservative and agrarian interests and to deprive the socialists and other popular elements all but completely of representation. At the elections of 1903 the Social Democrats put forth effort for the first time in an organized way to win seats in the Landtag. Under the system which has been described a total of 324,157 Conservative votes sufficed to elect 143 representatives, but 314,149 Social Democratic votes did not secure the return of a single member. In the Imperial elections of the same year, conducted under a scheme of equal suffrage, the popular party sent to the Reichstag eighty members. At the Prussian elections of 1908 a Social Democratic vote which comprised approximately twenty-four per cent of the total popular vote yielded but seven members in a total of 443. So glaringly undemocratic is the prevailing system that even that arch-aristocrat, Bismarck, was upon one occasion moved to denounce the three-class arrangement as "the most miserable and absurd election law that has ever been formulated in any country."[384] [Footnote 384: For a brief exposition of the practical effects of the system, especially on political parties, see Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 305-308. The system as it operates in the cities is described in Munro, The Government of European Cities, 128-135, and in R. C. Brooks, The Three-Class System in Prussian Cities, in _Municipal Affairs_, II., 396ff. Among special treatises may be mentioned H. Nézard, L'Évolution du suffrage universel en Prusse et dans l'Empire allemand (Paris, 1905); I. Jastrow, Das Dreiklassensystem (Berlin, 1894); R. von Gneist, Die nationale Rechtsidee von den Ständen und das preussische Dreiklassensystem (Berlin, 1904); and G. Evert, Die Dreiklassenwahl in den preussischen Stadt-und Landgemeinden (Berlin, 1901).] II. THE MOVEMENT FOR ELECTORAL REFORM *279. The Programme Formulated.*--Throughout more than a generation there has been in Prussia persistent agitation in behalf of electoral reform. In 1883, and again in 1886, the lower chamber debated, but rejected, a project for the substitution of the secret ballot for the existing _viva voce_ method of voting. In 1883 the Social Democratic party proclaimed its purpose to abstain from voting until the (p. 261) inequalities arising from "the most wretched of all electoral systems" should have been removed. Gradually there was worked out a programme of reform to which socialists, Liberals, and progressives of various schools gave adherence, wholly or in part, comprising four principal demands: (1) the abolition of discriminations against the small taxpayer; (2) the introduction of the secret ballot; (3) the replacing of indirect by direct elections; and (4) a redistribution of seats. And these are to-day the objects chiefly sought by the reform elements. *280. The Efforts of 1906 and 1908.*--In 1906 a bill raising the number of representatives from 433 to 443 and making provision for a slight redistribution of seats was carried, but a Radical amendment providing for direct and universal suffrage and the secret ballot was opposed with vigor by the Government and failed of adoption. In January, 1908, there were notable socialist demonstrations throughout the country in behalf of the establishment of equal manhood suffrage. Prince von Bülow, while admitting the existing system to be defective, opposed the introduction in Prussia of the electoral system of the Empire, alleging that it would not be compatible with the interests of the state and maintaining that every sound reform of the franchise must retain and secure the preponderance of the great mass of the middle class, and therefore must aim at the establishment of an equitable gradation in the weight of the various classes of votes. It was added that the Government would consider whether this object might best be attained by basing the franchise entirely upon the amount of taxes paid by the voter, or by taking into account age, educational attainments, or other qualifications. When the Radicals introduced in the lower chamber a resolution declaring for equal manhood suffrage the Clericals and the Poles supported it, but the Conservatives and National Liberals of all shades stood by the Government, and the resolution was overwhelmingly rejected. The elections of June, 1908, at which, as has been pointed out, seven Social Democratic members were returned, demonstrated that even under existing electoral arrangements dissatisfaction could find some expression. The National Liberals and the Free Conservatives, who had been outspoken in opposition to the extension of the suffrage, lost, respectively, twelve and four seats. When, however, the Radical resolution reappeared it again was thrown out. *281. The Project of 1910.*--By popular demonstrations in Berlin and in other important towns throughout the kingdom, the Government was brought to the conviction that it was not expedient to maintain too long its hitherto inflexible attitude. In a speech from the (p. 262) throne, January 11, 1910, the sovereign announced the early introduction of a measure for electoral reform, and a month later it became the unwelcome duty of the new Chancellor, von Bethman-Hollweg, to lay the Government's project before the chambers. Instantly it was evident, not only that the proposal had been prepared entirely under bureaucratic direction, but that the real purpose of the Government was to carry through the Landtag an electoral bill designed to appease the reformers without yielding the essential features of the existing system. The project provided, in brief: (1) that the tripartite system be retained, though the quota of taxes admitting to the first class should be reduced to a uniform level of five thousand marks (no weight being given to payment beyond that amount), and voters of specified degrees of education, or occupying certain official positions, or having served a stipulated number of years in the army or navy, should be assigned to the higher classes, with but incidental regard to their tax contributions: (2) that _viva voce_ voting be retained; (3) that the choice of electors be by districts rather than by Urwahlbezirke; and (4) that direct voting be substituted for indirect. There was no mention of redistribution, and the secret ballot was specifically withheld. The rearrangement of classes did not touch the fundamental difficulty, and the only demand of the reformers which was really met was that for direct elections. In his speech in defense of the measure the Chancellor frankly admitted that the Government was irrevocably opposed to a suffrage system based on democratic principles. The scheme was ridiculed by the liberal elements. In protest against the nonchalance with which the door had been shut in their faces the working classes in Berlin and elsewhere entered upon a fresh series of demonstrations by reason of which the Government was embarrassed through several weeks. In the Landtag the Conservative and Free Conservative parties, comprising the Government majority, stood solidly for the bill, in the conviction that if there must be change at all those changes which the bill proposed would be less objectionable than those which were being urged by the radicals. The Centre wavered, while the National Liberals, the Poles, the Social Democrats, and the Progressive People's Party stood firmly in opposition. February 13 the bill was referred in the lower house to a committee, by which it was reported so amended as to provide for the secret ballot but not for direct elections. March 16, by a vote of 283 to 168, the measure in this amended form, was passed by the chamber, all parties except the Conservatives and the Centre voting against it. April 29 the bill was passed in the upper chamber, by a vote of 140 to 94, in the form in which originally it had been introduced. All (p. 263) efforts on the part of the Government to bring the lower house to an acceptance of the original measure proved fruitless, and the upshot was that, May 27 following, the project was withdrawn from the chambers. The overhauling of the antiquated electoral system in Prussia, both national and municipal, remains a live issue, but agreement upon a definite project of reform is apparently remote. The problem is enormously complicated by the virile traditions of aristocratic, landed privilege which permeate the inmost parts of the Prussian political system. In respect to redistribution, too, a fundamental obstacle lies in the consideration that such a step on the part of Prussia would almost of necessity involve a similar one on the part of the Empire. In both instances the insuperable objection, from the point of view of the Government, arises from the vast acquisition of political power which would accrue from such reform to the socialists and other radical parties.[385] [Footnote 385: P. Matter, La réforme électorale en Prusse, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1910; C. Brocard, La réforme électorale en Prusse et les partis, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Feb., 1912.] III. ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS OF THE LANDTAG *282. Sessions and Privileges of Members.*--The maximum life of a Landtag is five years; but the lower house may at any time be dissolved by the crown. A dissolution must be followed by the election of a new chamber within sixty days, and the ensuing session is required to begin within three months. The power of dissolution is not infrequently exercised, and there have been instances of the dissolution of a newly elected chamber, by reason of its objectionable political character, before it had been convened for so much as a single sitting. According to law the Landtag must be convoked in regular session every year, during the period between the beginning of November and the middle of the following January.[386] It may be called in extraordinary session at any time. Without its own consent, it may not be adjourned for more than thirty days, or more than once during a session. Save in the event of the necessity of making provision for a regency, the chambers sit separately; but the two must be convoked, opened, adjourned, and prorogued simultaneously. [Footnote 386: Art. 76.] Each chamber passes upon the qualifications of its members; each elects it own presidents, vice-presidents, and secretaries; and each regulates its own discipline and order of business. Sittings of both chambers are public, save when, on proposal of the president or of ten members, it is decided to close the doors. Members are regarded (p. 264) as representatives of the population of the kingdom as a whole. They may not be bound by any sort of instructions; nor may they be called to account legally for votes cast, or for statements made, in the fulfillment of their legislative functions. Unless taken in the act, or within twenty-four hours thereafter, no member of either house may, without the consent of that house, be arrested or submitted to examination for any penal offense. Members of the lower house receive, and must accept, travelling expenses and a daily allowance of fifteen marks during sessions. At the beginning of each sitting the House of Lords is divided into five Abtheilungen, or sections, and the House of Representatives into seven. In the lower house the division is made by lot; in the upper, by the president. In both instances it is made once for an entire session, not monthly as in France, or bi-monthly as in Italy. The function of the Abtheilungen is to appoint committee members, and, in the lower house, to make preliminary examination of election returns. In each house there are eight standing committees. For the consideration of particular measures special committees are constituted as occasion demands. *283. Powers.*--The Landtag is, of course, primarily a legislative institution. But the powers of independent deliberation which it exercises are distinctly inferior to those exercised by the British House of Commons, by the French Chamber of Deputies, or by any one of a half score of other European parliamentary bodies. This fact arises from the relatively preponderating influence which is exerted by the Government in its proceedings. In theory each chamber possesses the right to initiate legislation; in practice, virtually all bills are introduced by the Government, and the chambers content themselves with discussion and the proposing of amendments. It not infrequently happens that, as in the case of the Electoral Reform Bill of 1910, the lower house so emasculates a measure as to compel the Government to withdraw it. But, speaking broadly, it may be said that the legislative acts of Prussia are projected and formulated by the crown and the ministers and merely ratified by the Landtag. There is still some question as to whether the stipulation that all laws require the assent of the two houses covers, under every circumstance, the appropriation of money. In practice, appropriations are regularly voted in the chambers, and in fact it is required that the budget and all fiscal measures shall be presented first to the lower house and shall be accepted or rejected as a whole by the upper; but during the years immediately preceding the Austrian war of 1866 the Government asserted and exercised the power of collecting and expending the revenues of the state on the basis of standing laws, thus virtually (p. 265) suspending the legislative appropriating power, and the question has never been finally settled by Prussian jurists as to whether such a thing might not again be done.[387] [Footnote 387: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 298.] On the side of administration the powers of the Landtag are but nominal. Under provisions of the constitution each chamber has a right to present memorials to the king; to refer to the ministers documents addressed to it, and to demand explanations respecting complaints made therein; and to appoint commissions for the investigation of subjects for its own information. The right of interpellation is expressly recognized. But, as has been pointed out, the ministers are not in practice responsible to the legislative chambers, and neither they nor the king himself can be compelled to give heed, unless they so desire, to legislative protests, demands, or censure. Where a parliamentary system does not exist, the influence of the legislative branch upon matters of administration is likely to be confined to the simple assertion of opinion. IV. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: ORIGINS AND PRINCIPLES[388] [Footnote 388: The judicial system of Prussia, regulated in common with that of the other states by Imperial law, is described in Chapter 11, pp. 241-244. Articles 86-97 of the Prussian constitution deal with the subject of the judiciary, but many of their provisions have been rendered obsolete by Imperial statutes.] *284. The Measures of Stein and Hardenberg.*--The origins of the local governmental régime prevailing in the kingdom of Prussia to-day antedate, to some extent, the nineteenth century, but in large part they are to be traced to the period of the Stein-Hardenberg ministries. By the memorable Municipal Edict (_Städt-Ordnung_) of November 19, 1808, Stein set up a complete municipal system, with burgomasters, executive boards, and town councils (all elective), and swept away the oligarchy of the guilds, broadened the franchise, and conferred upon the towns almost complete independence, even in the matter of taxation. An edict of 1831 inaugurated a revival of the right of the central authorities to supervise local taxation and introduced a number of other changes, but, on the whole, the municipal arrangements of the present day are based upon the edict of Stein. More immediately, they rest upon an act of 1853, applied originally only to the six eastern provinces of the kingdom, but eventually extended to the others. Aside from its introduction of the three-class electoral system, and a few other matters, this law follows closely the measure of 1808 and but consolidates and extends pre-existing arrangements.[389] Neither Stein nor Hardenberg touched the (p. 266) constitution of the country communes, but the extension, during the Napoleonic occupation, of the French communal system into all the Prussian territories west of the Elbe prepared the way for the essentially uniform system which was established by the Westphalian and Rhineland Edicts of 1841 and 1845. Edicts of 1807 and 1811 abolished the aristocratic basis of the ancient circles (Kreise), and after 1815 the circle as a unit of local government next above the commune was extended to all the conquered or reconquered territories. The revival of the old provincial organization was begun also in 1815, when the kingdom was divided into ten provinces; and in the same year there were established twenty-six government districts (Regierungsbezirke), two or three within each province, each under the control of one of the government boards (Regierungen) whose creation had been begun in 1808.[390] [Footnote 389: The text of the law of 1853 is printed in the appendix of A. W. Jebens, Die Städtverordneten (Berlin, 1905).] [Footnote 390: E. Meier, Die Reform der Verwaltungsorganisation unter Stein und Hardenberg (Leipzig, 1881).] *285. The Reforms of Bismarck.*--Throughout the middle portion of the nineteenth century the administrative system, modified but slightly by legislative enactment, continued to present a curious combination of elements which were popular and elements which were narrowly bureaucratic and, in some instances, essentially feudal. Beginning in 1872, Bismarck addressed himself to the task of co-ordinating, strengthening, and to a certain extent liberalizing, the local institutions of the kingdom. The ends at which he aimed principally were the abolition of conditions by which it was made possible for the whole machinery of local government to be captured from time to time by a single social class for its own benefit, and the establishment of a system under which all classes of the population might be admitted to participation in the management of purely local affairs. In the course of the reform which was carried through numerous features of English local institutions were copied with some closeness. In a number of scholarly volumes appearing between 1863 and 1872 the genius of these institutions had been convincingly expounded by the jurist Rudolph Gneist, whose essential thesis was that the failure of parliamentary government in Prussia and the success of it in Great Britain was attributable to the dissimilarity of the local governmental systems of the two countries;[391] and by these writings the practical proposals with which Bismarck came forward were given important theoretic basis. Neither Gneist nor Bismarck sympathized with the ideals of democracy, but both believed that the local (p. 267) administrative authorities should be made to include not only a paid, expert bureaucracy but a considerable element of unpaid lay or non-official persons, drawn, however, principally from the large landowners and taxpayers. The obstacles to be overcome, arising from public indifference, the opposition of the existing bureaucracy, the apprehensions of the Conservatives, and sectional differences and antipathies, were enormous, but by proceeding slowly and in a conciliatory spirit the Government was able eventually to execute the larger portion of its plans. The first enactments, for the circles in 1872 and for the provinces in 1875, were applied only to those provinces which had formed the old monarchy, but during the ensuing ten years similar measures were extended to the remainder of the kingdom, and, finally, after the dismissal of Bismarck, the task was rounded out by a great Landgemeinde-Ordnung issued for the seven eastern provinces in 1891. By this series of enactments the administrative methods and machinery of the kingdom were reduced to substantially the character which they to-day possess. [Footnote 391: The most important of Gneist's works in this connection are: Geschichte des self-government in England (1863); Verwaltung, Justiz, Rechtsweg (1867); Die preussische Kreis-Ordnung (1871); and Der Rechtsstaat (1872).] *286. Principles of the Administrative System.*--Although the system is still one of the most complicated in Europe, it is infinitely simpler than once it was, and the bureaucratic forces in it, if still predominant, have been subjected to a variety of important restraints. The principles which underlie it have been summarized by an English writer as follows: "The first is the careful distinction drawn between those internal affairs in which the central government is thought to be directly concerned, and those which are held to be primarily of only local interest. The former group includes, besides the army, the state taxes and domains, ecclesiastical affairs, police (in the wide Prussian meaning of the term), and the supervision of local authorities; whilst roads, poor relief, and a number of miscellaneous matters are left to the localities. These two groups are kept carefully separate, even when they are entrusted to the same authority. Secondly, the work of the central government is 'deconcentrated,' that is, the country is divided into districts (which may or may not be coincident with the areas of local self-government), in each of which there is a delegation of the central authority, doing its work, and thereby lessening the pressure upon the departmental offices in Berlin. Something like this deconcentration is found in the educational organization of France, and also in the office of the Prefect, but it is far more elaborate, and the machinery much more complex, in Prussia. Thirdly the comparative independence of the executive from the deliberative authority, and the predominance of the officials, which characterize the central government of Prussia, repeat themselves throughout the whole of local government. And, finally, in all except the (p. 268) largest of the Prussian areas of local self-government, the executive agents of the locality, elected by it, are also the representatives of the central government; as such they are members of the bureaucracy and controlled by it, and in consequence they naturally look to the center for guidance and direction in regard to local affairs. Therefore, whilst it would be inaccurate to say that local self-government, as understood in England, does not exist in Prussia, it is true that self-government there is weak, that it is not so much the exercise of the will of the locality within limits prescribed (for the protection of the whole community) by the central power, as the exercise of the will of the latter by the locality. In fact, the bureaucracy rules; and it is fortunate for Prussia that hitherto the bureaucracy has remained intelligent and respective of new ideas."[392] [Footnote 392: Ashley, Local and Central Government, 130-132.] At the same time it is to be observed that, while the professional, life-long holders of office continue to preponderate as in no other important country of western Europe, the class of non-professionals is large and constantly increasing. As a rule, the first class is salaried, the second is not; the non-professionals being simply citizens who, moved by considerations of a civic and social nature, give their services without prospect of pecuniary reward. The principle of the system is, as Ashley characterizes it, that of government by experts, checked by lay criticism and the power of the purse, and effectively controlled by the central authorities. And, although the details of local governmental arrangements vary appreciably from state to state, this principle, which has attained its fullest realization in Prussia, may be said to underlie local government throughout the Empire in general. V. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: AREAS AND ORGANS *287. The Province.*--Aside from the cities, which have their special forms of government, the political units of Prussia, in the order of their magnitude, are: (1) the Provinz, or province; (2) the Regierungsbezirk, or district; (3) the Kreis, or circle; (4) the Amtsbezirk, or court jurisdiction; and (5) the Gemeinde, or commune. Of these, three--the first, third, and fifth--are spheres both of the central administration and of local self-government; two--the second and fourth--exist for administrative purposes solely. Of provinces there are twelve: East Prussia, West Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Silesia, Posen, Westphalia, Saxony, Hanover, the Rhine Province, Schleswig-Holstein, and Hesse-Nassau.[393] Unlike the French and (p. 269) Italian departments, the Prussian provinces are historical areas, of widely varying extent and, in some instances, of not even wholly continuous territory. Thus Hanover is, geographically, the kingdom once united with the crown of Great Britain, Schleswig-Holstein comprises the territories wrested from Denmark in 1864, Saxony is the country taken from the kingdom of Saxony at the close of the Napoleonic wars, and Posen represents Prussia's ultimate acquisition from the Polish partitions of the eighteenth century. [Footnote 393: For all practical purposes the city of Berlin and the district of Hohenzollern form each a province. If they be counted, the total is fourteen.] In the organization of the province the separation of functions relating to the affairs of the kingdom (_Staatsgeschäfte_) from those which relate only to matters of a local nature is carried out rigidly. In the circle, as will appear, the two sets of functions are discharged by the same body of officials; in the district, the functions performed are wholly of a national, rather than a local, character; but in the province there are not merely two sets of functions but two entirely separate groups of officials. *288. Provincial Organs of the Central Administration.*--For the administration of affairs of general interest, such as police, education, and religion, the organs within the province are (1) the Oberpräsident, or chief president, appointed by the king to represent the central government in the management of all such matters as concern the entire province or reach beyond the jurisdiction of a single Regierungsbezirk administration,[394] and (2) the Provinzialrath, a provincial council consisting of, besides the Oberpräsident or his representative as presiding officer, one professional member appointed for an indefinite tenure by the Minister of the Interior and five ordinary citizen members elected, usually for a term of six years, by the provincial Ausschuss, or committee. The Oberpräsident is the immediate agent of the ministry, as is the prefect in France, though he is a more dignified and important functionary than his French counterpart. None the less, by virtue of the fact that most of the Oberpräsident's acts are valid only after having been accorded the assent of a body the majority of whose members are chosen within the province, the bureaucratic aspect of his position is subjected to a highly important limitation. [Footnote 394: Schulze, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Preussen, 63.] *289. Provincial Organs of Self-Government.*--By the side of this official group stands another, quite independent of it, for the control of affairs of purely local concern. Its organs comprise: (1) the Provinzialausschuss, or provincial committee, consisting of from seven to fourteen members elected for six years by the provincial (p. 270) Landtag, not necessarily, but almost invariably, from its own membership; (2) a Landeshauptmann or Landesdirektor, a salaried executive official elected by the Landtag for six or twelve years and confirmed by the crown; and (3) the Provinziallandtag, or provincial assembly. The Landeshauptmann is the executive, the Provinzialausschuss the consultative, organ of local self-administration; the Provinziallandtag is the provincial legislature. Members of the Landtag are elected for six years (one-half retiring every three years) by the diets of the circles, and they comprise, as a rule, local administrative officials of the circles, large landowners, and other well-to-do persons. Sessions are convoked by the crown at least every two years.[395] The Landtag's functions are comprehensive. They include the supervision of charities, highways, and industry; the voting of local taxes and the apportionment of them among the circles; the enactment of local laws; the custody of provincial property; the election of the Landeshauptmann and the members of the provincial committee; and the giving of advice on provincial matters at the request of the central government. The Landtag is in practice less independent, however, than this enumeration of powers might seem to imply. All of its legislation requires the assent of the king; most of its fiscal arrangements must be submitted to one or more of the ministers; and the body itself may be dissolved at any time by the crown. [Footnote 395: Towns of twenty-five thousand inhabitants or more may, by ministerial decree, be set off as separate circles. In such circles Landtag members are chosen by the municipal officials.] *290. The Government District.*--Each province is divided into a number of Regierungsbezirke, or districts, of which there are now thirty-five in the kingdom.[396] Unlike the province, the district exists for purposes of general administration only. It therefore has no organs of self-government. Its Regierung, or "administration," consists of a body of professional, salaried officials, appointed by the crown and having at its head the Regierungspräsident, who is, on the whole, the most important official in the Prussian local service. The subjects that fall within the jurisdiction of the functionaries of the district, including taxation, education, religion, forests, etc., are very comprehensive, and the work of administration is carried on chiefly through "colleges," or boards. For the management of police and the supervision of local bodies there exists a Bezirksausschuss, or district committee, composed of the Regierungspräsident, two (p. 271) other persons appointed by the crown, and four members elected by the Provinzialausschuss for six years. A very important function which this body has possessed since 1883 is that of sitting, under the presidency of one of its members appointed for his judicial qualifications, as the administrative court of the district.[397] [Footnote 396: The province of Schleswig-Holstein, however, contains but a single district. The largest number of districts in a province is six, in Hanover.] [Footnote 397: The immediate legal basis of the organization of the district is the Landesverwaltungsgesetz of 1883.] *291. The Circle.*--In the Kreis, or circle, as in the province, there exist two sharply distinguished sets of governmental functions, the general and the local; but for the administration of both there is a single hierarchy of officials. The number of circles within the kingdom is about 490, with populations varying from 20,000 to 80,000. Each includes all towns lying within it which have a population of less than 25,000. A town of over 25,000 is likely to be created, by ministerial order, a circle within itself, in which case the functions of government are exercised by the municipal authorities.[398] The essential organs of government within the Landkreise, or country circles, are three: the Landrath, the Kreisausschuss, and the Kreistag. The Landrath is appointed for life by the crown, on nomination frequently by the Kreistag, or diet. He superintends all administrative affairs, general and local, within the circle; fulfills the functions of chief of police; presides over the Kreisausschuss and Kreistag; and, in general, occupies within the circle the place occupied within the province by the Oberpräsident. Associated with him, and organized under his presidency, is the Kreisausschuss, or circle committee, composed of six unofficial members elected by the Kreistag for six years. In addition to its consultative functions, the Kreisausschuss sits as an administrative court of lowest grade. [Footnote 398: Approximately one hundred towns have been so constituted.] The Kreistag is the legislative body of the circle. Its members, numbering at least twenty-five, are elected for a term of six years by three Verbände, or colleges, the first being made up of the cities, the second of the large rural taxpayers, the third of a complicated group of rural interests in which the smaller taxpayers and delegates of the communal assemblies preponderate.[399] The Kreistag is a body of substantial importance. It chooses, directly or indirectly, all the elective officials of the circle, of the district, and of the province; it creates local officers and regulates their functions; it enacts legislation of a local nature; and it votes the taxes required for both its own and the provincial administration. [Footnote 399: For a fuller statement of the electoral system see Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 325.] *292. The Commune.*--The smallest of Prussian governmental units (p. 272) is the Gemeinde, or commune.[400] Of communes there are two distinct types, the rural (Landgemeinde) and the urban (Stadtgemeinde). The governments of the rural communes (some 36,000 in number) are so varied that any general description of them is virtually impossible. They rest largely upon local custom, though reduced at some points to a reasonable uniformity under regulating statutes such as were enacted for the communes of eight of the twelve provinces in the Landgemeinde-ordnung of 1891.[401] There is invariably an elective Schulze, or chief magistrate. He is assisted ordinarily by from two to six aldermen (Schöffen) or councillors. And there is generally a governing body (Gemeindevertretung), composed of elected representatives, when there are as many as forty qualified electors,--otherwise the people acting in the capacity of a primary assembly (Gemeindeversammlung),--for the decision of matters relating to local schools, churches, highways, and similar interests. It is to be observed, however, that most of the rural communes are so small that they have neither the financial resources nor the administrative ability to maintain a government of much virility. Such action as is taken within them is taken almost invariably with the approval of, and under the guidance of, the authorities of the circle, principally the Landrath.[402] [Footnote 400: The Amtsbezirk is essentially a judicial district. See p. 243. In the eastern provinces it is utilized also for purposes of police administration.] [Footnote 401: For an annotated edition of this important instrument see F. Keil, Die Landgemeinde-ordnung (Leipzig, 1890).] [Footnote 402: On Prussian local government see Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 308-333; F. J. Goodnow, Comparative Administrative Law (2d ed., New York, 1903), I., 295-338; and Ashley, Local and Central Government (London, 1906), 125-186, 263-287. Fuller accounts are contained in Schulze, Das preussische Staatsrecht, I., 436-538; K. Stengel, Organisation der preussischen Verwaltung, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1884); C. Bornhak, Preussisches Staatsrecht, 3 vols. (Freiburg, 1888-1890), and Hue de Grais, Handbuch der Verfassung und Verwaltung in Preussen, etc. (17th ed., Berlin, 1906). Texts of local government acts are printed in G. Anschutz, Organisations-gesetze der innern Verwaltung in Preussen (Berlin, 1897). The best description in English of Prussian municipal government is that in Munro, The Government of European Cities, 109-208. A good brief sketch is Ashley, Local and Central Government, 153-164. The best account of some length in German is H. Kappleman, Die Verfassung und Verwaltungsorganisation der preussischen Städte, in Schriften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik (Leipzig, 1905-1908), vols. 117-119. Mention may be made of A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Continental Europe (New York, 1895), Chaps. 5-6; E. J. James, Municipal Administration in Germany (Chicago, 1901); and Leclerc, La Vie municipale en Prusse, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, Oct., 1888. For ample bibliography see Munro, _op. cit._, 389-395.] In their governmental arrangements the urban communes exhibit more uniformity than do the rural, though occasionally among them there is wide variation. The usual organs comprise (1) the Stadtrath, (p. 273) an executive body consisting of a burgomaster and a number of assistants, elected for six, nine, or twelve years, or even for life, and (2) the Stadtverordnete, or municipal council, chosen for from three to six years, as a rule by an electorate identical with that which returns the members of the lower branch of the Prussian Landtag. CHAPTER XIV (p. 274) THE MINOR GERMAN STATES--ALSACE-LORRAINE *293. Essential Similarity of Political Institutions.*--The preponderance of Prussia among the twenty-five states comprised within the German Empire is such as to lend the governmental system of that kingdom an interest and an importance which attaches to the political arrangements of no one of the remaining members of the federation. No description of German governments would be adequate, none the less, which should ignore wholly the minor states. A number of these states, especially Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Saxony, are of considerable size, and the populations which are governed within them approximate, or exceed, the populations of certain wholly independent European nations, as Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, and several of the states of the southeast. It would be unnecessary, however, even were it possible, to describe in this place twenty-five substantially independent German governmental systems. Despite no inconsiderable variation, there are many fundamental features which they, or the majority of them, possess in common. All save three--Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck--are monarchies. All save two--Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz--have written constitutions[403] and elective legislative chambers. In every one of the monarchies the total lack of anything in the nature of ministerial responsibility to a parliamentary body leaves the way open for the maintenance of vigorous and independent royal authority, and it is not too much to say that in all of them, as is pre-eminently true in Prussia, the principle of autocracy lies at the root of both the organization and the methods of government. Local governmental arrangements and systems of administration of justice have been copied, in most instances, from Prussia. It will suffice to speak very briefly, first of a few of the more important monarchies, and subsequently of the city-state republics. [Footnote 403: The texts of these constitutions, in the form in which they existed in 1884, are printed in Stoerk, Handbuch der deutschen Verfassungen. Even in the Mecklenburgs there are certain written instruments by which the curiously mediæval system of government there prevailing is in a measure regulated.] I. THE MORE IMPORTANT MONARCHIES (p. 275) *294. Bavaria: Crown and Ministry.*--After Prussia, the most important of the German states, in point both of area and of population, is the kingdom of Bavaria. The constitution at present in operation in Bavaria was promulgated May 26, 1818, though it has undergone no slight modification through the process of amendment since that date.[404] The original instrument replaced a fundamental law of May, 1808, devised by the king of Bavaria in imitation of the constitution given some months before by Napoleon to the kingdom of Westphalia; and even the present frame of government bears unmistakable evidence of French influence. The functions and prerogatives of king and ministers are substantially what they are in Prussia.[405] In addition to the Ministry of State, consisting of the seven heads of departments, there is an advisory Staatsrath, or Council of State, comprising, besides the ministers, one prince of the royal blood and eight other members. In accordance with royal proclamation important acts of the government require the countersignature of all of the ministers. This, of itself, does not imply any larger measure of ministerial subordination than exists elsewhere in German governments, but it is worth observing that during a prolonged period, especially after 1869, there was persistent effort on the part of the Clericals to inject into the Bavarian system the principle of ministerial responsibility in the parliamentary sense of the phrase, and that although the attempt was by no means wholly successful, it is true that in Bavaria the ministers occupy in practice a somewhat less independent position than in other German monarchies. The device of interpellation, for example, not only exists in theory; it means something, as elsewhere in Germany it does not, in actual operation. If a minister will not answer an interpellation that is addressed to him, he is obliged by law at least to give reasons for his refusal.[406] [Footnote 404: Among amendments the most notable have been that of March 9, 1828, relating to the composition of the upper legislative chamber; those of June 4, 1848, and March 21, 1881, by which was modified the composition of the lower house; and that of April 8, 1906, whereby direct elections were substituted for indirect.] [Footnote 405: The crown is hereditary in the house of Wittelbach, by which it was acquired as early as 1180. From 1886, the king, Otto I., being insane, the powers of the sovereign were exercised by the prince regent Luitpold, until his death December 12, 1912.] [Footnote 406: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 338.] *295. The Bavarian Landtag.*--The Landtag of Bavaria consists of two chambers. The upper, designated officially as the Kammer der Reichsrate ("chamber of the council of the Empire"), is composed of princes (p. 276) of the royal family, crown dignitaries, high ecclesiastics, hereditary nobles, and life members appointed by the crown--in all, some eighty-five to ninety persons. The lower chamber, or Abgeordnetenkammer, consists of 163 members. By law of 1881 the class system of voting in Bavaria was replaced by an equal suffrage extended to all males paying a direct tax. Elections continued to be indirect until 1906, when provision was made for elections by direct and secret ballot.[407] Deputies are chosen for a term of six years and are apportioned in such a manner that, normally, there is one for every 38,000 people. Every male inhabitant is entitled to vote who at the time of the election has completed his twenty-fifth year, has been a Bavarian citizen during at least one year, and has paid to the state a direct tax during at least the same period. The Landtag must be summoned not less frequently than once every three years.[408] The budget is made up on a two-year basis, so that sessions are held, in point of fact, biennially. [Footnote 407: Grassman, Die bayerische Landtagswahlgesetz vom 8 April, 1906, in Jahrbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart, I., 242. A law of April 15, 1908, introduced the principle of proportional representation in Bavarian municipal elections.] [Footnote 408: M. von Seydel, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Bayern, (Freiburg, 1888), in Marquardsen's Handbuch; E. Junod, La Bavière et l'Empire allemande, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, Apr. 15, 1892.] *296. Saxony: Crown and Ministry.*--Third among the states of the Empire in population, though fifth in area, is the kingdom of Saxony. The present Saxon constitution was promulgated September 4, 1831, under the influence of the revolutionary movements of 1830. By it a monarchy governed under a mediæval system of estates was converted into a monarchy governed, at least nominally, under a modern representative régime. In point of fact, however, the inauguration of constitutionalism tempered the actual authority of the monarch very slightly. The king is still in every sense the supreme authority within the state.[409] He appoints and dismisses ministers at will, issues ordinances with the force of law, and exercises far-reaching control over the processes of legislation. Upon the failure of the chambers to vote supplies which are held to be essential, he may even collect and expend revenues for a year on no authority apart from his own. For purposes of administrative supervision there are ministers of War, Finance, Justice, Foreign Affairs, the Interior, and Education, and the ministers collectively comprise a Gesammt-Ministerium, or ministry of state. Measures of the crown are countersigned by a minister; but there is no means by which a minister may be forced out of office against the will of the (p. 277) king by a hostile legislative chamber. [Footnote 409: The crown is hereditary in the Albertine line of the house of Wettin, with reversion to the Ernestine line, of which the duke of Saxe-Weimar is now the head. The present sovereign is Frederick August III.] *297. The Saxon Legislative Chambers.*--The Saxon legislature (Standeversammlung) consists of two houses. The upper, designated simply as the First Chamber, is a composite body consisting of forty-six members, in addition to a variable number of adult princes of the royal house. The membership comprises, principally, (1) important prelates; (2) certain university officials; (3) proprietors of great estates, twelve elected and ten appointed by the crown for life: (4) the first magistrates of Dresden and Leipzig; (5) six burgomasters of other cities, designated by the king; and (6) five nobles named for life by free choice of the king. The lower house consists of ninety-one deputies, of whom forty-three are elected by the towns and forty-eight by the rural communes. At one time members were chosen by direct secret ballot under a general and equal suffrage based upon a small tax qualification. Fear of socialism led, however, to the adoption, in 1896, of a new system under which the tax qualification was retained, indirect elections were substituted for direct and public voting for the secret ballot, and a three-class scheme was brought into operation which threw political preponderance into the hands of the well-to-do scarcely less effectively than does the three-class arrangement in Prussia. After prolonged agitation the reactionary measure of 1896 was replaced by a comprehensive electoral law of May 5, 1909 by which direct and secret voting was re-established and the interests of property were sought to be safeguarded by a newly devised system of plural votes. As the law now stands (1) all males who have attained the age of twenty-five and who pay direct taxes are entitled to one vote; (2) men owning two hectares of land, or paying a tax upon an annual income of 1,250, 1,400, or 1,600 marks, according, respectively, as such income is drawn from land, public office, or general sources, and men who have passed certain examinations, are entitled to two votes; (3) voters paying taxes yearly, as above, upon an income of 1,600, 1,900, or 2,200 marks, or who possess four hectares of land, or who as teachers, engineers, artists, or writers earn an income of 1,900 marks, possess three votes; (4) persons paying a tax, as above, on an income of 2,200, 2,500, or 2,800 marks, or owning eight hectares of land, have four votes; and (5) every person belonging to the first, second, or third of these classes is allotted an additional vote when he attains the age of fifty, the total number of votes possessed by one elector never exceeding four. Curiously enough, at the first elections held under this law, in October, 1909, the socialists, (p. 278) who previously were represented by but a single member, gained twenty-five seats, or upwards of a third of the entire number. The chambers must be summoned by the king at least once in two years. Both may propose measures, but in practice leadership in the business of legislation is left very largely to the king and ministry.[410] [Footnote 410: O. Mayer, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Sachsen (Tübingen, 1909).] *298. Württemberg: Crown and Ministry.*--The constitution of the kingdom of Württemberg was promulgated, following prolonged political controversy, September 25, 1819. At the head of the state is the king, whose powers are in some respects even larger than those belonging to other German sovereigns.[411] It is required that all political acts, except the bestowing of titles of nobility, shall be performed only with the sanction in writing of a minister; but, by reason of the king's absolute control of the ministry, this constitutes no invasion of the crown's essential prerogative. Of ministers there are six. These collectively comprise the Ministry of State, and they, together with certain appointive councillors, likewise constitute the Geheimerrath, or Privy Council, which the sovereign consults at pleasure. [Footnote 411: The reigning sovereign is William II.] *299. The Assembly of Estates: Proportional Representation.*--The legislative body of Württemberg is known as the Standeversammlung, or Assembly of Estates. The upper chamber,--the Standesherren, or House of Lords,--consists of princes of the royal family; other princes, under varying conditions; knights; ecclesiastical dignitaries; and members appointed by the crown, in part according to stipulated conditions and in part without reference to any necessary consideration of birth, wealth, or religious affiliation. The Abgeordnetenhaus, or House of Deputies, consists of ninety-two members chosen for a term of six years, as follows: one from each of the administrative divisions (Oberamtsbezirke); six from Stuttgart and one from each of six other important towns; nine from the Neckar and Jagst circle; and eight from the Black Forest and Danube circle. Election is by direct and secret ballot, on a basis of universal suffrage for males over twenty-five years of age. By constitutional amendment of July 16, 1906, there was introduced a scheme of proportional representation under which the six deputies of Stuttgart and the seventeen of the Neckar and Jagst and the Black Forest and Danube circles are distributed among the several political groups in approximate proportion to the numerical strength attained by these groups at the polls. This system, an innovation in Germany, was tested in the elections of December, 1906, and January, 1907, and was by most persons adjudged satisfactory.[412] [Footnote 412: J. Fontaine, La représentation proportionnelle en Württemberg, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Jan., 1911; ibid., La représentation proportionnelle en Württemberg (Paris, 1909).] The remaining sixty-nine representatives are chosen still in (p. 279) single member districts. Prior to the amendment of 1906, the chamber was made up of seventy members chosen popularly and of twenty-three who sat as representatives of privileged or corporate interests--thirteen chosen by the landowning nobility, nine dignitaries of the Protestant and Catholic churches, together with the Chancellor of the University of Tübingen.[413] [Footnote 413: G. Combes de Lestrade, Monarchies de l'Empire allemand, 181; L. Gaupp, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Württemberg (Freiburg and Tübingen, 1884), in Marquardsen's Handbuch; W. Bazille, Das Staats-und Verwaltungsrecht des Königreichs Württemberg (Hanover, 1908), in Bibliothek des Oeffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart. The monograph of Gaupp, revised by him in 1895 and by K. Göz in 1904, has been re-issued as essentially a new volume by Göz (Tübingen, 1908).] *300. The Government of Baden.*--In July, 1808, a constitutional edict was promulgated in Baden in imitation of the fundamental law which Napoleon in the previous year had bestowed upon the kingdom of Westphalia. August 22, 1818, this instrument was replaced by the constitution at present in operation. Executive power is vested in the grand-duke, with the customary provision for ministerial countersignature. Legislative power is shared by the monarch with a Landstände of two houses. Under a liberalizing law of August 24, 1904, the upper chamber consists of princes of the reigning family, nobles occupying hereditary seats, members appointed for four years by the grand-duke, and representatives of a variety of ecclesiastical, educational, and other corporate interests. The lower house is composed of seventy-three representatives elected for four years (twenty-four by the towns and forty-nine by the rural districts) by male citizens over twenty-five years of age. Direct election was substituted for indirect in 1904. Half of the membership of the lower chamber is renewed every two years. In Baden there has been rather more progress than in the majority of German states toward liberal and responsible government.[414] [Footnote 414: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 345; K. Schenkel, Das Staatsrecht des Grossherzogthums Baden (Freiburg and Tübingen, 1884), in Marquardsen's Handbuch.] II. THE LESSER MONARCHIES AND THE CITY REPUBLICS *301. Monarchical Variations.*--With relatively unimportant exceptions, the governments of the remaining seventeen German monarchies exhibit features substantially similar to those of the governments that (p. 280) have been described. In each of the states, except the two grand-duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz, there is a written constitution, promulgated, in most instances, during the second or third quarter of the nineteenth century.[415] Executive power in each is vested in the monarch; legislative power in the monarch and a Landtag, or assembly. The assembly consists ordinarily of a single chamber, varying in membership from twelve to forty-eight; and in most instances the members are chosen, at least in part, on a basis of manhood suffrage. In some states, as the principality of Lippe, the three-class electoral system prevails; and elections are still very commonly indirect. The trend toward liberalism is, however, all but universal, and within recent years numbers of important changes, e.g., the substitution of direct for indirect elections in Oldenburg and in Saxe-Weimar in 1909, have been brought about. In the curiously intertwined grand-duchies of Mecklenburg the common Landtag remains a typically mediæval assemblage of estates, based, in the main, on the tenure of land.[416] [Footnote 415: The dates of the original promulgation of constitutions at present in operation are: Saxe-Weimar, 1816; Hesse, 1820; Saxe-Meiningen, 1829; Saxe-Altenburg, 1832; Brunswick, 1832; Lippe, 1836; Oldenburg, 1852; Waldeck, 1852; Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1852; Reuss Jüngerer Linie, 1852 and 1856; Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt, 1854; Schwartzburg-Sonderhausen, 1857; Anhalt, 1859; Reuss Älterer Linie, 1867; and Schaumburg-Lippe, 1868.] [Footnote 416: Repeated attempts to bring about a modernization of the Mecklenburg constitutional system have failed. Several times the liberal elements in the Reichstag have carried a proposal that to the Imperial constitution there should be added a clause requiring that in every state of the Empire there shall be an assembly representative of the whole people. On the ground that such an amendment would comprise an admission that the constitutions of the states are subject to revision at the hand of the Empire, the Bundesrath has invariably rejected the proposal. In 1907 the grand-duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin inaugurated a movement for political reform, and in 1908 there was drafted a constitution providing for the establishment of a Landtag whose members should be chosen in part by the landed, industrial, professional, and official classes and in part by manhood suffrage. Late in 1909 the Ritterschaft (i.e., the estate comprising owners of knights' fees) rejected the proposal, as, indeed, it had rejected similar ones on earlier occasions.] *302. Hamburg.*--The three free cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck are survivals of the ancient Hanseatic League. All have republican forms of government, differing in only minor details. The constitution of Hamburg came into operation January 1, 1861, and was revised in 1879 and in 1906. The principal organs of government are the Senate and the Bürgerschaft, or House of Burgesses. The Senate consists of eighteen members elected for life by the House of Burgesses, but in accordance with an indirect method so devised that the Senate itself exercises a preponderating influence in the elections. A senator (p. 281) is privileged to retire, if he so desires, at the end of a six-year period, or at the age of seventy. Of the eighteen, half must have studied finance or law, while of the remaining nine at least seven must belong to the class of merchants. The House of Burgesses is composed of 160 members, elected for six years by voters whose qualifications are based upon property, taxpaying, or position. An electoral law of March 5, 1906, introduced the principle of proportional representation, but failed to break the dominance of the well-to-do classes in the chamber. Half of the membership is renewed triennially. The service is unpaid and, under ordinary circumstances, compulsory. The larger portion of the executive authority is vested in the Senate. After the fashion of the prince of a monarchical state, this body appoints officials, designates and instructs the delegate in the Bundesrath, issues ordinances, and supervises administration.[417] One senator is placed at the head of each of the nine executive departments. In matters of legislation the powers of the Senate and of the Bürgerschaft are concurrent. Both bodies possess the right of legislative initiative, and all laws, treaties, and fiscal arrangements must receive the assent of both. The lower chamber elects and maintains a Bürgerausschuss, or Committee of the Burgesses, consisting of twenty-five members, whose business it is to watch over the proceedings of the Senate and the administration of the laws. The sessions of both Senate and Bürgerschaft are irregular but frequent. *303. Lübeck and Bremen.*--The government of Lübeck rests upon a constitution proclaimed December 30, 1848, but revised in later years upon a number of occasions. The system is essentially similar to that in operation in Hamburg, the principal differences being that in Lübeck the full membership of the Bürgerschaft (120) is elected by the citizens directly and that the Bürgerausschuss, of thirty members, performs larger and more independent functions. The constitution of Bremen dates from March 5, 1849, but was revised in 1854, 1875, and three times subsequently. As in Lübeck, the Bürgerschaft, of 150 members, is elected by all of the citizens, but under a class system according to which citizens who have studied at a university return fourteen members; the merchants, forty; the mechanics and manufacturers, twenty; and all other citizens who have taken the burgher oath, the remaining seventy-six. The Senate consists of fourteen members. [Footnote 417: The presiding officer of the Senate is a burgomaster, chosen for one year by the senators from their own number. The burgomaster as such, however, possesses no administrative power.] III. ALSACE-LORRAINE (p. 282) *304. Original Problem of Organization.*--By the terms of the Peace of Frankfort, May 10, 1871, France ceded to Germany the province of Alsace and a portion of that of Lorraine--an aggregate of 5,605 square miles of hotly disputed territory whose population, while in considerable measure German, was none the less predominantly French. The position assigned the newly acquired territory within the Empire was anomalous. It was determined by two principal considerations: first, the fact that the districts comprised conquered territory inhabited by a discontented people and liable both to domestic disorder and foreign invasion; and, second, the further fact that the newly established Empire consisted of a federation of semi-autonomous states, into which subordinate territory acquired by war could not easily be made to fit. The annexed lands might conceivably have been erected, in 1871, into the twenty-sixth state of the Empire; but in no quarter was this policy so much as suggested. They might have been incorporated with one of the existing states, or divided among two or more of them; but this would have involved friction at a time when the stability of the new régime was not yet assured. The only course that to the statesmen and jurists of the day appeared feasible was to hold the new territories as the joint property of the states, under the sovereign control of the Imperial Government; and the arrangement hit upon in the execution of this policy was perpetuated, with modification only of administrative machinery, from 1871 until almost the present day. *305. The Imperial Basis of Government.*--Prior to the enactment of the controverted Alsace-Lorraine Constitution Bill of 1911 Alsace-Lorraine was not a member of the German federation, but was, on the contrary, a mere dependency--a Reichsland, or Imperial territory. Beginning with a virtual dictatorship on the part of the Emperor, established under act of June 9, 1871, the governmental arrangements within the territory passed through a number of stages of elaboration. In the main, the organs of government employed until 1911, and a large proportion of those still in operation, were created, or perpetuated, by the constitutional statute of July 4, 1879. By this instrument the sovereignty of the territories was vested specifically in the Empire; the exercise of that sovereignty was vested in the Kaiser, acting alone or in conjunction with the Bundesrath. The Kaiser was represented personally at Strassburg, as he still is, by a Statthalter, or governor-general, whose powers were such as the Emperor might from time to time intrust to him. At Strassburg (p. 283) also was a ministry, with a secretary of state at the head, and with under-secretaries, appointed by the Kaiser, in charge of four departments; likewise a council of state, which was a purely advisory body made up of the secretary and under-secretaries, certain judicial officials, and from eight to twelve members specially appointed by the Kaiser for a term of three years. *306. The Landesausschuss.*--Such privileges of self-government as were possessed by the inhabitants of the territory arose from the peculiar and complicated arrangements which were devised for legislation. In 1874 an Imperial decree called into being a Landesausschuss, or Territorial Committee. This body consisted originally of thirty members--ten elected in each of the three districts of Upper Alsace, Lower Alsace, and Lorraine. Its function at the outset was merely to give expert advice on subjects pertaining to local legislation and taxation. By law of 1877, however, it was intrusted with power to initiate legislation in matters pertaining solely to the territory. Measures of any sort designed for Alsace-Lorraine exclusively were enabled to be carried through by enactment in the Territorial Committee, provided they received the assent of the Bundesrath and were duly promulgated by the Emperor. The Committee was enlarged until it consisted of fifty-eight members, thirty-four of whom were elected by the assemblies of the three districts from their own membership, four others being chosen by the communal councils of Strassburg, Metz, Kolmar, and Mülhausen, and twenty elected by indirect suffrage from the twenty-three circles into which the territories were divided. *307. Legislative Processes.*--Several conditions, however, operated to impose upon what might appear a fairly liberal system some very serious limitations. In the first place, there was no possibility of legislation which was wholly within the control of the inhabitants of the territory. The laws applicable solely to Prussia are made exclusively in Prussia, by Prussian authorities, and in like manner those of every other one of the confederated states. But those of Alsace-Lorraine, while they might be enacted in a provincial legislative chamber, acquired no validity until they should have been approved by the Empire through its agents, the Bundesrath and the Kaiser. In the second place, the method of legislation which has been mentioned did not occupy the field alone. With insignificant exceptions, any measure which might be enacted in the fashion described might be enacted in either of two other ways, in neither of which did the inhabitants of the territory have any appreciable influence. A measure might take the form of a simple decree of (p. 284) the Kaiser with the consent of the Bundesrath and Reichstag; or, in the case of an ordinance having the provisory force of law, it might be promulgated by the Kaiser with the consent of the Bundesrath alone. The fact that in practice the Territorial Committee ordinarily did participate in the legislative process was largely offset by the exceeding cumbersomeness and indirectness of the system. The normal procedure in the making of a law for the territory involved at least eight steps; (1) the _projet_ was drawn up by the Statthalter; (2) it was approved by the Council of State at Strassburg; (3) it was transmitted, through the Imperial Chancellor, to the Kaiser; (4) if he approved, it was sent to Strassburg to receive the Statthalter's countersignature; (5) it was laid before the Bundesrath, the members of which, being but delegates, ascertained from their respective sovereigns how they should vote; (6) if all had gone well, the Territorial Committee, at Strassburg, passed the measure through the usual three readings; (7) it was returned to the Bundesrath again to be approved; and (8) it was promulgated by the Emperor--provided he did not see fit to veto and withhold it, as he had an entire right to do. Even if such roundabout law-making were to be considered in itself satisfactory there remained the disquieting condition that the Territorial Committee rested on no basis more substantial than a body of Imperial decrees capable at any time of being altered, or even revoked. Not merely was it altogether lacking in the independence of action enjoyed by the diets of the federated states; its very existence was precarious. *308. The Movement for Autonomy.*--Throughout a prolonged period there was in the territory insistent demand for the grant of a more independent status, to involve the eventual placing of Alsace-Lorraine on a footing of constitutional equality with Saxony, Bavaria, and the other confederated states. Within very few years after the annexation there sprang up, within the Territorial Committee first of all, a group of "autonomists," led by the secretary of state Baron Zorn von Bulach, who insisted in season and out upon statehood for the conquered territory, and within a decade the campaign gained momentum until it enlisted the support of men of all political faiths and became the principal rallying issue of Alsatian sentiment and enthusiasm. Until within recent years the tension of the international situation was alone sufficient to restrain the Imperial Government from according the demand favorable consideration. With the passing of time the danger of international conflict in which Alsace-Lorraine should be involved was, however, perceptibly diminished, and the way was to this extent cleared for a readjustment of the territory's anomalous status on the merits of the purely administrative and constitutional questions involved. The programme of the autonomists, as it finally assumed shape, (p. 285) embraced four fundamental points: (1) the elevation of Alsace-Lorraine to membership in the German Empire, with all the rights and immunities commonly possessed by existing members; (2) the vesting of the executive authority in an independent head of the state, whether a king of a newly established line, a regent appointed for life, or even a president of a republic; (3) the establishment within the state of a full-fledged legislative body, with powers equivalent to those exercised by the Landtags of the existing states; and (4) the elimination of Kaiser, Bundesrath, and Reichstag from all legislation which concerns Alsace-Lorraine exclusively. Taking their stand on the situation as it was, and accepting the union with Germany with such grace as they could muster and assuming that it is to be permanent, the exponents of autonomy proposed to make the best of a state of things not of their choosing. *309. The Government Bill of 1910.*--Under pressure of persistent public demand, the Imperial Government prepared an elaborate measure upon the subject, which, after having been approved by the Bundesrath, was submitted to the Reichstag, December 17, 1910. Although Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg had declared unreservedly for reform, the Government's proposals fell far short of the demands of the autonomist leaders. The cardinal features of the Imperial programme, were, in brief: (1) Alsace-Lorraine should remain a dependency of the Empire; (2) sovereign authority therein should continue to be exercised by the Kaiser, as the representative of the states, through his accustomed agent, the Statthalter at Strassburg; (3) the legislative functions of the Bundesrath and Reichstag in matters pertaining exclusively to Alsace-Lorraine should be terminated; and (4) such legislation should thereafter be enacted by a bicameral diet at Strassburg. The members of the upper chamber of this diet, not to exceed thirty-six, were in part to sit by _ex-officio_ right, but some were to be named by chambers of commerce and other professional and business organizations, and a maximum of one-half might be appointed by the Emperor, on nomination of the Bundesrath. The sixty members of the lower house were to be chosen by manhood suffrage, but electors over thirty-five years of age were to have two votes, and those over forty-five three. *310. The Bill Amended and Adopted, 1911.*--By those whose object was the procuring of statehood for Alsace-Lorraine, this plan was pronounced inadmissible. It did not alter the legal status of the territory; neither, it was alleged, did it give promise of increased local independence in law-making or administration. Conservatives, on the other hand, objected to the provision which was made for manhood suffrage. After being debated in the Reichstag the measure was (p. 286) referred to a special committee, by which amendments were reported to the effect that the territory should be created a state of the Empire and the Statthalter should be appointed for life. The second of these amendments the Government refused positively to accept, but it was agreed finally that the territory should be recognized as substantially a state of the Empire, and, as such, should be allowed three votes in the Bundesrath. Since 1879 the Statthalter had been authorized to send to the Bundesrath four "commissioners" who might speak when the subject under consideration touched the affairs of Alsace-Lorraine, but might not vote. Since under the new arrangement the three members representing Alsace-Lorraine were to be appointed and instructed by the Statthalter, who is himself practically the delegate of the king of Prussia, the Bundesrath insisted upon and obtained the special stipulation (1) that the votes of Alsace-Lorraine should not be counted in favor of the Prussian view of any question except when Prussia should be able to procure a majority without such votes and (2) that they should not be counted for or against any proposal to amend the Imperial constitution. The revised bill was passed in the Reichstag, May 26, 1911, and in accordance with a decree of August 26 the new constitution was put in operation September 1. *311. The Governmental System To-day.*--Supreme executive authority is lodged, as before, in the Emperor. It is exercised, in the main, by the Statthalter, who is appointed by, and holds office at the pleasure of, the Emperor. In the Statthalter are vested all the rights and privileges in Alsace-Lorraine that hitherto have been held and exercised by the Imperial Chancellor. He appoints and instructs the plenipotentiaries in the Bundesrath, and Imperial orders and decrees have legal effect only when signed by him. All laws require the assent of the Emperor and the two chambers of the diet, and the budget of the year must be laid first before the lower chamber and must be accepted or rejected in its entirety by the upper one. The Emperor has the right to summon, to adjourn, and to dissolve the chambers simultaneously. Members of the popular branch are elected by direct and secret ballot and majority vote by all male German citizens twenty-five years of age who have resided in Alsace-Lorraine at least three years; except that a residence of one year qualifies teachers and occupants of official posts. The plural voting proposal contained in the Government bill of 1910 was abandoned. The first chamber elected under the new system--that chosen in October, 1911--contained twenty-five Centre members, eleven Socialists, ten members of the National Alsace-Lorraine group,[418] eight Liberal Democrats, and (p. 287) six Independents. The independent attitude promptly assumed by the body elicited from the Emperor, in May, 1912, a threat that the new constitution might be abrogated and Alsace-Lorraine incorporated with Prussia. The incident provoked a storm of criticism, and, outside the rabid Pan-German press, the Imperial pronouncement was commented upon everywhere adversely.[419] [Footnote 418: The party which had contended most vigorously for Alsatian autonomy.] [Footnote 419: On the organization of Alsace-Lorraine prior to 1911 see Howard, The German Empire, Chap. 10; Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches, §§ 67-69; P. Gerber, La condition de l'Alsace-Lorraine dans l'Empire allemand (Lille, 1906), and L'Administration en Alsace-Lorraine, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Oct.-Dec, 1909. On the problem of reform and the legislation of 1911 see R. Henry, La question d'Alsace-Lorraine, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Feb. 1 and March 16, 1904; P. Braun, Alsace-Lorraine--La réforme de la constitution, ibid., Nov. 16, 1905, and Jan. 1, 1906; Alsace-Lorraine en 1908, ibid., March 1, 1909; Alsace-Lorraine--les préludes d'une lutte nationale, ibid., April 16, 1910; La constitution d'Alsace-Lorraine, ibid., March 16, 1911; A. Wetterlé, L'Autonomie de Alsace-Lorraine, in _Le Correspondant_, Aug. 25, 1910, La nouvelle loi constitutionnelle de l'Alsace-Lorraine, ibid., June 10, 1911, and Les élections en Alsace-Lorraine, ibid., Nov. 25, 1911; Eccard, L'Autonomie de l'Alsace-Lorraine, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Nov. 10, 1910: G. Bruck, Die Reform der Verfassung von Elsass Lothringen, in _Annalen des deutschen Reichs_, 1911, I; and P. Heitz, La loi constitutionnelle de l'Alsace-Lorraine du 31 mai, 1911, in _Revue du Droit Public_, July-Sept., 1911, containing French translations of the documents. See also _Annual Register_ for 1911, 328-332.] PART III.--FRANCE (p. 289) CHAPTER XV CONSTITUTIONS SINCE 1789 I. A CENTURY OF POLITICAL INSTABILITY Among European states of the first order there is but a single republic. In Great Britain the conspicuous success with which monarchy has been tempered with democracy has left the partisans of the republican style of government slender ground upon which to stand. Russia has as yet but partially emerged from a political status in which monarchy is both natural and inevitable. Germany and Italy, in days comparatively recent, achieved nationality through processes absolutely conditioned upon monarchical leadership. And it is all but inconceivable that the heterogeneous nationalities of Austria-Hungary should thus long have been held together by any force less tangible and commanding than the personality of a common sovereign. Although in some of these instances the functions ordinarily associated with monarchy are more nominal than actual, the fact remains that in no one of the greater European states, save France, has it as yet been found expedient, or possible, to dispense with royalty as an agency of public authority. *312. The Multiplicity of Constitutions.*--The chain of circumstances by which the people of France have been brought to their present republican form of government constitutes one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of modern Europe. After centuries of governmental centralization, under conditions which enabled monarchy to do its best, and its worst, there came the gigantic disruption of 1789, inaugurating a series of constitutional changes by which was imparted to the political history of the French nation in the nineteenth century a more unsettled character than that exhibited by the public economy of any other European state. France to-day is governed under her eleventh constitution since the fall of the Bastille. All but one of the eleven have been actually in operation, during a longer or a shorter period. But, prior to the fundamental law at present in effect, no one of these instruments attained its twentieth year. Once having cut loose from her ancient moorings, the nation became through many decades the plaything of every current (p. 290) that swept the political sea. It is only within our own generation that she appears definitely to have righted herself for a prolonged and steady voyage. The constitutional system of the Third Republic is a product, not of orderly evolution, but of disruption, experimentation, compromise. It represents a precarious balance which has been struck between those forces of radicalism and conservatism, of progress and reaction, for whose eternal conflict France pre-eminently has furnished a theatre since 1789. Its connection with the remoter past is very much less direct and fundamental than is that of the governmental system of England, Russia, Austria-Hungary, or the Scandinavian states. At certain points, however, as will appear, this connection is vital. And the relation of the constitution of 1871-1875 to the several instruments by which it was more immediately preceded is essential to be observed, because this body of fundamental law comprises but the latest in a series of devices through which France since 1789 has sought orderliness and stability in public affairs. Some of these devices were shaped under the preponderating influence of radical democracy, some under that of monarchical reaction; but all are of interest and importance. For the purpose in hand it will be sufficient to review briefly the principal aspects of the several constitutional systems whose devising or operation has contributed with some directness to the political institutions and experience of the France of to-day. II. THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC ERA *313. The Constitution of 1791.*--During the decade which elapsed between the outbreak of the Revolution and the establishment of the Consulate there were in actual operation in France two successive constitutions: that of September 3, 1791, which was in effect subverted by the uprising of August 10, 1792, and that of 5 Fructidor of the Year III. (August 22, 1795), terminated by the _coup d'état_ of 18 Brumaire of the Year VIII. (November 9, 1799). The instrument of 1791, essentially a compilation of measures voted during the years 1789-1791, was prepared by a committee appointed by the National Assembly, September 15, 1789.[420] It was shaped, in the main, by men who were desirous of preserving the form while destroying the substance of monarchy. At the head of the state was allowed to remain the king, shorn, however, of many of his accustomed prerogatives and obliged to exercise under stringent restraint the few that were left him. "King of the French," he henceforth was to be, "by the grace of God and the will of the nation." The legislative body (_Corps (p. 291) législatif_) was made to consist of a single chamber whose 745 members, chosen for a two-year term according to a system of indirect suffrage, were distributed among the eighty-three newly created departments upon the three-fold basis of extent, population, and contribution of direct taxes.[421] Only male citizens who had attained the age of twenty-five, and whose annual payment of direct taxes was the equivalent of three days' labor, were entitled to participate in the choice of the electors, by whom, in turn, were chosen the deputies. The powers of the legislative body were ample. In respect to measures generally, the king possessed only a suspensive veto; that is to say, any measure passed by three successive legislatures acquired, without the royal sanction, the force of law. Fiscal measures might not be vetoed at all. The king was given no power to prorogue or to dissolve the legislative chamber, and without the assent of that body no proclamation of war, and no treaty, was valid. To it the ministers in charge of the six executive departments were made absolutely responsible. In conformity with prevailing ideas of the sovereignty of the people and the separation of powers, provision was made that all judges should be elected popularly, as also all local administrative authorities.[422] [Footnote 420: A constitutional committee of five had been appointed the previous July 14; but, its recommendation proving unacceptable to the Assembly, it had resigned, September 11.] [Footnote 421: Of the whole number of deputies, 247 were apportioned according to departmental areas and 249 according each to population and tax quotas.] [Footnote 422: The texts of all French constitutions and fundamental laws since 1789 are printed in several collections, of which the best is L. Duguit et H. Monnier, Les constitutions et les principales lois politiques de la France depuis 1789 (Paris, 1898). Other serviceable collections are F. Hélie, Les constitutions de la France (Paris, 1880) and E. Pierre, Organisation des pouvoirs publics; recueil des lois constitutionnelles et organiques (Paris, 1902). For English versions see F. M. Anderson, The Constitutions and other Select Documents illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907 (2d ed., Minneapolis, 1908). The various constitutions are excellently summarized in M. Block, Dictionnaire général de la politique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1884), I., 494-518. For the text of the constitution of 1791 see Duguit et Monnier, 1-35; Hélie, 268-294; Anderson, 58-95. For summary, Block, I., 494-497. Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 253-269; Cambridge Modern History, VIII., Chap. 7.] *314. The Constitution of the Year I. (1793).*--The constitution of 1791 was in operation rather less than a twelvemonth. The _Corps législatif_ elected under it, after precipitating war with Austria, gave way before the rising demand for the abolition of monarchy, called into being a constituent convention of 782 members, and voted its own dissolution.[423] September 21, 1792, the Convention met and decreed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic.[424] Mindful for the time of the purpose of its (p. 292) creation, the new assembly appointed, October 11, a committee of nine to which was intrusted the task of drafting a republican constitution. February 15, 1793, the committee reported, and June 24 the Convention adopted an ultra-republican frame of government, the principal features of which were an executive council consisting of twenty-four members chosen by the legislative body from candidates named by the secondary electors of the departments; a unicameral _Corps législatif_ chosen indirectly by manhood suffrage for one year, with power to enact "decrees," but only to propose "laws"; and an arrangement whereby projected laws were to be communicated to primary assemblies of citizens to be voted upon after the principle of the referendum.[425] [Footnote 423: The members of the Convention were elected by manhood suffrage, one of the last acts of the Legislative Body having been the repeal of the tax qualification required by the constitution of 1791.] [Footnote 424: September 22 was reckoned the first day of the Year I. of French liberty, and the fundamental law of June 24, 1793, was known as the constitution of the Year I. For an illuminating sketch of the rise of the republic see H. A. L. Fisher, The Republican Tradition in Europe (New York, 1911), Chap. 4.] [Footnote 425: Text in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 66-78; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 376-384; Anderson, Constitutions, 171-184. Summary in Block, Dictionnaire Général, 497-498.] *315. The Constitution of the Year III. (1795).*--By reason of the intensity of party strife within the Convention, and the critical condition of affairs generally, the constitution of 1793, although duly ratified by the people, was never put in operation. On the basis of a decree of December 4, 1793, the Convention maintained through upwards of two years a revolutionary provisional government, and when, finally, in October, 1795, the body passed out of existence, it left behind it in the Constitution of the Year III. an instrument of government essentially different from the proposed instrument of 1793. The Constitution of the Year III. was framed under a hurried order of the Convention by a committee of eleven. The Convention adopted the committee's plan with but few modifications, and when the project was submitted to a popular vote it was approved by the overwhelming majority of 1,057,390 to 49,997. September 23, 1795, the new frame of government was solemnly promulgated. The instrument of 1795, like that of 1791, was introduced by a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in which were stated succinctly the fundamental principles of the Revolution. Legislative power was henceforth to be vested in two chambers conjointly--a Council of Five Hundred and a Council of Elders--the members of which should be chosen by the same electors, but under differing conditions of eligibility. The term of members of both chambers was fixed at three years, and one-third of the membership was renewable annually. The franchise was broader than under the (p. 293) constitution of 1791, being extended now to all citizens over twenty-one years of age who were able to read and write and who followed a trade or were liable to direct taxation; but the earlier system of indirect election by means of electoral colleges was retained. Upon the lower chamber alone was conferred the right of initiating legislation. The Elders, whose number was fixed at 250, might approve or reject, but were not permitted to amend, any measure submitted to them. Executive power was vested in a Directory consisting of five members chosen for a term of five years, one member retiring annually. Directors were selected by the Council of Elders from a double quota of nominees offered by the Council of Five Hundred. Aside from its creation of a plural, republican executive, the most notable feature of the constitution was its provision for the establishment of a bicameral legislative system, until now generally opposed by French reformers.[426] [Footnote 426: For the text of the constitution of 1795 see Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 78-118; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 436-466; Anderson, Constitutions, 212-254. Summary in Block, Dictionnaire Général, 498-500. Cambridge Modern History, VIII., Chap. 13; G. Dodu, Le parlementarisme et les parlementaires sous la Révolution, 1789-1799; origines du régime représentatif en France (Paris, 1911); Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. 5.] *316. The Constitution of the Year VIII. (1799): Electoral System.*--The constitution of the Year III. continued in operation from October, 1795, to Napoleon's _coup d'état_ of 18 Brumaire of the Year VIII. (November 9, 1799). In the course of a month and a half following the event mentioned there was drawn up a new fundamental law, prepared in the first instance largely by Napoleon and Sieyès, put into final shape by two commissions composed each of twenty-five members of the old Councils, and subsequently ratified by popular vote.[427] Amended from time to time by important organic enactments, the Constitution of the Year VIII. (December 13, 1799) comprised the fundamental law under which Napoleon ruled France until his abdication in 1814. [Footnote 427: In favor of the new constitution there were cast 3,011,007 votes; against it, 1,562.] The new instrument, in ninety-five articles, was much briefer than the one which it replaced,[428] but the scheme of government for which it made provision was distinctly more complicated than that previously in operation. In the main, the Napoleonic constitution dealt with three subjects: the electoral system, the assemblies, and the executive. Nominally there was established a system of thoroughgoing manhood (p. 294) suffrage. But the conditions under which electoral powers were to be exercised rendered the plan very much less democratic than on the surface it appeared to be. The scheme was one devised by Sieyès under the designation of "lists of notables." In each communal district citizens twenty-one years of age and inscribed on the civil register were authorized to choose one-tenth of their number to comprise a "communal list." Those named on the communal list were to choose in their department a tenth of their number, who formed a "departmental list." And, similarly, those whose names appeared on the departmental list were to choose a tenth of their number, who formed a "national list." From these three lists in order were to be chosen, largely by the Senate, the public officials of the districts, the departments, and the nation. No electoral scheme has ever been devised which, while grounded upon the principle of manhood suffrage, more effectually withdraws from the people the actual choice of public officials, local as well as national.[429] [Footnote 428: The constitution of the Year III., containing 377 articles, is one of the lengthiest documents of the sort on record.] [Footnote 429: Under this system the primary electors numbered about 5,000,000; the district notables, 500,000; the departmental notables, 50,000; and the national list, 5,000.] *317. Constitution of the Year VIII: Organs of Government.*--Of national governmental bodies there were four. One was the Tribunate, consisting of 100 members, one-fifth of whom were renewable every year. The function of the Tribunate was to discuss, but not necessarily to vote upon, legislative measures. A second was the _Corps législatif_, or Legislative Body, of 300 members, one-fifth being renewed annually. To this assembly was committed the power to vote upon, but not to debate, legislative measures. A third was the Senate, consisting at the outset of sixty life members, to be increased through a period of ten years to eighty. The Senate was authorized to pass upon the constitutionality of laws and to choose the Tribunes, the Legislators, and the Consuls from the national list. Its own ranks were to be recruited by co-optation from triple lists of candidates presented by the Tribunate, the Legislative Body, and the First Consul. Finally, there was the Council of State, whose organization was left purposely indefinite. Its members were appointed by the First Consul, and their business consisted principally in the preparation and advocacy of legislative and administrative measures. If under this scheme the legislative organs were weak, the executive authority was notably strong. Powers of an executive character were vested in three consuls, appointed by the Senate for ten years and indefinitely eligible. Upon the First Consul was conferred power to promulgate the laws, to appoint all civil and military officials, and to do many other things of vital importance. Upon the second and (p. 295) third consuls was bestowed simply a "consultative voice." Provision was made for a ministry, and under the letter of the constitution no act of the government was binding unless performed on the warrant of a minister. But in point of fact the principle of irresponsibility permeated the Napoleonic régime from the First Consul himself to the lowliest functionary. The conferring upon Napoleon, in 1802, of the consulship for life, and the conversion of the Consulate, in 1804, into the Empire, but concentrated yet more fully in the hands of a single man the whole body of governmental authority in France.[430] [Footnote 430: The text of the constitution of the Year VIII. is in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 118-129; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 577-585; and Anderson, Constitutions, 270-281. Summary in Block, Dictionnaire Général, I., 500-505. Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 1.] III. FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 *318. The Constitutional Charter, 1814.*--May 3, 1814,--three weeks after Napoleon's signature of the Act of Abdication,--the restored Bourbon king, Louis XVIII., entered Paris. Already the Senate had formulated a document, commonly known as the "Senatorial Constitution," wherein was embraced a scheme for a liberalized Bourbon monarchy.[431] Neither the instrument itself nor the authorship of it was acceptable to the new sovereign, and by him the task of drafting a constitution was given over to a commission consisting of three representatives of the crown, nine senators, and nine members of the Legislative Body. The task was accomplished with despatch. June 4 the new instrument, under the name of the Constitutional Charter, was adopted by the two chambers, and ten days later it was put in operation. With some modification, principally in 1830, it remained the fundamental law of France until the revolution of 1848. [Footnote 431: Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 179-182; Anderson, Constitutions, 446-450; Block, Dictionnaire Général, I., 505-506.] The governmental system provided for in the Charter was in a number of respects more liberal than that which had prevailed during the dominance of Napoleon. At the head of the state stood the king, inviolable in person, in whose hands were gathered the powers of issuing ordinances, making appointments, declaring war, concluding treaties, commanding the armies, and initiating all measures of legislation. But there was established a bicameral legislature, by which the king's ministers might be impeached, and without whose assent no law might be enacted and no tax levied. The upper house, or Chamber of Peers, was composed of a variable number of members named by the crown in heredity or for life.[432] The lower, or Chamber (p. 296) of Deputies, consisted of representatives elected in the departments for a term of five years, one-fifth retiring annually.[433] Provision was made for the annual assembling of the chambers; and although the proposing of laws was vested exclusively in the crown, it was stipulated that either house might petition the king to introduce a measure relating to any specific subject. The Charter contained a comprehensive enumeration and guarantee of the civil rights of French citizens.[434] [Footnote 432: By law of December 29, 1831, it was stipulated that only life peers might thereafter be appointed, and the king was required to take all appointees from a prescribed list of dignitaries. Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 231-232.] [Footnote 433: A law of June 9, 1824, stipulated that thereafter the Chamber of Deputies should be elected integrally for a period of seven years. Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 211.] [Footnote 434: The text of the Charter of 1814 may be found in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, I., 183-190; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 884-890; and, in English translation, in Anderson, Constitutions, 457-465, and University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints, I., No. 3. Summary in Block, Dictionnaire Général, I., 506-508. Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 18.] *319. The Electoral System.*--The Charter prescribed the qualifications required of voters and of deputies, but did not define the manner in which deputies should be chosen. The lack was supplied by an election law enacted February 5, 1817. The system established was that of _scrutin de liste_. Under it the electors--men of a minimum age of thirty who paid each year a direct tax of at least three hundred francs--were required to assemble in the principal town of the department and there choose the full quota of deputies to which the department was entitled. The system proved of distinct advantage to the liberal elements, whose strength lay largely in the towns, and in 1820 when the conservative forces procured control and inaugurated a general reaction a measure was adopted, though only after heated debate, by which the arrangement was completely altered. The membership of the Chamber was increased from 258 to 430 and for the principle of _scrutin de liste_ was substituted that of _scrutin d'arrondissement_. Each arrondissement became a single-member district and the electors were permitted to vote for one deputy only. In this manner 258 of the members were chosen. The remaining 172 were elected at the chief departmental towns by the voters of the department who paid the most taxes, an arrangement under which some twelve thousand of the wealthier electors became possessed of a double vote. Voting was by ballot, but the elector was required to write out his ballot in the presence of an appointee of the government and to place it in his hands unfolded.[435] [Footnote 435: Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 206-209; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 934-936.] *320. Liberalizing Changes in 1830-1831.*--Upon the enforced (p. 297) abdication of Charles X. in 1830 a parliamentary commission prepared a revision of the Charter, which, being adopted, was imposed upon the new sovereign, Louis Philippe, and was continued in operation through the period of the Orleanist monarchy. The preamble of the original document, in which language had been employed which made it appear that the Charter was a grant from the crown, was stricken out. Suspension of the laws by the sovereign was expressly forbidden. Each chamber was given the right to initiate legislation, the responsibility of the ministers to the chambers was proclaimed, and the sessions of the Peers, hitherto secret, were made public. The integral renewal of the Deputies, established in 1824, was continued, but the term of membership was restored to five years. The minimum age of electors was reduced from thirty to twenty-five years, and of deputies from forty to thirty. Subsequently, April 19, 1831, a law was passed whereby the suffrage--so restricted at the close of the Napoleonic régime that in a population of 29,000,000 there had been, in 1814, not 100,000 voters--was appreciably broadened. The direct tax qualification of three hundred francs was reduced to one of two hundred, and, for certain professional classes, of one hundred. By this modification the number of voters was doubled, though the proportion of the enfranchised was still but one in one hundred fifty of the total population, and it would be a mistake to regard the government of the Orleanist period as in effect more democratic than that by which it was preceded. At the most, it was a government by and for the well-to-do middle class.[436] [Footnote 436: For the act of the Chambers relative to the modification of the Constitutional Charter and to the accession of Louis Philippe, see Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 213-218; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 987-992; and Anderson, Constitutions, 507-513. The electoral law of 1831 is in Duguit et Monnier, 219-230. Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 15; G. Weill, La France sous la monarchic constitutionnelle, 1814-1848 (new ed., Paris, 1912).] IV. THE SECOND REPUBLIC AND THE SECOND EMPIRE *321. The Republican Constitution of 1848.*--With the overthrow of the Orleanist monarchy, in consequence of the uprising of February 24, 1848, France entered upon a period of aggravated political unsettlement. Through upwards of five years the nation experimented once more with republicanism, only at the end of that period to emerge a monarchy, an empire, and the dominion of a Bonaparte. By the provisional government which sprang from the revolution a republic was proclaimed tentatively and the nation was called upon to elect, under a system of direct manhood suffrage, an assembly to frame a constitution. The elections--the first of their kind in the history of (p. 298) France--were held April 23, 1848, and the National Constituent Assembly, consisting of nine hundred members, eight hundred of whom were moderate republicans, met May 4 in Paris. During the summer the draft of a constitution prepared by a committee of eighteen, was duly debated, and November 4 it was adopted by a vote of 739 to 30. The Constitution of 1848 declared the Republic to be perpetual and the people to be sovereign. It asserted, furthermore, that the separation of powers is the first condition of a free government. In respect to the organs of government it provided, in the first place, for a legislative assembly consisting of a single chamber of 750 members[437] chosen integrally for three years, directly by secret ballot on the principle of departmental _scrutin de liste_, and by electors whose only necessary qualifications were those of age (twenty-one years) and of non-impairment of civil rights.[438] Executive powers were vested in a president of the Republic, elected for a term of four years by direct and secret ballot, and by absolute majority of all votes cast in France and Algeria. Under stipulated conditions, e.g., if no candidate should receive an absolute majority and at the same time a total of at least two million votes, the president was required to be chosen by the Assembly from the five candidates who had polled the largest votes. Save after a four-year interval, the president was ineligible for re-election. Upon him were bestowed large powers, including those of proposing laws, negotiating and ratifying treaties with the consent of the Assembly, appointing and dismissing ministers and other civil and military officers, and disposing of the armed forces. With respect to the functions and powers of the ministers the constitution was not explicit, and whether the instrument might legitimately be interpreted to make provision for a parliamentary system of government was one of the standing issues throughout the days of its duration.[439] [Footnote 437: Including representatives of Algeria and the colonies.] [Footnote 438: Electoral law of March 15, 1849. Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 247-265.] [Footnote 439: Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 308-312. The text of the Constitution of 1848 is in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 232-246; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 1102-1113; and Anderson, Constitutions, 522-537. Summary in Block, Dictionnaire Général, I., 510-513. Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 5; V. Pierre, Histoire de la république de 1848, 2 vols. (Paris, 1873-1878); P. de la Gorce, Histoire de la deuxième république française, 2 vols. (Paris, 1887); E. Spuller, Histoire parlementaire de la deuxième république (Paris, 1893); Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. 8.] *322. From Republic to Empire.*--December 10, 1848, Louis Napoleon, nephew of the first Napoleon, was chosen president by an overwhelming vote, and ten days later he assumed office. In May, 1849, an (p. 299) Assembly was elected, two-thirds of whose members were thoroughgoing monarchists; so that, as one writer has put it, both the president and the majority of the Assembly were, by reason of their very being, enemies of the constitution under which they had been elected.[440] The new order, furthermore, failed completely to strike root throughout the nation at large. In this state of things the collapse of the Republic was but a question of time. By an electoral law of May 31, 1850, requiring of the elector a fixed residence of three years instead of six months, the suffrage arrangements of 1849 were subverted and the electorate was reduced by three millions, or virtually one-third.[441] December 2, 1851, occurred a carefully planned _coup d'état_, on which occasion the Assembly was dissolved, the franchise law of 1849 was restored, and the people, gathered in primary assemblies, were called upon to intrust to the President power to revise the national constitution.[442] December 20, by a vote of 7,439,216 to 640,737, the people complied. Thereafter, though continuing officially through another year, the Republic was in reality dead. November 7, 1852, the veil was thrown off. A _senatus-consulte_ decreed a re-establishment of the Empire,[443] and by a plebiscite of eleven days later the people, by a vote of 7,824,189 to 253,145, sanctioned what had been done. December 2, Napoleon III. was proclaimed Emperor of the French. [Footnote 440: Hazen, Europe since 1815, 201.] [Footnote 441: The text of this measure is in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 265-268, and Hélie, Les Constitutions, 1149-1150. H. Laferrière, La loi électorale du 31 mai 1850 (Paris, 1910).] [Footnote 442: Anderson, Constitutions, 538-543.] [Footnote 443: Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 290-292; Anderson, Constitutions, 560-561.] *323. The Imperial Constitution, 1852.*--Meanwhile, March 29, 1852, there had been put in operation a constitution,[444] nominally republican, but in reality strongly resembling that in force during the later years of Napoleon I. The substitution, later in the year, of an emperor for a president upon whom had been conferred a ten-year term was but a matter of detail. A _senatus-consulte_ of December 25, made all of the necessary adjustments, and the constitution of 1852, with occasional modifications, remained the fundamental law of France until the collapse of the Empire in 1870. Upon the emperor were conferred very extended powers. His control of the administrative system was made practically absolute. He commanded the army and navy, decided upon war and peace, concluded treaties, and granted pardons. He alone possessed the power of initiating legislation and of promulgating the laws. To him alone were all ministers responsible, and of (p. 300) such parliamentarism as had existed formerly there remained not a vestige, Of legislative chambers there were two: a _Corps législatif_ of 251 members elected by direct manhood suffrage every six years, and a Senate composed of cardinals, admirals, and other _ex-officio_ members, and of a variable number of members appointed for life by the emperor. The powers of the Senate, exercised invariably in close conjunction with the head of the state, were of some importance, but those of the popular chamber were so restricted that the liberal arrangements which existed respecting the suffrage afforded but the appearance, not the reality, of democracy.[445] [Footnote 444: Drawn up by a commission of five, under date of January 14, 1852.] [Footnote 445: The text of the constitution of 1852 is in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 274-280; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 1167-1171; Anderson, Constitutions, 543-549. Summary in Block, Dictionnaire Général, I., 513-515. Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chaps. 5, 10.] *324. Constitutional Alterations, 1869-1870.*--Throughout upwards of two decades the illusion of popular government was maintained as well as might be. The country was prosperous and the government, if illiberal, was on the whole enlightened. Discontent, none the less, was not infrequently in evidence, and during especially the second half of the reign the Emperor found it expedient more than once to make some concession to public sentiment. In the later sixties he was compelled to moderate the laws which dealt with the press and with political meetings, and in 1869-1870 he was brought to the point of approving a series of measures which gave promise of altering in an important manner the entire governmental system. One was a _senatus-consulte_ of September 8, 1869, whereby the sittings of the Senate were made public, the Legislative Body was given the right to elect all of its own officials, and the parliamentary system was nominally re-established.[446] By reason of the fact, however, that ministers were not permitted to be members of either the Legislative Body or the Senate, and that they were declared still to be responsible to the crown, the effects of the last-mentioned feature of the reform were inconsiderable. By a _senatus-consulte_ of April 20, 1870, (approved by a plebiscite of May 8 following) there were adopted still more important constitutional changes. In the first place, the Senate, which hitherto had been virtually an Imperial council, was erected into a legislative chamber co-ordinate with the Legislative Body, and upon both houses was conferred the right of initiating legislation. In the second place, the provision that the ministers should be dependent solely upon the emperor was stricken from the constitution, thus clearing the way for a more effective realization of the parliamentary system of government. Finally, it was (p. 301) stipulated that the constitution should thereafter be modified only with the express approval of the people.[447] These reforms, however, were belated. They came only after the popularity of the Emperor had been strained to the breaking point, and by reason of the almost immediate coming on of the war with Prussia there was scant opportunity for the testing of their efficacy. [Footnote 446: Text in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 307-308; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 1314-1315; and Anderson, Constitutions, 579-580.] [Footnote 447: The text of the measure of April 20, 1870, is in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 308-314; Hélie, Les Constitutions, 1315-1327; and Anderson, Constitutions, 581-586. Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 17; H. Berton, L'évolution constitutionnelle du second empire (Paris, 1900). An important larger work is P. de la Gorce, Histoire du second empire, 7 vols. (Paris, 1894-1905).] V. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC *325. The National Assembly.*--The present French Republic was instituted under circumstances which gave promise of even less stability than had been exhibited by its predecessors of 1793 and 1848.[448] Proclaimed in the dismal days following the disaster at Sedan, it owed its existence, at the outset, to the fact that, with the capture of Napoleon III. by the Prussians and the utter collapse of the Empire, there had arisen, as Thiers put it, "a vacancy of power." The proclamation was issued September 4, 1870, when the war with Prussia had been in progress but seven weeks.[449] During the remaining five months of the contest the sovereign authority of France was exercised by a Provisional Government of National Defense, with General Trochu at its head, devised in haste to meet the emergency by Gambetta, Favre, Ferry, and other former members of the Chamber of Deputies. Upon the capitulation of Paris, January 28, 1871, elections were ordered for a national assembly, the function of which was to decide whether the war should be prolonged and what terms of peace should be accepted at the hands of the victorious Germans. There was no time in which to frame a new electoral system. Consequently the electoral procedure of the Second Republic, as prescribed by the (p. 302) law of March 15, 1849, was revived,[450] and by manhood suffrage there was chosen, February 8, an assembly of 758 members, representative of both France and the colonies. Meeting at Bordeaux, February 12, this body, by unanimous vote, conferred upon the historian and parliamentarian Thiers the title of "Chief of the Executive Power," without fixed term, voted almost solidly for a cessation of hostilities, and authorized Thiers to proceed with an immediate negotiation of peace. [Footnote 448: The best account of the beginnings of the Third Republic is that in G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, 4 vols. (Paris, 1903-1909), I. There is an English translation of this important work by J. C. Tarver. A recent book of value is A. Bertrand, Les origines de la troisième république, 1871-1876 (Paris, 1911). Mention may be made also of E. Zevort, Histoire de la troisième république, 4 vols. (Paris, 1896-1901), I.; C. Duret, Histoire de France de 1870 à 1873 (Paris, 1901); A. Callet, Les origines de la troisième république (Paris, 1889); F. Littré, L'établissement de la troisième république (Paris, 1880); L. E. Benoit, Histoire de quinze ans, 1870-1885 (Paris, 1886); F. T. Marzials, Léon Gambetta (London, 1890); and P. B. Ghensi, Gambetta: Life and Letters (New York, 1910). There is an interesting interpretation in Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. 11.] [Footnote 449: Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, cxvi.] [Footnote 450: Most of the disqualifications for voting which were enumerated in the law of 1849 were declared inapplicable in the present election.] *326. The Problem of a Permanent Government.*--Pending a diplomatic adjustment, the Assembly was disposed to defer the establishment of a permanent governmental system. But the problem could not long be kept in the background. There were several possible solutions. A party of Legitimists, i.e., adherents of the old Bourbon monarchy, was resolved upon the establishment of a kingdom under the Count of Chambord, grandson of the Charles X. who had been deposed at the revolution of 1830. Similarly, a party of Orleanists was insistent upon a restoration of the house of Orleans, overthrown in 1848, in the person of the Count of Paris, a grandson of the citizen-king Louis Philippe. A smaller group of those who, despite the discredit which the house of Bonaparte had suffered in the war, remained loyal to the Napoleonic tradition, was committed to a revival of the prostrate empire of the captive Napoleon III. Finally, in Paris and some portions of the outlying country there was uncompromising demand for the definite establishment of a republic.[451] In the Assembly the monarchists outnumbered the republicans five to two, and, although the members had been chosen primarily for their opinions relative to peace rather than to constitutional forms, the proportion throughout the nation was probably about the same. The republican outlook, however, was vastly improved by the fact that the monarchists, having nothing in common save opposition to republicanism, were hopelessly disagreed among themselves.[452] [Footnote 451: G. Weill, Histoire du parti républicain en France de 1814 à 1870 (Paris, 1900).] [Footnote 452: Of pure Legitimists there were in the Assembly about 150; of Bonapartists, not over 30; of Republicans, about 250. The remaining members were Orleanists or men of indecisive inclination. At no time was the full membership of the Assembly in attendance.] *327. The Rivet Law, 1871.*--As, from the drift of its proceedings, the royalist character of the Assembly began to stand out in unmistakable relief, there arose from republican quarters vigorous opposition to the prolonged existence of the body. Even before the signing of the Peace of Frankfort, May 10, 1871, there occurred a clash between the Assembly and the radical Parisian populace, the upshot of which (p. 303) was the bloody war of the Commune of April-May, 1871.[453] The communards fought fundamentally against state centralization, whether or not involving a revival of monarchy. The fate of republicanism was not in any real measure bound up with their cause, so that after the movement had been suppressed, with startling ruthlessness, by the Government, the political future of the nation remained no less in doubt than previously it had been. Thiers continued at the post of Chief of the Executive, and the Assembly, clothed by its own assumption with powers immeasurably in excess of those it had been elected to exercise, and limited by no fixed term, gave not the slightest indication of a purpose to terminate its career. Rather, the body proceeded, August 31, 1871, to pass, by a vote of 491 to 94, the Rivet law, whereby the existing régime was to be perpetuated indefinitely.[454] By this measure unrestricted sovereignty, involving the exercise of both constituent and legislative powers, was declared by the Assembly to be vested in itself. Upon the Chief of the Executive was conferred the title of President of the French Republic; and it was stipulated that this official should thereafter be responsible to the Assembly, and presumably removable by it. A quasi-republic, with a crude parliamentary system of government, thereafter existed _de facto_; but it had as yet absolutely no constitutional basis. [Footnote 453: In March the Assembly had transferred its sittings from Bordeaux to Versailles.] [Footnote 454: Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 315-316; Anderson, Constitutions, 604-606.] *328. Failure of the Monarchist Programmes.*--This anomalous condition of things lasted many months, during the course of which Thiers and the Assembly served the nation admirably through the promotion of its recovery from the ravages of war. More and more Thiers, who had begun as a constitutional monarchist, came to believe in republicanism as the style of government which would divide the French people least, and late in 1872 he put himself unqualifiedly among the adherents of the republican programme. Thereupon the monarchists, united for the moment in the conviction that for the good of their several causes Thiers must be deposed from his position of influence, brought about in the Assembly a majority vote in opposition to him, and so induced his resignation, May 24, 1873.[455] The opponents of republicanism now felt that the hour had come for the termination of a governmental régime which had by them been regarded all the while as purely (p. 304) provisional. The monarchist Marshal MacMahon was made President, a coalition ministry of monarchists under the Orleanist Duke of Broglie was formed, and republicanism in press and politics was put under the ban. Between the Legitimists and the Orleanists there was worked out an ingenious compromise whereby the Bourbon Count of Chambord was to be made king under the title of Henry V. and, he having no heirs, the Orleanist Count of Paris was to be recognized as his successor. The whole project was brought to naught, however, by the persistent refusal of the Count of Chambord to give up the white flag, which for centuries had been the standard of the Bourbon house. The Orleanists held out for the tricolor; and thus, on what would appear to most people a question of distinctly minor consequence, the survival of the Republic was for the time determined.[456] [Footnote 455: Anderson, Constitutions, 622-627; A. Lefèvre Pontalis, L'Assemblée nationale et M. Thiers, in _Le Correspondant_, Feb. 10, 1879; A. Thiers, Notes et Souvenirs de 1870 à 1873 (Paris, 1903); J. Simon, Le gouvernement de M. Thiers (Paris, 1878); E. de Marcère, L'Assemblée nationale de 1871 (Paris, 1904).] [Footnote 456: Marquis de Castallane, Le dernier essai de restauration monarchique de 1873, in _Nouvelle Revue_, Nov. 1, 1895.] In the hope that eventually they might gain sufficient strength to place their candidate on the throne without the co-operation of the Legitimists, the Orleanists joined with the Bonapartists and the republicans, November 20, 1873, in voting to fix the term of President MacMahon definitely at seven years.[457] By the Orleanists it was assumed that if within that period an opportunity should be presented for the establishment of the Count of Paris upon the throne, the President would clear the way by retiring. The opportunity, however, never came, and the septennial period for the French presidency, established thus by monarchists in their own interest, was destined to pass into the permanent mechanism of a republican state. [Footnote 457: Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 319; Anderson, Constitutions, 630.] VI. THE CONSTITUTION OF TO-DAY *329. Circumstances of Formation.*--Meanwhile the way was opening for France to acquire what for some years she had lacked completely, i.e., a constitution. May 19, 1873, the minister Dufaure, in behalf of the Government, laid before the Assembly _projets_ of two organic measures, both of which, in slightly amended form, passed in 1875 into the permanent constitution of the Republic. May 24 occurred the retirement of President Thiers, and likewise that of Dufaure, but in the Assembly, the two proposed measures were none the less referred to a commission of thirty. Consideration in committee was sluggish, and the Assembly itself was not readily roused to action. During the twelvemonth that followed several _projets_ were brought forward, and there was desultory discussion, but no progress. In the summer of (p. 305) 1874 a new commission of thirty was elected and to it was intrusted the task of studying and reporting upon all of the numerous constitutional laws that had been suggested. The majority of this commission, monarchist by inclination, contented itself with proposing, in January, 1875, a law providing simply for the continuance of the existing "septennate." Only after earnest effort, and by the narrow vote of 353 to 352, were the republican forces in the Assembly able to carry an amendment, proposed by the deputy Wallon, in which was made definite provision for the election of the President of the Republic, and therefore, by reasonable inference, for the perpetuity of the Republic itself.[458] [Footnote 458: Anderson, Constitutions, 633.] Before the year 1875 was far advanced the Assembly threw off its lethargy and for the first time in its history addressed itself systematically to the drafting of a national constitution. To this course it was impelled by the propaganda of Gambetta and other republican leaders, by fear on the part of the Legitimists and Orleanists that the existing inchoate situation would lead to a Bonapartist revival, and by a new _modus operandi_ which was cleverly arranged between the republicans and the Orleanists. Convinced that an Orleanist monarchy was, at least for a time, an impossibility, and preferring a republic to any alternative which had been suggested, the Orleanist members of the Assembly gave their support in sufficient numbers to the programme of the republicans to render it at last possible to work out for the nation a conservatively republican constitutional system. *330. Texts and General Nature.*--Of the organic laws which comprise the constitution of France to-day five which date from 1875 are of principal importance: (1) that of February 24, on the Organization of the Senate; (2) that of February 25,--the most important of all,--on the Organization of the Public Powers; (3) that of July 16, on the Relations of the Public Powers; (4) that of August 3, on the Election of Senators; and (5) that of November 30, on the Election of Deputies. Collectively, these measures are sometimes referred to as the "constitution of 1875." Other and later constitutional enactments of considerable importance include (1) the law of July 22, 1879, relating to the seat of the Executive Power and of the two Chambers at Paris; (2) the law of December 9, 1884, amending existing organic laws on the Organization of the Senate and the Election of Senators; and (3) laws of June 16, 1885, and February 13 and July 17, 1889, respecting the Election of Deputies.[459] [Footnote 459: The original texts of these documents are printed in Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 319-350, and Hélie, Les Constitutions, 1348-1456. For English versions see Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 286-319; C. F. A. Currier, Constitutional and Organic Laws of France, in _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, March, 1893, supplement; and Anderson, Constitutions, 633-640. Albert Duc de Broglie, Histoire et Politique: Étude sur la constitution de 1875 (Paris, 1897); R. Saleilles, The Development of the Present Constitution of France, in _Annals of Amer. Academy_, July, 1895.] Springing from the peculiar conditions which have been described, (p. 306) the handiwork of a body in which only a minority felt the slightest degree of enthusiasm for it, the constitution of the French Republic is essentially unlike any instrument of government with which the English-speaking world is familiar. It differs from the British in having been put almost wholly into written form. It differs from the American in that it consists, not of a single document, but of many, and in that it emanated, not from a great constituent assembly, charged with the specific task of formulating a governmental system, but from a law-making body which in truth had never been formally intrusted by the nation with even the powers of legislation proper, and had merely arrogated to itself those functions of constitution-framing which it chose to exercise.[460] It consists simply of organic laws, enacted chiefly by the provisional Assembly of 1871-1875, but amended and amplified to some extent by the national parliament in subsequent years. Unlike the majority of constitutions that went before it in France, it is not orderly in its arrangement or comprehensive in its contents. It is devoid of anything in the nature of a bill of rights,[461] and concerning the sovereignty of the people it has nothing to say. Even in respect to many essential aspects of governmental organization and practice it is mute. It contains no provision respecting annual budgets, and it leaves untouched the entire field of the judiciary. The instrument lays down only certain broad lines of organization; the rest it leaves to be supplied through the channels of ordinary legislation. [Footnote 460: Among French writers upon constitutional law there has been no small amount of difference of opinion as to whether the National Assembly is to be regarded as having been entitled to the exercise of constituent powers. For a brief affirmative argument see Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, cxvii. Cf. Dicey, Law of the Constitution, 121, note.] [Footnote 461: It is to be observed, however, that many authorities agree with Professor Duguit in his contention that although the individual rights enumerated in the Declaration of Rights of 1789 are passed without mention in the constitutional laws of 1875, they are to be considered as lying at the basis of the French governmental system to-day. Any measure enacted by the national parliament in contravention of them, says Professor Duguit, would be unconstitutional. They are not mere dogmas or theories, but rather positive laws, binding upon not only the legislative chambers but upon the constituent National Assembly. Traité de droit constitutionnel (Paris, 1911), II., 13.] *331. Amendment.*--It was the desire of all parties in 1875 that (p. 307) the constitutional laws should be easy of amendment, and indeed most men of the time expected the governmental system which was being established to undergo, sooner or later, fundamental modification. The process of amendment is stipulated in the law of February 25, 1875.[462] Amendments may be proposed by the President of the Republic or by either of the chambers of Parliament. When, by a majority of votes in each, the Senate and Chamber of Deputies declare a revision of the constitutional laws necessary, the two chambers are required to be convened in the character of a National Assembly, and amendments are adopted by absolute majority of this composite body. Contrary to earlier French practice, the exercise of constituent and of ordinary legislative powers is thus lodged in the same body of men, the only difference of procedure in the two instances arising from the temporary amalgamation of the chambers for constituent purposes. The sole limitation that has been imposed upon the revising powers of the Assembly is contained in a clause adopted in an amendment of August 14, 1884, which forbids that the republican style of government be made the subject of a proposed revision. In point of fact, amendments have been few, although some, as that of December 9, 1884, modifying the methods of electing senators and those of June 16, 1885, and February 13 and July 17, 1889, re-establishing single districts for the election of deputies and prohibiting multiple candidatures, have been of a high degree of importance. [Footnote 462: Art. 8. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 288.] CHAPTER XVI (p. 308) THE PRESIDENT, THE MINISTRY, AND PARLIAMENT I. THE PRESIDENT Under the French system of government functions of a purely executive nature are vested in the President of the Republic and the Ministry, assisted by a numerous and highly centralized body of administrative officials. The presidency had its origin in the unsettled period following the Prussian war when it was commonly believed that monarchy, in one form or another, would eventually be re-established. The title "President of the Republic" was created in 1871; but the office as it exists to-day hardly antedates the election of Marshal MacMahon in 1873. The character and functions of the presidency were determined in no small measure by the circumstance that by those who created the dignity it was intended merely to keep the French people accustomed to visible personal supremacy, and so to make easier the future transition to a monarchical system. Counting Thiers, the Republic has had thus far nine presidents: Adolphe Thiers, 1871-1873; Marshal MacMahon, 1873-1879; Jules Grévy, 1879-1887; F. Sadi-Carnot, 1887-1894; Casimir-Perier, June, 1894, to January, 1895; Félix Faure, 1895-1899; Émile Loubet, 1899-1906; Armand Fallières, 1906-1913; and Raymond Poincaré elected early in 1913. *332. Election and Qualifications.*--The President is chosen for seven years by an electoral college consisting of the members of the Senate and of the Chamber of Deputies, meeting at Versailles in National Assembly. The choice is by absolute majority of the combined body. The constitutional law of July 16, 1875, stipulates that one month, at least, before the expiration of his term the President shall call together the National Assembly for the election of a successor. In default of such summons, the meeting takes place automatically on the fifteenth day before the expiration; and in the event of the death or resignation of the President the Chambers are required to assemble immediately without summons.[463] There is no vice-president, nor (p. 309) any law of succession, so that whenever the presidential office falls vacant there must be a new election; and, at whatever time and under whatever circumstance begun, the term of the newly elected President is regularly seven years. As upon the occasion of the assassination of Sadi-Carnot in 1894, a vacancy may arise wholly unexpectedly. Under even the most normal conditions, however, the election of a President in France is attended by no period of campaigning comparable with that which attends a similar event in the United States. The Assembly habitually selects a man who has long been a member, and has perhaps served as president, of one or the other of the chambers, who has had experience in committee work and, as a rule, in one or more ministerial offices, and who, above all things, is not too aggressive or domineering. An election is likely to be carried through all stages within the space of forty-eight hours. The qualifications requisite for election are extremely broad. Until 1884 any male citizen, regardless of age, affiliation, or circumstance, was eligible. In the year mentioned members of families that have reigned in France were debarred, and this remains the only formal disqualification. A President is eligible indefinitely for re-election.[464] [Footnote 463: Art. 3. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 291.] [Footnote 464: A. Tridon, France's Way of Choosing a President, in _Review of Reviews_, Dec., 1912.] *333. Privileges.*--The President is paid the sum of 1,200,000 francs a year, half as salary, half to cover travelling expenses and the outlays incumbent upon him as the official representative of the nation. He resides in the Palais de l'Élysée, where he maintains in a measure the state and ceremony that ordinarily are associated only with monarchy. His dignity is safeguarded by special and effective penalties for insult and libel. Like the President of the United States, during his term of office he is exempt from the processes of the ordinary courts; but, like his American counterpart, he may be tried by the Senate, on articles of impeachment presented by the lower legislative chamber. The President of the United States may be impeached for "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors"; the French President may be impeached for treason only. On the other hand, whereas the penalty that may be imposed upon the American President by the judgment of the Senate is confined to removal from office and disqualification to hold office, the French constitution fixes no limit to the penalty which may be visited upon a President convicted of treason. So far as the law is concerned, he might be condemned to death. *334. Powers: Participation in Law-making.*--The President possesses powers which are numerous and, on paper at least, formidable. A (p. 310) first group pertains to the making of law. "The President of the Republic," says the constitutional law of February 25, 1875, "shall have the initiative of laws, concurrently with the members of the two chambers. He shall promulgate the laws when they have been voted by the two chambers; and he shall look after and secure their execution."[465] The concurrent power of initiating legislation, exercised through the Ministry, is something that is not possessed by the American President, who can do no more than suggest and recommend measures he deems desirable. The President of France, on the other hand, possesses only a suspensive veto. He may remand a measure of which he disapproves for fresh consideration by Parliament; but if it is re-enacted, by even a simple majority, it is incumbent upon him to promulgate it as law. If, however, the veto power is virtually non-existent, the President possesses an important prerogative in the right of issuing ordinances with the force of supplementary legislation. These may be not merely executive orders in matters of detail, such as are issued by the President of the United States, but sweeping injunctions deemed essential to the enforcement of the laws in general. The only limitation is that such ordinances must not contravene the constitution or any enactment of the chambers. The power is one which, rather curiously, rests upon no express constitutional provision, but simply upon custom. The right which the President possesses, with the consent of the Senate, to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration of its term, thereby precipitating a general election, may also be made the means of exercising considerable influence upon legislative processes and achievements. [Footnote 465: Art. 3. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 286.] *335. Powers: Executive and Judicial.*--As the head of the national administration, the President appoints to all civil and military offices connected with the central government. His appointments do not require ratification by the Senate, or by any other body. He may even create, by decree, new offices. And his power of removal from office, save in certain cases, is absolutely without restriction. Appointments and removals, however, are in practice made through the Ministry, and the President has no patronage at his immediate disposal other than that of the posts in his own household. In respect to foreign affairs the President's powers are more substantial. Like the American President, he represents his country in the sending and receiving of ambassadors, ministers, envoys, and consuls, and in the negotiation and conclusion of treaties. Treaties affecting peace, commerce, territorial possessions, finances, or the status of Frenchmen in foreign countries, require the ratification of the chambers; others call for no such action, and even a foreign alliance may be (p. 311) concluded by the Executive working independently. On the military side, the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the nation, military and naval. He may not declare war without the consent of the chambers; but through the conduct of foreign affairs he may at any time, very much as may the President of the United States, create a situation by which war will be rendered inevitable. Finally, the President is vested with the powers of pardon and reprieve, although amnesty may be granted only by law.[466] [Footnote 466: Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 358-372; J. Nadal, Attributions du président de la république en France et aux États-Unis (Toulouse, 1909). For a brief American discussion of the same subject see M. Smith, The French Presidency and the American, in _Review of Reviews_, Feb., 1906. Cf. A. Cohn, Why M. Fallières is an Ideal French President, ibid., July, 1908.] II. THE MINISTRY *336. Importance in the Government.*--"There is," says an English writer of the last generation, "no living functionary who occupies a more pitiable position than a French President. The old kings of France reigned and governed. The Constitutional King, according to M. Thiers, reigns, but does not govern. The President of the United States governs, but he does not reign. It has been reserved for the President of the French Republic neither to reign nor yet to govern."[467] The weakness of the French President's position arises specifically from two clauses of the constitutional law of February 25, 1875. One of them stipulates that "every act of the President of the Republic shall be countersigned by a minister." The other provides that "the ministers shall be collectively responsible to the chambers for the general policy of the government, and individually for their personal acts."[468] Under the operation of these principles the Ministry becomes the real executive. Like the sovereign of Great Britain, the President can do no wrong, because the acts that are officially his are in reality performed by the ministers, who alone (save in the case of treason) are responsible for them. Chosen by the members of Parliament, the President belongs normally to the party group which is at the time in the ascendant, and by it he is kept in tutelage. The leaders of this group are the ministers, and, in a very large measure, the President simply approves passively the policies of this body of men and signs and promulgates the measures which it carries through the chambers. [Footnote 467: Henry Maine, Popular Government (London, 1885), 250.] [Footnote 468: Arts. 3 and 6. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 287.] *337. Organization and Functions.*--Ministerial portfolios are created by executive decree. Their number has been somewhat variable. In (p. 312) 1875 there were nine. In 1879 there was created a tenth. Between 1881 and 1887 there were eleven. To-day there are twelve, as follows: (1) Interior; (2) Finance; (3) War; (4) Justice and Public Worship; (5) Marine; (6) Colonies; (7) Public Instruction; (8) Foreign Affairs; (9) Commerce; (10) Agriculture; (11) Public Works and Posts, Telegraphs, and Telephones; and (12) Labor. Portfolios may be not only created but rearranged by simple executive decree, though of course the necessary financial provisions are conditioned upon the approval of the chambers. The premier may occupy any one of the ministerial posts, or even two of them at one time. He is named by the President, and he, acting with the President, designates his colleagues and allots to them their respective portfolios. Usually, though not necessarily, the ministers are members of the Senate or of the Chamber of Deputies, principally the latter.[469] Whether members or not, they have a right to attend all sessions of both chambers and to take an especially privileged part in debate. Ministers receive annual salaries of 60,000 francs and reside, as a rule, in the official mansions maintained for the heads of the departments they control. [Footnote 469: In earlier days the ministers of war and of the marine were selected not infrequently from outside Parliament, but this practice has been discontinued.] Collectively the ministers possess two sets of functions which are essentially distinct. The one they fulfill as a "council"; the other as a "cabinet." In the capacity of a council they exercise a general supervision of the administration of the laws, to the end that there may be efficiency and unity in the affairs of state. In the event of the President's death, incapacitation, or resignation, the Council is authorized to act as head of the state until the National Assembly shall have chosen a successor. As a cabinet the ministers formulate the fundamental policies of the Government and represent it in the chambers. The Council is administrative and is expressly recognized by law; the Cabinet is political and is not so recognized. In the meetings of the Council the President of the Republic not only sits, but presides; in those of the Cabinet he rarely even appears. Aside from the President, however, the two bodies, in personnel, are identical.[470] [Footnote 470: Dupriez, Les ministres, II., 332-357. A recent treatise of value is H. Noell, L'Administration centrale; les ministères, leur organisation, leur rôle (Paris, 1911). Mention may be made of L. Rolland, Le Conseil d'État et les réglements d'administration publique, in _Revue du Droit Public_, April-June, 1911; J. Barthélemy, Les sous-secrétaires d'état, ibid.; P. Ma, L'organisation du Ministère des Colonies, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Sept. 1, 1910.] *338. The Parliamentary System: Multiplicity of Parties.*--On paper France has to-day a parliamentary system of government substantially like that which prevails in Great Britain. The President's (p. 313) authority is but nominal. The real executive consists of the ministers. These ministers are responsible, collectively in general matters and individually in particular ones, to the chambers, in reality to the Chamber of Deputies. When defeated on any important proposition, they resign as a body. Parliamentary government in France means, however, in practice, something very different from what it means across the Channel. The principal reason why this is so is to be found in the totally different status of political parties in the two countries. In Great Britain, while in later years small political groups have sprung up to complicate the situation, the political life of the nation is still confined very largely to the two great rival parties, which oppose to each other a fairly united front, and between which there is not likely to be anything like fusion or affiliation. In France, on the contrary, there is a multiplicity of parties and no one of them is likely ever to be in a position to dominate the Government alone. The election of 1910 sent to the Chamber of Deputies representatives of no fewer than nine distinct political groups. No ministry can be made up with any hope of its being able to command a working majority in the Chamber unless it represents in its membership a coalition of several parties. A Government so constituted, however, is almost inevitably vacillating and short-lived. It is unable to please all of the groups and interests upon which it relies; it dares displease none; it ends not infrequently by displeasing all. *339. Frequency of Ministerial Changes.*--It is from this condition of things that there arises the remarkable frequency with which ministerial crises and ministerial changes take place in France. The ministry of M. Poincaré, established in January, 1912, was the forty-fifth in the history of French parliamentarism since 1875--a period of but thirty-seven years. Between 1875 and 1900 but four years elapsed without at least one change of ministry. Since 1900 changes have been somewhat less frequent. The Waldeck-Rousseau ministry of 1899-1902--the longest-lived since 1875--endured virtually three years; the Combes ministry of 1902-1905 lasted more than two years and a half; and the Clemenceau ministry of 1906-1909 fell but little short of two years and nine months. None the less, a total of nine ministries within the space of thirteen years means an average of but one year and a half to the ministry. It is but fair to say that the ordinary "crisis" is not likely to involve a complete ministerial change. Defeated in the Chamber, or unable to make progress, the ministry as a body resigns; but, as a rule, many of the members are immediately reappointed, with perhaps a change of portfolios. A certain continuity arises also from the fact that the subordinate (p. 314) officials in the various departments enjoy a reasonable fixity of tenure. Nevertheless the most obvious feature of parliamentary government as it exists to-day in France, and in other continental countries, is its instability. Only where, as in England, there are two great parties, each possessing solidarity and sufficient strength, if returned to power, to support a homogeneous and sympathetic ministry, can the more desirable results of the parliamentary system be realized in full. There is as yet no evidence that such parties are in France in process of development.[471] [Footnote 471: A French scholar writes: "Power cannot pass alternately, as in England and the United States, from the party on one side over to the party in opposition. This alternation, this game of see-saw between two opposing parties, which certain theorists have declared to be the indispensable condition of every parliamentary régime, does not exist, and has never existed, in France. The reason why is simple. If the party of the Right, hostile to the Republic, should come into power, the temptation would be too strong for them to maintain themselves there by establishing an autocratic government, which would put an end to the parliamentary régime, as in 1851. The electors are conscious of this tendency of the Conservatives, and will not run the risk of entrusting the Republic to them. When they are discontented with the Republicans in power, they vote for other Republicans. Thus, new Republican groups are being ceaselessly formed, while the old ones fall to pieces." C. Seignobos, The Political Parties of France, in _International Monthly_, Aug., 1901, 155. On the French parliamentary system see Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 345-357, 373-461; E. Pierre, Principes du droit politique électoral et parlementaire en France (Paris, 1893).] *340. Interpellation.*--The precariousness of the position occupied by French ministries is enhanced by the parliamentary device of interpellation. As in Great Britain, every member of the two chambers possesses the right at any time to put to an executive head a direct question concerning any affair of state which, without impropriety, may be made the subject of open discussion. A minister may not, however, be questioned without his consent, and the incident ordinarily passes without debate. In France, however, any member may direct at a minister an interpellation, designed not to obtain information, but to put the Government on the defensive and to precipitate a debate which may end in the overthrow of the ministry on some mere technicality or other matter in itself of but slight importance. The interpellation is a challenge. It is made the special order for a day fixed by the chamber, and it almost invariably results in a vote of confidence, or want of confidence, in the ministers. As employed in France, the interpellation lends itself too readily to the ends of sheer factiousness to be adjudged a valuable feature of parliamentary procedure.[472] [Footnote 472: Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 432-461. L. Gozzi, L'Interpellation à l'assemblée rationale (Marseilles, 1909); J. Poudra and E. Pierre, Traité pratique de droit parlementaire, 8 vols. (Versailles, 1878-1880), VII., Chap. 4.] III. PARLIAMENT: SENATE AND CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES (p. 315) *341. The Bicameral System.*--With the dissolution of the States General in 1789, France definitely abandoned a parliamentary system based upon the mediæval principle of orders or estates. Throughout upwards of a hundred years, however, the scheme of parliamentary organization which was to take the place of that which had been cast aside continued uncertain. During the Revolution ultra-democratic reformers very generally favored the maintenance of a national assembly of but a single house, and it was not until the promulgation of the constitution of 1795 that a frame of government including provision for a legislature of two houses was brought into operation. The bicameral system of 1795-1799 was succeeded by the anomalous legislative régime of Napoleon, but under the Constitutional Charter of 1814 the two-house principle was revived and continuously applied through a period of thirty-four years. The legislative organ of the Second Republic was a unicameral assembly, but an incident of the transition to the Second Empire was the revival of a Senate, and throughout the reign of Napoleon III. the legislative chambers were nominally two in number, although it was not until 1870 that the Senate as a legislative body was made co-ordinate with the _Corps législatif_. On the whole, it can be affirmed that at the period when the constitution of the Third Republic was given form, the political experience of the nation had demonstrated the bicameral system to be the most natural, the safest, and the most effective. The opening stipulation of the Constitutional Law on the Organization of the Public Powers, adopted February 25, 1875, was that the law-making power of France should be exercised by a national parliament consisting of (1) a Chamber of Deputies and (2) a Senate. The one, it was determined, should rest upon a broadly democratic basis. The other was planned, as is customary with second chambers, to stand somewhat further removed from the immediate control of the voters of the country. But the two were intended to exist fundamentally to enact into law the will of the people, in whom the sovereignty of the French nation is clearly lodged. And even the most casual survey of the French governmental system as it operates to-day will impress the fact that the structure and organization of the parliamentary body have lent themselves to the usages of a democratic state in a measure even exceeding that intended by the founders of the existing order. *342. The Senate as Originally Established.*--Having determined that the parliament should consist of two branches, the National Assembly, in 1875, faced the difficult problem of constituting an upper chamber (p. 316) that should not be a mere replica of the lower, and yet should not inject into a democratic constitutional system an incongruous element of aristocracy. The device hit upon was a chamber, seats in which should be wholly elective, yet not at the immediate disposal of the people. By the constitutional law of February 24, 1875, it was provided that the Senate should consist of three hundred members, of whom two hundred twenty-five should be elected by the departments and colonies and seventy-five by the National Assembly itself.[473] The departments of the Seine and of the Nord were authorized to elect five senators each, the others four, three, or two, as specified in the law. The senators of the departments and of the colonies were to be elected by an absolute majority and by _scrutin de liste_, by a college meeting at the capital of the department or colony, composed of the deputies and general councillors and of delegates elected, one by each municipal council, from among the voters of the communes. Senators chosen by the Assembly were to be elected by _scrutin de liste_ and by an absolute majority of votes. No one should be chosen who had not attained the age of forty years, and who was not in enjoyment of full civil and political rights. The seventy-five elected by the Assembly were to retain their seats for life, vacancies that should arise being filled by the Senate itself. All other members were to be elected for nine years, being renewed by thirds every three years. [Footnote 473: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 288.] *343. The Senate: Composition and Election To-day.*--The system thus devised continues, in the main, in effect at the present day. The principal variations from it are those introduced in a constitutional law of December 9, 1884, whereby it was provided (1) that the co-optative method of election should be abolished, and that, while present life members should retain their seats as long as they should live, all vacancies thereafter arising from the decease of such members should be filled within the departments in the regular manner, and (2) that the electoral college of the department should be broadened to include not merely one delegate from each municipal council, but from one to twenty-four (thirty in the case of Paris), according to the number of members in the council.[474] By the same law members of families that have reigned in France were declared ineligible; and by act of July 20, 1895, no one may become a member of either branch of Parliament unless he has complied with the law regarding military service. [Footnote 474: Ibid., I., 310.] Few of the life members survive to-day. When they shall have disappeared, the French Senate will comprise a compact body of three hundred men apportioned among the departments in approximate (p. 317) accordance with population and chosen in all cases by bodies of electors all of whom have themselves been elected directly by the people. The present apportionment gives to the department of the Seine ten members; to that of the Nord, eight; to others, five four, three, and two apiece, down to the territory of Belfort and the three departments of Algeria, and the colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, and the French West Indies, which return one each. From having long been viewed by republicans with suspicion, the Senate has come to be regarded by Frenchmen generally as perhaps the most perfect work of the Republic.[475] In these days its membership is recruited very largely from the Deputies, so that it includes not only many men of distinction in letters and science but an unusual proportion of experienced debaters and parliamentarians. A leading American authority has said that it is "composed of as impressive a body of men as can be found in any legislative chamber the world over."[476] The sittings of the Senate, since 1879, have been held in the Palais du Luxembourg, a splendid structure on the left bank of the Seine dating from the early seventeenth century.[477] [Footnote 475: J. C. Bracq, France under the Republic (New York, 1910), 8.] [Footnote 476: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 22. But compare the view set forth in J. S. C. Bodley, France, 2 vols. (London, 1898), I., 46-60.] [Footnote 477: O. Pyfferoen, Du sénat en France et dans les Pays-Bas (Brussels, 1892).] *344. The Chamber of Deputies: Composition.*--The 597 members of the lower legislative branch are chosen directly by the people, under conditions regulated by a series of electoral measures, principally the organic law of November 30, 1875.[478] The franchise is extended to all male inhabitants who have attained the age of twenty-one, and who are not convicts, bankrupts, under guardianship, or in active military or naval service. Of educational or property qualifications there are none. The only requirements are that the voter shall have his name inscribed on the electoral lists and shall be able to prove a residence of six months in the commune in which he proposes to cast his ballot. The conditions of the franchise are prescribed by the state; but the keeping and the annual revision of the electoral lists devolves upon the commune, and the lists are identical for communal, district, departmental, and national elections. The French registration system is notably effective and, as compared with the British, inexpensive. [Footnote 478: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 302-308.] *345. Electoral Unit and Parliamentary Candidacies.*--The electoral area in France is the arrondissement, an administrative subdivision of (p. 318) the department. Each arrondissement returns one deputy, unless its population exceeds 100,000, in which case it is divided into single-member constituencies, one for each 100,000 or remaining fraction thereof. A fresh apportionment is made after each quinquennial census, when to each of the eighty-six departments is allotted a quota of representatives proportioned to population. The present method of election, under which the individual elector votes within his arrondissement or district for one deputy only, is known as the _scrutin d'arrondissement_. Established in 1876, the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ was employed until 1885, when, at the behest of Gambetta, a change was made to a system under which deputies for an entire department were voted for on a general ticket, as, for example, presidential electors are voted for in an American state. This system--the so-called _scrutin de liste_--was maintained in operation only until 1889, when the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ was re-established.[479] [Footnote 479: Laws of June 16, 1885, and February 13, 1889; Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 316-318.] The full membership of the Chamber is elected simultaneously, for a four-year term, save in the event that the Chamber shall be sooner dissolved. No nomination, or similar formality, is required of the candidate. To be eligible, however, he must be a qualified voter and as much as twenty-five years of age. By law of November 30, 1875, state officials are forbidden to become candidates in districts where their position might enable them to influence elections, and by act of June 16, 1885, members of families who have ever reigned in France are debarred. All that is required of a person who, possessing the requisite legal qualifications, wishes to be a candidate is that five days before the election he shall deposit with the prefect of the department within which the polling is to take place a declaration, witnessed by a mayor, of the name of the constituency in which he proposes to seek election. Even this trifling formality was introduced only by the Multiple Candidature Act of 1889, by which it is stipulated that no person shall be a candidate in more than one district. The French electorate is proverbially indifferent concerning the exercise of the suffrage, but the methods of campaigning which have become familiar in other countries are employed systematically, and no small measure of popular interest is occasionally aroused.[480] [Footnote 480: "During the electoral period, circulars and platforms signed by the candidates, electoral placards and manifestoes signed by one or more voters, may, after being deposited with the public prosecutor, be posted and distributed without previous authorization." Organic Law of November 30, 1875, Art. 3.] *346. The Conduct of Parliamentary Elections.*--The electoral (p. 319) process is simple and inexpensive. Voting is by secret ballot, and the balloting lasts one day only. As a rule, the polling takes place in the _mairie_, or municipal building, of the commune, under the immediate supervision of an electoral bureau consisting of a president (usually the mayor), four assessors, and a secretary. The state does not provide ballot-papers, but one or more of the candidates may be depended upon to supply the deficiency. The count is public and the result is announced without delay. If it is found that no candidate within the district has polled an absolute majority of the votes cast, and at the same time a fourth of the number which the registered voters of the district are legally capable of casting, a second balloting (the so-called _ballottage_) is ordered for one week from the ensuing Sunday. No one of the candidates voted for drops out of the contest, unless by voluntary withdrawal; new candidates, at even so late a day, may enter the race; and whoever, at the second balloting, secures a simple plurality is declared elected. By observers generally it is considered that the principle of the second ballot, in the form in which it is applied in France, possesses no very decisive value. Through a variety of agencies the central government is accustomed to exert substantial influence in parliamentary elections; but all of the more important political groups have profited at one time or another by the practice, and there is to-day a very general acquiescence in it, save on the part of unsuccessful candidates whose prospects have been injured by it. IV. THE PROBLEM OF ELECTORAL REFORM *347. Scrutin de liste and scrutin d'arrondissement.*--Within recent years there has arisen, especially among the Republicans and Socialists, an insistent demand for a thoroughgoing reform of the electoral process. Those who criticise the present system are far from agreed as to precisely what would be more desirable, but, in general, there are two preponderating programmes. One of these calls simply for abandonment of the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ and a return to the _scrutin de liste_. The other involves both a return to the _scrutin de liste_ and the adoption of a scheme of proportional representation. The arrondissement, many maintain, is too small to be made to serve satisfactorily as an electoral unit. Within a sphere so restricted the larger interests of the nation are in danger of being lost to view and political life is prone to be reduced to a wearisome round of compromise, demagogy, and trivialities. If, it is contended, all deputies (p. 320) from a department were to be elected on a single ticket, the elector would value his privilege more highly, the candidate would be in a position to make a more dignified campaign, and issues which are national in their scope would less frequently be obscured by questions and interests of a petty and purely local character. Professor Duguit, of the University of Bordeaux, who is one of the abler exponents of this proposed reform, contends (1) that the scheme of _scrutin de liste_ harmonizes better than does that of _scrutin d'arrondissement_ with the fundamental theory of representation in France, which is that the deputies who go to Paris do so as representatives of the nation as a whole, not of a single locality; (2) that the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ facilitates corruption through the temptation which it affords candidates to make to voters promises of favors, appointments, and decorations, and (3) that the prevailing system augments materially the more or less questionable influence which the Government is able to bring to bear in the election of deputies.[481] It does not appear that in the period 1885-1889 when the _scrutin de liste_ was in operation the very desirable ends now expected to be attained by a restoration of it were realized; indeed the system lent itself more readily to the menacing operations of the ambitious Boulanger than the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ could possibly have done. It is but fair, however, to observe that the trial of the system was very brief and that it fell in a period of unusual political unsettlement. [Footnote 481: L. Duguit, Traité de droit constitutionnel, I., 375-376.] *348. Proportional Representation.*--In the judgment of many reformers a simple enlarging of the electoral unit, however desirable in itself, would be by no means adequate to place the national parliament upon a thoroughly satisfactory basis. There is in France a growing demand for the adoption of some scheme whereby minorities within the several departments shall become entitled to a proportionate voice in the Chamber at Paris. And hence a second programme of reform is that which calls not merely for the _scrutin de liste_, but also for proportional representation. Within the past two decades the spread of the proportional representation idea in Europe has been rapid. Beginning in 1891, the device has been adopted by one after another of the Swiss cantons, until now it is in use in some measure in upwards of half of them. Since 1899 Belgium has employed it in the election of all members of both chambers of her parliament. In 1906 it was adopted by Finland and by the German state of Württemberg. In 1908 Denmark, in which country the system has been employed in the election of members of the upper chamber since 1867, extended its use to elections in (p. 321) the municipalities.[482] In 1907 an act of the Swedish parliament (confirmed after a general election in 1909) applied it to elections for both legislative chambers, all parliamentary committees, and provincial and town councils. In France there was organized in 1909, under the leadership of M. Charles Benoist, a Proportional Representation League by which there has been carried on in recent years a very vigorous and promising propaganda. The principal arguments employed by the advocates of the proposed reform are (1) that the effect of its adoption would be greatly to increase the aggregate vote cast in parliamentary elections, since electors belonging to minority parties would be assured of actual representation; (2) that it would no longer be possible, as is now regularly the case, for the number of voters unrepresented by deputies of their own political faith to be in excess of the number of electors so represented;[483] and (3) that a parliament in which the various parties are represented in proportion to their voting strength can be depended upon to know and to execute the will of the nation with more precision than can a legislative body elected after the principle of the majority system.[484] [Footnote 482: The first English-speaking state to adopt the system was Tasmania, where, after being in partial operation in 1896-1901, it was brought fully into effect in 1907. By an electoral law of 1900 Japan adopted it for the election of the members of her House of Commons. The plan was put in operation in Cuba April 1, 1908, and was adopted in Oregon by a referendum of June 1, 1908.] [Footnote 483: It is the assertion of M. Benoist that this situation has existed unbrokenly since 1881. An interesting fact cited is that the notable Separation Law of 1905 was adopted in the Chamber by the votes of 341 deputies who represented in the aggregate but 2,647,315 electors in a national total of 10,967,000.] [Footnote 484: Duguit, _op. cit._, argues forcefully in behalf of the proposed change. For adverse views, cogently stated by an equally eminent French authority, see A. Esmein, Droit Constitutionnel (5th ed., Paris, 1911), 253.] *349. The Government and Reform.*--During upwards of a decade the successive ministries of France have been committed to the cause of electoral reform. In March, 1907, a special committee of the Chamber of Deputies (the _Commission du Suffrage Universel_), appointed to consider the various bills which had been submitted upon the subject, reported a scheme of proportional representation whereby it was believed certain disadvantages inherent in the "list system" of Belgium might be obviated. Elections were to be by _scrutin de liste_ and the elector was to be allowed to cast as many votes as there were places to be filled and to concentrate as many of these votes as he might choose upon a single candidate.[485] In November, 1909, the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution favoring the establishment (p. 322) of both _scrutin de liste_ and proportional representation, but no law upon the subject was enacted, and at the elections of April-May, 1910, the preponderating issue was unquestionably that of electoral reform. According to a tabulation undertaken by the Ministry of the Interior, of the 597 deputies chosen at this time 94 had not declared themselves on electoral reform; 35 were in favor of no change from the existing system; 32 were in favor of a slightly modified _scrutin d'arrondissement_; 64 were partisans of the _scrutin de liste_ pure and simple; 272 were on record in favor of the _scrutin de liste_ combined with proportional representation; and 88 were known to be in favor of electoral reform, though not committed to any particular programme. The majority favoring change of some kind was thus notably large. [Footnote 485: The text of the proposed measure, in English translation, will be found in J. H. Humphreys, Proportional Representation (London, 1911), 382-385.] *350. The Briand Programme.*--June 30, 1910, the Briand ministry brought forward a plan which was intended as an alternative to the proposals of the Universal Suffrage Committee. The essential features of it were: (1) a return to _scrutin de liste_, with the department as the electoral area, save that a department entitled to more than fifteen deputies should, for electoral purposes, be divided, and one entitled to fewer than four should be united with another; (2) an allotment of one deputy to every 70,000 inhabitants, or major fraction thereof; (3) the division of the total number of electors on the register within a department by the number of deputies to which the department should be entitled, the quotient to supply the means by which to determine the number of deputies returned to the Chamber from each competing ticket; (4) the determination of this number by a division of the foregoing quotient into the average number of votes obtained by the candidates on each competing ticket, thus introducing the element of proportional representation; (5) the making up of tickets in each department from candidates nominated by one hundred electors; (6) the restriction of each elector to a vote for but a single ticket; and (7) an extension of the life of the Chamber from four to six years, one-third of the members to be chosen biennially. In the ministerial declaration accompanying the announcement of this scheme Premier Briand declared that the effect of the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ had been to narrow the political horizon of the deputies; that the electoral area must be broadened so that the interests of the nation may be made to predominate over those of the district; and that, while in a democracy the majority must rule, the Government was favorable to proportional representation in so far as the adoption of that principle can prevent the suppression of really important minorities. *351. The Electoral Reform Bill of 1912.*--In February, 1911, while the Briand Electoral Reform Bill was pending, there occurred a change (p. 323) of ministries. The Monis government which succeeded maintained, during its brief tenure (March-June, 1911), the sympathetic attitude which had been exhibited by its predecessor, and at the beginning of the period the _Commission du Suffrage Universel_ laid before the Chamber the draft of a new bill whereby the details of the proportional plan were brought back into closer accord with those of the Belgian system. During the period of the Caillaux ministry (June, 1911, to January, 1912) there was continued discussion, but meager progress. The Poincaré ministry, established at the beginning of 1912, declared that the nation had expressed forcefully its desire for far-reaching reform and promised that, in pursuance of the work already accomplished by the parliamentary commission, it would take steps to carry a measure of reform which should "secure a more exact representation for political parties and lend those who are elected the freedom that is required for the subordination of local interests in all cases to the national interest." During the earlier months of 1912 consideration of the subject was pressed in the Chamber and July 10 the whole of the Government's Electoral Reform Bill was adopted by a vote of 339 to 217. At the date of writing (October, 1912) the measure is pending in the Senate. The bill as passed in the Chamber comprises essentially the Briand proposals of 1910.[486] Through the revival of _scrutin de liste_, with a large department or a group of small ones as the electoral area, and with the device of representation of minorities added, (p. 324) the measure, in the event of its probable final enactment, will largely transform the conditions under which the parliamentary elections of to-day are conducted. [Footnote 486: The most systematic account of the electoral franchise in France since 1789 is A. Tecklenburg, Die Entwickelung des Wahlrechts in Frankreich seit 1789 (Tübingen, 1911). The French electoral system is described at length in E. Pierre, Code des élections politiques (Paris, 1893); Chaute-Grellet, Traité des élections, 2 vols. (Paris, 1897); M. Block, Dictionnaire de l'administration française (5th ed., Paris, 1905), I., 1208-1244. The literature of the subject of electoral reform is very extensive. Mention may be made of C. Benoist, Pour la réforme électorale (Paris, 1908); J. L. Chardon, La réforme électorale en France (Paris, 1910); J. L. Breton, La réforme électorale (Paris, 1910); C. Francois, La représentation des intérêts dans les corps élus (Paris, 1900); F. Faure, La législature qui finit et la réforme électorale, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Dec. 10, 1909; Marion, Comment faire la réforme électorale; ibid., Feb. 10 and March 10, 1910; M. Deslanders, La réforme électorale, ibid., July 10, 1910; A. Varenne, La réforme électorale d'abord, ibid., Nov. 10, 1910; G. Lachapelle, La discussion du projet de réforme électorale, ibid., May 10, 1912; F. Faure, Le vote de la réforme électorale, ibid., Aug. 10, 1912 (contains the text of the Electoral Law); L. Milhac, Les partis politiques français dans leur programme et devant le suffrage, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July 15, 1910; G. Scelle, La représentation politique, in _Revue du Droit Public_, July-Sept., 1911; L. Marin, Le vote personnel, in _La Grande Revue_, March 25, 1911; and G. Trouillot, La réforme électorale au Sénat, ibid., Sept. 25, 1912. The text of the bill of 1912 is to be found also in _Revue du Droit Public_, July-Sept., 1912. On the question of proportional representation see G. Tronqual, La représentation proportionnelle devant le parlement français (Poitiers, 1910); F. Lépine, La représentation proportionnelle et sa solution (Paris, 1911); N. Saripolos, La démocratie et l'élection proportionnelle (Paris, 1900); G. Lachapelle, La représentation proportionnelle (Paris, 1910); ibid., Représentation proportionnelle, in _Revue de Paris_, Nov. 15, 1910; ibid., L'Application de la représentation proportionnelle, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Dec. 10, 1910. See also Anon., La sophistication du suffrage universel, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1909, and May, 1910; E. Zevort, La France sous le régime du suffrage universel (Paris, 1894). The subject of proportional representation in France is fully discussed in a Report of the British Royal Commission on Electoral Systems (1910). Report, Cd. 5,163; Evidence, Cd. 5,352.] CHAPTER XVII (p. 325) PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE--POLITICAL PARTIES I. ORGANIZATION AND WORKINGS OF THE CHAMBERS *352. Sessions.*--By the constitutional law of July 16, 1875, it is required that the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate shall assemble annually on the second Tuesday of January, unless convened at an earlier date by the President of the Republic, and that they shall continue in session through at least five months of each year. The President may convene an extraordinary session, and is obligated to do so if at any time during a recess an absolute majority of both chambers request it. The President may adjourn the chambers, but not more than twice during the same session, and never to exceed one month. The sessions of the Deputies are held in the Palais Bourbon, situated in the immediate neighborhood of a group of ministerial buildings at the end of the Boulevard St. Germain, directly across the Seine from the Place de la Concorde; those of the Senate, in the Palais du Luxembourg. The sittings are by law required to be public, though there is provision for occasional secret sessions. Since January 1, 1907, deputies have received 15,000 francs a year (increased by law of November, 1906, from 9,000); and they are entitled, on payment of a nominal sum, to travel free on all French railways. The emoluments of senators are identical with those of deputies. *353. Officers, Bureaus, and Committees.*--The presiding officer of the Deputies is known as the president. He is elected by the Chamber and, far from being a mere moderator, as is the Speaker of the British House of Commons, he is ordinarily an aggressive party man, not indisposed to quit the chair to participate in debate, and therefore bearing an interesting resemblance to the Speaker of the American House of Representatives. Besides the president, there are four vice-presidents, eight secretaries, and three questors, all chosen by the Chamber. The vice-presidents replace the president upon occasion; the secretaries (of whom half must always be on duty when the Chamber is in session) supervise the records of the meetings and count the votes when there is a division; the questors have in charge the Chamber's finances. Collectively, this group of sixteen officials comprises what is known as the "bureau" of the Chamber. It manages (p. 326) the business of the body during a session and, if need be, acts in its name during a recess. Every month during the course of a session the entire membership of the Chamber is divided by lot into eleven other bureaus of equal size. These bureaus meet from time to time separately to examine the credentials of members, to give formal consideration to bills which have not yet been referred to a committee, and, most important of all, to select one of their number to serve on each of the committees of the Chamber. In the case of very important committees, the bureaus may be instructed by the Chamber to designate two members, or even three, each. Thus, the Budget Committee contains three representatives of each bureau. This committee and another constituted to audit the accounts of the Government are created for a year. Others serve a single month. Theoretically, indeed, every measure is referred to a committee constituted specifically for the purpose; but practically the consequence of such a procedure would be confusion so gross that the greater committees, as those on labor, railways, and the army, are allowed to acquire some substantial measure of permanence. Committee positions are quite generally objects of barter on the part of party groups and leaders.[487] [Footnote 487: A. de la Berge, Les grands comités parlementaires, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Dec. 1, 1889.] *354. Procedure.*--Immediately upon assembling, each of the chambers validates the elections of its own members, chooses its bureau of president, vice-presidents, secretaries, and questors, and adopts its own rules of procedure. At an early date the premier communicates orally a "ministerial declaration," in which are outlined the policies to which the Government is committed; and certain of the measures therein proposed are likely to take precedence in the ensuing deliberations. The hall in which each body sits is semi-circular, with as many seats and desks as there are members to be accommodated. In the centre stands a raised arm-chair for the use of the president, and in front of it is a platform, or "tribune," which every member who desires to speak is required to mount. On either side of the tribune are stationed stenographers, whose reports of the proceedings are printed each morning in the _Journal Officiel_. The first tier of seats in the semi-circle, facing the tribune, is reserved for the Government, i.e., the members of the ministry; behind are ranged the remaining members of the Chamber, with the radicals on the president's left and the conservatives on his right. Of the bureaus into which, at the beginning of each month, the members of each chamber are divided, there are, as has been said, eleven in the Deputies; in the Senate there are nine. When a bill is (p. 327) introduced it is referred first of all to these bureaus, each of which designates one or more commissioners, who, acting together as a committee, are expected to make a careful examination of the measure. The report of this committee is printed and distributed, whereupon general discussion begins in the chamber. Every measure must pass two readings in each chamber, with an interval of five days, unless otherwise ordered by a majority vote. A member wishing to take part in the debate indicates his desire by inscribing his name on lists kept by the secretaries. On the motion of any member, the closure may be applied and a vote ordered. The division may be taken by a show of hands, by rising, or by a ballot in which a white voting paper denotes an affirmative, and a blue one a negative, vote. Voting by proxy, long permitted, has been recently abolished. No decision is valid unless an absolute majority of the members (151 in the Senate and 299 in the Deputies) has participated in the vote. In the upper branch proceedings are apt to be slow and dignified; in the lower they are more animated, and not infrequently tempestuous. The duty of keeping order at the sittings falls to the president. In aggravated cases he is empowered, with the consent of a majority of the chamber, to administer a reprimand carrying with it temporary exclusion from the sessions.[488] [Footnote 488: A. P. Usher, Procedure in the French Chamber of Deputies, in _Political Science Quarterly_, Sept., 1906; J. S. Crawford, A Day in the Chamber of Deputies, in _Gunton's Magazine_, Oct., 1901; M. R. Bonnard, Les modifications du réglement de la Chambre des Députés, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Oct.-Dec., 1911. The standard treatise on French parliamentary procedure is J. Poudra et E. Pierre, Traité pratique de droit parlementaire, 8 vols. (Versailles, 1878-1880.)] *355. Powers and Functions: the National Assembly.*--Speaking broadly, the functions of the French chambers are three-fold--constituent, elective, and legislative. The first two are required to be exercised by the two houses conjointly. By the constitutional law of February 25, 1875, there is provided the only means whereby the constitution of the Republic may be amended. "The chambers," it is stipulated, "shall have the right by separate resolutions, taken in each by an absolute majority of votes, either upon their own initiative or upon the request of the President of the Republic, to declare a revision of the constitutional laws necessary. After each of the two chambers shall have come to this decision, they shall meet together in National Assembly to proceed with the revision. The acts affecting revision of the constitutional laws, in whole or in part, shall be passed by an absolute majority of the members composing the National Assembly."[489] The power of constitutional amendment is therefore vested absolutely in the parliamentary chambers, under the requirement simply that (p. 328) it be exercised in joint session. The only limitation that has been imposed on parliamentary omnipotence in this direction is a clause adopted in an amendment of August 13, 1884, to the effect that "the republican form of government shall not be made the subject of a proposed revision."[490] As in the British system, constituent and legislative powers are lodged in the same body of men; and not merely the powers of constitution-making, but the exclusive right to pronounce upon the constitutionality or unconstitutionally of legislation. The principal difference is that, whereas the British Parliament exercises the sum total of its powers in an unvarying manner, the French, when acting in its constituent capacity, follows a specially designed procedure. [Footnote 489: Art. 8. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 288.] [Footnote 490: Art. 8. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 294.] One other function the two chambers sitting conjointly possess, i.e., that of electing the President of the Republic. Under normal conditions, the chambers are called together in National Assembly to choose a President one month or more before the expiration of the seven-year presidential term. In the event of vacancy by death, by resignation, or by reason of any other unanticipated circumstance, the meeting of the Assembly takes place forthwith, without summons.[491] Election is by ballot, and by absolute majority of the members. All meetings of the National Assembly are held, not in Paris, but in the old royal palace at Versailles, which indeed was the sole seat of the present republican government until 1879. No elective session may exceed in length the five months allotted to an ordinary legislative session. [Footnote 491: Law of July 16, 1875, art. 3. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 291.] *356. Legislation and Special Powers.*--The two chambers possess concurrent powers in all that pertains to the initiation, the enactment, and the amending of laws, save that money bills must be introduced in and passed by the Chamber of Deputies before being considered in the upper branch. Except for this limitation, measures may be presented in either house, by the ministers in the name of the President, or by private members. The vast fabric of Napoleonic law which has survived to the present day in France has narrowed perceptibly the range of legislative activity under the Republic. During the first generation after 1871 few great statutes were enacted, save those of a constitutional character. In our own day, however, the phenomenal expansion of social and industrial legislation, which has been a striking feature of the public life of most European nations, has imparted a new vigor and productiveness to French parliamentary activity. Each of the chambers possesses certain functions peculiar to itself. Aside from the initiation of money bills, the principal such function of the Deputies is the bringing of charges of impeachment against (p. 329) the President or ministers. The Senate possesses the exclusive power to try cases of impeachment. It is given the right to assent or to withhold its assent when the President proposes to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies before the expiration of its term. And by decree of the President, issued in the Council of Ministers, it may be constituted a court of justice to try any person accused of attempts upon the safety of the state.[492] [Footnote 492: Y. Guyot, Relations between the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies, in _Contemporary Review_, Feb., 1910.] II. POLITICAL PARTIES SINCE 1871 *357. Republicans and Conservatives.*--In its larger aspects the alignment of political parties in France to-day dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. In the National Assembly of 1848--the first representative body elected in France by direct universal suffrage--the line was sharply drawn between the republicans of the Left, who wished to maintain the Republic and with it a liberal measure of democracy, and the reactionaries of the Right, who began by insisting upon a restoration of clerical privilege and bourgeois rule and ended, in the days of the Legislative Assembly, by clamoring for a restoration of monarchy itself. After the _coup d'état_ of 1851 both groups were silenced, though even in the politically stagnant era of the early Empire they did not lose altogether their identity. With the revival, however, after 1860, of a vigorous political life the two worked together, and with success, to accomplish the overthrow of the personal government of Napoleon III. Upon the collapse of the Empire in 1870 the original cleavage reappeared. The National Assembly elected in 1871 was divided broadly into Republicans and Conservatives (which name gradually replaced that of Reactionaries), and during the five years covered by the life of this extremely important body these two great groups struggled continuously over the supreme question of the day, i.e., the style of government which should be adopted permanently for France. Each of the groups comprised a variety of elements. To the Republicans belonged the Radical Extreme Left of Gambetta, the Left of Grévy, Freycînct, and Loubet, and the Centre Left of Thiers and Jules Simon. To the Conservatives belonged the Legitimate Extreme Right, an Orleanist Centre Right, and, eventually, the Imperialists. Following the definite establishment, in 1875, of the republican constitution, the lines by which these various elements had been marked off grew less distinct, and Republicans and Conservatives acquired in each case a more homogeneous character. *358. Rise of the Radicals.*--After the first election under the (p. 330) new constitution--that of 1876--the Senate remained in the control of the Conservatives, but the Chamber of Deputies was found to contain a Republican majority of more than two to one. From that day until the present the Republican ascendancy in the lower house has been maintained uninterruptedly; and since 1882 there has been likewise always a Republican majority in the Senate. It is to be observed, of course, that Republican control in both chambers has meant regularly not the absolute dominance of a single compact party group, but the preponderance of a coalition of two or more groups broadly to be described as "republican." During the early eighties there sprang up a flourishing group which, reviving the original programme of Gambetta, assumed the name Radical, and in the elections of 1885 this group acquired such a quota of seats in the Chamber (150) as to render it impossible for the Republicans alone to retain control. Thereafter there were three principal party groups--the Conservatives and the two republican groups, the Republicans proper and the Radicals. No one of the three being sufficiently strong to obtain a majority which would enable it to rule alone, the politics of a long succession of years turned upon the adoption of one or the other of two lines of tactics--the coalition of the two republican divisions to the end that they might rule as against a Conservative minority (the so-called policy of "republican concentration"), and the allying of one of these groups with the Right against the other Republican group (spoken of commonly as a "pacification"). The first "concentration" ministry was that of Brisson, formed in March, 1885; the first "pacification" ministry was that of Rouvier, formed in 1887. In the middle of the nineties some attempts were made to create and maintain homogeneous ministries. The Bourgeois ministry of 1895-1896 was composed entirely of Radicals and the Méline ministry of 1896-1898 of Moderate Republicans. But at the elections of 1898 the Republican position in the Chamber broke down and it was necessary to return, with the Dupuy ministry, to the policy of concentration. Meanwhile, in the early nineties, from the Conservative and Republican extremes respectively had been detached two new party groups. From the ranks of the Conservatives had sprung a body of Catholics who, under papal injunction, had declared their purpose to rally to the support of the Republicans; whence they acquired the designation of the "Ralliés." And from the Radical party had broken off a body of socialists of such consequence that in the elections of 1893 it succeeded in carrying fifty seats. *359. The Bloc.*--A new era in the history of French political (p. 331) parties was marked by the elections of May, 1898. Some 250 seats, and with them the effectual control of the Chamber, were acquired by the Radicals, the Socialists, and an intermediary group of Radical-Socialists. The Moderate Republicans, to whom had been given recently the name of Progressives, were reduced to 200; while the Right retained but 100. The Socialists alone polled nearly twenty per cent of the total popular vote. The remarkable agitation by which the Dreyfus affair was attended had the effect of consolidating further the parties of the Left, and the _bloc_ which resulted not only has subsisted steadily from that day to the present but has controlled very largely the policies of the government. The first conspicuous leader and spokesman of the coalition was Waldeck-Rousseau, premier from 1899 to 1902, and its first great achievement was the separation of church and state, accomplished through the means of the Law of Associations of July 1, 1901, the abrogation of the Concordat, December 9, 1905, and the law of January 2, 1907, restricting further the privileges of the Roman Catholic Church in France. A socialist now appeared for the first time in the cabinet. At the elections of April, 1902, the policies of the Government were vindicated by the return of 321 avowed "ministerialists" and of but 268 representatives of the opposition. *360. The Elections of 1906.*--June 3, 1902, the longest-lived ministry since the Third Republic was established was brought to an end by the voluntary retirement of Waldeck-Rousseau. The new premier, Combes, was a member of the Radical party, and the anti-clerical, radical policies of the preceding government were maintained throughout the ensuing two and a half years, as also they were during the premiership of Rouvier (1905-1906). In March, 1906, a new ministry, in which Clemenceau was actual chief, was formed with the Radical Sarrien as premier, and at the elections which came two months later the groups of the Left won another signal victory. Prior to the balloting the majority in support of the radical policy of the Government _bloc_ could muster in the Chamber some 340 votes; afterwards, it could muster at least 400. The Right retained its numerical strength (about 130), but the extreme Left made decided gains at the expense of the moderates, or Progressives. The number of Progressive seats, 120 prior to the election, was reduced by half; while the aggregate of Socialist and Radical-Socialist seats rose to 230. On all sides Moderate Republicanism fell before the assaults of Socialism. At the same time it was demonstrated unmistakably that the anti-clerical measures of the recent governments were in substantial accord with the will (p. 332) of the nation. October 25, 1906, Clemenceau assumed the premiership. *361. The Elections of 1910.*--The Clemenceau ministry, which survived until July, 1909, adopted a programme which was more frankly socialistic than was that of any of its predecessors. It added to the system of state-owned railways the Great Western Line; it inaugurated a graduated income tax and put the measure in the way of enactment at the hand of the Chamber; it carried fresh and more rigorous legislation in hostility to clericalism; and, in general, it gave free expression to the unquestionable trend of the France of to-day away from the individualism of the Revolutionary period in the direction of the ideals of collectivism. The Briand ministry by which it was succeeded followed in the same lines, three of its members, indeed, being active socialists. Prior to the elections of April-May, 1910, there took place some readjustment of political forces, but, on the whole, no change of large importance. The _bloc_, however, more than once showed signs of breaking up, and the majority of the party groups arrived at the electoral season devoid of harmony and paralyzed by uncertainty of policy. The Radicals were divided upon the question of the income-tax; the Socialists, upon the question of the party's attitude toward trade-unions; and all parties, upon the issue of proportional representation. That the voters were no less bewildered than were the party leaders appeared from the fact that in 231 constituencies--almost an unprecedented number[493]--second ballotings were required. With the issues so confused, the results could hardly prove of large significance. The lines which separate party groups to-day in France are not infrequently both ill-defined and shifting, with the consequence that it is not possible to express party strength by exact numbers, as may be done in the case of the parties of Great Britain or of the United States. A deputy may even belong to two groups at one time. The composition of the Chamber following the elections of 1910 can be stated, therefore, only approximately. Composing the Right were (1) the Right proper, 19; (2) the Action Libérale Populaire--organized originally to combat the radicalism of Waldeck-Rousseau, 34; (3) the Progressives, now to be identified with the Right, 76--a total of 129. Identified with the Left were (1) the Republicans, 73; (2) the Radicals, 112; and (3) the Radical-Socialists, 149--a total of 334. Comprising the Extreme Left were the Socialists (Independent 30; Unified, 75), aggregating 105. Finally, of Independents there were upwards of 20. The continued preponderance of the Left was assured, although to prolong their mastery of the situation the Radicals and Radical-Socialists fell under the (p. 333) necessity of securing the support of either the Republicans or the Independent Socialists.[494] [Footnote 493: Absolutely so, save for the _scrutin de liste_ election of 1885.] [Footnote 494: The political history of the period since the elections of 1910 has been remarkable by reason chiefly of the absorption of public attention by the issues of electoral reform and labor legislation. Embarrassed by interpellations with reference to its ecclesiastical policy, the Briand ministry (reconstituted in November, 1910) retired in February, 1911. The Monis government which succeeded lacked coherence, as also did the ministry of Caillaux (June, 1911 to January, 1912). The cardinal achievement of the Poincaré ministry has been the carrying of the Electoral Reform Bill of 1912 in the lower chamber. See p. 323.] *362. Changes since 1871.*--"The political history of France since the beginning of the Republic," says a scholarly French observer, "presents, instead of an alternation between two parties of opposing programmes, like those of Belgium or England, a continual evolution along one line, the constant growth of the strength of parties which represent the democratic, anti-clerical tendency."[495] The fundamental division of Conservative and Republican persists, but both of these terms have long since lost their original definiteness of meaning. The Conservatives have ceased, in large part, to be "reactionaries." Few of them are even royalists, and the old distinction of Legitimist, Orleanist, and Bonapartist has disappeared entirely. The Right is essentially "republican," as is evidenced by the further fact that the majority of its members in the Chamber are Progressives, whose forerunners composed the real Republican party of a generation ago. The Republican groups of to-day comprise simply those numerous and formidable political elements which are _more_ republican--that is to say, more radical--than are the adherents of the Right. Among themselves, however, they represent a very wide gradation of radicalism. [Footnote 495: C. Seignobos, The Political Parties of France, in _International Monthly_, Aug., 1901, 155.] *363. French Socialism.*--The history of socialism in France since 1871 has been stormy. During the seventies proselyting effort was directed chiefly toward the influencing of the trade-unions to declare for socialism. In 1879 the general trade-union congress at Marseilles took the desired step, but in the congress of the following year at Havre there arose a schism between the "collectivists" and the "co-operatives" which in reality has never been healed. During the eighties and nineties the process of disintegration continued, and there came to be a half-dozen socialist parties, besides numerous local groups of independents. During the years 1898-1901 continued effort was made to bring the various socialist elements into some sort of union, and in 1900 a national congress of all French socialist parties and organizations was held at Paris. An incident of the (p. 334) Dreyfus controversy was the elevation of an independent socialist, Étienne Millerand, to a portfolio in the ministry of Waldeck-Rousseau, and this event became the occasion of a new socialist breach. The Parti Socialiste Français, led by the eloquent Jaurès, approved Millerand's opportunism; the Parti Socialist de France opposed. In 1905, however, these two bodies were amalgamated in the Parti Socialist of the present day, with a programme which calls for the socializing of the means of production and exchange, i.e., the transforming of the capitalistic organization of society into a collectivist or communistic organization. The means by which the party proposes to bring about the transformation is the industrial and political organization of the working classes. In respect to its aim, its ideals, and its means, the French Socialist party, while ready to support the immediate reforms demanded by laboring people, is to a greater degree than the German Social Democracy a party of class struggle and revolution. In 1885, when the French socialists waged their first campaign in a parliamentary election, the aggregate number of socialist votes was but 30,000. By 1889 the number had been increased to 120,000; by 1898 to 700,000; and by 1906 to 1,000,000. At the election of 1910 the popular vote was increased by 200,000, and the number of socialist deputies was raised to a total of 105. Within recent years socialism, formerly confined almost wholly to the towns and cities, has begun to take hold among the wage-earners, and even the small proprietors, in the rural portions of the country.[496] [Footnote 496: The best accounts in English of the French parties and party system are Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., Chap. 2; Bodley, France, Book IV., Chaps. 1-8; and C. Seignobos, The Political Parties of France, in _International Monthly_, Aug., 1901. The last-mentioned is brief, but excellent. A valuable work is P. Laffitte, Le suffrage universel et la régime parlementaire (2d ed., Paris, 1889). Among useful articles may be mentioned: J. Méline, Les partis dans la république, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Jan., 1900; M. H. Doniol, Les idées politiques et les partis en France durant le XIXe siècle, in _Revue du Droit Public_, May-June, 1902; and A. Charpentier, Radicaux et socialistes de 1902 à 1912, in _La Nouvelle Revue_, May 1, 1912. On socialism in France see J. Peixotto, The French Revolution and Modern French Socialism (New York, 1901); R. T. Ely, French and German Socialism in Modern Times (New York, 1883); P. Louis, Histoire du socialisme français (Paris, 1901); E. Villey, Les périls de la démocratie française (Paris, 1910); and A. Fouillee, La démocratie politique et sociale en France (Paris, 1910).] CHAPTER XVIII (p. 335) JUSTICE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT I. FRENCH LAW The law of France is of highly composite origin. Its sources lie far back in the Roman law, the canon law, and the Germanic law of the Middle Ages. As late as 1789 there had been no attempt at a complete codification of it. Under the operation of a succession of royal ordinances, criminal law, civil and criminal procedure, and commercial law, it is true, had been reduced by the opening of the Revolution to a reasonable measure of uniformity. The civil law existed still, however, in the form of "customs" (_coutumiers_), which varied widely from province to province. A code of civil law which should be established uniformly throughout the realm was very generally demanded in the cahiers of 1789, and such a code was specifically promised in the constitution of 1791. *364. The Code Napoléon.*--Toward the work of codification some beginnings were made by the first two Revolutionary assemblies, but the development of a coherent plan began only with the Convention.[497] In the period of the Consulate the task was continued and progress was rapid. The governmental mechanism under the constitution of 1799 was cumbersome enough, but it was not ill adapted to the prosecution of a project of this particular character. To a special commission, appointed by the First Consul, was intrusted the drafting of the codes, and the ultimate decision of difficult or controverted questions fell to the Council of State, over whose deliberations Napoleon not infrequently presided in person. March 31, 1804,--less than two months before the proclamation of the Empire,--the new _Code civil des Français_ was promulgated in its entirety. September 3, 1807, the instrument was given officially the name of the _Code Napoléon_. By a measure of 1818 the original designation was restored; but a decree of March 27, 1852, revived the Napoleonic nomenclature. Since September 4, 1870, the instrument has been cited officially simply as the _Code Civil_. In arrangement the Code resembles the Institutes of Justinian. In (p. 336) content it represents a very successful combination of the two great elements with which the framers had to deal, i.e., the ancient heterogeneous law of the French provinces and the law which was originated, or which was given shape, during the course of the Revolution. [Footnote 497: H. Cauvière, L'idée de codification en France avant la rédaction du Code Civil (Paris, 1911).] With the progress of time certain defects have appeared in the Code, and since 1871 more than a hundred modifications, some important and some otherwise, have been introduced in it. Upon the occasion of the celebration, in 1904, of the centenary of its promulgation there was created an extra-parliamentary commission charged with the task of preparing a revision of the instrument.[498] In the main, the faults to be corrected are those which have arisen inevitably from the growth of new interests and the development of new conditions since 1804, in respect, for example, to insurance and to labor. In Belgium the Code Napoléon survives to this day, and the codes of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and many of the Latin American states are modelled upon it. [Footnote 498: The task of revision has not yet been accomplished. See La Code Civil, livre du centenaire (Paris, 1904)--a volume of valuable essays by French and foreign lawyers.] *365. Other Codes.*--Aside from the Civil Code of 1804, containing an aggregate of 2,281 articles, the larger part of the law of France to-day is comprised in four great codes, all drawn up and promulgated during the era of the Consulate and the Empire. These are: (1) the Code of Civil Procedure, of 1,042 articles, in 1806; (2) the Code of Commerce, of 648 articles, in 1807; (3) the Code of Criminal Instruction, of 648 articles, in 1808; and (4) the Penal Code, of 484 articles, in 1810.[499] The last two codes were submitted to a general revision in 1832, and various supplementary codes,--e.g., the Forest Code, of 226 articles, in 1827,--have been promulgated. But the modifications introduced since Napoleon's day have involved principally mere details or the addition of subjects originally omitted. No one of the codes represented at the time of its promulgation a new body of law. On the contrary, all of them, and especially the fundamental Civil Code of 1804, merely reduced existing law to systematic, written form, introducing order and uniformity where previously there had been diversity and even chaos. By the process the law of France was given a measure of unity and precision which it had never before possessed, with the disadvantage, however, that it lost the flexibility and dynamic character that once had belonged to it. Throughout the past hundred years the whole of France has been a country of one written law--a law so comprehensive in (p. 337) both principles and details that, until comparatively recently, there has seemed to be small room or reason for its modification. The history of French parliamentary assemblies has been affected perceptibly by the narrowing of the field of legislation arising from this circumstance.[500] [Footnote 499: M. Leroy, Le centenaire du code pénal, in _Revue de Paris_, Feb. 1, 1911.] [Footnote 500: J. Brissaud, History of French Private Law, trans. by R. Howell (Boston, 1912).] II. THE COURTS *366. The Ordinary Courts: Justice of the Peace.*--In French practice the distinction which is drawn between private law and public law is so sharp that there have been built up two hierarchies of courts--the ordinary and the administrative--each of which maintains practically exclusive jurisdiction within an independent field. The ordinary courts comprise civil and criminal tribunals, together with certain special tribunals, such as the _tribunaux de commerce_. At the bottom stands the court of the justice of the peace (_juge de paix_) of the canton. This tribunal was created by the first of the Revolutionary assemblies and it has existed continuously to the present day. The justice of the peace takes cognizance of disputes where the amount involved does not exceed 600 francs, and of contraventions of law punishable by a fine not exceeding fifteen francs or imprisonment not beyond five days. In civil cases involving more than 300 francs, and in criminal cases involving imprisonment or a fine exceeding five francs, appeal lies to a higher tribunal. *367. The Courts of First Instance.*--Next above the court of the justice of the peace stands the _tribunal de première instance_, or _tribunal d'arrondissement_. Of such courts there is, with a few exceptions, one in each arrondissement or district. Each consists of a president, at least one vice-president, and a variable number of judges, three of whom form a court with full powers. To each is attached a _procureur_, or public prosecutor. This tribunal takes cognizance of all kinds of civil cases. In appeals from the justices of the peace, actions relating to personal property to the value of 1500 francs, actions relating to land to the value of sixty francs per year, and all cases of registration, there lies no appeal from its decisions. The jurisdiction of the court in penal cases extends to all offenses of the class known as _délits_ (misdemeanors), i.e., offenses involving penalities which are heavier than those attached to the contraventions dealt with by the justices of the peace, yet less serious than those prescribed for crimes. When sitting as a criminal court, the court of first instance is known as a _tribunal (p. 338) correctionnel_, or "correctional court." All of its judgments in criminal cases are subject to appeal. *368. The Courts of Appeal and of Assize.*--Above the courts of first instance are twenty-six _cours d'appel_, or courts of appeal, each of which exercises jurisdiction within a territory comprising from one to five departments. At the head of each is a president, and each maintains an elaborate _parquet_, or permanent staff of officials, in which are included several _procureurs-généraux_ and _avocats-généraux_. For the transaction of business the court of appeal is divided into chambers, or sections, each consisting of a president and four _conseillers_, or judges. The primary function of the court is the hearing of appeals, in both civil and criminal causes, from the courts of first instance. Original jurisdiction is limited and incidental. Closely related to the courts of appeal are the _cours d'assises_, or courts of assize. These are not separate or permanent tribunals. Every three months there is constituted in each department, ordinarily in the chief town thereof, a court of assize consisting of a specially designated member of the court of appeals within whose jurisdiction the department lies and two other magistrates, who may be chosen either from the remaining _conseillers_ of the court of appeals or from the justices of the local court of first instance. The courts of assize are occupied exclusively with serious offenses, such as in the Penal Code are classified as crimes. In them, and in them only among French tribunals, is the device of the jury regularly employed. A jury consists of twelve men, whose verdict is rendered by simple majority. As in Great Britain and some of the American states, the jurors determine the fact but do not apply the law. *369. The Court of Cassation.*--At the apex of the hierarchy of ordinary tribunals is the Court of Cassation. This court sits at Paris, and in all matters of ordinary private law it is the supreme tribunal of the state. It consists of a first president, three sectional presidents, and forty-five judges. Attached to it are a procurator-general and six advocates-general. For working purposes it is divided into three sections: the _Chambre des Requêtes_, or Court of Petitions, which gives civil cases a preliminary hearing; the Civil Court, which gives them a final consideration; and the Criminal Court, which disposes of criminal cases on appeal. It is within the competence of the Court of Cassation to review the decisions of any tribunal in France, save those of an administrative character. It passes, not upon fact, but upon the principles of law involved and upon the competence of the court rendering the original decision. A decision which is overruled is said to be _cassé_, i.e., annulled. The purpose of the Court of (p. 339) Cassation is not alone to further the interests of justice, but also to preserve the unity of French jurisprudence. *370. Appointment and Tenure of Judges.*--All judges attached to the ordinary tribunals are appointed by the President of the Republic, on the recommendation, and under the responsibility, of the Minister of Justice. With the exception of justices of the peace in France, and of judges of all grades in Algeria and the colonies, tenure of judicial office continues during good behavior; and, outside of the classes mentioned, no judicial officer may be dismissed without the consent of the Court of Cassation. There is, however, an age limit, varying with the official grade, at which retirement is expected and virtually required. Justices of the peace and Algerian and colonial judges maybe dismissed by the President. Salaries range from 1,600 francs per year in the case of the justice of the peace to 30,000 in that of the President of the Court of Cassation.[501] [Footnote 501: The best treatise upon the French judicial system and upon proposed reforms of it is J. Coumoul, Traité du pouvoir judiciaire; de son rôle constitutionnel et de sa réforme organique (2d ed., Paris, 1911). See Vicomte d'Avenel, La réforme administrative--la justice, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, June 1, 1889; L. Irwell, The Judicial System of France, _Green Bag_, Nov., 1902.] *371. Administrative Law and Administrative Tribunals.*--Actions at law arising out of the conduct of administration are brought, not in the regular courts connected with the Ministry of Justice, but in special administrative tribunals connected with the Ministry of the Interior. Administrative courts exist for the application of administrative law, and administrative law may be defined in brief as that body of legal principles by which are determined the status and liabilities of public officials, the rights and liabilities of private individuals in their dealings with the official representatives of the state, and the procedure by which these rights and liabilities may be enforced. The idea underlying it is that the government, and every agent of the government, possesses a body of rights, privileges, and prerogatives which are sharply marked off from those of the private citizen, and that the nature and extent of these rights and privileges are to be determined on principles essentially distinct from those which govern in the fixing of the rights and privileges of citizens in relation one to another. This conception is foreign to the English-speaking world, and neither Great Britain nor any nation of English origin possesses more than here and there an accidental trace of administrative law. Among continental European states, however, the maintenance of a body of administrative legal principles--uncodified and flexible, but (p. 340) fundamental--is all but universal. In some states, as Belgium, the rules of administrative law are interpreted and enforced by the ordinary courts; but in others, as in France, they are dealt with by an entirely separate hierarchy of tribunals, made up of officials in the service of the government and dismissable at any time by the head of the state. "In France," as one writer puts it, "there is one law for the citizen and another for the public official, and thus the executive is really independent of the judiciary, for the government has always a free hand, and can violate the law if it wants to do so without having anything to fear from the ordinary courts."[502] Although not without precedent in the Old Régime, the distinction between ordinary and administrative law in France was first clearly established by Napoleon in the constitution of 1799, and the system of administrative courts erected under that instrument has survived in large part to the present day.[503] [Footnote 502: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 58.] [Footnote 503: It need hardly be explained that the First Consul's intention was that the ordinary judges should not be allowed to obstruct by their decisions the policies of the government.] *372. The Council of State.*--The most important of the administrative tribunals is the _Conseil d'État_, or Council of State, a body which once possessed large functions of an executive and legislative character, but whose influence to-day arises almost exclusively from its supreme administrative jurisdiction. The Council of State is composed of 32 councillors _en service ordinaire_, 19 councillors _en service extraordinaire_ (Government officials deputed to guard the interests of the various executive departments), 32 _maîtres des requêtes_, and 40 auditors. All members are appointed by, and dismissable by, the President. For purposes of business the body is divided into four sections, each corresponding to a group of two or three ministerial departments, and a fifth section which deals more directly with questions of administrative law. It is the function of the Council to consider and make reply to all questions relating to administrative affairs which the Government may lay before it; and in all administrative cases at law it is the court of last resort. Below it stands, in each department, a _conseil de préfecture_, or prefectural council, which is the court of first instance in all litigation arising out of the application of administrative law. A specialized function of the prefectural council is the determining of the validity of arrondissement and municipal elections.[504] [Footnote 504: For an account of the administrative law of France see A. V. Dicey, The Law of the Constitution (7th ed., London, 1908), Chap. 12. Important French works on the subject include H. Barthélemy, Traité élémentaire de droit administratif (5th ed., Paris, 1908); H. Chardon, L'administration de la France, les fonctionnaires (Paris, 1908); G. Jèze, Les principes généraux du droit administratif (Paris, 1904); and J. L. Aucoc, Conférences sur l'administration et le droit administratif (3d ed., Paris, 1885). Mention may be made also of E. J. Laferrière, Traité de la jurisdiction administrative et des recours contentieux (Paris, 1887-1888), and Varagnac, Le Conseil d'État et les projets de réforme, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Aug. 15, and Sept. 15, 1892.] *373. Other Courts.*--Between the hierarchy of ordinary courts (p. 341) and that of administrative tribunals stand a variety of courts of special character--courts of commerce, courts of accounts, courts of public instruction. There is a _Tribunal des Conflits_, or Court of Conflicts, composed of the Minister of Justice, three members of the Court of Cassation, three of the Council of State, and two elected by these seven. Under the presidency of the Minister of Justice, it determines, in the event of doubt or dispute, the competent jurisdiction, ordinary or administrative, to be extended to a particular case. Finally the fact may be recalled that to take cognizance of attacks upon the safety of the state, as well as for the trial of an impeachment proceeding, the Senate may be constituted a high court of justice. III. LOCAL GOVERNMENT: DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1789 *374. Stability of Local Institutions.*--Students of political science are familiar with the fact that governmental systems are, as a rule, less stable at the top than at the bottom. Local institutions, embedded in the interests of the community and supported by the native conservatism of the ordinary man, strike root deeply; the central, national agencies of law-making and of administration are played upon by larger, more unsettling forces, with the consequence of greatly increased likelihood of change. Of this principle the history of modern France affords notable illustration. Throughout a century of the most remarkable instability in the organization of the central government of the nation the scheme of local government which operates at the present day has been preserved almost intact. The origins of it, it is true, are to be traced to revolution. In most of its essentials it was created by the National Assembly of 1789 and by Napoleon, and it rose upon the wreckage of a system whose operation had been extended through many centuries of Capetian and Bourbon rule. Once established, however, it proved sufficiently workable to be perpetuated under every one of the governmental régimes which, between 1800 and the present day, have filled their successive places in the history of the nation. *375. Local Government Under the Old Régime.*--Prior to the Revolution the French administrative system was centralized and bureaucratic, but heterogeneous and notoriously ineffective. The provinces had ceased almost completely to be political units. In but few of them did (p. 342) the ancient assembly of the estates survive, and nowhere did it possess more than merely formal administrative powers. The "governments" of later times, corresponding roughly to the provinces, had fallen likewise into desuetude and the governors had become inactive pensioners. Of political units possessing some vitality there were but two--the _généralité_ and the commune. The _généralité_ was the jurisdiction of a royal officer known as an _intendant_, to whom was assigned the conduct of every kind of administrative business. The number of _généralités_ in the kingdom varied from thirty to forty. The commune was an irreducible local unit whose history was unbroken from the era of Roman dominion in Gaul. Its constitution in the eighteenth century was in appearance democratic. To the communal assembly belonged all persons who were liable to the _taille_, and this body elected communal officers, cared for communal property, and regulated local affairs. In point of fact, however, the measure of real independence which the assembly enjoyed was meager. The _intendant_ dictated or controlled virtually its every act. Of true local government it may be said that in pre-revolutionary France there was little or none.[505] [Footnote 505: A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien régime (Paris, 1880); A. Luchaire, Les communes françaises (Paris, 1890); H. Barthélemy, Traité de droit administratif (5th ed., Paris, 1908); A. Esmein, Histoire du droit français (8th ed., Paris, 1908).] *376. The Reconstitution of 1789-1791.*--One of the earlier performances of the National Assembly of 1789 was to sweep away relentlessly the administrative system of the Old Régime and to substitute therefor an order which was all but entirely new. The communes, to the number of upwards of forty-four thousand, were retained. But the provinces and the _généralités_ were abolished and in their places was erected a system of departments, districts, and cantons. For historic boundary lines, physical demarcations, and social cleavages only incidental allowance was made. Eighty-three departments in all were created. In each there were, on an average, six or seven districts, and in each of these an average of eight or nine cantons. The cantons, in turn, were made up of widely varying numbers of communes. The most striking aspects of the system were its symmetry and its detachment from history and tradition. Departments, districts, and cantons presented, and were intended to present, a _tabula rasa_ upon which the law-makers of France might impress any pattern whatsoever. For the time being the ideal of democracy was predominant, and by the measures of 1789, re-enforced by the constitution of 1791, the entire administration of local affairs was transferred at a stroke from the agents of the crown to the elected representatives of the new governmental units. In the department was established an (p. 343) administrative group consisting of thirty-six persons, elected for a term of two years, and divided into an executive directory of nine and a deliberative council of twenty-seven. In the district was established a similar, but smaller, elective directory and council, and in the commune provision was made for the election, under a broadly democratic franchise, of a mayor and a council. The canton was not employed for administrative purposes.[506] [Footnote 506: For the text of the Décret sur les Municipalités of December 14, 1789, see Hélie; Constitutions, 59-72. An English version is in Anderson, Constitutions, 24-33.] *377. The Revival of Centralization, 1795-1800.*--Experience proved, that in the direction both of democracy and of decentralization the reformers had gone too far. With the re-establishment of order following the close of the Revolution proper, in 1795, there was revived the rule of official experts, together with the maintenance over the local administrative organs of a highly centralized supervision. The Constitution of the Year III. (1795), while perpetuating the elective principle in respect to local officers, replaced the commune by the canton as the basal administrative unit and made provision in a variety of ways for the effective control of local affairs by the national Directory.[507] Under the Napoleonic régime, established in 1799-1800, the centralizing process was carried yet further. The canton was reduced to the status of a judicial district and the commune was restored as the basal administrative unit;[508] but it was stipulated that the mayor, the _adjoints_, or deputies, and the council of the commune should be no longer elective, but should be appointed by the central government, directly or by its departmental agents. By law of February 17, 1800, there was established in each department a prefect, appointed by the First Consul, responsible only to him, and endowed with functions scarcely less comprehensive than, in the days of the Old Régime, had been those exercised by the _intendant_. The general council of the department was perpetuated, but its sixteen to twenty-four members were henceforth to be named for a term of three years by the First Consul. Each department, furthermore, was divided for administrative purposes into _arrondissements_, within each, of which were established a sub-prefect and a council of eleven members, likewise appointive. The arrondissement represented substantially a revival of the district, established by law of December 22, 1789, and extinguished by the constitution of 1795. The sub-prefect served as a local deputy of the prefect, and one of his principal duties was to assist in the (p. 344) continuous and close supervision of the affairs of the communes within his jurisdiction.[509] [Footnote 507: Anderson, Constitutions, 233-236. The canton, suppressed by law of June 26, 1793, was now revived.] [Footnote 508: The number of communes was reduced at this time from 44,000 to 36,000.] [Footnote 509: Anderson, Constitutions, 283-288. G. Alix, Les origines du système administratif français, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July-Nov., 1899.] *378. From Napoleon to the Third Republic.*--The Napoleonic administrative system--simple, symmetrical, bureaucratic, and absolutely centralized--has persisted in France, in a large measure, to the present day.[510] The most important modifications that have been introduced in it are those which have arisen from a cautious revival of the elective principle in the constitution of the various local governmental bodies. The fall of Napoleon brought no change of consequence, and none ensued until after the revolution of 1830. In the days of the Orleanist monarchy, however, the rigor of the Napoleonic system was in some measure relaxed. A law of 1831 made the municipal council elective, one of 1833 did the same thing for the councils of the department and the arrondissement, and both measures established a fairly liberal arrangement in respect to the local franchise. In 1838 the powers of the two councils were materially increased.[511] [Footnote 510: Its influence upon the administrative systems of other countries--Belgium, Italy, Spain, and even Greece, Japan, and various Latin American states--has been profound. "Judged by its qualities of permanence and by its influence abroad, the law of 1800 is one of the best examples of Bonaparte's creative statesmanship, taking rank with the Code and with the Concordat among his enduring non-military achievements. If, in the nineteenth century, England has been the mother of parliaments and has exercised a dominant influence upon the evolution of national governments, France has had an equally important rôle in moulding systems of local administration among the nations." Munro, Government of European Cities, 7.] [Footnote 511: The texts of these acts are in Hélie, Constitutions, 1019-1050.] At the establishment, in 1848, of the Second Republic, the essentials of the administrative system then prevailing were retained. It was enacted merely that the various councils should be elected on a basis of manhood suffrage, and that in communes of fewer than six thousand inhabitants the council should be permitted to elect the mayor and the deputies, while in the larger ones appointment should be made as heretofore by the central authorities. With the conversion, in 1851-52, of the Second Republic into the Second Empire, this decentralizing tendency suffered a distinct check. Throughout the reign of Napoleon III. the communal council continued to be elected, at least nominally, upon the principle of manhood suffrage; but so thoroughgoing was the prefectorial supervision that there remained to the councils very little of initiative or independence of action. Even the privilege which the smaller communes possessed of choosing their own mayors was speedily lost, while by a decree of March 25, 1852, the powers of the prefect in communal affairs were substantially (p. 345) extended. Many matters pertaining to departmental and communal interests which this official had been accustomed to refer to the authorities at Paris he was now authorized to dispose of at his own discretion. Throughout the Second Empire the prefect, more truly than ever before, was the pivot of the administrative system. Despite the survival of elective councils in the departments, the arrondissements, and the communes, local autonomy all but disappeared. *379. Changes Under the Third Republic.*--Upon the establishment of the Third Republic the Napoleonic system was discontinued in only some of its more arbitrary aspects. The National Assembly of 1871 revived tentatively the scheme laid down in the constitution of 1848, save that once again the councils of smaller communes were authorized to elect the mayors and deputies. Even at such a time of unsettlement, when the liberal elements were insistent upon changes that were fundamental, there was slender indication of any real desire on the part of the French people for an essentially decentralized administrative régime. At the most, the demand was but for the autonomy of the commune, while the canton, arrondissement, and department should continue to be administered by, and largely in the interest of, the national government. By law of March 28, 1882, the demand in behalf of the communes was met. Upon every commune, large and small (except Paris), was conferred the privilege of choosing freely its entire quota of administrative officials; and in the great municipal code of April 5, 1884, drafted by a commission of nine constituted in the previous year, this privilege, with others, was specifically guaranteed.[512] Departments and arrondissements, however, continued to be primarily spheres within which the general government, acting through its own agents, brought home immediately to the people the reality and comprehensiveness of its authority. And to this day France presents the curious spectacle of a nation broadly democratic in respect to its constitution and central government, yet more closely bound by a hard and fast administrative régime than any other principal state of western Europe.[513] [Footnote 512: Text in J. Duvergier, Collection complète des lois, décrets, ordonnances, réglements, avis du conseil d'état (Paris, 1834-1907), LXXXIV., 99-148.] [Footnote 513: On the French administrative system two admirable general works are H. Barthélemy, Traité de droit administratif (5th ed., Paris, 1908), and A. Esmein, Histoire du droit français (8th ed., Paris, 1908). An older treatise of value is E. Monnet, Histoire de l'administration provinciale, départementale et communale en France (Paris, 1885). Three works in which the subject is dealt with in a comparative fashion are P. P. Leroy-Beaulieu, Administration locale en France et en Angleterre (Paris, 1872); P. W. L. Ashley, Local and Central Government (London, 1906); and F. J. Goodnow, Comparative Administrative Law (2d ed., New York, 1903). A study of some value is J. T. Young, Administrative Centralization and Decentralization in France, in _Annals of Amer. Acad. of Political and Social Science_, Jan., 1898.] IV. LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO-DAY (p. 346) *380. The Department: the Prefect.*--For administrative purposes, the Republic is divided, first of all, into 86 departments, besides which there is the "territory" of Belfort, a remnant of the department of the Upper Rhine, most of which was acquired by Germany in 1871. Since 1881 the three departments of Algeria have been dealt with substantially as if included within continental France. At the head of each of the departments is a prefect, appointed and removed nominally by the President of the Republic, but in reality by the Minister of the Interior. The prefect, who is much the most important of all local officials, is at the same time an agent of the general government and the executive head of the department in the administration of local affairs. As agent of the general government he acts, in some instances, upon detailed instructions; in others, he enjoys a wide range of discretion. His powers extend to virtually all public matters affecting the department. He supervises the execution of the laws; maintains a vigorous control over all administrative officials of the department, upon occasion annulling their acts; gives the authorities at Paris information and advice respecting the affairs of the department; nominates to a variety of subordinate offices; exercises an oversight of the communes, some of whose measures become effective only after receiving his assent; and, in certain instances indicated by law, acts as a judge. He is assisted by a secretary and a _conseil de préfecture_, appointed by the President. This prefectorial council, consisting of from three to nine members, advises the prefect and, in certain cases, exercises jurisdiction as an administrative tribunal. The prefect is essentially a political official. He owes his appointment not infrequently to political considerations, and with the fall of the ministry his tenure is apt to be terminated. *381. The Department: the General Council.*--As executive head of the department the prefect is required to work with a _conseil général_, or representative assembly, elected by the inhabitants of the department on a basis of manhood suffrage. This council comprises one member chosen in each canton for a period of six years, half of the number retiring every three years. The actual powers of the body are not large. Aside from the apportioning of the direct taxes among the arrondissements, they are restricted pretty generally to the administration of highways, canals, schools, asylums, and similar interests. Questions of a political nature or of a national (p. 347) bearing are rigorously excluded from consideration. The council has but two ordinary sessions a year--one extending through not more than fifteen days, the other not more than a month. The longer begins regularly in August and is devoted to the consideration of the budget. During the intervals between sessions the council is represented by a _commission départementale_, or permanent delegation, of from four to seven members. Neither the council nor the delegation possesses any considerable measure of control over the prefect. The council's acts may be vetoed by the President of the Republic, and, except when the national parliament is in session, the body may be dissolved by the same power. The department is an essentially artificial political unit. During the century and a quarter of its existence it has not become--indeed has been prevented deliberately from becoming--a sphere of forceful, independent governmental activity.[514] [Footnote 514: An administrative reform which appears not infrequently in current political discussion in France is the grouping of the departments into "regions" possessing a certain community of character and interest. Each of a score or more of regions might conceivably be made to have an assembly of its own, and within each of them one of the departmental prefects might be given a certain superiority over his colleagues. The principal purpose would be to offset somewhat the nation's present excess of administrative centralization. On this proposal see C. Beauquier, Un projet de réforme administrative; l'organisation régionale en France, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Nov. 10, 1909. Cf. A. Brette, La réforme des départements à propos d'une proposition de loi, ibid. On the department as at present constituted the monumental treatise is G. Bouffet et L. Périer, Traité du départements 2 vols. (Paris, 1894-1895). In M. Laferrière, Loi organique départementale du 10 Août 1871 (Paris, 1871) is an annotated copy of the organic statute of 1871. See also G. Dethan, De l'organisation des conseils généraux (Paris, 1889); A. Nectoux, Des attributions des conseillers généraux (Paris, 1895); and P. Chardenet, Les élections départementales (Paris, 1895). An excellent brief statement will be found in M. Block, Dictionnaire de l'administration française (5th ed., Paris and Nancy, 1905), I., 933-948, 1101-1116.] *382. The Arrondissement and the Canton.*--Next to the department stands the arrondissement, or district, created originally in 1799. Within the bounds of France there are to-day 362 of these districts. Except those in the department of the Seine, and three containing the capitals of departments elsewhere, each has in its chief town a sub-prefect, who serves as a district representative of the prefect. Every one has a _conseil d'arrondissement_, or arrondissement council, consisting of at least nine members, elected by manhood suffrage for a term of six years. But since the arrondissement has no corporate personality, no property, and no budget, the council possesses but a single function of importance, that, namely, of allotting among the communes their quotas of the taxes assigned to the arrondissement by the general council of the department. The arrondissement is, (p. 348) however, the electoral district for the Chamber of Deputies, and also normally the seat of a court of first instance.[515] [Footnote 515: Block, Dictionnaire de l'administration française, I., 256-260.] The canton is an electoral and a judicial, but not strictly an administrative, unit. It is the area from which are chosen the members of both the departmental general council and the council of the arrondissement, and it constitutes the jurisdiction of the justice of the peace. The total number of cantons is 2,911. As a rule each contains about a dozen communes, though a few of the larger communes are so populous as to be divided into a number of cantons. *383. The Commune.*--The most fundamental of the administrative divisions of France, and the only one whose origins antedate the Revolution, is the commune. The commune is at the same time a territorial division and a corporate personality. "On the one hand," to employ the language of a recent writer, "it is a tract of territory the precise limits of which were defined by the law of December 22, 1789, or by some subsequent law or decree; for by the law of 1789 all local units which had a separate identity during the old régime were authoritatively recognized as communes, and since that enactment there have been a number of suppressions, divisions, consolidations, and creations of communal units. On the other hand, the commune is an agglomeration of citizens united by life in a common locality and having a common interest in the communal property. A commune ranks as a legal person: it may sue and be sued, may contract, acquire, or convey property,--it may, in general, exercise all of the ordinary rights of a corporation."[516] [Footnote 516: Munro, Government of European Cities, 15.] Of communes there are, in all, under the territorial land survey of 1909, 36,229. In both size and population they vary enormously. Some comprise but diminutive hamlets of two or three score people; others comprise cities like Bordeaux, Lyons, and Marseilles, each with a population in excess of a quarter of a million. At the last census 27,000 communes had a population of less than one thousand; 17,000, of less than five hundred; 9,000, of less than three hundred; 137, of less than fifty. On the other hand, 250 contained each a population of more than ten thousand, and fourteen of more than one hundred thousand. In area they vary all the way from a few acres to the 254,540 acres of the commune of Arles.[517] [Footnote 517: A. Porche, La question des grandes et des petits communes (Paris, 1900).] *384. The Communal Council.*--Except Paris and Lyons, all communes are organized and governed in the same manner. In each is a council, (p. 349) whose members are elected by manhood suffrage and, normally, on the principle of the _scrutin de liste_, for a term of four years. The body is renewed integrally, on the first Sunday in May in every fourth year. In communes whose population is under five hundred the number of councillors is ten; in those whose population exceeds five hundred the number is graduated on a basis such that a commune of sixty thousand people has a council of thirty-six, which is the maximum. The council holds annually four ordinary sessions--in February, May, August, and November--besides which special meetings may be convoked at any time by the prefect, the sub-prefect, or the mayor. Sessions are held in the _mairie_, or municipal building, and are regularly open to the public. Except the May session, during which the budget is considered, a meeting may not be prolonged beyond fifteen days, save with the consent of the sub-prefect. The normal maximum of the May sitting is six weeks. Speaking broadly, the functions of the council may be said to comprise the administration of the purely local affairs of the commune and the formulation and expression of local needs and demands. In the code of 1884 the powers of the body are defined with exceeding minuteness. Some are purely advisory, to be exercised when the council is called upon by the higher administrative authorities for an expression of local interest or desire in respect to a particular question. Advice thus tendered may or may not be heeded. Other powers involve the initiation by the council of certain kinds of measures, which, however, may be carried into effect only with the assent of the higher authorities. Among the thirteen such measures which are enumerated in the code the most important are those pertaining to the purchase, sale, or other legal disposition of property belonging to the commune. Finally, there is a group of powers--relating principally to the various communal services, e.g., parks, fire-protection, etc.--which are vested in the communal authorities (council and mayor) independently. But the predominating fact is that even to-day the autonomy of the commune is subject to numerous and important limitations. Many communal measures become valid only upon receiving the approval of the prefect, and virtually any one of them may be suspended or annulled by that official. Some require the consent of the departmental council, or even of the President of the Republic; and by decree of the President the council itself may be dissolved at any time. *385. The Mayor and his Assistants.*--The executive head of the commune is the _maire_, or mayor, who is elected by the municipal council, by secret ballot, from its own membership, for a term of four years. Associated with the mayor is, in communes of 2,500 inhabitants or fewer, an _adjoint_, or assistant, similarly chosen. In communes (p. 350) of 2,500 to 10,000 inhabitants there are two assistants, and in those of over 10,000 there is an additional one for every 25,000 people in excess of the figure named. Except in Lyons, however, where there are seventeen, the number may not exceed twelve. The mayor plays the dual rôle of executive head of the commune and representative (though not the appointee) of the central government. The powers which he exercises vary widely according to the size and importance of the commune. But in general it may be said that he appoints to the majority of municipal offices, publishes laws and decrees and issues _arrêtés_, or ordinances, supervises finance, organizes and controls the local police, executes measures for public health and safety, safeguards the property interests of the commune, and represents the commune in cases at law and on ceremonial occasions. The functions of the mayoral office are in practice distributed by the mayor among the assistants, to each of whom is assigned a specific department, such as that of streets, of sanitation, or of fire-protection. As a rule, the mayor reserves to himself the control of police. For the acts of the assistants, however, the mayor is directly responsible, and all acts, whether of the mayor or of the assistants, which relate to the interests of the general government are performed under the strictest surveillance of the prefectorial authorities. The mayor may be suspended from office for a month by the prefect, or for three months by the Minister of the Interior; and he may be removed from office altogether by order of the President. Despite the restrictions which are placed upon it, the commune remains the true focus of local life in France.[518] Its activities, on a sufficiently petty scale though they not infrequently are, run the (p. 351) gamut of finance, commerce, industry, education, religion, and politics. So strong is the communal spirit that public sentiment will acquiesce but rarely in the suppression of a commune, or even in the union of two or more diminutive ones; and, in truth, the code of 1884 recognized the fixity of communal identity by permitting changes of communal boundaries to be undertaken by the departmental authorities only after there shall have been held an _enquête_ and local susceptibilities shall have been duly consulted. Save by special decree of the President of the Republic, not even the name of a commune may be altered. [Footnote 518: Among general treatises on the French commune may be mentioned M. Block, Entretiens sur l'administration; la commune (Paris, 1884); L. Bequet, Traité de la commune (Paris, 1888); P. Andre and F. Marin, La loi sur l'organisation municipale du 5 avril 1884 (Paris, 1884); and F. Grelot, Loi du 5 avril 1884 (Paris, 1889). The best and most recent extensive work is L. Morgand, La loi municipale, 2 vols. (7th ed., Paris, 1907). The most convenient brief discussion in French is in Block, Dictionnaire de l'administration française, I., 738-852. In English a good description is in A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Continental Europe (New York, 1897), and a fuller and more recent one in W. B. Munro, The Government of European Cities, 1-108. On municipal elections the best work is M. J. Saint-Lager, Élections municipales (6th ed., Paris, 1904). Worthy of mention are Chardenet, Panhard, and Gérard, Les élections municipales (Paris, 1896), and J. Dorlhac, De l'électorat politique: étude sur la capacité électorale et les conditions d'exercise du droit de vote (Paris, 1890). An excellent study is P. Lavergne, Du pouvoir central et des conseils municipaux, in _Revue Générale d'Administration_, 1900. See also A. G. Desbats, Le budget municipal (Paris, 1895); M. Peletant, De l'organisation de la police (Dijon, 1899); and R. Griffin, Les biens communaux en France (Paris, 1899). On the government of Paris the reader may be referred to G. Artigues, Le régime municipal de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1898), and M. Block, L'Administration de la ville de Paris et du département de la Seine (Paris, 1898). Excellent bibliographies are printed in Munro, _op. cit._, 380-389, and in Block, Dictionnaire, I., 850-852.] PART IV. ITALY (p. 353) CHAPTER XIX CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY I. THE ERA OF NAPOLEON *386. Italy in the Later Eighteenth Century.*--The dominant forces in the politics of Europe since the French Revolution have been the twin principles of nationality and democracy; and nowhere have the fruits of these principles been more strikingly in evidence than in the long disrupted and misgoverned peninsula of Italy. The awakening of the Italian people to a new consciousness of unity, strength, and aspiration may be said to date from the Napoleonic invasion of 1796, and the first phase of the _Risorgimento_, or "resurrection," may, therefore, be regarded as coincident with the era of French domination, i.e., 1796-1814. At the opening of this period two non-Italian dynasties shared the dominion of much the larger portion of Italy. To the Austrian Hapsburgs belonged the rich duchies of Milan (including Mantua) and Tuscany, together with a preponderating influence in Modena. To the Spanish Bourbons belonged the duchy of Parma and the important kingdom of Naples, including Sicily. Of independent states there were six--the kingdom of Sardinia (comprising Piedmont, the island of Sardinia, and, nominally, Savoy and Nice), where alone in all Italy there lingered some measure of native political vitality; the Papal States; the petty monarchies of Lucca and San Marino; and the two ancient republics of Venice and Genoa, long since shorn of their empires, their maritime power, and their economic and political importance. All but universally absolutism held sway, and in most of the states, especially those of the south, absolutism was synonymous with corruption and oppression. *387. The Cisalpine Republic, 1797.*--During the two decades which comprehended the public career of Napoleon it was the part of the French to overturn completely the long existing political arrangement of Italy, to abolish altogether the dominion of Austria and to substitute therefor that of France, to plant in Italy a wholly new and revolutionizing set of political and legal institutions, and, quite unintentionally, to fan to a blaze a patriotic zeal which through (p. 354) generations had smouldered almost unobserved. The beginning of these transformations came directly in consequence of the brilliant Napoleonic incursion of 1796. One by one, upon the advance of the victorious French, were detached the princes who, under English and Austrian tutelage, had been allied hitherto against France. The king of Naples sought an armistice; the Pope made peace; at Arcole and Rivoli the Austrian power was shattered. October 16, 1796, there was proclaimed, with the approval of the conqueror, a Cispadane Republic, including Modena, Reggio, Ferrara, and Bologna; and March 27, 1797, there was promulgated for the new state a constitution which, after having been adopted by representatives of the four districts, had been ratified by a vote of the people. This constitution--the first in the history of modern Italy--was modelled immediately upon the French instrument of 1795. It provided for a legislative council of sixty members, with exclusive power to propose measures, another of thirty members, with power to approve or reject measures, and an executive directory of three, elected by the legislative bodies. In Lombardy a similar movement produced similar results. Through the spring and early summer of 1797 four commissions, constituted by Napoleon, worked out a constitution which likewise reproduced all of the essential features of the French model, and, July 9, the Transpadane Republic was inaugurated, with brilliant ceremony, at Milan. Provision was made for a directory and for two legislative councils consisting of one hundred sixty and eighty members respectively; and the first directors, representatives, and other officials were named by Napoleon. At the urgent solicitation of the Cispadanes the two republics were united, July 15, and upon the combined commonwealth was bestowed the name of the Cisalpine Republic.[519] During the preceding May the venerable but helpless Venetian republic had been crushed, and when, in the treaty of Campo Formio, October 17, 1797, Austria was brought to the point of recognizing the new Cisalpine state, she was compensated in some degree by being awarded the larger part of the Venetian territories, including the city of Venice.[520] [Footnote 519: The Cisalpine constitution was amended September 1, 1798, when there was introduced in the republic the French system of administrative divisions.] [Footnote 520: E. Bonnal de Ganges, La chute d'une république (Paris, 1885).] *388. The Ligurian, Roman, and Parthenopæan Republics, 1797-1799.*--In the meantime, in June, 1797, the ancient republic of Genoa had undergone a remodelling. The ruling oligarchy, driven from power by Napoleon, gave place to a democracy of a moderate type, the (p. 355) legislative functions being intrusted to two popularly elected chambers, while the executive power was vested in a doge and twelve senators; and to the new commonwealth, French in all but name, was given the designation of the Ligurian Republic. The Ligurian constitution was accepted by the people December 2, 1797. During the winter of 1797-1798 the French Directory, openly hostile to the papacy, persistently encouraged the democratic party at Rome to overthrow the temporal power and to set up an independent republic. February 15, 1798, with the aid of French arms, the democrats secured the upper hand, assembled in the Forum, declared for the restoration of the Roman Republic, and elected as head of the state a body of seven consuls. The aged pontiff, Pius VI., was maltreated and eventually transported to France. For the new Tiberine, or Roman, Republic was promulgated, March 20, 1798, a constitution providing for the customary two councils--a Senate of thirty members and a Tribunate of sixty--and a directory, christened a consulate, consisting of five consuls elected by the councils. Within a twelvemonth thereafter (January 23, 1799), following a clash of arms between the French and the Neapolitan sovereign, Ferdinand IV., Naples was taken and the southern kingdom was converted into the Parthenopæan Republic. A constitution was there promulgated providing for a directory of five members, a Senate of fifty, possessing exclusive right of legislative initiative, and a Tribunate of one hundred twenty.[521] [Footnote 521: For an interesting portrayal of the workings of republican idealism in the Neapolitan republic see Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, 150-157.] *389. Constitutional Revisions.*--During the absence of Napoleon on the Egyptian expedition the armies of France suffered repeated reverses in Italy, and by the end of 1799 all that had been gained for France seemed to be, or about to be, lost. By the campaign which culminated at Marengo (June 14, 1800), however, Napoleon not only clinched his newly won position in France but brought Italy once more to his feet. Under the terms of the treaty of Lunéville (February 9, 1801) Austria recognized the reconstituted Cisalpine and Ligurian republics, while Modena and Tuscany reverted to French control, and French ascendancy elsewhere was securely established. September 21, 1802, Piedmont was organized in six departments and incorporated in the French Republic. During the winter of 1802-1803 the constitutions of the Cisalpine and Ligurian republics were remodelled in the interest of that same autocratic domination which already was fast ripening in France. In each republic were established at first three bodies--an executive _consulta_,[522] a legislature of 150 members, and a court--which were chosen by three electoral colleges comprising (1) the (p. 356) _possidenti_, or landed proprietors, (2) the _dotti_, or scholars and ecclesiastics, and (3) the _commercianti_, or merchants and traders; but the legislature could be overridden completely by the _consulta_, and the _consulta_ was little more than the organ of Napoleon. Incidentally, the Cisalpine Republic at this point was renamed the Italian Republic. Within a twelvemonth the new constitutions, proving too democratic, were revised in such a manner that for the legislative body was substituted a senate of thirty members presided over by a doge, in which were concentrated all political and administrative powers. [Footnote 522: An advisory council of state, consisting of eight members.] *390. The Kingdom of Italy (1805) and the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples, 1807.*--The stipulation of the treaty of Lunéville to the effect that the Italian republics should remain entirely independent of France was all the while disregarded. Politically and commercially they were but dependencies, and, following the proclamation of the French empire (May 18, 1804), the fact was admitted openly. To Napoleon it seemed incongruous that an emperor of the French should be a patron of republics. How meager was the conqueror's concern for the political liberty of the Italians had been demonstrated many times, never more forcefully than in the cynical treatment which he accorded Venice. No one knew better, furthermore, how ill-equipped were the Italians for self-government. Gradually, therefore, there was framed a project for the conversion of the Italian Republic into a kingdom which should be tributary to France. Napoleon's desire was that his eldest brother, Joseph, should occupy the throne of this kingdom. But Joseph, not caring to jeopardize his chances of succession in France, demurred, as did also the younger brother, Louis. The upshot was that by a constitutional statute of March 17, 1805, the Emperor caused himself to be called to the throne of Italy, and May 26 following, in the cathedral at Milan, he placed upon his own head the iron crown of the old Lombard kings. The sovereign's step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, was designated regent. In June of the same year, in response to a petition which Napoleon himself had instigated, the Ligurian Republic was proclaimed an integral part of the French empire. The annexation of Parma and Piacenza promptly followed. Against the coalition of Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Naples, which was prompted immediately by the Ligurian annexation, Napoleon was completely successful. By the treaty of Pressburg (December 26, 1806) Austria ceded to the Italian kingdom her portion of Venetia, together with the provinces of Istria and Dalmatia.[523] Following a vigorous campaign conducted by Joseph Bonaparte, the restored Bourbon family was driven again from Naples, whereupon Joseph allowed (p. 357) himself to be established there as king. In 1808 he was succeeded by Napoleon's ambitious marshal and brother-in-law Murat. From Bayonne, Joseph issued a constitution for his former subjects, providing for a council of state of from twenty-six to thirty-six members and a single legislative chamber of one hundred members, of whom eighty were to be named by the king and twenty were to be chosen by electoral colleges. Not until 1815, however, and then but during the space of a few weeks, was this instrument actually in operation. [Footnote 523: The incorporation of Dalmatia with the kingdom of Italy was but temporary.] *391. The End of French Dominance.*--Finally, there were brought under complete control the papal territories. Following prolonged friction with the Pope, Napoleon first of all (April 2, 1808) annexed to the kingdom of Italy the papal march of Ancona and the duchies of Urbino, Macerata, and Camerina, and then (by decrees of May 17, 1809, and February 17, 1810) added to the French empire Rome itself and the _Patrimonium Petri_. The Roman territory was divided into two departments, and in them, as in all of the Italian provinces which fell under Napoleon's rule, a thoroughgoing French system of law and administration was established. To all of the tributary districts alike were extended the Code Napoléon, and in them were organized councils, courts, and agencies of control essentially analogous to those which comprised the Napoleonic governmental régime in France. In them, likewise, were undertaken public works, measures for public education, and social reforms similar to those which in France constituted the most permanent and the most beneficent aspects of the Napoleonic domination. For the first time since the age of Justinian the entire peninsula was brought under what was in fact, if not in name, a single political system. If the rise of French power in Italy had been brilliant, however, the collapse of that power was speedy and complete. It followed hard upon Napoleon's Russian campaign and the defeat at Leipzig. The final surrender, consequent upon Napoleon's first abdication was made April 16, 1814, by the viceroy Beauharnais, whereupon the Austrians resumed possession in the north, the Bourbons in the south, and the whole problem of permanent adjustment was given over to the congress of the powers at Vienna.[524] [Footnote 524: For brief accounts of the Napoleonic régime in Italy see Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 14; B. King, A History of Italian Unity (London, 1899), I., Chap. 1. Works of value dealing with the subject include P. Gaffarel, Bonaparte et les républiques italiennes, 1796-1799 (Paris, 1895); A. Dufourcq, Le régime jacobin en Italie, 1796-1799 (Paris, 1900); F. Lemmi, Le origini del risorgimento italiano (Milan, 1906); G. Sabini, I primi esperimenti costituzionali in Italia, 1797-1815 (Turin, 1911); and R. M. Johnston, The Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy, 2 vols. (London, 1904). An older work is E. Ramondini, L'Italia durante la dominazione francese (Naples, 1882).] II. THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 (p. 358) *392. Italy in 1815.*--By the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, June 9, 1815, Italy was remanded to a status such that the name of the peninsula could be characterized with aptness by Metternich as merely a geographical expression. In essentials, though not in all respects, there was a return to the situation of pre-Napoleonic times. When the bargainings of the diplomats were concluded it was found that there remained, in all, ten Italian states, as follows: the kingdom of Sardinia, Lombardo-Venetia, Parma, Modena, Lucca, Tuscany, Monaco, San Marino, the kingdom of Naples, and the States of the Church. To the kingdom of Sardinia, reconstituted under Victor Emmanuel I., France retroceded Nice and Savoy, and to it was added the former republic of Genoa. Lombardo-Venetia, comprising the duchy of Milan and all of the continental possessions of the former Venetian republic, including Istria and Dalmatia, was given into the possession of Austria.[525] Tuscany was restored to the grand-duke Ferdinand III. of Hapsburg-Lorraine; the duchy of Modena, to Francis IV., son of the archduke Ferdinand of Austria; Parma and Piacenza were assigned to Maria Louisa, daughter of the Austrian emperor and wife of Napoleon; the duchy of Lucca, to Maria Louisa of Bourbon-Parma. In the south, Ferdinand IV. of Naples, restored to all of his former possessions, was recognized under the new title of Ferdinand I. And, finally, Pope Pius VII., long held semi-prisoner by Napoleon at Fontainebleau, recovered the whole of the dominion which formerly had belonged to the Holy See. [Footnote 525: By decree of April 24, 1815, these territories were erected into a kingdom under Austrian control, though possessing a separate administration.] Respecting the entire arrangement two facts are obvious. The first is that there was not, in the Italy of 1815, the semblance, even, of national unity. The second is that the preponderance of Austria was scarcely less thoroughgoing than in Napoleon's time had been that of the French. Lombardo-Venetia Austria possessed outright; Tuscany, Modena, and Parma were ruled by Austrian princes; Ferdinand of Naples was an Austrian ally, and he had pledged himself not to introduce in his possessions principles of government incompatible with those employed by the Austrians in the north; while even Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia--the only important native sovereign, aside from the Pope, in the peninsula--was pledged to a perpetual Austrian alliance.[526] [Footnote 526: W. R. Thayer, The Dawn of Italian Independence, 2 vols. (Boston, 1893), I., 116-178.] *393. Foreshadowings of Unity.*--"Italy," wrote Napoleon some (p. 359) time after his banishment to St. Helena, "isolated between her natural limits, is destined to form a great and powerful nation. Italy _is_ one nation; unity of language, customs, and literature, must, within a period more or less distant, unite her inhabitants under one sole government. And, without the slightest doubt, Rome will be chosen by the Italians as their capital."[527] At the time when this prophecy was written the unification of Italy appeared, upon the surface, the most improbable of events. It was, none the less, impending, and to it Napoleon must be adjudged to have contributed in no unimportant measure. In the words of a recent writer, "the brutalities of Austria's white coats in the north, the unintelligent repression then characteristic of the house of Savoy, the petty spite of the duke of Modena, the mediæval obscurantism of pope and cardinals in the middle of the peninsula, and the clownish excesses of Ferdinand in the south, could not blot out from the minds of the Italians the recollection of the benefits derived from the just laws, vigorous administration, and enlightened aims of the great emperor. The hard but salutary training which they had undergone at his hands had taught them that they were the equals of the northern races both in the council chamber and on the field of battle. It had further revealed to them that truth, which once grasped can never be forgotten, that, despite differences of climate, character, and speech, they were in all essentials a nation."[528] It is not too much to say that Napoleon sowed the seed of Italian unity. [Footnote 527: M. Cesaresco, The Liberation of Italy (London, 1895), 3.] [Footnote 528: J. Holland Rose, in Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., XV., 48. See also Fisher, The Republican Tradition in Europe, 158-159.] *394. Attempted Revolution, 1820-1832.*--From 1815 to 1848 Austrian influence, shaped largely by Metternich, was everywhere reactionary, and during this prolonged period there was no government anywhere in Italy that was not of the absolutist type. No one of the states had a constitution, a parliament, or any vestige of popular political procedure. In July, 1820, Ferdinand of Naples was compelled by a revolutionary uprising to promulgate a constitution which was identical with that forced in the same year upon Ferdinand VII. of Spain. This ready-made instrument provided for a popularly elected parliament of one chamber, upon which were conferred large powers; a council of state composed of twenty-four members to advise the king; an independent judiciary; and a parliamentary deputation of seven members elected by the parliament, whose duty it was, in the event of the dissolution of parliament, to safeguard the observance of the constitution. In March, 1821, revolution broke out in Piedmont and, after the mild-tempered king, Victor Emmanuel, had abdicated in (p. 360) favor of his brother, Charles Albert, a temporary regent, the Prince of Carignano, under pressure, conceded to the people a replica of the Spanish fundamental law. In both Naples and Piedmont, however, the failure of the progressives was complete. The reformers proved to be lacking in unity of purpose, and when, under authorization of the greater continental powers, Austria intervened, every gleam of constitutionalism was promptly snuffed out. Similarly, in 1831-1832, there was in Modena, Parma, and the Papal States, widespread insurrection, and with rather more evidence of a growing national spirit; but again, with Austrian assistance, the outbreaks were suppressed.[529] [Footnote 529: Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 4; Johnston, Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy, II., Chap. 4; Thayer, Dawn of Italian Independence, I., 215-278.] *395. The Revolution of 1848 and the New Constitutions.*--The turning point came with the great year of revolution, 1848. During the thirties and forties, by public agitation, by the organization of Mazzini's "Young Italy," by the circulation of patriotic literature, and in a variety of other ways, the ground was prepared systematically for the _risorgimento_ upon which the patriots and the prophets had set their hearts. In 1846 a liberal-minded pope, Pius IX., instituted a series of reforms, and the example was followed forthwith by the princes of Piedmont (Sardinia) and Tuscany. In January, 1848, revolution broke out afresh in Naples and within a month Ferdinand II. was obliged to yield to public demand for a constitution. The instrument, promulgated February 10, provided for a legislative body consisting of a chamber of peers, appointed by the king for life, and a chamber of deputies, elected by the people. February 15 the sovereign of Tuscany, Leopold II., granted to his subjects a constitution of a similar character, making provision for a complete representative system. February 5 the municipality of Turin, voicing a demand in which many of the nobility and high officials of state concurred, petitioned Charles Albert of Piedmont for the grant of a constitution. Three days subsequently, at the conclusion of a series of secret sessions of his council, the sovereign announced that "of his free and entire will" he believed the time to have come for an extension to his subjects of a full-fledged representative system of government, and March 4 there was promulgated a remarkable instrument--the _Statuto fondamentale del Regno_, modelled on the amended French Charter of 1830--which, with absolutely no modification of text, survives to the present day as the constitution of the Italian kingdom.[530] March 14 there was (p. 361) issued by the Pope an instrument known as the _Statuto fondamentale del Governo temporale_, by which were constituted two legislative bodies--a high council and a chamber of deputies--and a council of state, composed of ten members and twenty-four advisors, to which was committed the task of preparing measures. Bills passed by the parliament were to be submitted to the Supreme Pontiff, who, after their discussion in consistory, should extend to them, or withhold from them, final approval. Before the year was far advanced the news of the overthrow of Louis Philippe, of the uprising in Germany, and of the fall of Metternich plunged the whole of Italy afresh in insurrection. Under the pressure of popular demand the Pope and the King of Naples sent troops to aid the northern states in the liberation of the peninsula from Austrian despotism, and for a time, under the leadership of the Piedmontese monarch, Charles Albert, all Italy seemed united in a broadly nationalistic movement. July 10 a new and extremely liberal constitution was adopted by a constituent assembly in Naples, and, February 9, 1849, following a breach between the Pope and the Roman parliament, the temporal power of the papacy was once more swept away and Rome, under an appropriate constitution, was proclaimed a republic.[531] [Footnote 530: The nature of the governmental system provided in this instrument will be explained at length in the succeeding chapter.] [Footnote 531: G. Garavani, La costituzione della repubblica romana nel 1798 e nel 1849 (Fermo, 1910).] *396. The Reaction.*--The reaction, however, was swift and seemingly all but complete. At the earliest possible moment the king of Naples withdrew from the war, revoked the constitution which he had granted, and put the forces of liberalism to rout. With the assistance of France, Austria, and Naples, the Pope extinguished the Roman republic and re-established in all of its vigor the temporal power. By Austrian arms one after another of the insurrectionary states in the north and center was crushed, and Austrian influence in that quarter rose to its former degree of ascendancy. Constitutionalism gave place to absolutism, and the liberals, disheartened and disunited, were everywhere driven to cover. Only in Piedmont, whose sovereign, after the bitter defeat at Novara, had abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel II. (March 23, 1849), was there left any semblance of political independence or civil liberty.[532] [Footnote 532: Elaborate accounts of the revolution of 1848 in Italy are contained in King, History of Italian Unity, I., Chaps. 9-19, and Thayer, Dawn of Italian Independence, II., Bks. 4-5. A good brief account is Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 4 (bibliography, pp. 908-913). A suggestive sketch is Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. 9.] III. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF UNIFICATION (p. 362) *397. The Leadership of Piedmont.*--To all inducements to abrogate the constitution which his father had granted Victor Emmanuel continued deaf, and the logic of the situation began to point unmistakably to Piedmont as the hope of the patriotic cause. After 1848 the building of the Italian nation becomes, indeed, essentially the story of Piedmontese organization, leadership, conquest, and expansion. Victor Emmanuel, honest and liberal-minded, was not a statesman of the first rank, but he had the wisdom to discern and to rely upon the statesmanship of one of the most remarkable of ministers in the history of modern Europe, Count Cavour. When, in 1850, Cavour entered the Piedmontese ministry he was known already as an ardent advocate of both constitutionalism and national unification, and after, in 1852, he assumed the post of premier he was allowed virtually a free hand in the prosecution of policies designed to contribute to a realization of these ends. The original purpose of the king and of his minister was to bring about the exclusion of Austrian influence from Italy and to organize the various states of the peninsula into a confederacy under the nominal leadership of the Pope, but under the real supremacy of the sovereign of Piedmont. Ultimately the plan was so modified as to contemplate nothing short of a unification of the entire country under the control of a centralized, national, temporal government. *398. The Annexations of 1859-1860.*--In 1855 Cavour signed an offensive and defensive alliance with France, and in 1859 Piedmont, with the connivance of her ally, precipitated war with Austria. According to an understanding arrived at by Cavour and the Emperor Napoleon III. at Plombières (June 20, 1858) Austria was to be expelled absolutely from Italian soil; Lombardo-Venetia, the smaller duchies of the north, the papal Legations, and perhaps the Marches, were to be annexed to Piedmont, the whole to comprise a kingdom of Upper Italy; Umbria and Tuscany were to be erected into a kingdom of Central Italy; the Pope was to retain Rome and Ferdinand Naples; and the four states thus constituted were to be formed into an Italian confederation. In the contest which ensued the Austrians were roundly defeated, but their only immediate loss was the ancient duchy of Lombardy. Despite Napoleon's boast that he would free Italy to the Adriatic, Venetia was retained yet seven years by the Hapsburgs. Under the terms of the treaty of Zürich (November 10), in which were ratified the preliminaries of Villafranca (July 11), Lombardy was annexed to Piedmont. Years (p. 363) before (June 8, 1848) a Lombard plebiscite upon the question of such annexation had brought out an affirmative vote of 561,002 to 681.[533] [Footnote 533: King, History of Italian Unity, II., Chap. 27.] The gain arising from the annexation of Lombardy was in a measure counterbalanced by the cession of Savoy and Nice to France, in conformity with an agreement entered into before the war. In point of fact, none the less, the benefits which accrued to Piedmont from the Austrian war were enormous. Aroused by the vigor and promise of Piedmontese leadership, a large portion of central Italy broke into revolt and declared for union with Victor Emmanuel's dominion. In September, 1859, four assemblies, representing the grand-duchy of Tuscany, the duchies of Modena and Parma, and the Romagna (the northern portion of the Papal States), met at Florence, Modena, Parma, and Bologna, respectively, and voted unanimously for incorporation with Piedmont. During March, 1860, the alternatives of annexation and independence were submitted to the choice of the inhabitants of each of these districts, all males of age being privileged to vote, with the result of an aggregate of 792,577 affirmative votes in a total of 807,502. Under authority conferred by the Piedmontese parliament the king accepted the territories, the formal proclamation of the incorporation of Parma, Modena, and the Romagna being dated March 18, and that of the incorporation of Tuscany, March 22. Deputies were elected forthwith to represent the annexed provinces, and April 2, 1860, the enlarged parliament was convened at Turin. Within the space of a year the population of the kingdom had been more than doubled. It was now 11,000,000, or approximately half of that of the peninsula. *399. Further Annexations: the Kingdom of Italy, 1861.*--Meanwhile the programme of Cavour and the king had been broadened to comprise a thoroughgoing unification of the entire country. With amazing rapidity the task was carried toward completion. Aided by Garibaldi and his famous Thousand, the people of Sicily and Naples expelled their Bourbon sovereign, and, at the plebiscite of October 21, 1860, they declared, by a vote of 1,734,117 to 10,979, for annexation to Piedmont. At the same time Umbria and the Marches were occupied by the Piedmontese forces, leaving to the Pope nothing save the Eternal City and a bit of territory immediately surrounding it. By votes of 97,040 to 380 and 133,077 to 1,212, respectively, these districts declared for annexation, and, December 17, 1860, a royal decree announced their final incorporation, together with that of Naples. January 27, 1861, general elections were held, and, February 18, there was convened (p. 364) at Turin a new and enlarged parliament by which, March 18, was proclaimed the united Kingdom of Italy. Over the whole of the new territories was extended the memorable _Statuto_ granted to Piedmont by Charles Albert thirteen years before, and Victor Emmanuel II. was acknowledged "by the grace of God and the will of the nation, King of Italy."[534] [Footnote 534: King, History of Italian Unity, II., Chaps. 29-32.] *400. The Completion of Unification, 1866-1871.*--It remained but to consolidate the kingdom and to accomplish the annexation of the two Italian districts, Venetia and Rome, which were yet in foreign hands. Venetia was acquired in direct consequence of Italy's alliance with Prussia against Austria in 1866. A plebiscite of October 21-22, 1866, following the enforced cession of Venetia by Austria, October 3, yielded a vote of 647,246 to 47 for annexation. The union was sanctioned by a decree of November 4, 1866, and ratified by a law of July 18, 1867. The acquisition of Rome was made possible four years later by the exigencies of the Franco-German war. The conviction had been ripening that eventually Rome must be made the kingdom's capital, and when, in 1870, there was withdrawn from the protection of the papacy the garrison which France had maintained in Italy since 1849, the opportunity was seized to follow up fruitless diplomacy with military demonstrations. September 20 the troops of General Cadorna forced an entrance of the city and the Pope was compelled to capitulate. October 2 the people declared, by a vote of 133,681 to 1,507, for annexation; October 9 the annexation was proclaimed; and December 31 it was ratified by act of parliament. The guarantees of independence to be accorded the papacy were left to be determined in a subsequent statute.[535] By an act of February 3, 1871, the capital of the kingdom--already, in 1865, transferred from Turin to Florence--was removed to Rome; and in the Eternal City, November 27 following, was convened the eleventh parliament since the revolution of 1848, the fourth since the proclamation of the kingdom of Italy, the first since the completion of Italian unity.[536] [Footnote 535: The resulting measure, the Law of Papal Guarantees, was enacted May 13, 1871. See p. 388.] [Footnote 536: For a brief account of the final stages in the unification of Italy see Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chaps. 14, 19. The best presentation of the entire subject is that in the two volumes of King, History of Italian Unity, 1814-1871. Other works of value are W. J. Stillman, The Union of Italy, 1815-1895 (Cambridge, 1898); J. Probyn, Italy, 1815-1890 (London, 1884); M. Cesaresco, The Liberation of Italy (New York, 1894); P. Orsi, L'Italia moderna (Milan, 1901); F. Bertolini, Storia d'Italia dal 1814 al 1878 (Milan, 1880-1881); and E. Sorin, Histoire de l'Italie depuis 1815 jusqu'à la mort de V. Emm. (Paris, 1910). Among biographies mention may be made of G. Godkin, Life of Victor Emmanuel II. (2d ed., London, 1880); M. Cesaresco, Cavour (London, 1898); D. Zanichelli, Cavour (Florence, 1905); B. King, Mazzini (London, 1902). A very valuable biography, which indeed comprises virtually a history of the period 1848-1861, is W. R. Thayer, Count Cavour, 2 vols. (Boston, 1911). The monumental Italian work in the field is C. Tivaroni, Storia critica del risorgimento italiano, 9 vols. (Turin, 1888-1897). The principal documentary collection is N. Bianchi, Storia documentata della diplomazia Europea in Italia dall' anno 1814 all' anno 1861, 8 vols. (Turin, 1865-1872). Invaluable are L. Chiala, Lettere del Conte di Cavour, 7 vols. (Turin, 1883-1887), and D. Zanichelli, Scritti del Conte di Cavour (Bologna, 1892). For full bibliography see Cambridge Modern History, XI., 908-913.] IV. THE CONSTITUTION (p. 365) *401. The Statuto.*--The formal constitution of the kingdom of Italy to-day is the _Statuto fondamentale del Regno_ granted March 4, 1848, by Charles Albert to his Piedmontese subjects. To each of the territories successively annexed to the Piedmontese kingdom this instrument was promptly extended, on the basis of popular ratifications, or plebiscites; and when, in 1861, the kingdom of Piedmont was converted into the kingdom of Italy, the fundamental law, modified in only minor respects, was continued in operation. The _Statuto_ was granted originally as a royal charter, and its author seems to have expected it to be final, at least until it should have been replaced as a whole by some other instrument. At the same time, there is little reason to doubt that from the outset there was contemplated the possibility of amendment through the agencies of ordinary legislation. In any case, there was put into the instrument no stipulation whatsoever relating to its revision, and none has ever been added. Upon a number of occasions since 1861 possible modifications of the constitutional text have been suggested, and even debated, but no one of them has been adopted. But this does not mean that the constitutional system of Italy has stood all the while unchanged. On the contrary, that system has exhibited remarkable vitality, growth, and adaptive capacity. In Italy, as in other states the constitution as it exists in writing is supplemented in numerous important ways by unwritten custom, and Italian jurists are now substantially agreed that custom is legitimately to be considered a source of public law. *402. Legislative Amendment.*--A more important matter, however, is the extension and the readaptation of the constitution through parliamentary enactment. In the earlier days of the kingdom there was a disposition to observe rather carefully in practice the distinction between functions and powers of a legislative, and those of a constitutional, character. Gradually, however, the conviction grew that the constitutional system of the nation might be modified (p. 366) through the processes of ordinary legislation, and in Italy to-day the theory of parliamentary omnipotence is scarcely less firmly entrenched than it is in Great Britain. The parliamentary chambers have never directly avowed a purpose to amend a single article of the _Statuto_, but numerous measures which they have enacted have, with clear intent, taken from the instrument at some points, have added to it at others, and have changed both its spirit and its application. Care has been exercised that such enactments shall be in harmony with the public will, and in practice they are rarely brought to a final vote until the country shall have been given an opportunity to pass upon them at a general election. What has come to be the commonly accepted doctrine was stated forcefully, in the session of July 23, 1881, by Crispi, as follows: "I do not admit the intangibility of the _Statuto_. Statutes are made to prevent governments from retrograding, not from advancing. Before us there can be nothing but progress.... If we retain immutable the fundamental law of the state, we desire immobility, and should throw aside all advances which have thus far been made by the constituted authorities. I understand that in the _Statuto_ of Charles Albert nothing is said of revision, and this was prudent. But how should this silence be interpreted? It should be interpreted in the sense that it is not necessary to the Italian Constitution that a constituent assembly should be expressly convoked, but that Parliament in its usual manner of operation is always constituent and constituted. Whenever public opinion has matured a reform, it is the duty of Parliament to accept it, even though the reform may bring with it the modification of an article of the _Statuto_."[537] It is in accord with the principles here enunciated that--to mention but a few illustrations--the law of December 6, 1865, regulating the organization of the judiciary, the Law of Papal Guarantees of 1871, and the measures of 1882 and 1895 overhauling and extending the franchise, were placed upon the statute books. [Footnote 537: Quoted by G. A. Ruiz, The Amendments to the Italian Constitution, in _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, Sept., 1895, 38.] *403. Nature of the Constitution.*--The _Statuto_, in eighty-four articles, is an instrument of considerable length. It deals, successively, with the Crown, the rights and duties of citizens, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, the Ministers, the Judiciary, and matters of a miscellaneous character. The bill of rights contained in Articles 24-32 guarantees to all inhabitants of the kingdom equality before the law, liberty of person, inviolability of domicile and of property, freedom of the press, exemption from non-parliamentary taxation and, with qualifications, freedom of assembly. It is (p. 367) constantly to be borne in mind, however, that, so overlaid is the _Statuto_ with statutory enactments and with custom, that one cannot apprehend adequately the working constitution of the kingdom to-day, in respect to either general principles or specific governmental organs, through an examination of this document alone. In the language of an Italian publicist, the Italian constitution no longer consists of the Statute of Charles Albert. This forms simply the beginning of a new order of things. Many institutions have been transformed by laws, decrees, usages, and neglect, whence the Italian constitution has become cumulative, consisting of an organism of law grouped about a primary kernel which is the _Statuto_.[538] [Footnote 538: Ruiz, Amendments to the Italian Constitution, _loc. cit._, 57. The text of the _Statuto_ appears in P. Coglio e Malchiodi, Codice Politico Amministrativo. Raccolta completa di tutte le leggi e regolamenti concernenti la pubblica amministrazione nei suoi rapporti politici e amministrativi (6th ed., Florence, 1907), and in V. Gioia, Le leggi di unificazione amministrativa precedute dalla legge fondamentale del regno, 2 vols. (Palermo, 1879). It is printed also in Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 346-354. There is a French version in F. R. Dareste, Les constitutions modernes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1883) I., 550-560. There is an English translation in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 5-16, and another, by S. M. Lindsay and L. S. Rowe, in _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, Nov., 1894. The Codice Politico Amministrativo contains a good collection of statutes, ordinances, and administrative regulations. The most comprehensive work on Italian constitutional law which has been written is F. Racioppi and I. Brunelli, Commento allo statuto del regno, 3 vols. (Turin, 1909). Among other treatises the following are of principal value: G. Arangio Ruiz, Storia costituzionale del regno di Italia, 1848-1898 (Florence, 1898); E. Brusa, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Italien (Leipzig, 1892), in Marquardsen's Handbuch; E. del Guerra, L'Amministrazione pubblica in Italia (Florence, 1893); and, for briefer treatment, G. Mosca, Appunti di diritto costituzionale (Milan, 1908) and I. Tambaro, II diritto costituzionale italiano (Milan, 1909).] CHAPTER XX (p. 368) THE ITALIAN GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEM I. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY *404. Status of the Sovereign.*--The constitutional system of Italy comprises, according to the phraseology of the _Statuto_, a "representative monarchical government." The throne is hereditary, after the principle of the Salic Law; that is, it may be inherited only by and through males. Elaborate provision is made for the exercise of regal authority in the event of the minority or the incapacity of the sovereign. During a minority (which terminates with the close of the king's eighteenth year) the prince who stands next in the order of succession, provided he be twenty-one years of age, is authorized to act as regent. In the lack of male relatives the regency devolves upon the queen-mother, and in default of a queen-mother the regent is elected by the legislative chamber.[539] Upon ascending the throne, the king is required to take an oath in the presence of the legislative chambers faithfully to maintain and observe the constitution of the realm. The monarch is declared to be sacred and inviolable in his person, and there is settled upon him a civil list of 16,050,000 lire, of which amount at present, however, the sum of one million lire is repaid annually to the state. Since 1870 the royal residence has been the Palazzo del Quirinale, a palace which for generations, by reason of its elevated and healthful situation, was much frequented by the popes. [Footnote 539: Arts. 11-17. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 6.] *405. Powers and Functions of the Crown.*--On paper, the powers of the crown appear enormous; in reality they are much less considerable, as is inevitably the fact wherever monarchy is tempered by parliamentarism. In the king alone is vested, by the _Statuto_, the executive power, and to him alone this power, in theory, still belongs. The exercise of it, however, devolves almost wholly upon a group of ministers, who are responsible, not to the crown, but to the parliament. In no continental country has there been a more deliberate or a more unreserved acceptance of the essential principles which underlie the parliamentary system of Great Britain. No one of the (p. 369) three sovereigns of united Italy has ever sought for an instant to establish anything in the nature of personal government. The principle that the ministry shall constitute the working executive, and that it shall be continually responsible to the lower chamber of Parliament, has been so long observed in practice that it is now regarded as an inflexible law of the constitution. Under these limitations, however, the king approves and promulgates the laws, grants pardons and commutes sentences, declares war, commands all military and naval forces, concludes treaties, issues ordinances, creates senators, and makes appointments to all offices of state.[540] By the _Statuto_ it is provided that treaties involving financial obligations or alterations of the territory of the state shall be effective only after receiving the sanction of the legislative chambers. In practice, treaties of all kinds are submitted regularly for such approval, save only such as comprise military conventions or foreign alliances. The power of the veto exists, but it is in practice never used. Rarely does the king attend the sessions of the cabinet, in which the policies of the government are discussed and its measures formulated and, save through the designation of the premier, in the event of a cabinet crisis, and within the domain of foreign relations, the royal power may be said to be brought to bear in direct manner upon the affairs of state only incidentally. As head of the nation, however, and visible token of its hard-won unification, the monarch fulfills a distinctly useful function. The reigning family, and especially the present sovereign, Victor Emmanuel III., is extremely popular throughout the country; so that, although in Italy, as elsewhere among European monarchies, there is an avowed republican element, there is every indication that royalty will prove an enduring institution. [Footnote 540: Arts. 5-8. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 5. Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 292-297.] *406. The Ministry: Composition.*--From what has been said it follows that the ministry in Italy, as in Great Britain and France, constitutes the actual executive. Nominally it consists of heads of departments, although occasionally a member is designated without portfolio. Of departments there are at present eleven, as follows: Foreign affairs; War; Marine; the Interior; Finance; the Treasury;[541] Public Instruction; Public Works; Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs; Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture; and Posts and Telegraphs. Ordinarily the premier, or "president of the council," occupies the portfolio of the Interior. He is named by the king, and inasmuch as, by reason of the multiplicity of Italian political (p. 370) parties, there is often no clearly distinguished "leader of the opposition," such as all but invariably stands ready to assume office in Great Britain, in the making of the appointment there is room for the exercise of considerable discretion. All remaining members of the ministry are designated by the crown, on nomination of the premier. In accordance with the provisions of a law of February 12, 1888, each minister is assisted by an under-secretary of state. [Footnote 541: Separated from Finance in 1889.] All ministers and under-secretaries possess the right to appear on the floor of either of the legislative chambers, and to be heard upon request; but no one of them is entitled to vote in either body unless he is a member thereof.[542] To be eligible for appointment to a portfolio or to an under-secretaryship it is not necessary that a man be a member of either chamber; but if an appointee is not in possession of such membership it is customary for him to seek the next seat that falls vacant in the Deputies, unless in the meantime he shall have been created a senator. In point of fact, the ministers are selected regularly from among the members of Parliament, and predominantly from the Chamber of Deputies. Only rarely has the premiership devolved upon a senator. Ministers of war and of marine, being chosen largely by reason of technical qualifications, are frequently members of the Senate by special appointment. [Footnote 542: Art. 66. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 13.] *407. The Ministry: Organization and Functions.*--The internal organization of the ministry--the interrelations of the several departments and the relations sustained by each minister with the premier--are regulated largely by a decree of March 28, 1867, promulgated afresh, with minor modifications, August 25, 1876. Among matters which are required to be brought before the ministerial council are all projects of law which are to be submitted to the chambers, all treaties, all conflicts of administrative jurisdiction, all proposals relating to the status of the Church, petitions from the chambers, and nominations of senators, diplomatic representatives, and a wide range of administrative and judicial functionaries. By law there is enumerated further an extended list of matters which must be brought to the ministry's attention, though action thereupon is not made compulsory; and the range of subjects which, upon the initiative of the premier or that of other ministers, may be submitted for consideration is left purposely without limit. It is the business of the premier to convoke the ministers in council, to preside over their deliberations, to maintain, in respect to both administrative methods and political policy, as large a measure of ministerial uniformity and solidarity as may be; and to require from time to time from his (p. 371) colleagues full and explicit reports upon the affairs of each of the several departments. By reason, however, of the multiplicity of party groups in the chambers, the necessarily composite character politically of every cabinet, and the generally unstable political condition of the country, ministries rarely possess much real unity, and in the administration of the public business they are likely to be handicapped by internal friction. "The Italian ministry," says an able French writer, "is manifestly unable to fulfill effectively the three-fold purpose of a parliamentary cabinet. It exercises the executive power in the name, and under the authority, of the king; but it does not always know how to restrain Parliament within the bounds of its proper control, and it is obliged to tolerate the interference of deputies in the administration. Through the employment of the initiative, and of influence upon the acts of Parliament, it is the power which impels legislation; but not infrequently it is lacking in the authority essential to push through the reforms which it has undertaken, and the Chamber evades easily its control. It seeks to maintain harmony between the two powers (executive and legislative); but the repeated defeats which it suffers demonstrate to what a degree its work is impeded by the disorganization of parties."[543] For all of their acts the ministers are responsible directly to Parliament, which means, in effect, to the Chamber of Deputies; and no law or governmental measure may be put in operation until it has received the signature of one or more of the ministerial group, by whom responsibility for it is thereby explicitly assumed. [Footnote 543: Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 291.] *408. The Promulgation of Ordinances.*--The administrative system of Italy is modelled, in the main, upon that of France. In the effort to achieve national homogeneity the founders of the kingdom indulged to excess their propensity for centralization, with the consequence that Italy has exhibited regularly an admixture of bureaucracy and liberalism even more confounding than that which prevails in the French Republic. In theory the administrative system is broadly democratic and tolerant; in practice it not infrequently lends itself to the employment of the most arbitrary devices. Abuse arises most commonly from the powers vested in the administrative officials to supplement legislation through the promulgation and enforcement of ordinances. By the constitution it is stipulated that the Executive shall "make decrees and regulations necessary for the execution of the laws, without suspending their execution, or granting exemptions from them."[544] This power, however, in practice, is stretched even further than is the similar power of the Executive in France, and with the result not infrequently of the creation of temporary law, or (p. 372) even the virtual negation of parliamentary enactment. Parliament is seldom disposed to stand very rigidly upon its rights; indeed, it sometimes delegates expressly to the ministry the exercise of sweeping legislative authority. The final text of the great electoral law of 1882, for example, was never considered in the chambers at all. After debating the subject to their satisfaction, the two houses simply committed to the Government the task of drawing up a permanent draft of the measure and of promulgating it by executive decree. The same procedure has been followed in other fundamental matters. And not merely the ministers at Rome, but also the local administrative agents, exercise with freedom the ordinance-making prerogative. "The preference, indeed," as is observed by Lowell, "for administrative regulations, which the government can change at any time, over rigid statutes is deeply implanted in the Latin races, and seems to be especially marked in Italy."[545] [Footnote 544: Art. 6. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 5.] [Footnote 545: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 166. On the Italian executive see Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 281-329. An essay of value is M. Caudel, Parlementarisme italien, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1900.] II. PARLIAMENT: THE SENATE *409. Composition.*--Legislative power in Italy is vested conjointly in the king and Parliament, the latter consisting of two houses--an upper, the _Senato_, and a lower, _the Camera de' Deputati_. The Senate is composed entirely of members appointed for life by the crown. The body is no true sense a house of peers. Its seats are not hereditary and its members represent not alone the great proprietors of the country but a wide variety of public functionaries and men of achievement. In the making of appointments the sovereign is restricted by the necessity of taking all appointees from twenty-one stipulated classes of citizens, and it is required that senators shall be of a minimum age of forty years. The categories from which appointments are made--including high ecclesiastics, ministers of state, ambassadors, deputies of prolonged service, legal and administrative officials, men who during as much as seven years have been members of the Royal Academy of Sciences or of the Superior Council of Public Instruction--may be reduced, broadly, to three: (1) high officials of church and state; (2) persons of fame in science or literature, or who by any kind of services or merit have brought distinction to the country; and (3) persons who for at least three years have paid direct property or business taxes to the amount of 3000 lire ($600). The total number of members when the _Statuto_ was put in effect in 1848 was 78; the number in 1910 was 383. The last-mentioned number comprised the president of the Chamber of Deputies, 147 ex-deputies of six (p. 373) years' service (or men who had been elected to as many as three parliaments), one minister of state, six secretaries of state, five ambassadors, two envoys extraordinary, 23 officials of the courts of cassation and of other tribunals, 33 military and naval officials, eight councillors of state, 21 provincial functionaries, 41 members of the Royal Academy of Sciences, three members of the Superior Council of Public Instruction, two persons of distinguished services to the country, 71 payers of direct taxes in the amount of 3,000 lire, and 19 other scattered representatives of several categories. The absence of ecclesiastical dignitaries is to be accounted for by the rupture with the Vatican. The last members of this class to be named were appointed in 1866. *410. Legislative Weakness.*--The prerogative of senatorial appointment has been exercised upon several occasions for the specific purpose of influencing the political complexion of the upper chamber. In 1886 forty-one appointments were made at one stroke; in 1890, seventy-five; and in 1892, forty-two. The Senate guards jealously its right to determine whether an appointee is properly to be considered as belonging to any one of the twenty-one stipulated categories, and if it decides that he is not thus eligible, he is refused a seat. But as long as the sovereign keeps clearly within the enumerated classes, no practical limitation can be placed upon his power of appointment.[546] In practice, appointment by the king has meant regularly appointment by the ministry commanding a majority in the lower chamber; and so easy and so effective has proved the process of "swamping" that the legislative independence of the Senate has been reduced almost to a nullity. In general it may be said that the body exercises the function of a revising, but no longer of an initiating or a checking, chamber. During the period 1861-1910 the government presented in the Chamber of Deputies a total of 7,569 legislative proposals, in the Senate but 598; and the number of projects of law originated within the Senate during this same period was but thirty-nine. In volume and range of legislative activity the nominated senate of Italy is distinctly inferior to the elected senate of France.[547] [Footnote 546: Of 1,528 appointments made between 1848 and 1910 but 63 were refused confirmation by the Senate.] [Footnote 547: It is interesting to observe that, in the interest of governmental stability and permanence, Cavour favored the adoption of the elective principle in Italy. For illustrations of the weakness of the Italian Senate see C. Morizot-Thibault, Des droits des chambres hautes ou sénats en matière des lois de finance (Paris, 1891), 156-175.] *411. Projected Reform.*--Within recent years there has arisen a persistent demand for a reform of the Senate, to the end that the body may be brought into closer touch with the people and be (p. 374) restored to the position of a vigorous and useful second chamber. In the spring of 1910 the subject was discussed at some length within the Senate itself, and at the suggestion of the ministry a special commission of nine members was created to study "the timeliness, the method, and the extent" of the proposed reforms. December 5, 1910, this commission brought in an elaborate report, written principally by Senator Arcoleo, a leader among Italian authorities upon constitutional law. After pointing out that among European nations the reconstitution and modernization of upper chambers is a subject of large current interest, the commission proposed a carefully considered scheme for the popularizing and strengthening of the senatorial body. The substance of the plan was, in brief; (1) that the chamber henceforth should be composed of 350 members; (2) that the membership should be divided into three categories, designated, respectively, as officials, men of science and education, and men of political or economic status; and (3) that members of the first category, not to exceed 120, should be appointed, as are all members at present, by the crown; but members of the other two should be elected by fifteen special colleges so constituted that their membership would represent actual and varied groups of interests throughout the nation. The professors in the universities, for example, organized for the purpose as an electoral college, should be authorized to choose a contingent of thirty representatives. Other elements to be admitted to a definite participation in the elections should include former deputies, larger taxpayers, provincial and communal assemblies, chambers of commerce, agricultural societies, and workingmen's associations. The primary idea of those who propounded the scheme was that through its adoption there would be established a more vital contact between the Senate and the varied forces that contribute to the life of the nation than can subsist under the existing order. Unfortunately, as many consider, the Senate voted not to approve the commission's project. It contented itself, rather, with a vote in favor of an enlargement of the classes of citizens from which senators may be appointed by the king, although, in February, 1911, it went so far as to request the ministry to present new proposals, and, in particular, a proposal to vest in the Senate the choice of its presiding officer. Toward a solution of the problems involved there has been (to 1912) no further progress. It is not improbable, however, that upon some such plan of modernization as was prepared by the commission of 1910 agreement eventually will be reached.[548] [Footnote 548: E. Pagliano, Il Senato e la nomina dei senatori (Rome, 1906); L. A. Magro, L' aristocrazia e il Senato (Catania, 1909); I. Tambaro, La réforme du Sénat italien, in _Revue du Droit Public_, July-Sept., 1910, and Les débats sur la réforme du Sénat italien, ibid., July-Sept., 1911; M. Scelle, Réforme du Sénat italien, ibid., Oct.-Dec, 1911; Nazzareno, La riforma del Senato, in _Rivista di Diritto Pubblica_, III., 171. The report of the commission of 1910 is contained in Per la riforma del Senato; relazione della commissione (Rome, 1911).] *412. Privileges and Powers.*--Within the Senate, as to-day (p. 375) constituted, the president and vice-president are named by the king; the secretaries are selected by the body from its own membership. The privileges of members are defined minutely. Save by order of the Senate itself, no senator may be arrested, unless apprehended in the commission of an offense; and the Senate is constituted sole judge of the alleged misdemeanors of its members--a curious duplication of an ancient prerogative of the British House of Lords. Ministers are responsible only to the lower house, and although there are instances in which a minister has retired by reason of an adverse vote in the Senate, in general it may be affirmed that the Senate's importance in the parliamentary régime is distinctly subordinate. The two chambers possess concurrent powers of legislation, except that all measures imposing taxes or relating to the budget are required to be presented first in the Deputies. By decree of the crown the Senate may be constituted a High Court of Justice to try cases involving treason or attempts upon the safety of the state, and to try ministers impeached by the Chamber of Deputies. When acting in this capacity the body is a tribunal of justice, not a political organization; but it is forbidden to occupy itself with any judicial matters other than those for which it was convened.[549] [Footnote 549: Art. 36. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 10.] III. THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES--PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE *413. Composition: Franchise Law of 1882.*--The lower legislative chamber is composed of 508 members chosen by the voters of the realm under the provisions of the electoral law of March 28, 1895. In no country of western Europe is the privilege of the franchise more restricted than in Italy; yet progress toward a broadly democratic scheme of suffrage has been steady and apparently as rapid as conditions have warranted. The history of the franchise since the establishment of the present kingdom falls into three periods, delimited by the electoral laws of 1882 and 1895. Prior to 1882 the franchise was, in the main, that established by the electoral law of December 17, 1860, modified by amendments of July, 1875, and May, 1877. It was restricted to property-holders who were able to read and write, who had attained the age of twenty-five, and who paid an annual tax of at least forty lire. Under this system less than two and a (p. 376) half per cent of the population possessed the right to vote. In 1882, after prolonged consideration of the subject, the Government carried through Parliament a series of measures--co-ordinated in the royal decree of September 24--by which the property qualification was reduced from forty lire to nineteen lire eighty centesimi and the age limit was lowered to twenty-one years. The disqualification of illiteracy was retained, and a premium was placed upon literacy by the extension of the franchise, regardless of property, to all males over twenty-one who had received a primary school education. There were minor extensions in other directions. The net result of the law of 1882 was to raise the number of voters at a stroke from 627,838 to 2,049,461, about two-thirds of the new voters obtaining the franchise by reason of their ability to meet the educational qualification.[550] An incidental effect of the reform was to augment the political influence of the cities, because in them the proportion of illiterates was smaller than in the country districts. Small landed proprietors, though of a more conservative temperament, and not infrequently of a better economic status, than the urban artisans, were commonly unable to fulfill the scholarship qualification. [Footnote 550: Lowell, Governments and Parties, I., 157.] The law of 1882 provided for elections by general ticket, i.e., on the principle of _scrutinio di lista_. An act of May 8, 1891, abolished the general ticket and created a commission by which the country was divided into 508 electoral districts, each entitled to choose one deputy. By a law of June 28, 1892, there were introduced various reforms in the control and supervision of elections, and by another of July 11, 1894, new provisions were established for the revision of electoral and registration lists. Finally, March 28, 1895, there was promulgated an elaborate royal decree whereby the entire body of electoral laws enacted since the establishment of constitutional government, and at the time continuing in operation, was co-ordinated afresh. The existing system was not altered fundamentally, although the method of making up the voting-lists was changed, with the result that the number of electors was somewhat diminished. *414. The Franchise To-day.*--The Italian voter to-day must possess the following qualifications: (1) Italian citizenship; (2) age of twenty-one, or over; (3) ability to read and write; and (4) successful passage of examinations in the subjects comprised in the course of compulsory elementary education. The last-mentioned qualification is not, however, required of officials, graduates of colleges, professional men, persons who have served two years in the army, citizens who pay a direct tax annually of not less than nineteen lire eighty (p. 377) centesimi, those who pay an agricultural rental of 500 lire, those who pay house rent of from 150 lire in communes of 2,500 people to 400 lire in communes of over 150,000, and certain less important classes. So serious at all times has seemed the menace of illiteracy in Italy that the establishment of manhood suffrage has but rarely been proposed. Under the existing system the extension of education carries with it automatically the expansion of the franchise, though the obstacles to universal education are still so formidable that the democratizing of the state proceeds but slowly.[551] In 1904 the number of enrolled electors was 2,541,327--29 per cent of the male population over twenty-one years of age, and 7.67 per cent of the total population--exclusive of 26,056 electors temporarily disfranchised by reason of being engaged in active military service. At the elections of November, 1904, the number of qualified electors who voted was 1,593,886, or but 62.7 per cent of those who possessed the privilege. The proportion of registered electors who actually vote is kept down by the prosaic character of Italian electoral campaigns, by the influence of the papal _Non Expedite_,[552] and, most of all, by the habitual indifference of citizens, who, if the truth be told, for the most part have never displayed an insatiable yearning for the possession of the voting privilege. With the exception of the Socialists, no party has a clear-cut, continuous programme; none, save again the socialists, attempts systematically to arouse the voters at election time. [Footnote 551: King and Okey, Italy To-day, Chap. 12.] [Footnote 552: See p. 400.] *415. Electoral Reform.*--Notwithstanding these facts, there has been, in recent years, a somewhat insistent demand for electoral reform. The Luzzatti ministry fell, in March, 1911, primarily because a plan of suffrage extension which it had proposed was not to be put in operation before 1913. June 10, 1911, the Giolitti ministry which succeeded laid before the Chamber the text of a measure which, if adopted, would go far toward the establishment of universal male suffrage. The proposal was that practically all male citizens over thirty years of age, and all over twenty-one who have performed the military service required by the state, should be given the privilege of voting, irrespective of their ability to read and write. This project, after being debated at length, was adopted in the Chamber of Deputies early in 1912 by the enormous majority of 392 to 61. In the event of its final enactment the existing electorate will be increased from three millions to two and a half times that number and a general overhauling of electoral methods and machinery will be rendered necessary. The grounds upon which the change is urged are, first, (p. 378) the example of other nations and, second, the political and economic progress which Italy has achieved within the past generation. Serious students doubt whether the time is ripe for so radical a step. One half of the proposed electorate would be wholly illiterate.[553] [Footnote 553: For the text of the Giolitti proposals see _Il Seculo_, June 11, 1911. On Italian electoral reform see A. Piebantoni, La riforma della legge elettorale (Naples, 1909); G. Bandini, La riforma elettorale con la rappresentanza proporzionale nelle elezioni politiche (Rome, 1910); G. Sabini, La riforma del sistema elettorale in Italia (Turin, 1910); Siotto-Pintor, Estensione del suffragio e distribuzione della rappresentanza, in _Rivista di Diritto Pubblico_, Dec., 1911, and Le riforma del régime elettorale e le dottrine della rappresentanza politica e dell' elettorato nel secolo XX. (Rome, 1912).] *416. Electoral Procedure.*--Save during the years 1882-91, when the _scrutinio di lista_ was in operation, deputies have been chosen uniformly from single-member districts. There are to-day 508 such districts. No candidate is returned unless he not only polls a number of votes in excess of one-sixth of the total number of enrolled electors within the district, but has also an absolute majority of all the votes cast. If, after balloting, it is found that no candidate meets this requirement, a second ballot (_ballottaggio_) takes place one week subsequently.[554] At each polling place the presiding officer and "scrutineers" are chosen by the voters present. The method of voting is simple. In the polling-booth stands a table, on which are placed two square glass boxes, one empty, the other containing the voting papers. As the list of enrolled electors is read alphabetically, each man steps forward, receives a ballot paper, takes it to an adjoining table and writes on it the name of the candidate for whom he wishes to vote, folds the paper, and deposits it in the box reserved for the purpose. After the list has been read through it is the right of any voter who was not present to respond when his name was called to cast his ballot in a similar manner. The polling hours extend, as a rule, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.[555] [Footnote 554: At the elections of March, 1909, in 75 of the 508 districts no candidate received an adequate majority. In 57 of these districts the candidate who, at the first ballot, had received the largest number of votes was elected at the second ballot. The political effect of the second ballot is slight. At the election of 1900 there were 77 second ballotings; at that of 1904, 39. A. N. Holcombe, Direct Primaries and the Second Ballot, in _Amer. Political Science Review_, Nov., 1911; A. F. Locatelli, Considerazioni intorno all' opportunità di abolire il ballottaggio, in _La Riforma Sociale_, July-Aug., 1910.] [Footnote 555: King and Okey, Italy To-day, 14.] *417. Qualifications and Privileges of Members.*--A deputy is not required to be a resident of the district from which he is chosen. He must, however, be a citizen; must be at least thirty years of age; must be in possession of full civil and political rights; and must not belong to any of the classes or professions whose members are (p. 379) debarred by law. All salaried government officials, all persons receiving stipends from the state, and all persons ordained for the priesthood or filling clerical office are disqualified outright. Furthermore, while officers in the army and navy, ministers, under-secretaries, and various other higher functionaries may be elected, their number must never exceed forty, not including the ministers and under-secretaries. Neither senators nor deputies receive a salary or other compensation, a fact that undoubtedly accounts in some measure for the uniformly slender attendance in the chambers. Members are permitted, however, to travel free throughout Italy by rail, or on steamers belonging to lines that have a government contract containing a stipulation upon the subject. Measures providing for the payment of members have been proposed from time to time, but none have received the approval of the two chambers. A measure of the sort introduced in 1882 by Francesco Crispi, when a deputy, was rejected by the lower house. More recently, in the electoral bill voted by the Chamber of Deputies in 1912 provision is made for the payment of deputies; but at the time of writing final action upon this project has not been taken. Deputies are elected nominally for a five-year period, which is the maximum duration of a parliament. In point of fact, a dissolution is practically certain to intervene before the expiration of the full term, and the average interval between elections is nearer three years than five. If for any reason a deputy ceases to perform his duties, the electoral district that chose him is called upon forthwith to elect a new representative. *418. The Chambers: Organization.*--The constitution does not prescribe definitely that the parliament shall be assembled annually. It stipulates merely that the sessions of the two houses shall begin and end at the same time, that a meeting of one house at a time when the other is not in session is illegal, and that measures enacted under such circumstances are void.[556] Custom and the necessities of administration, however, render it incumbent upon the crown to convoke the chambers in at least one session each year, unless, indeed, as has sometimes happened, a session is so prolonged as to extend, with occasional recesses, over an entire year, or even two years. [Footnote 556: Art. 48. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 12.] The president and vice-president of the Senate are designated by the crown, but the president, vice-presidents, and secretaries of the lower chamber are chosen by the chamber itself from among its own members at the beginning of each session, for the entire session. The president of the Deputies, although empowered to appoint certain committees, such as those on rules and contested elections, is not (p. 380) infrequently re-elected again and again without regard to party affiliations, after the manner of the Speaker of the British House of Commons. The membership of the Chamber of Deputies is divided into nine _uffici_, or sections, and that of the Senate into five. A fresh division, by lot, takes place every two months. The principal function of the _uffici_ is the election of those committees for whose constitution no other provision is made. In each chamber the most important of all committees, that on the budget, is elected directly by the chamber. In the Deputies certain other committees are elected in the same way, while, as has been said, those on elections and on rules are appointed by the president. But committees specially constituted for the consideration of particular measures are made up of members chosen from the various _uffici_, unless the chamber prefers to designate some other method. *419. The Chambers: Procedure.*--Each house frames its own rules of procedure. By the constitution it is stipulated that the sessions shall be public (with the provision that upon the written request of ten members secret sessions may be held); that Italian shall be the official language; that no session or vote of either house shall be valid unless an absolute majority of the members is present; and that neither house shall receive any deputation, or give hearings to persons other than the legislative members, ministers, and commissioners of the Government.[557] Except such as relate to finance, bills on any subject may originate in either house, and at the initiative of the Government or of private members, though in practice all proposals of importance emanate from the Quirinal. The ministers appear regularly on the floor of the two chambers, to advocate the measures of the Government and to reply to inquiries. The right of interpellation is not infrequently exercised, though the debate and vote following a challenge of the ministry fall regularly after an interval of some days, instead of at once, as in the French system, thus guarding somewhat against precipitancy of action. A measure which is passed in one house is transmitted to the other for consideration. After enactment in both houses, it is presented to the king for approval, which, in practice, is never withheld. A bill rejected by the crown, or by either house, may not be reintroduced during the same session. Votes are taken by rising and sitting, by division, or by secret ballot. The third of these methods is obligatory in all final votes on enactments, and on measures of a personal character. It is specifically enjoined that deputies (p. 381) shall represent the nation as a whole, and not the districts from which they are chosen, and to this end no binding instructions may be imposed upon them by the electors.[558] Except when taken in the actual commission of an offense, deputies are exempt from arrest during the continuance of a session, and they may not be proceeded against in criminal matters without the previous consent of the Chamber. Neither senators nor representatives may be called to account for opinions expressed, or for votes cast, in the performance of their official functions. [Footnote 557: Arts. 52-54, 59, 62. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 12-13. In practice the requirement of the presence of an absolute majority of members is sometimes disregarded.] [Footnote 558: Art. 41. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 11.] IV. THE JUDICIARY *420. General Aspects.*--The provisions of the _Statuto_ respecting the administration of justice are brief and general. Justice, it is declared, emanates from the king and is administered in his name by the judges whom he appoints. These judges, after three years of service, are irremovable. Proceedings of courts in civil cases and hearings in criminal cases are required to be public. No one may be withdrawn from his ordinary legal jurisdiction; and no modification may be introduced in respect to courts, tribunals, or judges, save by law.[559] On the basis of these principles there has been built up a system of tribunals which differs in but few important respects from the systems in operation in the other Latin countries of Europe. It consists, in part, of courts which have been carried over from the period preceding Italian unification and, in part, of courts which owe their existence to legislation subsequent to 1861. The model upon which the system has been developed is the judicial hierarchy of France, and it differs from this system in little save the existence, as will appear, of five largely independent courts of cassation instead of one. [Footnote 559: Arts. 68-73. Ibid., II., 14-15.] *421. The Ordinary Courts.*--For purposes of justice the kingdom is divided into 1,535 _mandamenti_,[560] 162 tribunal districts, and 20 appellate court districts. Within each _mandamento_ is a _pretura_, or magistracy, which exercises jurisdiction in civil cases and in cases of misdemeanors (_contravvenzioni_) and offenses (_delitte_) punishable by imprisonment not exceeding three months, or banishment not exceeding one year, or a fine not exceeding 1,000 lire. In (p. 382) minor civil cases, involving sums not in excess of 100 lire, jurisdiction is vested in justices of the peace (_giudici conciliatori_) who likewise, upon request, act as arbitrators in cases involving any amount. In each of thirteen of the largest towns there is a _pretura_ which exercises penal jurisdiction exclusively. Next above the _pretori_ stand the penal courts, one in each of the 162 tribunal districts. These exercise jurisdiction in the first instance in offenses involving a maximum imprisonment of ten years or a fine of more than 1,000 lire. To them appeal may be carried from the decisions of the _pretori_. Closely associated are the courts of assize, which possess original jurisdiction in cases involving a penalty of imprisonment for life, or for a period longer than a minimum of five, and a maximum of ten, years. Save when the Senate is constituted a high court of justice, these tribunals have exclusive jurisdiction of all press offenses and of all cases involving attacks upon the security of the state. As a rule, the courts of assize make use of the jury. From their decisions there is no appeal, save upon a point of form, and appeal lies solely to the court of cassation at Rome. From the penal tribunals appeal lies, in cases not dealt with by the assize courts, to the twenty courts of appeal. [Footnote 560: Prior to 1901 the administrative and electoral _mandamenti_ and the _mandamenti giudiziarii_ were identical geographically, and there were 1,805 of them in the kingdom. By a law of the year mentioned the judicial _mandamenti_ were reduced in number to 1,535.] At the top of the system stand five largely independent courts of cassation, located at the old capitals of Turin, Florence, Naples, Palermo, and Rome. Each of these exercises, within its own territory, final jurisdiction in all cases involving the ordinary civil law. The court of cassation at Rome, it is true, has been given exclusive jurisdiction in conflicts of competence between different courts, conflicts between the courts and the administrative authorities, the transfer of suits from one tribunal to another, writs of error in criminal cases, and a variety of other special matters. But, aside from this, the five tribunals are absolutely equal in function; there is no appeal from one to another, and the decisions arrived at by one do not constitute precedents which the others are obligated to recognize. One of the most striking aspects, indeed, of the Italian judicial system is its lack of centralization; though it should be added that the centralizing principle which, since 1870, has dominated so notably all other departments of the government has been gradually winning its way in the judiciary. *422. The Administrative Courts.*--In Italy, as in continental countries generally, there is preserved a sharp distinction between public and private law; but the separation of functions of the ordinary and the administrative courts is much less clear-cut than in France and elsewhere. In 1865, indeed, the surviving administrative courts of (p. 383) the states which had been drawn into the kingdom, were abolished and it was arranged that the ordinary courts should exercise unrestricted jurisdiction in all criminal cases and in all civil cases in which, by the decision of the Council of State, a civil or political right was involved. The system worked poorly and by laws of June 2, 1889, and May 1, 1890, a special section of the Council of State (composed of a president and eight councillors named by the king) was set off to serve as an administrative court, while at the same time an inferior administrative jurisdiction was conferred upon the _giunta_ (prefect and certain assistants) of the province. In practice to-day, when the legality of acts committed by the administrative officials is called in question, the ordinary courts exercise jurisdiction, if the question is one of private _right_; if it is one merely of private _interest_, it goes for decision to an administrative tribunal. In most continental countries _all_ cases involving the legality of official acts fall within the domain of the administrative courts.[561] [Footnote 561: There is a brief description of the Italian judicial system in Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 170-178.] V. LOCAL GOVERNMENT *423. Historical Basis.*--In her ancient territorial divisions Italy had once the basis of a natural and wholesomely decentralized system of local government. Instead of availing themselves of it, however, the founders of the present kingdom preferred to reduce the realm to a _tabula rasa_ and to erect within it a wholly new and symmetrical hierarchy of territorial divisions and governmental organs. By a great statute of March 20, 1865, there was introduced in the kingdom a system of provincial and communal organization, the essentials of which were taken over in part from Belgium, but more largely from France. The functions and relations of the various local agencies were amplified and given substantially their present form in the law of December 30, 1888, supplemented and amended by acts of July 7, 1889, and July 11, 1894. So closely has the French model been adhered to throughout that the resemblance between the two systems amounts almost to duplication. The system of Italy calls, therefore, for no very extended independent description. The units of local government are four in number--the province, the _circondaro_, the _mandamento_, and the commune. Of these, the first and last alone possess vitality, distinct interests, and some measure of autonomy; and throughout the entire series runs that same principle of thoroughgoing centralization which is the pre-eminent characteristic of the local governmental system of France. The _circondaro_, (p. 384) corresponding to the French _arrondissement_, is essentially an electoral division. Strictly, there are in the kingdom 197 _circondarii_; but 87 districts comprising the province of Mantua and the eight provinces of Venetia are, in all save name, _circondarii_ also. The 1806 _mandamenti_, or cantons, are but subdivisions of the provinces for administrative purposes. *424. The Province: Prefect and Council.*--There are in the kingdom 69 provinces, varying considerably in size but with an average population of 450,000 to 500,000. The Italian province corresponds closely to the French department. At its head is a prefect, appointed by the crown and directly responsible to the Minister of the Interior. Like the French prefect, the Italian is a political official, and the fact not merely influences his appointment but affects greatly his conduct in office. As representative and agent of the central government the prefect publishes and executes the laws, supervises the provincial administration, opens and closes sessions of the provincial council and sanctions or vetoes the measures of that body, and safeguards in general the interests of the Government in the province. Within each province is a council of from 20 to 60 members, elected for a period of six years on a franchise somewhat broader than that which prevails in parliamentary elections. One-half of the membership is renewed triennially. The council meets regularly once each year, nominally for a month's session; but an extraordinary session may be convened at any time by the prefect, by the deputation, or upon call of one-third of the councillors. Aside from the voting of the provincial budget, the powers of the council are relatively meager. In part, e.g., in respect to the maintenance of highways, the control of secondary and technical education, and a share in the supervision of charity, they are obligatory; in part they are merely permissive. A deputation, or commission, of from six to ten persons, elected by the council from its own membership, represents the council in the intervals between its sittings and carries on the work which it may have in hand. The prefect is advised by a prefectorial council of three members appointed by the Government, and he is further assisted by a _giunta_ of six members, four of whom are elected by the provincial council, the other two being drawn from the prefectorial council. It is the business of the _giunta_ to assist the prefect and sub-prefects in the supervision of local administration and to serve as a tribunal for the trial of cases arising under the administrative law. The prefect and the _giunta_ possess large, and to a considerable degree, discretionary powers of control over the proceedings of the council; and the prefect, representing as he does the central government exclusively, can be called to account only by his superiors at (p. 385) Rome. *425. The Commune: Syndic and Council.*--As in France, the commune is the least artificial and the most vigorous of the local governmental units. In June, 1911, there were in Italy a total of 8,323 communes, besides four boroughs in Sardinia not included in the communal organization. Each commune has a council of from 15 to 80 members, according to its population, elected for a period of six years, one-half retiring every three years. The communal franchise is appreciably broader than the parliamentary. It extends to all Italian citizens twenty-one years of age who can read and write, provided they are on the parliamentary list, or pay any direct annual contribution to the commune, or comply with various other very easy conditions. The council holds two regular sessions a year, though in the large towns it, in point of fact, meets much more frequently. Between sittings its work is carried on by a _giunta_, which serves as a committee to execute the resolutions of the council and to draft its budget and by-laws. The powers of the council are comprehensive. It is obligated to maintain streets, roads, and markets; to provide for elementary education; to make suitable arrangements for the relief of the poor, the registration of births and deaths, and of electors; to establish police regulations and prisons; and, under varying conditions, to attend to a wide variety of other matters. The range of its optional activities is almost boundless. The council may establish theatres, found museums, subsidize public amusements, and, indeed, go to almost any length in the regulation of local affairs and the expenditure of local funds.[562] [Footnote 562: For an arraignment of the extravagance of the local governing authorities see King and Okey, Italy To-day, 267.] As its chief official, every commune has a _sindaco_, i.e., a syndic, or mayor. Prior to 1896 the syndic was chosen by the communal council from its own members, if the commune had more than 10,000 inhabitants, or was the capital of a province or _circondaro_; otherwise he was appointed from among the members of the council by the king. In the great majority of communes the procedure was of the second type. Since 1896 the syndic has been chosen regularly in all communes by the council, for a term of three years, together with a secretary, elected in the first instance for two, but afterwards for periods of not less than six, years. Despite the fact that the syndic is now elected universally by the communal council, his position is not that exclusively of executive head of the local community. Like the prefect, he is a government official, who, save under very exceptional circumstances, may be removed only with the prefect's permission. He may not be called to account except by his superiors, or sued save (p. 386) with the permission of the crown.[563] [Footnote 563: For a brief account of local government in Italy see King and Okey, Italy To-day, Chap. 14. More extended treatment will be found in E. del Guerra, L'Amministrazione pubblica in Italia (Florence, 1893) and G. Greco, Il nuova diritto amministrativo Italiano (Naples, 1896).] CHAPTER XXI (p. 387) STATE AND CHURCH--POLITICAL PARTIES I. QUIRINAL AND VATICAN Italy differs from other nations of importance in containing what is essentially a state within a state. The capital of the kingdom is likewise the capital of the Catholic world--the administrative seat of a government which is not only absolutely independent of the government of the Italian nation but is in no small degree antagonistic to it. It need hardly be remarked that the consequences of this anomalous situation affect profoundly the practical operations of government, and especially the crystallization and programmes of political parties, in the peninsula. *426. Termination of the Temporal Power.*--One goal toward which the founders of the kingdom directed their efforts was the realization of the ideal of Cavour, "a free church in a free state." A thoroughgoing application of this principle proved impracticable, but such progress has been made toward it as to constitute, for Italy, a veritable revolution. On the 20th of September, 1870, the armed forces of King Victor Emmanuel crossed the bounds of the petty papal dominion about Rome, entered the city, and by a few sharp strokes beat down all forcible opposition to the sovereignty of the united Italian nation. Pope Pius IX. refused absolutely to acquiesce in the loss of his temporal dominion, but he was powerless to prevent it. His sole hope of indemnity lay in a possible intervention of the Catholic powers in his behalf--a hope which by Prussia's defeat of France and the downfall of the Emperor Napoleon III. was rendered extremely unsubstantial. The possibility of intervention was, however, sufficiently considerable to occasion real apprehension on the part of Victor Emmanuel and of those attached to the interests of the young nation. In part to avert complications abroad, as well as with an honest purpose to adjust a difficult situation, the Government made haste to devise what it considered a fair, safe, and honorable settlement of its relations with the papal authority. The result was the fundamental statute known as the Law of the Papal Guarantees, enacted March 21, 1871, after a heated parliamentary contest (p. 388) lasting upwards of two months, and promulgated under date of May 13 following.[564] [Footnote 564: Text in Coglio e Malchiodi, Codice Politico Amministrativo. An English version is printed in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 16-21.] *427. The Law of Papal Guarantees, 1871: Papal Prerogatives.*--This important measure, which remains to this day unchanged, falls into two principal parts. The first is concerned with the prerogatives of the Supreme Pontiff and of the Holy See; the second regulates the legal relations of church and state within the kingdom. In a series of thirteen articles there is enumerated a sum total of papal privileges which constitutes the Vatican an essentially sovereign and independent power. First of all, the Pope is declared sacred and inviolable, and any offense against his person is made punishable with the same penalty as a similar offense against the person of the king. In the second place, the Italian Government "grants to the Supreme Pontiff, within the kingdom, sovereign honors, and guarantees to him the pre-eminence customarily accorded to him by Catholic sovereigns."[565] Diplomatic agents accredited to him, and envoys whom he may send to foreign states, are entitled to all the prerogatives and immunities which international law accords to diplomatic agents generally. In lieu of the revenues which were cut off by the loss of the temporal dominion there is settled upon the Pope a permanent income to be paid from the treasury of the state. For the uses of the Holy See--the preservation and custody of the apostolic palaces, compensation and pensions for guards and attachés, the keeping of the Vatican museums and library, and any other needful purposes--there is reserved the sum of 3,225,000 lire ($645,000) annually, to be "entered in the great book of the public debt as a perpetual and inalienable income of the Holy See."[566] The obligation thus assumed by the state may never be repudiated, nor may the amount stipulated be reduced. Permanent possession, furthermore, of the Vatican and Lateran palaces, with all buildings, museums, libraries, gardens, and lands appertaining thereto (including the church of St. Peter's), together with the villa at Castel Gandolfo, is expressly guaranteed, and it is stipulated, not only that these properties shall be exempt from all taxation and charges and from seizure for public purposes, but that, except with papal permission, no public official or agent in the performance of his public duties shall so much as enter the papal palaces or grounds, or any place where there may be in session at any time a conclave or ecumenical council. During a vacancy of the pontifical chair no judicial or political functionary may, on any pretext, invade the (p. 389) personal liberty of the cardinals, and the Government engages specifically to see to it that conclaves and ecumenical councils shall not be molested by external disorder. [Footnote 565: Art. 3. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 16.] [Footnote 566: Art. 4. Ibid., 17.] *428. Papal Freedom in the Exercise of Spiritual Functions.*--In the exercises of spiritual functions the independence of the Holy See is fully secured. The Pope may correspond freely with the bishops and with "the whole Catholic world," without interference from the Government.[567] Papers, documents, books, and registers deposited in pontifical offices or in congregations of an exclusively spiritual character are exempt from all legal processes of visit, search, or sequestration, and ecclesiastics may not be called to account by the civil authorities for taking part officially in the promulgation of any act pertaining to the spiritual ministry of the Holy See. To facilitate the administration of papal affairs the right is granted of maintaining separate postal and telegraph offices, of transmitting sealed packages of correspondence under the papal stamp, either directly or through the Italian post, and of sending couriers who, within the kingdom, are placed on an equal footing with emissaries of foreign governments. [Footnote 567: Art. 12. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 19.] *429. Legal Relations of Church and State.*--The regulations by which the relations of church and state are governed more specifically begin with the abolition of all restrictions upon the right of members of the Catholic clergy to assemble for ecclesiastical purposes. With provisional exceptions, the _exequatur_, the _placet_, and all other forms of civil authorization of spiritual measures are done away.[568] The state yields its ancient right of nominating to bishoprics, and the bishops themselves are no longer required to take oath of fidelity to the king. In matters of spiritual discipline it is stipulated that there shall be no appeal to the civil courts from the decisions of the ecclesiastical authorities. If, however, any ecclesiastical decision or act contravenes a law of the state, subverts public order, or encroaches upon the rights of individuals, it is, _ipso facto_, of no effect; and in respect to these things the state is constituted sole judge. The Church, in short, is granted a very large measure of freedom and of autonomy; but at the same time it is not so far privileged as to be removed beyond the pale of the public law. If its measures constitute offenses, they are subject to the provisions of the ordinary criminal code.[569] [Footnote 568: On the Government's use of the _exequatur_ since 1871 see King and Okey, Italy To-day, 253.] [Footnote 569: By act of July 12, 1871, articles 268-270 of the Italian penal code were so modified as to render ecclesiastics liable to imprisonment of from six months to five years, and to fines of from one thousand to three thousand lire, for spoken or written attacks upon the state, or for the incitement of disorder.] *430. Papal Opposition to the Existing System.*--The arrangements (p. 390) thus comprised in the Law of Guarantees have never received the sanction of the papacy. They rest exclusively upon the authority of the state. Pope Pius IX., flatly refusing to accept them, issued, May 15, 1871, an encyclical to the bishops of the Church repudiating the Law and calling upon Catholic princes everywhere to co-operate in the restoration of the temporal power. The call was unheeded, and the Pope fell back upon the obstructionist policy of maintaining absolutely no relations, with the Italian kingdom. His successor, Leo XIII., preserved essentially the same attitude, and, although many times it has been intimated that the present Pope, Pius X., is more disposed to a conciliatory policy, it still is true that the only recognition which is accorded the Quirinal by the Vatican is of a purely passive and involuntary character. The Pope persists in regarding himself as "the prisoner of the Vatican." He will not so much as set foot outside the petty domain which has been assigned to him, because his doing so might be construed as a virtual recognition of the legality of the authority of the kingdom within the Eternal City. Not a penny of the annuity whose payment to the Holy See was stipulated in 1871 has been touched. By the Italian Government the annuity itself has been made subject to quinquennial prescription, so that in the event of a recognition of the Law at any time by the papacy not more than a five-year quota, with interest, could be collected. As to the measure of fidelity with which the Government has fulfilled the obligations which it assumed under the Law, there is, naturally, a wide divergence of opinion. The authors of what is probably the most authoritative book on Italy written from a detached and impartial point of view say that "on the whole, one is bound to conclude that the Government has stretched the Law of Guarantees in its own interest, but that the brevity and incompleteness of the Law is chiefly responsible for the difficulty in construing it."[570] Undoubtedly it may be affirmed that the spirit of the Law has been observed with consistency, though the exigencies of temporal interest have compelled not infrequently the non-observance of the letter. So long as the Vatican persists in holding rigidly aloof from co-operation in the arrangement the Law obviously cannot be executed with the spontaneity and completeness that were intended by its framers. The situation is unfortunate, alike for state and church, and subversive of the best interests of the Italian people.[571] [Footnote 570: King and Okey, Italy To-day, 255.] [Footnote 571: For a brief discussion of the subject of church and state in Italy see King and Okey, Italy To-day, Chaps. 2 and 13. A useful book is R. de Cesare, Roma e lo stato del papa dal ritorno di Pio IX., 2 vols. (Rome, 1907), of which there is an abridged translation by H. Zimmern, The Last Days of Papal Rome, 1850-1870 (Boston, 1909). Mention may be made of M. Pernot, La politique de Pie X. (Paris, 1910); A. Brunialto, Lo stato e la chiesa in Italia (Turin, 1892); G. Barzellotti, L'Italia e il papato, in _Nuova Antologia_, March 1, 1904; and F. Nielsen, The History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1906).] II. PARTIES AND MINISTRIES, 1861-1896 (p. 391) *431. Party Beginnings: the Conservative Ascendancy, 1861-1876.*--In Italy, as in France, political parties are numerous and their constituencies and programmes are subject to rapid and bewildering fluctuation. In the earliest days of the kingdom party lines were not sharply drawn. In the parliament elected in January, 1861, the supporters of Cavour numbered 407, while the strength of the opposition was but 36. After the death of Cavour, however, June 6, 1861, the cleavage which already had begun to mark off the Radicals, or Left, from the Conservatives, or Right, was accentuated, and the Left grew rapidly in numbers and in influence. During the period between 1861 and 1870 the two parties differed principally upon the question of the completion of Italian unity, the Conservatives favoring a policy of caution and delay, the Radicals urging that the issue be forced at the earliest opportunity. With the exception of brief intervals in 1862 and 1867, when the Radicals, under Rattazzi, gained the upper hand, the government during the period indicated was administered by the Conservative ministries of Ricasoli (the successor of Cavour), Minghetti, La Marmora, Menabrea, and Lanza. Each of the Rattazzi ministries had as one of its principal incidents an invasion of the papal territory by Garibaldi, and each fell primarily because of the fear of the nation that its continuance in power would mean war with France. The unification of the peninsula was left to be accomplished by the Conservatives. After 1870 the dominance of the Conservatives was prolonged to 1876. The Lanza government, whose most distinguished member was the finance minister Sella, lasted until July 10, 1873, and the second ministry of Minghetti, given distinction by the able foreign minister Visconti-Venosta, filled out the period to March 18, 1876. Upon these two ministries devolved the enormous task of organizing more fully the governmental system of the kingdom, and especially of bringing order out of chaos in the national finances. The work was effectively performed, but when it had been completed the nation was more than ready to drive the Conservatives from office. The Conservative administration had been honest and efficient, but it had been rigid and at times harsh. It had set itself squarely against the democracy of Garibaldi, Crispi, and Depretis; it had sought to retain the (p. 392) important offices of state in the hands of its own immediate adherents; and in the execution of its fiscal measures it had been exacting, and even ruthless. March 18, 1876, the Minghetti government found itself lacking a majority in the Chamber, whereupon it retired and was replaced by a Radical ministry under the premiership of Depretis, successor of Rattazzi in the leadership of the Left. A national election which followed, in November, yielded the new Government the overwhelming parliamentary majority of 421 to 87. *432. The Rule of the Radicals, 1876-1896.*--Prior to their accession to power the Radical leaders had criticised so sharply the fiscal and administrative policies of their opponents that they were expected by many persons to overturn completely the existing order of the state. As all but invariably happens under such circumstances, however, when the "outs" became the "ins" their point of view, and consequently their purposes, underwent a remarkable transformation. In almost every essential the policies, and even the methods, of the Conservatives were perpetuated, and the importance of the political overturn of 1876 arises, not from any shift which took place from one style of government to another, but from its effects upon the composition and alignment of the parties themselves. During its fifteen-year ascendancy the Right had exhibited again and again a glaring lack of coherence; yet its unity was in reality considerably more substantial than was that of the Left. So long as the Radicals occupied the position of opponents of the Government they were able, indeed, to present a seemingly solid front. But when it fell to them to organize ministries, to frame and enact measures, and to conduct the administration, the fact appeared instantly that they had neither a constructive programme nor a unified leadership. The upshot was that upon its advent to power the Left promptly fell apart into the several groups of which it was composed, and never thereafter was there substantial co-operation among these groups, save at rare intervals when co-operation was necessary to prevent the return to office of the Conservatives. *433. The Depretis Ministries, 1876-1887.*--That portion of the party which first acquired ascendancy was the more moderate, under the leadership of Depretis. Its programme may be said to have embraced the extension of the franchise, the enforcement of the rights of the state in relation to the Church, the incompatibility of a parliamentary mandate with the holding of public office, the maintenance of the military and naval policy instituted by the Conservatives, and, eventually, fiscal reform, though the amelioration of taxation was given no such prominence as the nation had been led to expect. (p. 393) Save for the brief intervals occupied by the two Cairoli ministries of 1878 and 1879-1881, Depretis continued in the office of premier from 1876 until his death, in the summer of 1887. Again and again during this period the personnel of the ministry was changed. Ministers who made themselves unpopular were replaced by new ones,[572] and so complete became the lack of dividing principles between the parties that in 1883 there was established a Depretis cabinet which represented a coalition of the moderate Left and the Right.[573] The coalition, however, proved ill-advised, and when, July 27, 1887, Depretis died he left behind him a government which represented rather a fusion of the moderate and radical wings of the Left. By reason of the disintegrated condition of parties Depretis had been able to override habitually the fundamental principles of parliamentarism and to maintain through many years a government which lived from hand to mouth on petty manoeuvers. The franchise, it is true, had been broadened by the law of 1882, and some of the more odious taxes, e.g., the much complained of grist tax, had been abolished. But electoral corruption had been condoned, if not encouraged; the civil service had been degraded to a mere machine of the ministerial majority; and the nation had been led to embark upon highly questionable policies of colonial expansion, alliance with Germany and Austria, and protective tariffs. [Footnote 572: This partial renewal of a ministry, known in Italy as a _rimpasto_, was, and still is, rendered easy by the average ministry's lack of political solidarity.] [Footnote 573: This coalition policy--the so-called _transformismo_--did not originate with Depretis. As early as 1873 a portion of the Right under Minghetti, by joining the Left, had overturned the Lanza-Sella cabinet; and in 1876 Minghetti himself had fallen a victim to a similar defection of Conservative deputies.] *434. The First Crispi, First Rudini, and First Giolitti Ministries, 1887-1893.*--The successor of Depretis was Crispi, in reality the only man of first-rate statesmanship in the ranks of the Left. To him it fell to tide the nation safely over the crises attendant upon the death (January 9, 1878) of King Victor Emmanuel II. and that (February 7 following) of Pope Pius IX. The personality of Crispi was very much more forceful than was that of Depretis and the grasp which he secured upon the political situation rendered his position little short of that of a dictator. The elections of 1876 had reduced to impotence the old Right as a party of opposition, and although prior to Crispi's ministry there had been some recovery, the Left continued in all but uncontested power. In the elections of November, 1890, the Government was accorded an overwhelming majority. None the less, largely by reason of his uncontrollable temper, Crispi allowed himself, at the end of January, 1891, to be forced by the Conservatives into a (p. 394) position such that the only course open to him was to resign. There followed a transitional period during which the chaos of party groups was made more than ever apparent. The Rudini ministry, composed of representatives of both the Right and the Left, survived little more than a year. May 5, 1892, the formation of a ministry was intrusted by King Humbert to Giolitti, a Piedmontese deputy and at one time minister of finance in the Crispi cabinet. The product was a ministry supported by the groups of the Centre and the Left, but opposed by those of the Right and of the Extreme Left. Parliament was dissolved and during the ensuing November were held national elections in which, by exercise of the grossest sort of official pressure, the Government was able to win a substantial victory. The period covered by Giolitti's ministry--marked by a cringing foreign policy, an almost utter breakdown of the national finances, and the scandals of 1893 in connection with the management of state banks, especially the Banca Romana--may well be regarded as the most unfortunate in Italian history since the completion of national unity. The revelations made, November 23, 1893, by a committee appointed by Parliament to investigate the bank scandals were of such a character that the Giolitti ministry retired from office, November 24, without so much as challenging a vote of confidence. After prolonged delay a new ministry was made up, December 10, by Crispi, whose return to power was dictated by the conviction of the nation that no one else was qualified to deal with a situation so desperate. *435. The Second Crispi Ministry, 1893-1896.*--The second Crispi ministry extended from December, 1893, to March, 1896. Politically, the period was one of extreme unsettlement. Supported by the Centre and the Left, substantially as Giolitti had been, the Government suppressed disorder, effected economies, and entered upon an ambitious attempt at colonial aggrandizement in East Africa. But it was opposed by the Extreme Left, a large portion of the Right, and the adherents of Giolitti, so that its position was always precarious. In December, 1894, Giolitti produced papers purporting to show that Crispi himself had been implicated in the bank irregularities. The effort to bring about the premier's fall failed, although there ensued a veritable war between the cabinet and the chambers, in the course of which even the appearance of parliamentary government was abandoned. In the elections of May, 1895, the Government was victorious, and it was only by reason of public indignation arising from the failure of the Eritrean enterprise that, finally, March 5, 1896, Crispi and his colleagues surrendered office. III. THE ERA OF COMPOSITE MINISTRIES, 1896-1912 (p. 395) During the period which was terminated by the retirement of Crispi the successive ministries, while occasionally including representatives of more than a single political group, exhibited normally a considerable degree of solidarity. After 1896 there set in, however, an epoch during which the growing multiplicity of parties bore fruit in cabinets of amazingly composite character. In the place of the fairly substantial Conservative and Radical parties of the seventies stood now upwards of half a score of contending factions, some durable, some but transitory. No government could survive a month save by the support of an affiliation of a number of these groups. But such affiliations were, in the nature of things, artificial and provisional, and ministerial stability became what it remains to-day, a thing universally desired but rarely enjoyed. *436. The Second Rudini and the Pelloux Ministries, 1896-1900.*--To General Ricotti-Magnani was committed, at Crispi's fall in 1896, the task of forming a new ministry. After some delay the premiership was bestowed upon Rudini, now leader of the Right. The new Government, constructed to attract the support of both the Right and the Extreme Left, took as its principal object the elimination of Crispi from the arena of politics. In time its foreign policy was strengthened appreciably by the return of Visconti-Venosta, after twenty years, to the foreign office, but home affairs were administered in a grossly inefficient manner. Bound by a secret understanding with Cavalotti, the leader of the Extreme Left, Rudini was obliged to submit habitually to radical dictation, and the elections of 1899, conducted specifically to crush the adherents of Crispi, threw open yet wider the door of opportunity for the Socialists, the Republicans, and the radical elements generally. The Rudini ministry survived until June 18, 1898, when it was overthrown in consequence of riots occasioned in southern Italy by a rise in the price of bread. June 29, 1898, a ministry was made up by General Pelloux which was essentially colorless politically and whose immediate programme consisted solely in the passage of a public safety measure originated during the preceding ministry. When, in June, 1900, the Government dissolved parliament and appealed to the country the result was another appreciable increase of power on the part of the radicals. In the new chamber the extremists--Radicals, Republicans, and Socialists--numbered nearly 100, or double their former strength. The Pelloux government forthwith retired, and a Liberal ministry was constituted (June 24, 1900) under Saracco, president of the (p. 396) Senate. Five weeks later, upon the assassination of King Humbert, occurred the accession of the present sovereign, Victor Emmanuel III. *437. The Saracco and Zanardelli Ministries, 1900-1903.*--The Saracco ministry, formed as a cabinet of pacification, was overthrown February 7, 1901, in consequence of its hesitating attitude towards a dock strike at Genoa. It was succeeded by a ministry containing Giolitti (in the portfolio of the interior) and presided over by Zanardelli, long a leader of the extremer wing of the Radicals. The members of the new Government were drawn from several groups. Three were of Zanardelli's following, three were adherents of Giolitti, three belonged to the Right, one was a Crispian, and two were Independents. Such was their forced reliance, however, upon the support of the Extreme Left that the formation of this cabinet served as an impetus to a notable advance on the part of the extremer groups, especially the Socialists. *438. Giolitti, Fortis, and Sonnino, 1903-1909.*--In October, 1903, Premier Zanardelli retired, by reason of ill-health, and the cabinet was reconstituted under Giolitti. Aside from the premier, its most distinguished members were Tittoni, minister of foreign affairs, and Luzzatti, minister of finance. The position of the new Government was insecure, and although the elections of November, 1904, resulted in the return of a substantial ministerial majority, the cabinet, realizing that it really lacked the support of the country, resigned in March, 1905. A new and colorless ministry, that of Fortis, lasted less than a year, i.e., until February 2, 1906. The coalition cabinet of Sonnino proved even less long-lived. The well-known statesmanship of Sonnino, together with the fact that men of ability, such as Luzzatti and Guicciardini, were placed in charge of various portfolios, afforded ground for the hope that there might ensue an increased measure of parliamentary stability. But the hope was vain and, May 17, 1906, the ministry abandoned office. Curiously enough, the much desired stability was realized under a new Giolitti government, composed, as all Italian governments in these days must be, of representatives of a number of political groups. In part by reason of the shrewdness of the premier and his colleagues, in part by reason of sheer circumstance, the Giolitti cabinet maintained steadily its position until December 2, 1909, although, as need hardly be observed, during these three and a half years there were numerous changes in the tenure of individual portfolios. *439. Second Sonnino and Luzzatti Ministries, 1909-1911.*--Upon the retirement of Giolitti there was constituted a second Sonnino ministry, composed of elements drawn from all of the moderate groups from the Liberal Right to the Democratic Left. The programme which it announced included electoral reform, the improvement of primary (p. 397) education, measures for the encouragement of agriculture, reorganization of local taxation, reduction of the period of military service to two years, and a multiplicity of other ambitious projects. Scarcely more fortunate, however, was the second Sonnino government than had been the first, and, in the midst of the turmoil attending the debates upon a Shipping Conventions bill, the premier and his colleagues felt themselves forced to retire, March 21, 1910. Giolitti refused to attempt the formation of another ministry, and the task devolved upon the former minister of finance, Luzzatti. In the new cabinet the premier and one other member represented the Liberal element of the Right; one member represented the Centre; three were adherents of Giolitti; two were Radicals; one was a Socialist; and two professed independence of all groups. Whatever of advantage might be supposed to accrue from a government which was broadly representative could legitimately be expected from this combination; although the composite character of the ministry, it was well enough understood, must of necessity operate to the detriment of the Government's unity and influence. The programme which the Luzzatti ministry announced was no less ambitious than that put forward by its predecessor. Included in it were the establishment of proportional representation, the extension of the suffrage, measures to remedy unemployment and other industrial ills, compulsory insurance for agricultural laborers, resistance to clerical intrigue and the prevention of anti-clerical provocations, and the usual pledge to maintain the Triple Alliance. *440. Giolitti and the Left, 1911-.*--The life of the Luzzatti government covered barely a twelvemonth. March 29, 1911, Giolitti returned to the premiership, signalizing his restoration to power by avowing in the Chamber a programme of policies which, for the time at least, elicited the support of all of the more important party groups. The composition of the new government differed but slightly from that of the former one, but the fact was undisguised that Giolitti relied for support principally upon the more radical elements of the nation, and that, furthermore, he did so with the full assent of the king. A striking evidence of this was the invitation which was extended the socialist leader Bissolati to assume a post in the ministry. Certain obstacles arose which prevented acceptance of the offered position, but when the Government's programme was being given shape Bissolati was called repeatedly into counsel, and it is understood that the ministry's pronouncement in behalf of universal suffrage and the reduction of military and naval expenditures was inspired immediately by socialist influence. Socialism in Italy, it may be observed, is not entirely anti-monarchical, as it is in France and Spain; on the (p. 398) contrary, it tends constantly to subordinate political to social questions and ends. Bissolati is himself an exponent of the evolutionary type of socialism, as is Briand in France. The first vote of confidence accorded the Giolitti government was participated in by the Giolitti Liberals, the Democratic Left, the Radicals, and a section of the Socialists--by, in short, a general coalition of the Left. The shift of political gravity toward the Left, of which the vote was symptomatic, is the most fundamental aspect of the political situation in Italy to-day, even as it is in that of France. During more than a generation the grouping of parties and factions has been such as to preclude the formation of a compact and disciplined majority able and willing to grapple with the great social questions which successive ministries have inscribed in their programmes. But it seems not impossible that a working _entente_ among the groups of the Left may in time produce the legislative stability requisite for systematic and fruitful legislation. IV. PHASES OF PARTY POLITICS *441. Lack of a Conservative Party: Effects.*--"From the beginning," says an Italian writer, "the constitution of our parties has been determined, not at all by great historical or political considerations, but by considerations of a purely personal nature, and this aspect has been accentuated more and more as we have progressed in constitutional development. The natural conditions surrounding the birth and growth of the new nation did not permit the formation of a true conservative party which could stand in opposition to a liberal party. The liberal party, therefore, occupying the entire field, divided empirically into groups, denominated not less empirically Right and Left, in accordance with simple distinctions of degrees and forms, and perchance also of personal disposition."[574] [Footnote 574: Cardon, Del governo nella monarchia costituzionale, 125.] The preponderating facts, in short, relative to political parties in Italy are two: (1) the absence of any genuine conservative party such as in virtually every other European state plays a rôle of greater or lesser importance, and (2) the splitting of the liberal forces, which elsewhere are bound to co-operate against the conservatives, into a number of factional groups, dominated largely by factional leaders, and unwilling to unite save in occasional coalitions for momentary advantage. The lack of a genuine conservative party is to be explained largely by the anomalous situation which has existed since 1870 in respect to church and state. Until late years that important element, the clericals, which normally would have constituted, as does its counterpart in France, the backbone of a conservative party has (p. 399) persisted in the purely passive policy of abstention from national politics. In the evolution of party groupings it has had no part, and in Parliament it has been totally unrepresented. Until recently all active party groups were essentially "liberal," and rarely did any one of them put forward a programme which served to impart to it any vital distinction from its rivals. Each was little more than a faction, united by personal ties, fluctuating in membership and in leadership, fighting with such means as for the moment appeared dependable for the perquisites of office. Of broadly national political issues there were none, just as indeed there were no truly national parties. *442. The Groups of the Extreme Left.*--More recently there has begun to be a certain development in the direction of national parties and of stable party programmes. This is coming about primarily through the growth of the Extreme Left, and especially of the Socialists. Although the effects are as yet scarcely perceptible, so that the politics of the country exhibit still all of the changeableness, ineffectiveness, and chaos characteristic of the group system, the development of the _partiti populari_ which compose collectively the Extreme Left, i.e., the Republicans, the Radicals, and the Socialists, is an interesting political phenomenon.[575] The Republicans are not numerous or well organized. Quite impotent between 1870 and 1890, they gained no little ground during the struggle against Crispi; but the rise of socialism has weakened them, and the party may now be said to be distinctly in decline. To employ the expressive phrase of the Italians, the Republicans are but _quattro noci in un sacco_, four nuts rattling in a bag. The Radicals are stronger, and their outlook is much more promising. They are monarchists who are dissatisfied with the misgovernment of the older parties, but who distrust socialism. They draw especially from the artisans and lower middle class, and are strongest in Lombardy, Venetia, and Tuscany. [Footnote 575: For an exposition of party conditions during the past decade see A. Labrioli, Storia di dieci anni, 1899-1909 (Milan, 1910).] *443. The Rise of Socialism.*--In not a few respects the master fact of Italian politics to-day is the remarkable growth of the Socialist party. The origins of the socialist movement in Italy may be traced to the Congress of Rimini in 1872, but during a considerable period Italian socialism was scarcely distinguishable from Bakuninian anarchism, and it was not before 1890 that the line between the two was drawn with precision. In 1891 was founded the collectivist journal _Critica Sociale_, and in the same year was held the first Italian congress which was distinctively socialist. In 1892 came the final break with the anarchists, and since this date socialism in Italy (p. 400) has differed in no essential particulars from its counterpart in other countries. Between 1891 and 1893 the new party was allied with the Right, but Crispi's relentless policy of repression in 1894 had the effect of driving gradually the radical groups, Republicans, Radicals, and Socialists, into co-operation, and it is to this period that the origins of the present coalition of the groups of the Extreme Left are to be traced. During the years 1895-1900 the Socialists assumed definitely the position of the advanced wing of a great parliamentary party, with a very definite programme of political and social reform. This "minimum programme," as it was gradually given shape, came to comprise as its most essential features the establishment of universal suffrage for adults of both sexes, the payment of deputies and members of local councils, the enactment of a more humane penal code, the replacing of the standing army by a national militia, improved factory legislation, compulsory insurance against sickness, the reform of laws regulating the relations of landlords and tenants, the nationalization of railways and mines, the extension of compulsory education, the abolition of duties on food, and the enactment of a progressive income tax and succession duty. The widespread dissatisfaction of Italians with the older parties, the practical character of the socialist programme, and the comparatively able leadership of the socialist forces have combined to give socialism an enormous growth within the past fifteen years. In 1895 the party polled 60,000 votes and returned to the Chamber of Deputies 12 members. In 1897 it polled 108,000 votes and returned 16 members. Thereafter the quota of seats carried at successive elections rose as follows: 1900, 33; 1904, 26; 1906, 42; and 1909, 43. *444. The Catholics and Politics: the Non Expedit.*--Aside from the growth of socialism, the most important development in recent Italian politics has been the changed attitude of the Holy See with respect to the participation of Catholics in political affairs. The term "Catholic" in Italy has a variety of significations. From one point of view it denotes the great mass of the people--97.1 per cent in 1910--who are not Protestants, Greeks, Jews, or adherents of any faith other than the Roman. In another sense it denotes that very much smaller portion of the people who regularly and faithfully observe Catholic precepts of worship. Finally, it denotes also the still smaller body of men who yield the Pope implicit obedience in all matters, civil as well as ecclesiastical, and who, with papal sanction, are beginning to constitute an organized force in politics. After it had become manifest that the Holy See might not hope for assistance from the Catholic powers in the recovery of its temporal possessions and of its accustomed independence, there was worked (p. 401) out gradually at the Vatican a policy under which pressure was to be brought to bear upon the Italian state from within. This policy comprised abstention from participation in national political life on the part of as many citizens as could be induced to admit the right of the papal government to control their civic conduct. In protest against the alleged usurpations of secular power Pope Pius IX. promulgated, in 1883, the memorable decree _Non Expedit_, by which it was declared "inexpedient" that Catholics should vote at parliamentary elections. Leo XIII. maintained a similar attitude; and in 1895 he went a step further by expressly forbidding what hitherto had been pronounced simply inexpedient. At no time, before or after Pope Leo's decree of prohibition, was the policy of abstention widely enforced, and very many Catholics, both in and out of Italy, warmly opposed it. The stricture was applied only to parliamentary, not to municipal, elections; yet in the two the percentages of the enfranchised citizens who appeared at the polls continued to be not very unequal, and there is every reason to believe that the meagerness of these percentages has been attributable at all times to the habitual indifference of the Italian electorate rather than to the restraining effects of the papal veto. None the less, in the strongly Catholic province of Bergamo and in some other quarters, the papal regulations, by common admission, have cut deeply into what otherwise would have been the normal parliamentary vote. *445. Relaxation of the Papal Ban.*--In the elections of 1904 many Catholics who hitherto had abstained from voting joined with the Government's supporters at the polls in an effort to check the growing influence of the more radical political groups, justifying their conduct by the conviction that the combatting of socialism is a fundamental Catholic obligation. Pope Leo XIII. was ready to admit the force of the argument, and in June of the following year there was issued an encyclical which made it the duty of Catholics everywhere, Italy included, to share in the maintenance of social order, and permitted, and even enjoined, that they take part in political contests in defense of social order whenever and wherever it was obviously menaced. At the same time, such participation must be, not indiscriminate, but disciplined. It must be carried on under the direction of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and with the express approval of the Vatican. Theoretically, and as a general rule, the _Non Expedit_ remains. But where the rigid application of the law would open the way for the triumph of the enemies of society and of religion (as, from the papal point of view, socialists inevitably are) the rule, upon request of the bishop and sanction by the Holy See, is to be waived. A corollary of this new policy is that, under (p. 402) certain circumstances, Catholics not merely vote but may stand for parliamentary seats. By the encyclical it is prescribed that such candidacies shall be permitted only where absolutely necessary to prevent the election of an avowed adversary of the Church, only where there is a real chance of success, and only with the approbation of the proper hierarchical authorities; and even then the candidate shall seek office not _as_ a Catholic, but _although_ a Catholic.[576] [Footnote 576: The idea is expressed in the phrase _cattolici deputati, si, deputati cattolici, no_.] The partial lifting of the _Non Expedit_ has had two obvious effects. In the first place, it has stimulated considerably the political activities of the Catholics. In the elections of 1906 and 1909 the number of Catholic voters and of Catholic candidates was larger than ever before, and in the Chamber of Deputies the group of clerical members gives promise of attaining some real importance. A second result has been, on the other hand, a quickening of the anti-clerical spirit, with a perceptible strengthening of the radical-republican-socialist _bloc_. By providing the Left with a solidifying issue it may yet prove that the papacy has rendered unwittingly a service to the very elements against whom it has authorized its adherents to wage relentless war.[577] [Footnote 577: Eufrasio, Il Non Expedit, in _Nuova Antologia_, Sept. 1, 1904.] *446. The Election of 1909.*--In respect to the parliamentary strength of the several party groups the elections of the past decade have produced occasional changes of consequence, but the situation to-day is not widely different from what it was at the opening of the century. In the Chamber elected in 1900 the Extreme Left obtained, in all, 107 seats. In 1904 the total fell to 77. In 1906, however, the Radicals secured 44, the Socialists 42, and the Republicans 23--an aggregate of 109; and following the elections of March 7 and 14, 1909, the quotas were, respectively, 37, 43, and 23, aggregating 103. The falling-off in 1904 is to be explained principally by the activity of the Catholics in the elections of that year, and the recovery in 1906 by the fact that, sobered by their reverses, the Socialists had abandoned in the meantime the extremer phases of their revolutionary propaganda. The elections of 1909 were precipitated by Giolitti's dissolution of the Chamber, February 6, in consequence largely of the dissatisfaction of the nation with the ministry's conciliatory attitude toward Austria-Hungary following the annexation by that power of the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite the excitement by which it was preceded, however, the campaign was a listless one. The foreign situation as an issue was soon forgotten, and no preponderating national question rose to assume its place. The (p. 403) Left made the most of the opportunity to increase its parliamentary strength, and the Catholics were more than ever active. The two forces, however, in a measure offset each other, and the mass of the nation, unreached by either, returned the customary overwhelming Governmental majority. When various electoral contests had been decided the quota of seats retained by each of the party groups in the Chamber was found to be as follows: Radicals, 37; Socialists, 43; Republicans, 23; Catholics, 16; Constitutional Opposition (separated from the Government upon no vital matter of principle), 42; and Ministerialists, or supporters of the Government, 346. These supporters of the Government include men of varied political opinions, but collectively they correspond approximately to the elements which in other countries are apt to be designated Liberals, Progressives, or Moderates.[578] [Footnote 578: The political parties of Italy are described briefly in Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., Chap. 4, and at more length in King and Okey, Italy To-day, Chaps. 1-3. Special works of importance upon the subject include M. Minghetti, I partiti politici e la ingerenza loro nella giustizia e nell' amministrazione (2d ed., Bologna, 1881); P. Penciolelli, Le gouvernement parlementaire et la lutte des partis en Italie (Paris, 1911); and S. Sighele, Il nazionalismo e i partiti politici (Milan, 1911). Of value are R. Bonfadini, I partiti parlamentari, in _Nuova Antologia_, Feb. 15, 1894, and A. Torresin, Statistica delle elezioni generali politiche, in _La Riforma Sociale_, Aug. 15, 1900. A useful biography is W. J. Stillman, Francesco Crispi (London, 1899), and an invaluable repository of information is M. Prichard-Agnetti (trans.), The Memoirs of Francesco Crispi, 2 vols. (New York, 1912). On the parties of the Extreme Left the following may profitably be consulted: F. S. Nitti, Il partito radicale (Turin and Rome, 1907); P. Villari, Scritti sulla questione sociale in Italia (Florence, 1902); R. Bonghi, Gli ultimi fatti parlamentari, in _Nuova Antologia_, Jan. 1, 1895; G. Alessio, Partiti e programmi, ibid., Oct. 16, 1900; G. Louis-Jaray, Le socialisme municipal en Italie, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, May, 1904; R. Meynadier, Les partis d'extrême gauche et la monarchie en Italie, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, April 1, 1908; F. Magri, Riformisti e rivoluzionari nel partito socialista italiano, in _Rassegna Nazionale_, Nov. 16, 1906, and April 1, 1907; R. Soldi, Le varie correnti nel partito socialista italiano, in _Giornale degli Economisti_, June, 1903. On recent Italian elections see G. Gidel, Les élections générales italiennes de novembre 1904, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Jan., 1905; P. Quentin-Bauchart, Les élections italiennes de mars 1909, ibid., July, 1909.] PART V.--SWITZERLAND (p. 405) CHAPTER XXII THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM--THE CANTONS I. THE CONFEDERATION AND ITS CONSTITUTION Among the governments of contemporary Europe that of the federal republic of Switzerland is unique; and the constitutional experiments which have been, and are being, undertaken by the Swiss people give the nation an importance for the student of politics altogether out of proportion to its size and population. Nowhere in our day have been put to the test in more thoroughgoing fashion the principles of federalism, of a plural executive, of proportional representation, of the initiative and the referendum, and, it may be said, of radical democracy in general. The results attained within a sphere so restricted, and under conditions of race, religion, and historical tradition so unusual, may or may not be accepted as evidence of the universal practicability of these principles. At the least, they are of acknowledged interest. *447. The Confederation in the Eighteenth Century.*--In the form in which it exists to-day the Swiss Confederation is a product of the middle and later nineteenth century. The origins of it, however, are to be traced to a very much remoter period. Beginning with the alliance of the three forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden in 1291,[579] the Confederation was built up through the gradual creation of new cantons, the splitting of old ones, the reorganization of (p. 406) dependent territories, and the development of a federal governmental system, superimposed upon the constitutional arrangements of the affiliated states. In 1789, when the French Directory, at the instigation of Napoleon, took it upon itself to revolutionize Switzerland, the Confederation consisted of thirteen cantons.[580] With it were associated certain _Zugewandte Orte_, or allied districts, some of which eventually were erected into cantons, together with a number of _Gemeine Vogteien_, or subject territories. The Confederation comprised simply a _Staatenbund_, or league of essentially autonomous states. Its only organ of common action was a diet, in which each canton had a right to one vote. Save in matters of a purely advisory nature, the powers of this diet were meager indeed. Of the cantons, some were moderately democratic; others were highly aristocratic. The political institutions of all were, in large measure, such as had survived from the Middle Ages. [Footnote 579: For an English version of the Perpetual League of 1291 see Vincent, Government in Switzerland, 285-288. The best account in English of the origins of the Confederation is contained in W. D. McCrackan, The Rise of the Swiss Republic (2d ed., New York, 1901). Important are A. Rilliet, Les origines de la confédération suisse (Geneva, 1868); P. Vauchier, Les commencements de la confédération suisse (Lausanne, 1891); W. Oechsli, Die Anfange der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Zürich, 1891). Of the last-mentioned excellent work there is a French translation, under the title Les origines de la confédération suisse (Bern, 1891). The origins of the Swiss Confederation were described in a scientific manner for the first time in the works of J. E. Kopp: Urkunden zur Geschichte der eidgenössischen Bünde (Leipzig and Berlin, 1835), and Geschichte der eidgenössischen Bünde (Leipzig and Berlin, 1845-1852). The texts of all of the Swiss alliances to 1513 are printed in J. von Ah, Die Bundesbriefe der alten Eidgenossen (Einsiedeln, 1891).] [Footnote 580: Lucerne joined the alliance in 1332; Zürich in 1351; Glarus and Zug in 1352; Bern in 1353; Freiburg and Solothurn in 1481; Basel and Schaffhausen in 1501; and Appenzell in 1513. "Swiss history is largely the history of the drawing together of bits of each of the Imperial kingdoms (Germany, Italy, and Burgundy) for common defense against a common foe--the Hapsburgs; and, when this family have secured to themselves the permanent possession of the Empire, the Swiss league little by little wins its independence of the Empire, practically in 1499, formally in 1648. Originally a member of the Empire, the Confederation becomes first an ally, then merely a friend." Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., XXVI., 246.] *448. The Helvetic Republic.*--The result of the French intervention of 1798 was that, almost instantly, the loosely organized Swiss confederation was converted into a centralized republic, tributary to France, and under a constitution which was substantially a reproduction of the French instrument of 1795. Under the terms of this constitution the territories of the Confederation were split up into twenty-three administrative districts, corresponding in but rare instances to the earlier cantons,[581] a uniform Swiss citizenship was established, a common suffrage was introduced, freedom of speech and of the press was guaranteed, and unity was provided for in the coinage, the postal service, and the penal law. A government of ample powers was set up, with its seat at Lucerne, its organs comprising a Grand Council of deputies elected indirectly in the cantons in proportion to population, a Senate of four delegates from each canton (together with retiring members of the Directory), and an Executive Directory of five members, with whom were associated, for (p. 407) administrative purposes, four appointed heads of departments. The French intervention was ruthless and the governmental order thrust upon the Swiss had no root in national tradition or interest. The episode served, however, to break the shackles of mediævalism and thus to contribute to the eventual establishment of a modernized nationality. July 2, 1802, following a series of grave civil disturbances, the constitution of 1798 was superseded by a new but similar instrument, which was imposed by force despite an adverse popular vote.[582] [Footnote 581: To these districts, however, the name canton was applied; and, indeed, this was the first occasion upon which the name was employed officially in Switzerland.] [Footnote 582: McCrackan, Rise of the Swiss Republic, 295-312; A. von Tillier, Geschichte der helvetischen Republik, 3 vols. (Bern, 1843); Muret, L'Invasion de la Suisse en 1798 (Lausanne, 1881-1884); L. Marsauche, La confédération helvétique (Neuchâtel, 1890).] *449. The Act of Mediation, 1803.*--Under the circumstances reaction was inevitable, and the triumph of the "federalists" came more speedily than might have been expected. In deference to preponderating sentiment in the territories, Napoleon, February 19, 1803, promulgated the memorable Act of Mediation, whereby he authorized the re-establishment of a political system that was essentially federal.[583] Once again there was set up a loose confederation, under a constitution which, however, provided for a central government that was distinctly more substantial than that which had prevailed prior to 1798. The right, for example, to make war and to conclude treaties, withdrawn entirely from the individual cantons, was conferred specifically upon the federal Diet. To the thirteen original cantons were added six new ones--Aargau, Thurgau, Vaud, Ticino, and the Grisons (St. Gall and Graubünden)--the first four formed from districts which under the old régime had occupied the status of subordinate territory, the last two having been formerly "allied states." In the Diet six cantons (Bern, Zürich, Vaud, Aargau, St. Gall, and Graubünden) which had a population in excess of 100,000 were given each two votes. All others retained a right to but one. The executive authority of the Confederation was vested by turns in the six cantons of Bern, Freiburg, Lucerne, Zürich, Basel and Solothurn, the "directorial" canton being known as the _Vorort_, and its chief magistrate as the _Landammann_, of the Confederation. The principle of centralization was in large part abandoned; but the equality of civil rights which the French had introduced was not allowed by Napoleon to be molested. It may be observed further that by the accession of the newly created cantons, containing large bodies of people who spoke French, Italian, and Romansch, the league ceased to be so (p. 408) predominantly German as theretofore it had been.[584] [Footnote 583: It is in this instrument that the Confederation was for the first time designated officially as "Switzerland."] [Footnote 584: Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 4 (bibliography, pp. 805-807). The best general work on the period 1798-1813 is W. Oechsli, Geschichte der Schweiz im XIX. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1903), I.] *450. The Pact of 1815 and the Revival of Particularism.*--The Act of Mediation, on the whole not unacceptable to the majority of the Swiss people, save in that it had been imposed by a foreign power, continued in operation until 1813. During the decade Switzerland was essentially tributary to France. With the fall of Napoleon the situation was altered, and December 29, 1813, fourteen of the cantons, through their representatives assembled at Zürich, declared the instrument to be no longer in effect. Led by Bern, eight of the older cantons determined upon a return to the system in operation prior to 1798, involving the reduction of the six most recently created cantons to their former inferior status. Inspired by the Tsar Alexander I., however, the majority of the Allies refused to approve this programme, and, after the Congress of Vienna had arranged for the admission to the confederacy of the three allied districts of Valais, Geneva, and Neuchâtel, there was worked out, by the Swiss themselves, a constitution known as the "Federal Pact," which was formally approved by the twenty-two cantons at Zürich, August 7, 1815.[585] [Footnote 585: This statement needs to be qualified by the observation that the half-canton Nidwalden approved the constitution August 30, and only when compelled by force to do so.] By this instrument the ties which bound the federation together were still further relaxed. The cantons regained almost the measure of independence which they had possessed prior to the French intervention. The Diet was maintained, on the basis now of one vote for each canton, regardless of size or population.[586] It possessed some powers,--for example, that of declaring war or peace, with the consent of three-fourths of the cantons,--but there were virtually no means by which the body could enforce the decrees which it enacted. The executive authority of the Confederation was vested in the governments of the three cantons of Zürich, Lucerne, and Bern, which, it was stipulated, should serve in rotation, each during a period of two years. Practically all of the guarantees of common citizenship, religious toleration, and individual liberty which the French had introduced were rescinded, and during the decade following 1815 the trend in most of the more important cantons was not only particularistic but also distinctly reactionary. The smaller and poorer ones (p. 409) retained largely their democratic institutions, especially their Landesgemeinden, or primary assemblies, but it was only after 1830, and in some measure under the stimulus of the revolutionary movements of that year, that the majority of the cantonal governments underwent that regeneration in respect to the suffrage and the status of the individual which lay behind the transforming movements of 1848.[587] [Footnote 586: Three of the cantons--Unterwalden, Basel, and Appenzell--were divided into half-cantons, each with a government of its own; but each possessed only half a vote in the Diet.] [Footnote 587: B. Van Muyden, La suisse sous le pacte de 1815, 2 vols. (Lausanne and Paris, 1890-1892); A. von Tillier, Geschichte der Eidgenossenschaft während der sogen. Restaurationsepoche, 1814-1830, 3 vols. (Bern and Zürich, 1848-1850); ibid., Geschichte der Eidgenossenschaft während der Zeit des sogeheissenen Fortschritts, 1830-1846, 3 vols. (Bern, 1854-1855).] *451. Attempted Constitutional Revision: the Sonderbund.*--The period between 1830 and 1848 was marked by not fewer than thirty revisions of cantonal constitutions, all in the direction of broader democracy.[588] The purposes of the liberal leaders of the day, however, extended beyond the democratization of the individual cantons. The thing at which they aimed ultimately was the establishment, through the strengthening of the Confederation, of a more effective nationality. On motion of the canton of Thurgau, a committee was authorized in 1832 to draft a revision of the Pact. The instrument which resulted preserved the federal character of the nation, but provided for a permanent federal executive, a federal court of justice, and the centralization of the customs, postal service, coinage, and military instruction. By a narrow majority this project, in 1833, was defeated. It was too radical to be acceptable to the conservatives, and not sufficiently so to please the advanced liberals. [Footnote 588: McCracken, Rise of the Swiss Republic, 325-330.] The obstacles to be overcome--native conservatism, intercantonal jealousy, and ecclesiastical heterogeneity--were tremendous. More than once the Confederation seemed on the point of disruption. In September, 1843, the seven Catholic cantons[589] entered into an alliance, known as the Sonderbund, for the purpose of defending their peculiar interests, and especially of circumventing any reorganization of the confederacy which should involve the lessening of Catholic privilege; and, in December, 1845, this affiliation was converted into an armed league. In July, 1847, the Diet, in session at Bern, decreed the dissolution of the Sonderbund; but the recalcitrant cantons refused to abandon the course upon which they had entered, and it was only after an eighteen-day armed conflict that the obstructive league was suppressed.[590] [Footnote 589: Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and the Valais.] [Footnote 590: A. Stern, Zur Geschichte des Sonderbundes, in _Historische Zeitschrift_, 1879; W. B. Duffield, The War of the Sonderbund, in _English Historical Review_, Oct., 1895; and P. Matter, Le Sonderbund, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, Jan. 15, 1896.] *452. The Constitution of 1848 and the Revision of 1874.*--The war (p. 410) was worth while, because the crisis which it precipitated afforded the liberals an opportunity to bring about the adoption of a wholly new constitution. For a time the outlook was darkened by the possibility of foreign intervention, but by the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 at Paris that danger was effectually removed. The upshot was that, through the agency of a committee of fourteen, constituted, in fact, February 17, 1848--one week prior to the overthrow of Louis Philippe--the nationalists proceeded to incorporate freely the reforms they desired in a constitutional _projet_, and this instrument the Diet forthwith revised slightly and placed before the people for acceptance. By a vote of 15-1/2 cantons (with a population of 1,900,000) to 6-1/2 (with a population of 290,000), the new constitution was approved. The adoption of the constitution of 1848, ensuring a modified revival of the governmental régime of 1798-1803, comprised a distinct victory for the Radical, or Centralist, party. During the two decades which followed this party maintained complete control of the federal government, and in 1872 it brought forward the draft of a new constitution whose centralizing tendencies were still more pronounced. By popular vote this proffered constitution was rejected. Another draft, however, was prepared and, April 19, 1874, by a vote of 14-1/2 cantons against 7-1/2, it was adopted. The popular vote was 340,149 to 198,013. Amended subsequently upon a large number of occasions,[591] the instrument of 1874 is the fundamental law of the Swiss Confederation to-day, although it is essential to observe that it represents only a revision of the constitution of 1848. As a recent writer has said, "the one region on the continent to which the storms of 1848 brought immediate advantage was Switzerland, for to them it owes its transformation into a well-organized federal state."[592] [Footnote 591: For the methods of constitutional amendment see p. 431.] [Footnote 592: W. Oechsli, in Cambridge Modern History, XI., 234. A brief survey of the constitutional history of Switzerland from 1848 to 1874 is contained in Chap. 8 of the volume mentioned (bibliography, pp. 914-918). Two excellent works are C. Hilty, Les constitutions fédérales de la confédération suisse; exposé historique (Neuchâtel, 1891), and T. Curti, Geschichte der Schweiz im XIX. Jahrhundert (Neuchâtel, 1902). A fairly satisfactory book is L. Hug and R. Stead, Switzerland (New York, 1889). The text of the constitution may be found in S. Kaiser and J. Strickler, Geschichte und Texte der Bundesverfassungen der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft von der helvetischen Staatsumwälzung bis zur Gegenwart (Bern, 1901), and in Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 405-431. English versions are printed in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 257-290; McCrackan, Rise of the Swiss Republic, 373-403; Vincent, Government in Switzerland, 289-332; and Old South Leaflets, General Series, No. 18. The texts of all federal constitutions after 1798 are included in the work of Kaiser and Strickler. A good collection of recent documents is P. Wolf, Die schweizerische Bundesgesetzgebung (2d ed., Basel, 1905-1908). The principal treatises on the Swiss constitutional system are J. J. Blumer, Handbuch des schweizerischen Bundesstaatsrechtes (2d ed., Schaffhausen, 1877-1887); J. Schollenberger, Bundesverfassung der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Berlin, 1905); ibid., Das Bundesstaatsrecht der Schweiz Geschichte und System (Berlin, 1902); and W. Burckhardt, Kommentar der Schweiz; Bundesverfassung vom 29 Mai 1874 (Bern, 1905). Two excellent briefer treatises are N. Droz, Instruction civique (Lausanne, 1884) and A. von Orelli, Das Staatsrecht der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Freiburg, 1885), in Marquardsen's Handbuch. The best treatise in English upon the Swiss governmental system is J. M. Vincent, Government in Switzerland (New York, 1900). Older works include B. Moses, The Federal Government of Switzerland (Oakland, 1889); F. Adams and C. Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation (London, 1889); and B. Winchester, The Swiss Republic (Philadelphia, 1891). Mention should be made of A. B. Hart, Introduction to the Study of Federal Government (Boston, 1891); also of an exposition of Swiss federalism in Dicey, Law of the Constitution, 7th ed., 517-529.] II. THE NATION AND THE STATES (p. 411) *453. Dominance of the Federal Principle.*--In its preamble the Swiss constitution proclaims its object to be "to confirm the alliance of the Confederation and to maintain and to promote the unity, strength, and honor of the Swiss nation;" and in its second article it affirms that it is the purpose of the Confederation "to secure the independence of the country against foreign nations, to maintain peace and order within, to protect the liberty and the rights of the confederates, and to foster their common welfare."[593] The use of the term "nation" (which, curiously, nowhere occurs in the constitution of the United States) might seem to imply a considerably larger measure of centralization than in fact exists. For although the effect of the constitution of 1848 was to convert a loosely organized league into a firmly constructed state--to transform, as the Germans would say, a _Staatenbund_ into a _Bundesstaat_--the measure of consolidation attained fell, and still falls, somewhat short of that which has been realized in the United States, and even in Germany. There are in the Confederation twenty-two cantons, of which three (Unterwalden, Basel, and Appenzell) have split into half-cantons; so that there are really twenty-five political units, each with its own government, its own laws, and its own political conditions. In territorial extent these cantons vary all the way from 2,773 to 14 square miles, and in population, from 642,744 to 13,796;[594] and the primary fact of (p. 412) the Swiss governmental system is the remarkable measure of political independence which these divisions, small as well as large, possess. [Footnote 593: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 257.] [Footnote 594: The total area of the Confederation is approximately 16,000 square miles; the total population, according to the census of December 1, 1910, is 3,741,971.] *454. The Sovereignty of the Cantons.*--In the United States there was throughout a prolonged period a fundamental difference of opinion relative to the sovereignty of the individual states composing the Union. The Constitution contains no explicit affirmation upon the subject, and views maintained by nationalists and state right's advocates alike have always been determined of necessity by interpretation of history and of public law. In Switzerland, on the contrary, there is, upon the main issue, no room for doubt. "The cantons are sovereign," asserts the constitution, "so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the federal constitution; and, as such, they exercise all the rights which are not delegated to the federal government."[595] As in the United States, the federal government is restricted to the exercise of powers that are delegated, while the federated states are free to exercise any that are not delegated exclusively to the nation, nor prohibited to the states. In the Swiss constitution, however, the delimitation of powers, especially those of a legislative character, is so much more minute than in the American instrument that comparatively little room is left for difference of opinion as to what is and what is not "delegated."[596] [Footnote 595: Art. 3. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 257.] [Footnote 596: In the form in which it now exists the Swiss constitution is one of the most comprehensive instruments of the kind in existence. Aside from various temporary provisions, it contains, in all, 123 articles, some of considerable length. As is true of the German constitution, there is in it much that ordinarily has no place in the fundamental law of a nation. A curious illustration is afforded by an amendment of 1893 to the effect that "the killing of animals without benumbing before the drawing of blood is forbidden; this provision applies to every method of slaughter and to every species of animals." Art. 25. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 263. The adoption of this amendment was an expression of antisemitic prejudice.] *455. Federal Control of the Cantons.*--After the analogy of the United States, where the nation guarantees to each of the states a republican form of government, the Swiss Confederation guarantees to the cantons their territory, their sovereignty (within the limits fixed by the fundamental law), their constitutions, the liberty and rights of their people, and the privileges and powers which the people have conferred upon those in authority. The cantons are empowered, and indeed required, to call upon the Confederation for the guaranty of their constitutions, and it is stipulated that such guaranty shall be accorded in all instances where it can be shown that the constitution in question contains nothing contrary to the provisions of the (p. 413) federal constitution, that it assures the exercise of political rights according to republican forms, that it has been ratified by the people, and that it may be amended at any time by a majority of the citizens.[597] A cantonal constitution which has not been accorded the assent of the two houses of the federal assembly is inoperative; and the same thing is true of even the minutest amendment. The control of the federal government over the constitutional systems of the states is thus more immediate, if not more effective, than in the United States, where, after a state has been once admitted to the Union, the federal power can reach its constitutional arrangements only through the agency of the courts. Finally, in the event of insurrection the government of the Confederation possesses a right to intervene in the affairs of a canton, with or without a request for such intervention by the constituted cantonal authorities. This right was exercised very effectively upon the occasion of the Ticino disorders of 1889-1890. [Footnote 597: Arts. 5 and 6. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 258.] Like the American states, but unlike the German, the Swiss cantons enjoy a complete equality of status and of rights. They are forbidden to enter into alliances or treaties of a political nature among themselves, though they are permitted to conclude intercantonal conventions upon legislative, administrative, and judicial subjects, provided such conventions, upon inspection by the federal officials, are found to be devoid of stipulations contrary to the federal constitution or inimical to the rights of any canton. In the event of disputes between cantons, the questions at issue are required to be submitted to the federal government for decision, and the individual canton must refrain absolutely from the use of violence, and even from military preparation. *456. Powers Vested Exclusively in the Confederation.*--Within the text of the constitution the division of powers between the federal and the cantonal governments is minute, though far from systematic. The clearest conception of the existing arrangements may perhaps be had by observing that provision is made for three principal categories of powers: (1) those that the Confederation has an exclusive right to exercise, some being merely permissive, others obligatory; (2) those which the Confederation is required, or allowed, to exercise in concurrence with the cantons; and (3) those which are not permitted to be exercised at all. Of powers committed absolutely to the Confederation, the most important are those of declaring war, making peace, and concluding alliances and treaties with foreign powers, especially treaties relating to tariffs and commerce.[598] The Confederation is (p. 414) forbidden to maintain a standing army, and no canton, without federal permission, may maintain a force numbering more than three hundred men. None the less, by law of 1907, every male Swiss citizen between the ages of twenty and forty-eight is liable to military service, and the constitution vests not only the sole right of declaring war but also the organization and control of the national forces in the Confederation.[599] The neutralized status with which, by international agreement, Switzerland has been vested renders a war in which the nation should be involved, other, at any rate, than a civil contest, extremely improbable.[600] Within the domain of international relations, the cantons retain the right to conclude treaties with foreign powers respecting border and police relations and the administration of public property. All remaining phases of diplomatic intercourse are confided exclusively to the Confederation. Other functions vested in the federal authorities alone include the control of the postal service and of telegraphs; the coining of money and the maintenance of a monetary system; the issue of bank notes and of other forms of paper money; the fixing of standards of weights and measures; the maintenance of a monopoly of the manufacture and sale of gunpowder; and the enactment of supplementary legislation relating to domicile and citizenship. [Footnote 598: Art. 8. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 258.] [Footnote 599: Arts. 15-23. Ibid., II., 260-262.] [Footnote 600: McCrackan, Rise of the Swiss Republic, 354-363; Payen, La neutralisation de la Suisse, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, Oct. 15, 1892.] *457. Concurrent Powers and Powers Denied the Confederation.*--Among powers which are intrusted to the Confederation, to be exercised in more or less close conjunction with the cantonal governments, are: (1) the making of provision for public education, the cantons maintaining a system of compulsory primary instruction, the Confederation subsidizing educational establishments of higher rank;[601] (2) the regulation of child labor, industrial conditions, emigration, and insurance; (3) the maintenance of highways; (4) the regulation of the press; and (5) the preservation of public order and of peace between members of different religious organizations. [Footnote 601: Art. 27. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 263.] Several explicit prohibitions rest upon the authorities of both Confederation and cantons. No treaties may be concluded whereby it is agreed to furnish troops to other countries. No canton may expel from its own territory one of its citizens, or deprive him of his rights. No person may be compelled to become a member of a religious society, to receive religious instruction, to perform any religious act, or to incur penalty of any sort by reason of his religious opinions.[602] No (p. 415) death penalty may be pronounced for a political offense. The prohibitions, in short, which the constitution imposes upon federal and cantonal authorities comprise essentially a bill of rights, comparable with any to be found in a contemporary European constitution. [Footnote 602: Art. 49. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 271-272.] *458. General Aspects.*--The fundamental thing to be observed is that under the Swiss constitution, as under the German, the legislative powers of the federal government are comprehensive, while the executive authority, and especially the executive machinery, is meager. The Confederation has power to legislate upon many subjects--military service, the construction and operation of railroads, education, labor, taxation, monopolies, insurance, commerce, coinage, banking, citizenship, civil rights, bankruptcy, criminal law, and numerous other things. In respect to taxation the federal government possesses less power than does that of Germany, and distinctly less than does that of the United States, for this power is confined to the single field of customs legislation;[603] but in virtually every other direction the legislative competence of the Swiss central authorities is more extended. It is worth observing, furthermore, that the centralizing tendency since 1874 has found expression in a number of constitutional amendments whose effect has been materially to enlarge the domain covered by federal legislation. Among these may be mentioned the amendment of July 11, 1897, granting the Confederation power to enact laws concerning the traffic in food products, that of November 13, 1898, extending the federal legislative power over the domain of civil and criminal law, that of July 5, 1908, conferring upon the Confederation power to enact uniform regulations respecting the arts and trades (thus bringing substantially the entire domain of industrial legislation within the province of the Confederation), and that of October 25, 1908, placing the utilization of water-power under the supervision of the central authorities. [Footnote 603: "The customs system shall be within the control of the Confederation. The Confederation may levy export and import duties." Art. 28. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 263. The constitution stipulates further that imports of materials essential for the manufactures and agriculture of the country, and of necessaries of life in general, shall be taxed as low as possible; also that export taxes shall be kept at a minimum. Art. 42 prescribes that the expenditures of the Confederation shall be met from the income from federal property, the proceeds of the postal and telegraph services, the proceeds of the powder monopoly, half of the gross receipts from the tax on military exemptions levied by the cantons, the proceeds of the federal customs, and, finally, in case of necessity, contributions levied upon the cantons in proportion to their wealth and taxable resources. Dodd, II., 269.] Within the domain of administrative functions, the principle is (p. 416) rather that of committing to the federal agencies a minimum of authority. Beyond the management of foreign relations, the administration of the customs, the postal, and the telegraph services, and of the alcohol and powder monopolies, and the control of the arsenals and of the army when in the field, the federal government exercises directly but inconsiderable executive authority. It is only in relation to the cantonal governments that its powers of an administrative nature are large; and even there they are only supervisory. In a number of highly important matters the constitution leaves to the canton the right to make and enforce law, at the same time committing to the Confederation the right to inspect, and even to enforce, the execution of such measures. Thus it is stipulated that the cantons shall provide for primary instruction which shall be compulsory, non-sectarian, and free; and that "the Confederation shall take the necessary measures against such cantons as do not fulfill these duties."[604] Not only, therefore, does the federal government enforce federal law, through its own officials or through those of the canton; it supervises the enactment and enforcement of measures which the constitution enjoins upon the cantons.[605] [Footnote 604: Art. 27. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 263.] [Footnote 605: A. Souriac, L'évolution de la juridiction fédérale en Suisse (Paris, 1909).] III. CANTONAL LEGISLATION: THE REFERENDUM AND THE INITIATIVE *459. Variation of Cantonal Institutions.*--In its fundamental features the federal government of Switzerland represents largely an adaptation of the political principles and organs most commonly prevailing within the individual cantons; from which it follows that an understanding of the mechanism of the federation is conditioned upon an acquaintance with that of the canton.[606] Anything, however, in the nature of a description which will apply to the governmental systems of all of the twenty-five cantons and half-cantons is impossible. Variation among them, in both structure and procedure, is at least as common and as wide as among the governments of the American commonwealths. Each canton has its own constitution, and the Confederation is bound to guarantee the maintenance of this instrument regardless of the provisions which it may contain, provided only, as has been pointed out, that there is in it nothing that is contrary to the federal (p. 417) constitution, that it establishes a republican system of government, and that it has been ratified by the people and may be amended upon demand of a majority. The constitutions of the cantons are amended easily and frequently; but while it may be affirmed that, in consequence of their flexibility, they tend toward more rather than toward less uniformity, the diversity that survives among them still proclaims strikingly their separatist origin and character. [Footnote 606: On the governments of the cantons the principal general works are J. Schollenberger, Grundriss der Staats-und Verwaltungsrechts der schweizerischen Kantone, 3 vols. (Zürich, 1898-1900), and J. Dubs, Das öffentliche Recht der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Zürich, 1877-1878), I. Brief accounts will be found in Vincent, the Government of Switzerland, Chaps. 1-12.] The point at which the governments of the cantons differ most widely is in respect to arrangements for the exercise of the functions of legislation. Taking the nature of the legislative process as a basis of division, there may be said to be two classes of cantonal governments. One comprises those in which the ultimate public powers are vested in a Landesgemeinde, or primary assembly of citizens; the other, those in which such powers have been committed to a body of elected representatives. The second class, as will appear, falls again into two groups, i.e., those in which the employment of the referendum is obligatory and those in which it is merely optional. *460. The Landesgemeinde.*--Prior to the French intervention of 1798 there were in the Confederation no fewer than eleven cantons whose government was of the Landesgemeinde type. To-day there are but six cantons and half-cantons--those, namely, of Uri, Glarus, the two Unterwaldens, and the two Appenzells. Under varying circumstances, but principally by reason of the increasingly unwieldy character of the Landesgemeinde as population has grown, the rest have gone over to the representative system. All of those in which the institution survives are small in area and are situated in the more sparsely populated mountain districts where conditions of living are primitive and where there is little occasion for governmental elaborateness.[607] [Footnote 607: The area of Zug is 92 square miles; of Glarus, 267; of the Unterwaldens, 295; of the Appenzells, 162. The longest dimension of any one of these cantons is but thirty miles, and the distance to be traversed by the citizen who wishes to attend the Landesgemeinde of his canton rarely exceeds ten miles. It was once the fashion to represent the Swiss Landesgemeinde as a direct survival of the primitive Germanic popular assembly. For the classic statement of this view see Freeman, Growth of the English Constitution, Chap. 1. There is, however, every reason to believe that between the two institutions there is no historical connection.] Nominally, the Landesgemeinde is an assembly composed of all male citizens of the canton who have attained their majority. Actually, it is a gathering of those who are able, or disposed, to be present. The assembly meets regularly once a year, in April or May, at a centrally located place within the canton, and usually in an open meadow. When necessity arises, there may be convened a special session. With the men come ordinarily the women and children, and the occasion (p. 418) partakes of the character of a picturesque, even if solemn and ceremonious, holiday. Under the presidency of the Landammann, or chief executive of the canton, the assembly passes with despatch upon whatsoever proposals may be laid before it by the Landrath, or Greater Council. In the larger assemblies there is no privilege of debate. Measures are simply adopted or rejected. In the smaller gatherings, however, it is still possible to preserve some restricted privilege of discussion. Unless a secret ballot is specifically demanded, voting is by show of hands. Theoretically, any citizen possesses the right to initiate propositions. In practice, however, virtually all measures emanate from the Greater Council, and if the private citizen wishes to bring forward a proposal he will be expected to do so by suggesting it to the Council rather than by introducing it personally in the assembly. The competence of the Landesgemeinde varies somewhat from canton to canton, but in all cases it is very comprehensive. The assembly authorizes the revision of the constitution, enacts all laws, levies direct taxes, grants public privileges, establishes offices, and elects all executive and judicial officials of the canton. Directly or indirectly, it discharges, indeed, all of the fundamental functions of government. It is the sovereign organ of a democracy as thoroughgoing as any the world has ever known.[608] [Footnote 608: H. D. Lloyd, A Sovereign People (New York, 1907), Chap. 4.] *461. The Greater Council.*--In every canton, whether or not of the Landesgemeinde type, there is a popularly elected representative body, the Greater Council, which performs a larger or smaller service in the process of legislation. This body is variously known as the Grosser Rath, the Landrath, and the Kantonsrath. In the cantons that maintain the Landesgemeinde the functions of the Greater Council are subsidiary. It chooses minor officials, audits accounts, and passes unimportant ordinances; but its principal business is the preparation of measures for the consideration of the Landesgemeinde. In the cantons, however, in which the Landesgemeinde does not exist, the Greater Council is a more important institution, for there it comprises the only law-making body which is ever brought together at one time or place. Where there exists the obligatory referendum, i.e., where all legislative measures are submitted to a direct popular vote, the decisions of the Council are but provisional. But where the referendum is optional the Council acquires in many matters the substance of final authority. Members of the Council are elected regularly in districts by direct popular vote. The size of constituencies varies from 188 people in Obwalden and 250 in Inner Appenzell to 1,500 in St. Gall and Zürich and 2,500 in Bern. The electors include all males who have (p. 419) completed their twentieth year and who are in possession of full civil rights. The term of members varies from one to six years, but is generally three or four. There are, as a rule, two meetings annually, in some cantons a larger number. Beginning with the canton of Ticino in 1891, there has been introduced into the governmental systems of several cantons and of the two cities of Bern and Basel the principle of proportional representation. The details vary, but the general principle is that each political party shall be entitled to seats in the Greater Council in the closest practicable proportion that the party vote bears to the entire vote cast within the canton. Those cantons where this principle is in operation are laid out in districts, each of which is entitled to two or more representatives, and the individual elector, while forbidden to cast more than one vote for a given candidate, casts a number of votes corresponding to the number of seats to be filled.[609] [Footnote 609: For an excellent account of the introduction of proportional representation in the canton of Ticino see J. Galland, La démocratie tessinoise et la représentation proportionnelle (Grenoble, 1909). The canton in which the principle has been adopted most recently is St. Gall. In 1893, 1901, and 1906 it was there rejected by the people, but at the referendum of February, 1912, it was approved, and in the following November the cantonal legislature formally adopted it. For a brief exposition of the workings of the system see Vincent, Government in Switzerland, Chap. 4. An important study of the subject is E. Klöti, Die Proportionalwahl in der Schweiz; Geschichte, Darstellung und Kritik (Bern, 1901). On the proposed introduction of proportional representation in the federal government see p. 433.] *462. The Referendum: Origins and Operation.*--The most interesting if not the most characteristic, of Swiss political institutions is the referendum. The origins of the referendum in Switzerland may be traced to a period at least as early as the sixteenth century. The principle was applied first of all in the complicated governments of two territories--the Grisons and the Valais--which have since become cantons but which at the time mentioned were districts merely affiliated with the Confederation. In the later sixteenth century there were traces of the same principle in Bern and in Zürich. And, in truth, the political arrangements of the early Confederation involved the employment of a device which at least closely resembled the referendum. Delegates sent by the cantons to the Diet were commissioned only _ad audiendum et referendum_; that is to say, they were authorized, not to agree finally to proposals, but simply to hear them and to refer them to the cantonal governments for ultimate decision. In its present form, however, the Swiss referendum originated in the canton of St. Gall in 1830. It is distinctively a nineteenth century creation and is to be regarded as a product of the political philosophy of Rousseau, the fundamental tenet of which was that (p. 420) laws ought to be enacted, not through representatives, but by the people directly.[610] The principle of the referendum may be applied in two essentially distinct directions, i.e., to constitutions and constitutional amendments and to ordinary laws. The referendum as applied to constitutional instruments exists to-day in every one of the Swiss cantons.[611] It is in no sense, however, peculiar to Switzerland. The same principle obtains in several English-speaking countries, as well as upon occasion elsewhere. The referendum as applied to ordinary laws, on the other hand, is distinctively Swiss. In our own day it is being brought into use in certain of the American commonwealths and elsewhere, but it is Swiss in origin and spirit. Inaugurated in part to supply the need created by a defective system of representation and in part in deference to advanced democratic theory, the referendum for ordinary laws exists to-day in every canton of Switzerland save only that of Freiburg. In some cantons the referendum is obligatory, in others it is "facultative," or optional. Where the referendum is obligatory every legislative measure must be referred to popular vote; where it is optional, a measure is referred only upon demand of a specified number or proportion of voters. A petition calling for a referendum must be presented to the executive council of the canton, as a rule, within thirty days after the enactment of the measure upon which it is proposed that a vote be taken. The number of signers required to make the petition effective varies from 500 in Zug to 6,000 in St. Gall. Likewise, the proportion of voters which is competent to reject a measure is variable. In some cantons a majority of all enfranchised citizens is required; in others, a simple majority of those actually voting upon the proposition in hand. In the event of popular rejection of a measure which the cantonal legislature has passed, the executive council gives the proper notice to the legislature, which thereupon pronounces the measure void.[612] [Footnote 610: Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 243.] [Footnote 611: It will be observed, of course, that in the cantons which maintain a Landesgemeinde there is no occasion for the employment of the referendum upon either constitutional or legislative questions. The people there act directly and necessarily upon every important proposition.] [Footnote 612: Important treatises on the Swiss referendum are T. Curti, Geschichte der schweizerischen Volksgesetzgebung (Zürich, 1885); ibid., Die Volksabstimmung in der schweizerischen Gesetzgebung (Zürich, 1886). A French version of the former work, by J. Ronjat, has appeared under the title Le référendum: histoire de la législation populaire en Suisse (Paris, 1905). Of large value is Curti, Die Resultate des schweizerischen Referendums (2d ed., Bern, 1911). An older account is J. A. Herzog, Das Referendum in der Schweiz (Berlin, 1885). An excellent book is S. Duploige, Le référendum en Suisse (Brussels, 1892), of which there is an English translation, by C. P. Trevelyan, under the title The Referendum in Switzerland (London, 1898). Of value also are Stüssi, Referendum und Initiative in den Schweizerkantonen (Zürich, 1894), and J. Signorel, Étude de législation comparée sur le référendum législatif (Paris, 1896). Mention may be made of J. Delpech, Quelques observations à propos du référendum et des Landesgemeinde suisse, in _Revue du Droit Public_, April-June, 1906.] *463. The Initiative.*--The complement of the referendum is the (p. 421) initiative. Through the exercise of the one the people may prevent the taking effect of a law or a constitutional amendment to which they object. Through the exercise of the other they may not merely bring desired measures to the attention of the legislature; they may secure the enactment of such measures despite the indifference or opposition of the legislative body. In current political discussion, and in their actual operation, the two are likely to be closely associated. They are, however, quite distinct, as is illustrated by the fact that the earliest adoptions of the initiative in Switzerland occurred in cantons (Vaud in 1845 and Aargau in 1852) in which as yet the referendum did not exist. Among the Swiss cantons the right of popular legislative initiative is now all but universal. It has been established in all of the cantons save Freiburg, Lucerne, and Valais. As a rule, measures may be proposed by the same proportion of voters as is competent to overthrow a measure referred from the legislature; and any measure proposed by the requisite number of voters must be taken under consideration by the legislature within a specified period. If the legislature desires to prepare a counter-project to be submitted to the voters along with the popularly initiated proposition, it may do so. But the original proposal must, in any case, go before the people, accompanied by the legislature's opinion upon it; and their verdict is decisive.[613] [Footnote 613: A. Keller, Das Volksinitiativrecht nach den schweizerischen Kantonsverfassungen (Zürich, 1889).] IV. THE CANTONAL EXECUTIVE AND JUDICIARY *464. The Council of State.*--Executive authority within the canton is vested regularly in an administrative council, variously designated as a Regierungsrath, a Standeskommission, or a Conseil d'État. The Council of State (employing this phrase to designate each body of the kind, however named) consists of from five to thirteen members, serving for from one to five years. In more than half of the cantons the members are chosen by popular vote; in the rest, they are elected by the Greater Council, or legislature. By the Council of State (in a few instances by the legislature) is chosen a chairman, or president, known in the German cantons as the Landammann.[614] The office of Landammann is one of dignity and honor, at least locally, but it (p. 422) is not one of large authority. The Landammann is the chief spokesman of the canton, but legally his status is scarcely superior to that of his fellow councillors. The functions of the Council embrace the execution of the laws, the preservation of order, the drawing up of fiscal statements, the drafting of proposed legislation, the rendering of decisions in cases on appeal, and, in general, the safeguarding of the interests of the canton. For purposes of convenience the functions of the Council are divided among departments, to each of which one of the councillors is assigned. All acts, however, are performed in the name of the Council as a whole. In those cantons which have full-fledged legislative chambers councillors may attend sessions and speak, though as a rule they may not vote. [Footnote 614: In the Landesgemeinde cantons the Landammann is elected by the primary assembly.] *465. Local Administration.*--For purposes of administration all cantons, save a few of the smaller ones, are divided into districts (187 in the aggregate), at the head of each of which is placed a prefect or Bezirksammann. This official, whether chosen by the Council of State, by the Greater Council, or even by the people of the district, is in every sense a representative of the cantonal government. Sometimes he is assisted by a Bezirksrath, or district council; frequently he is not. In Schwyz there is a Bezirksgemeinde, or popular assembly, in each of the six districts, but this is wholly exceptional. Each canton is built up of communes, or Gemeinden, and these communes, 3,164 in number, comprise the most deeply rooted political units of the country. Legally, each is composed of all male Swiss citizens over twenty years of age resident within the communal bounds during a period of at least three months. The meeting of these persons is known as the Gemeindeversammlung, or the assemblée générale. By it are chosen an executive council (the Gemeinderath or conseil municipal) and a mayor (Gemeindepräsident). A principle adhered to by the cantonal governments generally is that in the work of local administration the largest possible use shall be made of the mayors of towns, the headmen of villages, and other minor local dignitaries.[615] [Footnote 615: Vincent, Government in Switzerland, Chap. 10; Adams and Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation, Chap. 8; Lloyd, A Sovereign People, Chap. 3.] *466. Justice.*--Each canton has a judicial system which is essentially complete within itself. Judges are elected by the people. The hierarchy of civil tribunals--the Vermittler, or justice of the peace, the Bezirksgericht, or district court, and the Kantonsgericht--is paralleled by a hierarchy of courts for the trial of criminal cases, a special committee or chamber of the Kantonsgericht serving as the criminal court of last resort. Only in few and wholly exceptional instances may appeal be carried from a cantonal to a federal tribunal. CHAPTER XXIII (p. 423) THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT I. THE EXECUTIVE *467. The Federal Council: the President.*--At the framing of the Swiss constitution, as at that of the American, there arose the question of a single or a plural executive. In the United States the disadvantages assumed to be inherent in an executive which should consist of a number of persons who were neither individually responsible nor likely to be altogether harmonious determined a decision in favor of a single president. In Switzerland, on the other hand, the cantonal tradition of a collegiate executive, combined with an exaggerated fear of the concentration of power, determined resort to the other alternative. There is a president of the Swiss Confederation. But, as will appear, his status is altogether different from that of the President of the United States, and likewise from that of the President of France. The Swiss executive consists rather of a Bundesrath, or Federal Council, in which the President is little more than chairman. "The supreme directive and executive authority of the Confederation," says the constitution, "shall be exercised by a Federal Council, composed of seven members."[616] The members of the Federal Council are elected by the Federal Assembly, i.e., the National Council and the Council of the States in joint session, from among all citizens eligible to the National Council, or popular legislative body, with the condition simply that not more than one member may be chosen from the same canton. Nominally, the term of members is three years; practically, it is variable, for whenever the National Council is dissolved prior to the expiration of its triennial period the new Assembly proceeds forthwith to choose a new Federal Council. Two officials, designated respectively as President of the Confederation and Vice-President of the Federal Council, are elected annually by the Assembly from among the seven members of the Council. A retiring president may not be elected president or vice-president for the succeeding year; nor may any member occupy the vice-presidency during two consecutive years. By custom the vice-president regularly (p. 424) succeeds to the presidency. The function of the President, as such, is simply that of presiding over the deliberations of the Council. He has no more power than any one of his six colleagues. Like each of them, he assumes personal direction of some one of the principal executive departments.[617] The only peculiarity of his status is that he performs the ceremonial duties connected with the titular headship of the state and draws a salary of 13,500 francs instead of the 12,000 drawn by each of the other councillors. He is in no sense a "chief executive." [Footnote 616: Art. 95. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 281.] [Footnote 617: No longer, as prior to 1888, necessarily that of foreign affairs.] *468. The Executive Departments.*--The business of the Council is divided among the seven departments of Foreign Affairs, Interior, Justice and Police, Military Affairs, Imposts and Finance, Posts and Railways, and Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture. Each department is presided over by a member of the Council, and to each is assigned from time to time, by the President, such subjects for consideration as properly fall within its domain. It is stipulated by the constitution, however, that this distribution shall be made for the purpose only of facilitating the examination and despatch of business. All decisions are required to emanate from the Council as a body.[618] Ordinarily a councillor remains at the head of a department through a considerable number of years,[619] and it may be added that, by reason of an increase in the aggregate volume of governmental business, the departmental head enjoys to-day a larger measure of independence than formerly. A quorum of the Council consists of four members, and no member may absent himself from a session without excuse. Except in elections, voting is _viva voce_, and an abstract of proceedings is published regularly in the official gazette of the Republic. [Footnote 618: Art. 103. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 284. For a synopsis of the law of July 8, 1887, whereby an apportionment of functions was made among the various departments see Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 239-246.] [Footnote 619: Members of the Council are re-elected, almost as a matter of course, as long as they are willing to serve. Between 1848 and 1893 the average period of service exceeded ten years. Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 203.] *469. Actual Character of the Council.*--The Federal Council, although at certain points resembling a cabinet, is not a cabinet, and no such thing as cabinet government, or a parliamentary system, can be said to exist in Switzerland. The Council does, it is true, prepare measures and lay them before the Assembly. Its members even appear on the floor of the two chambers and defend these measures. But the councillors are not, and may not be, members of the Assembly; they do not, of necessity, represent a common political party, faith, or programme, they are not necessarily agreed among themselves upon the merits or demerits of a particular legislative proposal; and if overruled by (p. 425) a majority of the Assembly they do not so much as think of retiring from office, for each member has been elected by a separate ballot for a fixed term.[620] In other words, the Council is essentially what Swiss writers have themselves denominated it, i.e., an executive committee of the Federal Assembly. It possesses a large measure of solidarity, but only for the purposes of routine business. Quite superior to it in every way--so much so that even its most ordinary administrative measures may be set aside--is the Assembly, as against which the Council possesses not a shred of constitutional prerogative. In the Assembly is vested ultimate authority, and in the event of a clash of policies what the Assembly orders the Council performs. Between the executive and the legislative branches of the government the relation is quite as close as it is in a parliamentary system, but the relation is of a totally different sort.[621] [Footnote 620: The resignation, in 1891, of M. Welti, a member of the Council since 1867, by reason of the fact that the people rejected his project for the governmental purchase of railway shares occasioned general consternation.] [Footnote 621: For interesting observations upon the advantages and disadvantages of the Swiss system see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 204-208. See also Vincent, Government in Switzerland, Chap. 16; Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 188-203.] *470. The Council's Functions.*--The functions of the Council are at the same time executive, legislative, and judicial. On the executive side it is the duty of the body to "execute the laws and resolutions of the Confederation and the judgments of the Federal Court"; to watch over the external interests of the Confederation and to conduct foreign relations; to safeguard the welfare, external and internal, of the state; to make such appointments as are not intrusted to any other agency; to administer the finances of the Confederation, introduce the budget, and submit accounts of receipts and expenses; to supervise the conduct of all officers and employees of the Confederation; to enforce the observance of the federal constitution and the guaranty of the cantonal constitutions; and to manage the federal military establishment. In respect to legislation it is made the duty of the Council to introduce bills or resolutions into the Federal Assembly and to give its opinion upon the proposals submitted to it by the chambers or by the cantons; also to submit to the Assembly at each regular session an account of its own administration, together with a report upon the internal conditions and the foreign relations of the state.[622] The Council possesses no veto upon the Assembly's measures. The judicial functions of the Council are such as arise from the fact that there are in Switzerland no administrative courts, (p. 426) so that the varied kinds of administrative cases which have been withheld from the jurisdiction of the Federal Tribunal are in practice dealt with directly by the Federal Council, with appeal, as a rule, to the Assembly.[623] [Footnote 622: Art. 102. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 282-284; Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 218-225.] [Footnote 623: Art. 113. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 286. The nature and functions of the Swiss executive are treated briefly in Vincent, Government in Switzerland, Chap. 17, and Adams and Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation, Chap. 4. An excellent account is that in Dupriez, Les Ministres, II., 182-246. Of value are Blumer and Morel, Handbuch des schweizerischen Bundesstaatsrechts, III., 34-92, and Dubs, Le droit public de la confédération suisse, II., 77-105.] II. LEGISLATION: THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY With specific reservation of the sovereign rights of the people and of the cantons, the constitution vests the exercise of the supreme authority of the Confederation in the Bundesversammlung, or Federal Assembly. Unlike the cantonal legislatures, the Federal Assembly consists of two houses--a Nationalrath, or National Council, and a Ständerath, or Council of the States.[624] The one comprises essentially a house of representatives; the other, a senate. The adoption, in the constitution of 1848, of the hitherto untried bicameral principle came about as a compromise between conflicting demands of the same sort that were voiced in the Philadelphia convention of 1787--the demand, that is, of the smaller federated units for an equality of political power and that of the larger ones for a proportioning of such power to population. [Footnote 624: In French, the Conseil National and the Conseil des États.] *471. The National Council: Composition and Organization.*--The National Council is composed of deputies chosen at a general election, for a term of three years, by direct manhood suffrage. The constitution stipulates that there shall be one representative for every 20,000 inhabitants, or major fraction thereof, and a reapportionment is made consequent upon each decennial census. The electoral districts are so laid out that no one comprises portions of different cantons; but they are of varying sizes and are entitled to unequal numbers of representatives, according to their population. Within the district all representatives, if there are more than one, are chosen on a general ticket, and the individual elector has a right to vote for a number of candidates equal to the number of seats to be filled. The quota of representatives falling to the various cantons under this arrangement varies from one in Uri and in Zug to twenty-two in Zürich and twenty-nine in Bern. Every canton and each of the six half-cantons is entitled to at least one deputy. The total number in 1911 was 189. The electorate consists of all male Swiss who have attained their (p. 427) twentieth year and who are in possession of the franchise within their respective cantons. The establishment of electoral districts, as well as the regulation of the conduct of federal elections, has been accomplished, under provision of the constitution, by federal statute. Voting is in all cases by secret ballot, and elections take place always on the same day (the last Sunday in October) throughout the entire country. An absolute majority of the votes cast is necessary for election, save that, following two unsuccessful attempts to procure such a majority within a district, at the third trial a simple plurality is sufficient. Except that no member of the clergy may be chosen, every citizen in possession of the federal franchise is eligible to a seat in the National Council.[625] Members receive a small salary, which is proportioned to days of actual attendance and paid out of the federal treasury. [Footnote 625: This denial of clerical eligibility was inspired by fear of Catholic influences.] At each regular or extraordinary session the National Council chooses from among its members a president, a vice-president, and four tellers, under the provision, however, that a member who during a regular session has held the office of president is ineligible either as president or vice-president at the ensuing regular session, and that the same member may not be vice-president during two consecutive regular sessions. In all elections within the National Council the president participates as any other member; in legislative matters he possesses a vote only in the event of a tie. The president, vice-president, and tellers together comprise the "bureau" of the Council, by which most of the committees are nominated, votes are counted, and routine business is transacted.[626] [Footnote 626: Arts. 72-79. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 277-278.] *472. The Council of the States: Composition and Status.*--Superficially, the Swiss Council of the States resembles the American Senate, and it is commonly understood that the framers of the constitution of 1848 created the institution not merely by reason of an inevitable tendency to perpetuate in some measure the purely federal features of the old Diet, but also in consequence of a deliberate purpose to set up a legislative body which should fulfill essentially those complementary and restraining functions which in the United States were assigned to the upper chamber. In point of fact, however, the Swiss Council has little in common with its American counterpart. It consists of forty-four members, two chosen within each canton; and to this extent it indeed resembles the Senate. The manner of election and the qualifications of members, however, as well as tenure of office and the arrangements made for remuneration, are not regulated, as are similar matters in the United States, by the (p. 428) constitution, or by federal authority, but, on the contrary, are left entirely to be determined by the individual cantons. The consequence is a total lack of uniformity in these highly important matters. In some cantons members are elected by popular vote; in others, by the legislative assembly. In some they are chosen for one year; in others, for two; in still others, for three. The consequence is that the Council is commonly lacking in compactness and morale. More serious still is the fact that the functions of the upper chamber are in all respects identical with those of the lower. The American Senate has power and character of its own, quite apart from that of the House of Representatives; the Swiss Council has nothing of the kind. Its organization, even, is an almost exact replica of that of the lower chamber.[627] In the earlier days of the present constitutional system the Council enjoyed high prestige and influence; but by reason of the conditions that have been described the body in time fell into decline. Able and ambitious statesmen have preferred usually to be identified with the lower house. The upper chamber possesses large powers--powers nominally co-ordinate with those of the lower one--and it has acted not infrequently with sufficient independence to defeat measures advocated by the National Council. But, without being the feeble upper chamber that is commonly associated with a parliamentary system of government, it is yet essentially lacking in the initiative and independence of a true senate.[628] [Footnote 627: "Neither the president nor the vice-president may be chosen at any session from the canton from which the president for the preceding session was chosen; and the vice-presidency may not be held during two successive regular sessions by representatives of the same canton." Art. 82.] [Footnote 628: Arts. 80-83. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 278.] *473. Powers of the National Assembly.*--In the constitution it is stipulated that the National Council and the Council of the States shall have the right to consider all subjects placed within the competence of the Confederation and not assigned to any other federal authority.[629] The range of this competence is enormous. There are, in the first place, certain functions which the two houses perform while sitting jointly under the direction of the president of the National Council. These are electoral and judicial in character and comprise (1) the election of the Federal Council, or executive committee of the Confederation, the federal judges, the chancellor,[630] and the generals of the federal army; (2) the granting of pardons; (p. 429) and (3) the adjustment of jurisdictional conflicts between different branches of the federal governmental system. [Footnote 629: Art. 84. Ibid., II., 278.] [Footnote 630: The principal duty of the chancellor is the keeping of the minutes of the National Council. A vice-chancellor, appointed by the Federal Council, performs a similar function in the Council of States, under responsibility to the chancellor.] Much more extensive are the powers which the houses, sitting separately, exercise concurrently. The constitution requires that the councils be assembled at least once annually. In practice, they meet in June and December of each year, regular sessions extending as a rule through four or five weeks. At the request of either one-fourth of the members of the National Council or of five cantons an extraordinary session must be held, and there is a probability of one such session each year, ordinarily in March. The powers assigned the chambers to be exercised in their concurrent capacities may be classified variously. The more important are: (1) the enactment of laws and ordinances upon the organization and election of federal authorities and upon all subjects which by the constitution are placed within the federal competence; (2) the conduct of foreign relations, particularly the concluding of treaties and alliances with foreign powers, the supervision of conventions entered into by the cantons (in the event that the Federal Council, or any canton, protests against such cantonal arrangements), the declaring of war and the concluding of peace, and the taking of measures for the safety, independence, and neutrality of the Confederation; (3) the control of the federal army; (4) the adoption of the annual budget, the authorizing of federal loans, and the auditing of public accounts; (5) the taking of measures for the enforcement of the provisions of the federal constitution, for the carrying out of the guaranty of the cantonal constitutions, for the fulfillment of federal obligations, and for the supervision of the federal administration and of the federal courts; and (6) the revision of the federal constitution.[631] It will be perceived that the powers exercised by the chambers are principally legislative, but also in no small degree executive and judicial; that, as has already been emphasized, the two councils comprise the real directive agency of the Confederation. [Footnote 631: Art. 85, §§ 1-14. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 278-279.] *474. The Assembly's Procedure.*--Federal laws, decrees, and resolutions are passed only by agreement of the two councils. Any measure may originate in either house and may be introduced by any member. There are committees upon various subjects, but bills are referred to them only by special vote. Committee members are chosen by the chamber directly or by the chamber's "bureau," as the chamber itself may determine. In each house a majority constitutes a quorum for the transaction of business, and measures are passed by a simple majority. Sittings, (p. 430) as a rule, are public. It is expressly forbidden that members shall receive from their constituents, or from the cantonal governments, instructions respecting the manner in which they shall vote.[632] [Footnote 632: For a brief account of the procedure of the chambers see Vincent, Government in Switzerland, 181-187.] III. LEGISLATION: THE REFERENDUM AND THE INITIATIVE From the domain of cantonal legislative procedure there has been carried over into federal law-making the fundamental principle of the referendum. The federal referendum exists to-day in two forms, i.e., the optional and the obligatory. The one appeared for the first time in the revised constitution of 1874 and is applicable exclusively to projects of ordinary legislation. The other was established by the constitution of 1848 and is applicable solely to proposed amendments of that instrument. *475. The Optional Referendum: Laws and Resolutions.*--After a law which has been enacted by the Federal Assembly has been published it enters regularly upon a probationary period of ninety days during which, under stipulated conditions, it may be referred directly to the people for ratification or rejection. The only exceptions are afforded by those measures which, by declaration of the councils, are of a private rather than a general character, and those which are "urgent." Such acts take effect at once. But all others are suspended until there shall have been adequate opportunity for the carrying through of a referendum. At any time within the ninety-day period a referendum may be demanded, either by the people directly or by the cantonal governments. Petitions signed by as many as 30,000 voters, or adopted by the legislatures of as many as eight cantons, render it obligatory upon the Federal Council to arrange for the submission of a measure to a referendum within four weeks after the announcement of the demand has been made. The method of the referendum is carefully prescribed by federal legislation. Every citizen in possession of unimpaired civil rights is entitled to vote, and the voting takes place under the supervision of the authorities of the commune and of the canton. If in a majority of the cantons a preponderance of votes is cast in favor of the measure in hand, the Federal Council proclaims the fact and the measure goes at once into operation. An adverse majority, on the other hand, renders the measure null. In the event that no referendum is demanded, the measure, of course, goes automatically into effect at the expiration of the ninety-day period. Since its introduction (p. 431) into the federal constitution the principle of the legislative referendum has been brought to bear upon a not inconsiderable number of legislative projects. The proportion, indeed, of laws falling within the range of the system which have been subjected to the popular vote, while varying widely from time to time, has been not far from ten per cent; and of the measures actually voted upon several of importance have been rejected. In all instances the demand has arisen directly from citizen petitioners, not from the cantonal governments.[633] [Footnote 633: On the operation of the optional referendum see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 252-261. "From 1874 till 1908 the Federal Assembly passed 261 bills and resolutions which could constitutionally be subjected to the referendum. Thirty of these 261 were actually voted on by the people, who ratified eleven and rejected nineteen of them. The effect of the federal optional legislative referendum was, then, to hold up a little more than seven per cent of the statutory output of the Federal Assembly." W. E. Rappard, in _American Political Science Review_, Aug., 1912, 357. On the most recent exercise of the federal referendum (the adoption, February 4, 1912, of a national Accident and Sickness Insurance bill) see M. Turmann, Le référendum suisse du 4 février--la loi fédérale sur l'assurance-maladie et l'assurance accident, in _Le Correspondant_, Feb. 10, 1912. This particular referendum was called for by 75,000 voters. The measure submitted was approved by a vote of 287,566 to 241,416, on a poll of 63.04 per cent of the registered electorate.] *476. The Obligatory Referendum: Constitutional Amendments.*--In its application to laws and resolutions the referendum is optional; in application to constitutional amendments it is obligatory. Revision of the Swiss constitution may be accomplished at any time, in whole or in part, and in a variety of modes. In the event that the legislative councils are able to agree upon a scheme of revision they vote the adoption of the proposed amendment precisely as if it were an ordinary statute, and it is thereupon submitted to the people for acceptance or rejection. If, however, the two houses disagree upon the question of a total revision, or if as many as 50,000 voters make demand for a total revision, there must be put to the people the preliminary question as to whether there shall be a revision at all. If the will of the majority is affirmative, new legislative councils must be elected, and to them falls the obligation of executing the popular mandate. When the question is one of but partial revision the procedure is somewhat different. Partial revision may be instituted either by the councils or by petition of 50,000 voters. When a popular petition is presented there are four possible courses of action: (1) if the project is presented in general terms and the councils are in agreement upon it, they reduce the proposal to specific form and submit it to the people; (2) if the councils are not in agreement (p. 432) upon the project they put to the people the preliminary question of whether an amendment of the general type proposed is desirable, and if the vote is affirmative they proceed with the revision; (3) if the petition is presented in a form that is specific and final and the councils are in agreement upon it, the project is submitted forthwith to the people; and (4) if the councils are not in agreement upon a specific project so advanced, they may prepare a project of their own, or recommend the rejection of the proposed amendment, and they may submit their counter-project or their recommendation at the same time that the initiative petition is presented to the people.[634] In no case may an amendment be put into effect until it has received the assent of a majority of those voting thereon in a majority of the cantons. Of seventeen constitutional amendments submitted by the Federal Assembly between 1874 and 1908 twelve were ratified and five were rejected. [Footnote 634: Arts. 118-123. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 287-289.] *477. The Popular Initiative.*--The right of popular initiative in the revision of the constitution was established by an amendment of July 5, 1891, through the united efforts of all the anti-Radical parties and groups. The purpose underlying the amendment was to break the monopoly long enjoyed by the Radicals by placing within the hands of any fifty thousand citizens the power to compel the federal government to take under consideration proposed modifications of the constitution, to prepare projects relating to them, and to submit these projects to the ultimate decision of the people. When the system was established many persons seriously feared that the way had been thrown open for frequent, needless, and revolutionary change, by which the stability of the state would be impaired. Such apprehension, however, has been proved groundless. During a score of years only nine popularly-initiated amendments have been voted upon, and only three have been incorporated in the fundamental law. One of the three, adopted in 1893, prohibited the Jewish method of slaughtering animals, and was purely a product of the antisemitic movement. The other two were adopted in 1908. One authorized for the first time legislation by the federal authorities upon subjects relating to the trades and professions; the other prohibited the manufacture and sale of absinthe. A number of other more or less sweeping amendments, it is true, have been proposed, but all alike have failed of adoption. Thus, in 1894, perished a socialistic scheme whereby the state was to obligate itself to provide employment for every able-bodied man, and in the same year, a project to pay over to the cantons a bonus of two francs per capita from the rapidly increasing returns of the (p. 433) customs duties.[635] Similarly, in 1900, failed two interesting projected reforms relating to the federal electoral system. One of these provided for the introduction, in the various cantons, of the principle of proportional representation in the election of members of the National Council. The other provided for the election of the members of the Federal Council, not, as at present, by the General Assembly, but by direct popular vote, the whole mass of electors voting, not by cantons, but as one national constituency. In June, 1900, both of these electoral proposals were rejected by the legislative chambers, and in the ensuing November the people ratified the rejection. In 1903, there was defeated in the same way a proposal to base representation in the National Council, not upon the total population of the country, but upon the Swiss population alone. In 1909-10 the proportional representation project was revived, but with a negative result.[636] [Footnote 635: C. Borgeaud, Le plébiscite du 4 novembre 1894, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Nov.-Dec., 1894. The adverse votes were decisive, i.e., 308,289 to 75,880 and 347,401 to 145,362 respectively.] [Footnote 636: The introduction of proportional representation in Switzerland is advocated especially by the Socialists and the Clericals, to whom principally would accrue the benefits of the system. The Liberals are favorable to the principle, though they prefer to postpone the issue. The Radicals are solidly opposed. At the referendum of 1900 the project was rejected by 11-1/2 to 10-1/2 cantons, and by a popular majority of 75,000; at that of October 23, 1910, it was approved by 12 to 10 cantons, but was rejected popularly by a majority of less than 25,000 (265,194 negative, 240,305 affirmative). Rather curiously, the defeat arose largely from the defection of the Catholic canton of Freiburg, which in 1900 was favorable by a vote of 13,000 to 3,800. The canton's vote in 1910 was for rejection, by 11,200 to 3,900. By those best acquainted with the situation this astonishing reversal is explained by the influence which is exercised in the canton to-day by M. Python, a dictator who opposes any innovation whereby his own controlling position would be menaced. Not unnaturally, the friends of the project (and in 1910 all parties save the Radicals gave it their support) regard the outcome in 1910 as a certain forecast of eventual victory. In nine of the cantonal governments, beginning with that of Ticino in 1891, the principle has been already put in operation. In truth, the defeat of 1910 was followed promptly by a triumph in the important canton of St. Gall, where the proportional system was adopted for the first time, February 5, 1911, for elections of the cantonal council. See E. Secretan, Suisse, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Feb., 1911; G. Daneo, La rappresentanza proporzionale nella Svizzera, in _Nuova Antologia_, Sept. 16, 1910.] Among reforms that have been much discussed in recent years has been the extension of the initiative and of the obligatory referendum to all federal legislation. Both apply as yet only to constitutional amendments. In 1906 the Federal Council went so far as to submit to the legislative councils a proposal intended to meet the first of these ends. The purport of the proposal was that fifty thousand voters, or eight cantons, should have the right at any time to (p. 434) demand the passage, modification, or repeal of any sort of federal law or federal decree. In December, 1906, the project was debated in the National Council; after which it was referred to the Federal Council for further consideration. The proposal is still pending, but its eventual adoption is probable.[637] [Footnote 637: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 280-281. For references on the initiative and the referendum see p. 420. A very satisfactory appraisal of the operation of these principles in Switzerland may be found in Lloyd, A Sovereign People, chaps. 14-15. See also W. E. Rappard, The Initiative and the Referendum in Switzerland, in _American Political Science Review_, Aug., 1912.] IV. POLITICAL PARTIES *478. Centralism vs. Federalism.*--Until the middle of the nineteenth century the most fundamental of political questions in modern Switzerland was that of centralization, and the most enduring of political cleavages among the people was that which marked off the "centralists" from the "federalists." There was a time when the annihilation of the cantons and the establishment of a thoroughly consolidated state was not only openly advocated but confidently predicted. With the establishment, however, of the reasonable compromise embodied in the constitution of 1848 the issue of centralization dropped pretty much into the background. There continued to be, and still are, "centralizers;" but the term has come long since to denote merely men who, with due regard for the susceptibilities of the cantons, direct their influence habitually to the strengthening of the central agencies of government. The constitution of 1848 was the work of a combination of centralist elements which acquired the general designation of Radicals. Opposed to the Radicals were the federalist Moderates. Between 1848 and 1874 controlling influence was maintained steadily by the Radicals, although during the decade 1850-1860 there was a fusion of parties in consequence of which there existed through many years an extremely intricate political situation. Gradually there emerged a three-fold party grouping, which has survived uninterruptedly from the era of the constitutional revision of 1874 until our own day. The three parties, as aligned now through more than a generation in the National Council, are: (1) the Right, or Clericals; (2) the Left, or Radicals; and (3) the Centre, or Liberals. To these, in very recent times, must be added a small but growing group of the Extreme Left, comprising ultra-democrats and socialists. *479. The Parties of To-day.*--The basis of segregation of the Right is primarily religious. The party is thoroughly clerical, and it has for its fundamental object the defense of the Catholic church and the (p. 435) interests of the Catholic population. In the Catholic cantons it occupies the field almost alone, and everywhere it is the most compact and zealous of the parties, although even it is not without a certain amount of division of opinion and of policy. The Left, or Radical party, has always represented a combination of widely varied shades of radicalism and democracy. Its greatest strength lies in the predominantly Protestant cantons, and it is distinctly anti-clerical. Large portions of the party have ceased long since to be really radical, although on one side there is an imperceptible shading off into the ranks of the advanced democrats and socialists. Through many years the party has been lacking notoriously in cohesion. Between the Conservative Right and the Radical Left stands the Centre, or the Liberal group, lacking most notably of all in unity, but preserving the traditional Swiss principles of personal freedom in defiance of the tendency of the state in the direction of paternalism. The Liberals are not strong numerically, but they comprise men of wealth and influence (largely conservative Protestants), and in the shaping of economic policies, in which they are interested principally, they sometimes exercise a powerful influence. During the years immediately following the constitutional revision of 1874 no one of these three parties possessed in the Federal Assembly a clear majority, with the consequence that the Centre was able to maintain a balance between the other two. Gradually, however, the Radicals regained their former ascendancy, and in subsequent years their preponderance, in especially the lower chamber, has tended steadily to be increased. *480. Party Stability and Strength.*--Concerning the political parties of Switzerland two or three things are worthy of special observation. The first is the remarkable stability which these parties, despite their obvious lack of cohesion, exhibit from the point of view both of party identity and of party strength. Except the Socialists, who have ceased to vote and act with the Radicals, there has sprung into existence not one new political party since 1874. Numerous and varied as have been the political issues of these four decades, no one of them has given rise to a new party grouping. And, save for the gradual augmentation of Radical strength to which allusion has been made, there has been in this period no noteworthy change in the relative strength of the party groups. Sudden fluctuations, such as in other countries are common, are in Switzerland quite unknown. The reasons are varied and not wholly clear, but among them seem to be the brevity of national legislative sessions, the lack of federal patronage whereby party zeal may be whetted, the indirect method of electing the Federal Council, and the essentially non-partisan character of the (p. 436) referendum.[638] Party strength in the National Council following the election of 1878 was: Clericals, 35; Liberals, 31; Radicals, 69. After the election of 1881 it was: Clericals, 36; Liberals, 26; and Radicals, 83. In these proportions the six triennial elections between 1884 and 1902 produced no important change, although in 1890 the Socialists broke somewhat into the balance by winning six seats. After the census of 1900 the number of members of the Council was raised from 147 to 167, and the results of the election of 1902 were as follows: Clericals, 35; Liberals, 25; Radicals, 97; Socialists, 9; and Independents, 1. In 1905 the Radicals, who hitherto had co-operated with the Socialists in many constituencies, broke with them upon the question of military policy, with the result that the Socialist contingent in the Council was cut to two. In 1908 and 1911 the Socialists made, however, some recovery; so that, on the whole, the party situation in the Council remains to-day very nearly what it was ten years ago. By popular suffrage the Radicals are continued uninterruptedly in control, although the people do not hesitate again and again to reject measures framed by Radical administrators and law-makers and submitted to the vote of the nation. [Footnote 638: Upon this subject, especially the effects of the referendum upon political parties, see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 314-332.] *481. The Inactivity of Parties.*--A second important fact respecting the parties of Switzerland is their all but total lack of organization and machinery. Parties are little more than groups of people who hold similar views upon public questions. Of office-seekers there are few, and of professional politicians fewer still. Elections are not infrequently uncontested, and only at rare intervals do they serve to awaken any considerable public enthusiasm. There are no campaign managers and funds, no platforms, no national committees, no elaborate systems of caucuses or conventions. Candidates for seats in the National Council are nominated by political gatherings in the several districts, but the proceedings are frequently of an all but purely non-partisan character. Political congresses are held occasionally, and a few political associations exist, but their activities are limited and comparatively unimportant. So far as there is party vigor at all, it is expended principally upon local issues and contests within the cantons. Finally, it must be observed that the Swiss government is not a government by party at all. The Federal Council regularly includes members of more than one party, and there is no attempt to preserve in the body a homogeneous partisan character. Even in the legislative councils considerations of party are but incidental. Upon by no means all public issues are party lines drawn, and where they are drawn (p. 437) there is seldom that compactness and discipline of party to which legislative assemblies in other nations are accustomed. An evidence of the secondary importance of party demarcation is afforded by the fact that, instead of being arranged in groups according to party affiliations, the members of the National Council are so placed, as a rule, that all of the deputies of a canton occupy contiguous seats. The Federal Council, being elected by the Federal Assembly, is practically certain to reflect the preponderating political complexion of that body. But, in the entire absence of the parliamentary system, there is no essential reason why politically the executive and legislative organs should be in accord.[639] [Footnote 639: On Swiss political parties see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., Chap. 13; Adams and Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation, Chap. 7.] V. THE JUDICIARY *482. The Federal Court: Civil Jurisdiction.*--In respect to organization, the Swiss federal judiciary is very simple; in respect to functions, it is extremely complex. It comprises but a single tribunal, the Bundesgericht, or Federal Court. The court, created originally in 1848, consists to-day of sixteen judges and nine alternates, all chosen by the Federal Assembly for a term of six years. Any citizen eligible to the National Council may be elected to the Federal Court, but it is incumbent upon the Assembly to take care that all of the three officially recognized languages--German, French, and Italian--are represented. The president and vice-president of the court are designated by the Assembly, for a two years' term, but the court is authorized to organize its own secretariat and to appoint the officials thereof. Judges are forbidden to sit in either house of the federal legislature, to occupy any other office, or to engage in any alien pursuit or profession. Their yearly salary is 12,000 francs. The seat of the Court is Lausanne, in the French province of Vaud. The jurisdiction of the Federal Court extends not only to ordinary civil and criminal cases but also to cases arising under public law. The competence of the tribunal in civil cases is very considerable. It extends to all suits between the Confederation and the cantons; between the Confederation and corporations or individuals, when such corporations or individuals appear as plaintiffs, and when the amount involved exceeds 3,000 francs; between cantons; and between cantons and corporations or individuals, upon request of the parties, and when the amount involved exceeds 3,000 francs. The constitution authorizes the Confederation to enlarge, by legislation, the competence of (p. 438) the Court,[640] and from time to time a variety of specific fields of civil jurisdiction have been opened to it, such as those of transportation and bankruptcy. In addition to original jurisdiction in all matters that have been named, the Court is required by the constitution to exercise appellate jurisdiction in cases carried on appeal, by mutual consent of the parties, from the cantonal courts. For the adjudication of civil cases the Court divides itself into two chambers of seven members each, presided over respectively by the president and vice-president. [Footnote 640: Art. 114. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 287.] *483. Criminal and Public Law Jurisdiction.*--The tribunal's criminal jurisdiction is less extensive. It covers, in the main, cases of high treason against the Confederation, crimes and misdemeanors against the law of nations, political crimes and misdemeanors of such seriousness as to occasion armed federal intervention, and charges against officers appointed by a federal authority, when such authority makes application to the Federal Court. In cases falling within any one of these categories the Court is required to employ a jury to decide questions of fact. With the consent of the Federal Assembly, criminal cases of other kinds may be referred to the Federal Court by the cantonal governments. For the trial of criminal cases the Court is divided each year into four chambers, each of three members, save the fourth and highest, the Kassationshof, or Court of Appeals, which has five. The Confederation is divided into three Assizenbezirke, or assize districts, and from time to time one of the criminal chambers sits in each. Within the domain of public law the Court is given cognizance of conflicts of jurisdiction between federal and cantonal authorities, conflicts between cantons when arising out of questions of public law, complaints of violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, and complaints of individuals by reason of the violation of concordates or treaties. In actual operation, the range of powers which would appear thus to be conferred is much restricted by a clause which declares that "conflicts of administrative jurisdiction are reserved, and are to be settled in a manner prescribed by federal legislation."[641] Legislation in pursuance of this clause has withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Court a long list of possible subjects of litigation. Like European courts generally, the Swiss Federal Court possesses no power to determine the constitutionality of law, federal or cantonal. On the contrary, it is obligated to apply all law, by whatever proper authority enacted.[642] [Footnote 641: Art. 112. Ibid., II., 286.] [Footnote 642: On the Swiss federal judiciary see Vincent, Government in Switzerland, Chap. 15; Adams and Cunningham, The Swiss Confederation, Chap. 5.] *484. The Civil Code.*--In 1898 the nation, through the means of (p. 439) a referendum, adopted the principle of the unification of all cantonal legal systems, civil and criminal, in a set of federal codes. Through more than a decade the task has been in progress, drafts being prepared by experts and submitted from time to time for criticism to special commissions and to public opinion. Early in 1908 the Assembly adopted an elaborate Civil Code which in this way had been worked out, and January 1, 1912, this monumental body of law was put in operation. By it many long established practices within the individual cantons were abolished or modified; but the humane and progressive character of the Code won for it such a measure of public approval that there was not even demand that the instrument be submitted to a referendum. PART VI--AUSTRIA-HUNGARY (p. 441) CHAPTER XXIV AUSTRIA-HUNGARY PRIOR TO THE AUSGLEICH *485. The Dual Monarchy.*--The dual monarchy Austria-Hungary, comprising a sixteenth of the area, and containing an eighth of the population, of all Europe, is an anomaly among nations. It consists, strictly, of two sovereign states, each of which has a governmental system all but complete within itself. One of these is known officially as "The Kingdoms and Lands represented in the Reichsrath," but more familiarly as Cisleithania, or the Empire of Austria. The other, officially designated as "The Lands of St. Stephen's Crown," is commonly called Transleithania, or the Kingdom of Hungary. By certain historical and political ties the two are bound together under the official name of the Österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie, or Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.[643] In the one the common sovereign is Emperor; in the other, Apostolic King. [Footnote 643: This designation was first employed in a diploma of the Emperor Francis Joseph I., November 14, 1868 (see p. 459).] "If," says a modern writer, "France has been a laboratory for political experiments, Austria-Hungary is a museum of political curiosities, but it contains nothing so extraordinary as the relation between Austria and Hungary themselves."[644] In its present form this relation rests upon the memorable Ausgleich, or Compromise, of 1867. The historical phases of it, however, may be traced to a period as remote as the first half of the sixteenth century, when, in 1526, after the Hungarians had suffered overwhelming defeat by the Turks at the Battle of Mohács, a Hapsburg prince, the later Emperor Ferdinand I., assumed, upon election by the Hungarian diet, the throne of the demoralized eastern kingdom.[645] Until the eighteenth century the union of the two monarchies was always precarious, much of the time practically non-existent. Set in the midst of a whirlpool of races and political powers, the ancient Hungarian state, recovered from its days of disaster, struggled unremittingly to preserve its identity, and even to regain its independence, as against the overshadowing (p. 442) Imperial authority of which Austria was the seat. The effort was fairly successful and as late as the Napoleonic period Hungary, while bound to her western neighbor by a personal union through the crown, maintained not only her essential autonomy but even the constitutional style of government which had been hers since at least the early portion of the thirteenth century. A rapid sketch of the earlier political development of the two states seems a necessary introduction to an examination of the institutions, joint and separate, which to-day enter into the texture of their governmental organization. [Footnote 644: Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 177.] [Footnote 645: See p. 448.] I. AUSTRIAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT TO 1815 *486. Origins.*--The original Austria was a mark, or border county, lying along the south bank of the Danube, east of the river Enns, and founded by Charlemagne as a bulwark of the Frankish kingdom against the Slavs. During the ninth century the territory was overrun successively by the Moravians and the Magyars, or Hungarians, and all traces of Frankish occupation were swept away. At the middle of the tenth century, however, following Otto the Great's signal triumph over the Hungarians on the Lech in 955, the mark was reconstituted; and from that point the development of modern Austria is to be traced continuously. The name Österreich, i.e., "eastern empire" or "dominion," appears in a charter as early as 996. The first notable period of Austrian history was that covered by the rule of the house of Babenberg. The government of the mark was intrusted by the Emperor Otto II. to Leopold of Babenberg in 976, and from that date to the extinction of the family in 1246 the energies of the Babenbergs were absorbed principally in the enlargement of the boundaries of their dominion and in the consolidation of its administration. In 1156 the mark was raised by King Frederick I. to the dignity of a duchy, and such were the privileges conferred upon it that the duke's only obligation consisted in the attending of any Imperial diet which should be held in Bavaria and the sending of a contingent to the Imperial army for such campaigns as should be undertaken in countries adjoining the duchy. *487. The Establishment of Hapsburg Dominion, 1276.*--In 1251--five years after the death of the last Babenberg--the estates of the duchy elected as duke Ottakar, son of Wenceslaus I., king of Bohemia. In 1276, however, Duke Ottakar was compelled to yield his three dominions of Austria, Styria, and Carinthia to Rudolph of Hapsburg, who, in 1273, upon the breaking of the Interregnum, had become German king and emperor; and at this point began in Austria the rule of the (p. 443) illustrious Hapsburg dynasty of which the present Emperor Francis Joseph is a representative. Under the adroit management of Rudolph the center of gravity of Hapsburg power was shifted permanently from the Rhine to the Danube, and throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages the history of Austria is a story largely of the varying fortunes of the Hapsburg interests. In 1453 the duchy was raised to the rank of an archduchy, and later in the century the Emperor Maximilian I. entertained plans for the establishment of an Austrian electorate, or even an Austrian kingdom. These plans were not carried into execution, but the Austrian lands were constituted one of the Imperial circles which were created in 1512, and in 1518 representatives of the various Austrian Landtage, or diets, were gathered for the first time in national assembly at Innsbrück. *488. Austro-Hungarian Consolidation.*--In 1519 Maximilian I. was succeeded in the archduchy of Austria, as well as in the Imperial office, by his grandson Charles of Spain, known thenceforth as the Emperor Charles V. To his brother Ferdinand, however. Charles resigned the whole of his Austrian possessions, and to Austrian affairs he gave throughout his reign but scant attention. Ferdinand, in turn, devoted himself principally to warfare with the Turks and to an attempt to secure the sovereignty of Hungary. His efforts met with a measure of success and there resulted that affiliation of Austria and Hungary which, though varying greatly from period to period in strength and in effect, has been maintained to the present day. During a century succeeding Ferdinand's accession to the Imperial throne in 1556, the affairs of Austria were inextricably intertwined with those of the Empire, and it was only with the virtual disintegration of the Empire in consequence of the Thirty Years' War that the Hapsburg sovereigns fell back upon the policy of devoting themselves more immediately to the interests of their Austrian dominion. The fruits of this policy were manifest during the long reign of Leopold I., who ruled in Austria from 1655 to 1705 and was likewise emperor during the last forty-eight years of this period. At the close of a prolonged series of Turkish wars, the Peace of Karlowitz, January 26, 1699, added definitely to the Austrian dominion Slavonia, Transylvania, and all Hungary save the banat of Temesvár, and thus completed the edifice of the Austrian monarchy.[646] The period was likewise one of internal consolidation. The Diet continued to be (p. 444) summoned from time to time, but the powers of the crown were augmented enormously, and it is to these years that scholars have traced the origins of that thoroughgoing bureaucratic régime which, assuming more definite form under Maria Theresa, continued unimpaired until the revolution of 1848. It was in the same period that the Austrian standing army was established. [Footnote 646: At the diet of Pressburg, in 1687-1688, the Hungarian crown had been declared hereditary in the house of Hapsburg, and the Austrian heir, Joseph, had been crowned hereditary king. In 1697 Transylvania was united to the Hungarian monarchy. The banat of Temesvár was acquired by the Hapsburgs in 1718. The term "banat" denotes a border district, or march.] *489. Development of Autocracy Under Maria Theresa, 1740-1780.*--The principal threads in Austrian history in the eighteenth century are the foreign entanglements, including the war of the Spanish Succession, the war of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War, and the internal measures, of reform and otherwise, undertaken by the successive sovereigns, especially Maria Theresa (1740-1780) and Joseph II. (1780-1790). For Austria the net result of the wars was the loss of territory and also of influence, among the states of the Empire, if not among those of all Europe. On the side of internal affairs it may be observed simply that Maria Theresa became virtually the founder of the unified Austrian state, and that, in social conditions generally, the reign of this sovereign marks more largely than that of any other the transition in the Hapsburg dominions from mediæval to modern times. Unlike her doctrinaire son and successor, Joseph, Maria Theresa was of an eminently practical turn of mind. She introduced innovations, but she clothed them with the vestments of ancient institutions. She made the government more than ever autocratic, but she did not interfere with the nominal privileges of the old estates. In Hungary the constitution was left untouched, but during the forty years of the reign the Diet was assembled only four times, and government was, in effect, by royal decree. Joseph II. assumed the throne in 1780 bent primarily upon a policy of "reform from above." Utterly unacquainted with the actual condition of his dominions and unappreciative of the difficulties inherent in their administration, the new sovereign set about the sweeping away of the entire existing order and the substituting of a governmental scheme which was logical enough, to be sure, but entirely impracticable. The attempt, as was inevitable, failed utterly. *490. Austria and France, 1789-1815.*--Leopold II. inherited, in 1790, a dominion substantially as it was at the death of Maria Theresa. Prior to his accession Leopold had acquired a reputation for liberalism, but apprehension aroused by the revolution in France was of itself sufficient to turn him promptly into the traditional paths of Austrian autocracy. His reign was brief (1790-1792), but that of his son and successor, Francis II., which continued through the revolutionary epoch, was essentially a continuation of it, and from first to (p. 445) last there was maintained with complete success that relentless policy of "stability" so conspicuously associated later with the name of Metternich. Hardly any portion of Europe was less affected by the ideas and transformations of the Revolution than was Austria. Having resisted by every means at her disposal, including resort to arms, the progress of revolution, Austria set herself firmly, likewise, in opposition to the ambitions of Napoleon. Of the many consequences of the prolonged combat between Napoleon and the Hapsburg power, one only need be mentioned here. August 11, 1804, Francis II., archduke of Austria and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, assumed the name and title of Francis I., emperor of Austria. To the taking of this step the Hapsburg monarch was influenced in part by Napoleon's assumption, three months previously, of the title of emperor of the French, and in part by anticipation that the Holy Roman Empire would soon be subverted completely by the conqueror. The apprehension proved well-founded. Within two years it was made known definitely that the Napoleonic plan of international readjustment involved as one of its principal features the termination, once for all, of an institution which, as Voltaire had already said, was "no longer holy, Roman, or an empire." August 6, 1806, the title and functions of Holy Roman Emperor were relinquished formally by the Austrian monarch. The Austrian imperial title of to-day, dates, however, from 1804. II. HUNGARIAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT TO 1815 *491. Beginnings.*--According to accounts which are but indifferently reliable, the Magyars, or Hungarians, lately come as invaders from Asia, made their first appearance in the land which now bears their name in the year 895. Certain it is that during the first half of the tenth century they terrorized repeatedly the populations of Germany and France, until, in 955, their signal defeat at the Lechfeld by the German king (the later Emperor Otto I.) checked effectually their onslaughts and re-enforced the disposition already in evidence among them to take on a settled mode of life. In the second half of the tenth century they occupied definitely the valleys of the Danube and the Theiss, wedging apart, as do their descendants to this day, the Slavs of the north and those of the Balkan regions. *492. Institutional Growth Under Stephen I., 997-1038.*--The principal formative period in the history of the Hungarian nation is the long reign of Stephen I., or, as he is more commonly known, St. Stephen. In this reign were established firmly both the Hungarian state and (p. 446) the Hungarian church; and in the organization of both Stephen exhibited a measure of capacity which entitles him to high rank among the constructive statesmen of mediæval Europe. Under his predecessor the court had accepted Roman Christianity, but during his reign the nation itself was Christianized and the machinery of the Church was for the first time put effectively in operation. In the year 1001 Pope Sylvester II. accorded formal recognition to Magyar nationality by bestowing upon Prince Stephen a kingly crown, and to this day the joint sovereign of Austria-Hungary is inducted into office as Hungarian monarch with the identical crown which Pope Sylvester transmitted to the missionary-king nine centuries ago. In the elaboration of a governmental system King Stephen and the advisers whom he gathered from foreign lands had virtually a free field. The nation possessed a traditional right to elect its sovereign and to gather in public assembly, and these privileges were left untouched. None the less, the system that was set up was based upon a conception of royal power unimpaired by those feudal relationships by which in western countries monarchy was being reduced to its lowest estate. The old Magyar tribal system was abolished and as a basis of administration there was adopted the Frankish system of counties. The central and western portions of the country, being more settled, were divided into forty-six counties, at the head of each of which was placed a count, or lord-lieutenant (_föispán_), appointed by the crown and authorized in turn to designate his subordinates, the castellan (_várnagy_), the chief captain (_hadnagy_), and the hundredor (_százados_). This transplantation of institutions is a matter of permanent importance, for, as will appear, the county is still the basal unit of the Hungarian administrative system. *493. The Golden Bull, 1222.*--During the century and a half which followed the reign of Stephen the consolidation of the kingdom, despite frequent conflicts with the Eastern Empire, was continued. The court took on something of the brilliancy of the Byzantine model, and in the later twelfth century King Béla III. inaugurated a policy--that of crowning as successor the sovereign's eldest son while yet the sovereign lived--by which were introduced in effect the twin principles of heredity and primogeniture. In 1222 King Andrew II. (1204-1235) promulgated a famous instrument, the _Bulla Aurea_, or Golden Bull, which has been likened many times to the Great Charter conceded to his barons by King John of England seven years earlier. The precise purport of the Golden Bull is somewhat doubtful. By some the instrument has been understood to have comprised a virtual surrender on the part of the crown in the interest of a class of (p. 447) insolent and self-seeking nobles with which the country was cursed. By others it has been interpreted as a measure designed to strengthen the crown by winning the support of the mass of the lesser nobles against the few greater ones.[647] The exemption of all nobles from taxation was confirmed; all were exempted likewise from arbitrary arrest and punishment. On the other hand, it was forbidden expressly that the titles and holdings of lords-lieutenant should become hereditary. The most reasonable conclusion is that the instrument represents a compromise designed to afford a working arrangement in a period of unusual stress between crown and nobility. Although the document was amplified in 1231 and its guarantees were placed under the special guardianship of the Church, it does not appear that its positive effects in the period immediately following were pronounced. The Golden Bull, none the less, has ever been regarded as the foundation of Hungarian constitutional liberty. As such, it was confirmed specifically in the coronation oath of every Hapsburg sovereign from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. [Footnote 647: J. Andrássy, Development of Hungarian Constitutional Liberty (London, 1908), 93.] *494. Three Centuries of Constitutional Unsettlement.*--The last century of the Árpád dynasty, which was ended in 1308, was a period of depression and of revolution. The weakness of the later Árpáds, the ruin wrought by the Tatar invasion of 1241-1242, the infiltration of feudalism, and perennial civil discord subverted the splendid monarchical establishment of King Stephen and brought the country into virtual subjection to a small body of avaricious nobles. The Árpáds were succeeded by two Angevin princes from the kingdom of Naples--Charles I. (1310-1342) and Louis I. (1342-1382)--under whom notable progress was made toward the rehabilitation of the royal power. Yet in the midst of their reforms appeared the first foreshadowings of that great Turkish onslaught by which eventually the independent Hungarian monarchy was destined to be annihilated completely. The long reign of Sigismund (1387-1437) was occupied almost wholly in resistance to the Ottoman advance. So urgent did this sovereign deem the pushing of military preparations that he fell into the custom of summoning the Diet once, and not infrequently twice, a year, and this body acquired rapidly a bulk of legislative and fiscal authority which never before had been accorded it. Persons entitled to membership were regularly the nobles and higher clergy. But in 1397 the free and royal towns were invited to send deputies, and this privilege seems to have been given statutory confirmation. By the ripening of the Hungarian feudal system, however, and the (p. 448) struggles for the throne which followed the death of King Albert V. (1439), much that was accomplished by Sigismund and his diets was undone. Ultimately, measures of vigilance were renewed under John Hunyadi,--by voice of the Diet "governor" of Hungary, 1446-1456,--and, under his son King Matthias I. (1458-1490). During the last-mentioned reign fifteen diets are known to have been held, and no fewer than 450 statutes to have been enacted. The Hungarian common law was codified afresh and the entire governmental system overhauled. But again succeeded a period, from the accession of Wladislaus II. to the battle of Mohács, during which turbulence reigned supreme and national spirit all but disappeared. *496. The Establishment of Austrian Dominion.*--In 1526 the long expected blow fell. Under the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent the Turks invaded the Hungarian kingdom and at the battle of Mohács, August 28, put to rout the entire Hungarian army. The invading hosts chose to return almost instantly to Constantinople, but when they withdrew they left one-quarter of the Hungarian dominion in utter desolation. It was at this point, as has been stated, that the Hapsburg rulers of Austria first acquired the throne of Hungary. The death of King Louis at Mohács was followed by the election of John Zapolya as king. But the archduke Ferdinand, whose wife, Anne, was a sister of Louis, laid claim to the throne and, in November, 1527, contrived to procure an election thereto at the hand of the Diet. In 1529 the deposed Zapolya was reinstated at Buda by the Sultan. The upshot was civil war, which was terminated in 1538 by a treaty under whose terms the kingdom was divided between the two claimants. Zapolya retained approximately two-thirds of the country, while to Ferdinand was conceded the remaining portion, comprising Croatia-Slavonia and the five westernmost counties. The government which Zapolya maintained at Buda had rather the better claim to be considered the continuation of the old Hungarian monarchy; but from 1527 onwards some portion of Hungary, and eventually the whole, was attached regularly to the Hapsburg crown. In 1540 Zapolya died and the Diet at Buda elected as king his infant son John Sigismund. On the basis of earlier pledges Ferdinand laid claim to Zapolya's possessions, but the Sultan intervened and in 1547 there was worked out a three-fold division of the kingdom, on the principle of _uti possedetis_, under which thirty-five counties (including Croatia and Slavonia) were assigned to Ferdinand, Transylvania and sixteen adjacent counties were retained by John Sigismund, while the remaining portions of the kingdom were annexed to the dominions of the Sultan. With frequent modifications in detail, this three-fold division persisted through the next century and a (p. 449) half. The period was marked by frequent wars, by political confusion, and by the assumption on the part of the Hapsburg sovereigns of an increasingly autocratic attitude in relation to their Hungarian dependencies. It was brought to a close by the Peace of Karlowitz, January 26, 1699, whereby the Hapsburg dynasty acquired dominion over the whole of Hungary, except the banat of Tamesvár, which was acquired nineteen years later. *496. Austrian Encroachment: the Pragmatic Sanction.*--The immediate effect of the termination of the Turkish wars was to enhance yet further the despotism of the Hapsburgs in Hungary. In 1687 the Emperor Leopold I. induced a rump diet at Pressburg to abrogate that clause of the Golden Bull which authorized armed resistance to unconstitutional acts of the sovereign, and likewise to declare the Hungarian crown hereditary in the house of Hapsburg. After upwards of seven hundred years of existence, the elective Hungarian monarchy was brought thus to an end. In 1715 King Charles III.[648] persuaded the Diet to consent to the establishment of a standing army, recruited and supported under regulation of the Diet but controlled by the Austrian council of war. By the diet of 1722 there was established a Hungarian court of chancery at Vienna and the government of Hungary was committed to a stadtholder at Pressburg who was made independent of the Diet and responsible to the sovereign alone. The diet of 1722 likewise accepted formally the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 by which the Emperor Charles settled the succession to his hereditary dominions, in default of male heirs, upon his daughter Maria Theresa and her heirs;[649] and in measures promulgated during the succeeding year the Emperor entered into a fresh compact with his Hungarian subjects which continued the basis of Hapsburg-Hungarian relations until 1848. On the one hand, Hungary was declared inseparable from the Hapsburg dominions, so long as there should be a legal heir; on the other, the crown was sworn to preserve the Hungarian constitution intact, with all the rights, privileges, laws, and customs of the kingdom. The net result of all of these measures, none the less, was to impair perceptibly the original autonomy of the Hungarian state. [Footnote 648: Charles VI. as emperor.] [Footnote 649: The Pragmatic Sanction was accepted at different dates by the various diets of the Austro-Hungarian lands: in 1713 by Croatia, and from 1720 to 1724 by the other diets. It was finally proclaimed a fundamental law in 1724.] *497. The Later Eighteenth Century.*--Maria Theresa cherished a genuine interest in Hungarian affairs and was deeply solicitous concerning the welfare of her Hungarian subjects. It was never her intent, however, to encourage Hungarian self-government. The constitution of the (p. 450) kingdom was not subverted; it was simply ignored. The Diet was summoned but seldom, and after 1764 not at all. Reforms were introduced, especially in connection with education, but through the medium of royal decrees alone. Joseph II. continued nominally the policy of enlightened despotism, but in so tactless a manner that most of his projects were brought to nought. Approaching the problem of Hungarian administration with his accustomed idealism, he undertook deliberately to sweep away not only the constitution of the kingdom but the whole body of Hungarian institutions and traditions. He refused even to be crowned king of Hungary or to recognize in any manner the established status of the country. His purpose was clearly to build of Austria and Hungary one consolidated and absolute state--a purpose which, it need hardly be remarked, failed of realization. The statesmanship of Leopold II. averted the impending revolt. The constitution was restored, the ancient liberties of the kingdom were confirmed, and it was agreed that the Diet should be assembled regularly every three years. Through a quarter of a century the principal interest of Leopold's successor, Francis II. (1792-1835),[650] was the waging of war upon revolutionary France and upon Napoleon, and during this period circumstances conspired to cement more firmly the relations between the Hapsburg monarchy and the Hungarian people. In Hungary, as in Austria, the time was one of political stagnation. Prior to 1811 the Diet was several times convened, but never for any purpose other than that of obtaining war subsidies. [Footnote 650: As emperor of Austria, Francis I. (1804-1835).] III. THE ERA OF METTERNICH In the thoroughgoing reaction which set in with the Congress of Vienna it fell to Austria to play the principal rôle. This was in part because the dominions of the Hapsburgs had emerged from the revolutionary epoch virtually unscathed, but rather more by reason of the remarkable position occupied during the period 1815-1848 by Emperor Francis I.'s minister and mentor, Prince Metternich. Easily the most commanding personality in Europe, Metternich was at the same time the moving spirit in international affairs and the autocrat of Austro-Hungarian politics. Within both spheres he was, as he declared himself to be, "the man of the _status quo_." Innovation he abhorred; immobility he glorified. The settlement at Vienna he regarded as essentially his own handiwork, and all that that settlement involved he proposed to safeguard relentlessly. Throughout a full generation he contrived, with consummate skill, to dam the stream of liberalism in more than half of Europe. *498. Condition of the Monarchy in 1815.*--In the dominions of the (p. 451) Hapsburgs the situation was peculiarly such as to render all change, from the point of view of Metternich, revolutionary and ruinous. In respect to territory and prestige Austria emerged from the Napoleonic wars with a distinctly improved status. But the internal condition of the monarchy, now as ever, imparted a forbidding aspect to any policy or movement which should give promise of unsettling in the minutest degree the delicate, haphazard balance that had been arrived at among the multiplicity of races, religions, and interests represented in the Emperor's dominions. In the west were the duchies, essentially German, which comprised the ancestral possessions of the Hapsburg dynasty; in the north was Bohemia, comprising, besides Bohemia proper, Silesia, and Moravia, and containing a population largely Czech; to the south lay the lately acquired Italian kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia; to the east lay the kingdom of Hungary, including the kingdom of Croatia and the principality of Transylvania, with a population preponderantly Slavic but dominated politically by the Magyars. Several of these component states retained privileges which were peculiar to themselves and were bound to the Hapsburg monarchy by ties that were at best precarious. And the differences everywhere of race, religion, language, tradition, and interest were such as to create for the Vienna Government a seemingly impossible task. So decadent and ineffective was the Austrian administrative system when Metternich entered, in 1809, upon his ministry that not even he could have supposed that change would not eventually have to come. Change, however, he dreaded, because when change begins it is not possible to foresee how far it will go, or to control altogether the course it shall follow. Change, therefore, Metternich resisted by every available means, putting off at least as long as might be the evil day. The spirit of liberalism, once disseminated throughout the conglomerate Empire, might be expected to prompt the various nationalities to demand constitutions; constitutions would mean autonomy; and autonomy might well mean the end of the Empire itself. Austria entered upon the post-Napoleonic period handicapped by the fact that the principle upon which Europe during the nineteenth century was to solve many of her problems--the principle of nationality--contained for her nought but the menace of disintegration. Conservatism, as one writer has put it, was imposed upon the Empire by the very conditions of its being. *499. Metternich's System: the Rise of Liberalism.*--The key to Austrian history during the period 1815--1848 is, then, the maxim of the Emperor Francis, "Govern and change nothing." In Hungary government was nominally constitutional; elsewhere it was frankly absolute. (p. 452) The diets of the component parts of the Empire were not abolished, nor were the estates of the several Austrian provinces. But, constituted as they generally were on an aristocratic basis and convened but irregularly and for brief periods, their existence was a source neither of embarrassment to the Government nor of benefit to the people. "I also have my Estates," declared the Emperor upon one occasion. "I have maintained their constitution, and do not worry them; but if they go too far I snap my fingers at them or send them home." The Diet of Hungary was not once convened during the years 1812-1825. On the side of administration Metternich did propose that the various executive departments, hitherto gathered under no common management nor correlated in any degree whatsoever, should be brought under the supervision of a single minister. But not even this project was carried out effectively. Throughout the period the central government continued cumbersome, disjointed, and inefficient. With every passing decade the difficulties of the Government were augmented. Despite a most extraordinary censorship of education and of the press, western liberalism crept slowly into the Empire and the spirit of disaffection laid hold of increasing numbers of people. The revolutions of 1820 passed without eliciting response; those of 1830 occasioned but a ripple. But during the decade 1830-1840, and especially after 1840, the growth of liberalism was rapid. In 1835 the aged Francis I. was succeeded by Ferdinand I., but as the new sovereign was mentally incapacitated the dominance of Metternich continued unimpaired.[651] In Bohemia, Hungary, and elsewhere there were revivals of racial enthusiasm and of nationalistic aspirations which grew increasingly ominous. The Hungarian diet of 1844 substituted as the official language of the chambers Magyar for Latin, and during the forties there was built up, under the leadership of Louis Kossuth and Francis Deák, a flourishing Liberal party, whose aim was the re-establishment of the autonomy of the kingdom and the thoroughgoing reform of the government. By 1847-1848 this party was insisting strenuously upon the adoption of its "Ten Points," in which were included a responsible ministry, the abolition of serfdom, equality of citizens before the law, complete religious liberty, fuller representation in the Diet, taxation of the nobles, and (p. 453) control by the Diet of all public expenditures.[652] [Footnote 651: Technically the control of the government was vested in a small group of dignitaries known as the Staatskonferenz, or State Conference. The nominal president of this body was the Archduke Louis, representing the crown; but the actual direction of its proceedings fell to Metternich. H. von Sybel, Die Österreichische Staatskonferenz von 1836, in _Historische Zeitschrift_, 1877.] [Footnote 652: On Austria during the period of Metternich see Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 11, XI., Chap. 3; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, X., Chap. 17; A. Stern, Geschichte Europas (Berlin, 1904-1911), I., Chap. 3; A. Springer, Geschichte Österreichs seit dem Wiener Frieden 1809 (Leipzig, 1863), I., 275-322; H. Meynert, Kaiser Franz I. (Vienna, 1872).] IV. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 *500. The Fall of Metternich.*--The crash came in 1848. Under the electrifying effect of the news of the fall of Louis Philippe at Paris (February 24), and of the eloquent fulminations of Kossuth, translated into German and scattered broadcast in the Austrian capital, there broke out at Vienna, March 12-13, an insurrection which instantly got quite beyond the Government's power to control. Hard fighting took place between the troops and the populace, and an infuriated mob, breaking into the royal palace, called with an insistence that would not be denied for the dismissal of Metternich. Recognizing the uselessness of resistance, the minister placed in the hands of the Emperor his resignation and, effecting an escape from the city, made his way out of the country and eventually to England. March 15 there was issued a hurriedly devised Imperial proclamation, designed to appease the populace, in which was promised the convocation of an assembly with a view to the drafting of a national constitution. *501. Hungary: the March Laws.*--On the same day the Diet of Hungary, impelled by the oratory of Kossuth, began the enactment of an elaborate series of measures--the so-called March Laws--by which was carried rapidly toward completion a programme of modernization which, in the teeth of Austrian opposition, had been during some years under way. The March Laws fell into two principal categories. The first dealt with the internal government of the kingdom, the second with the relations which henceforth were to subsist between Hungary and the Austrian Empire. For the ancient aristocratic machinery of the monarchy was substituted a modern constitutional system of government, with a diet whose lower chamber, of 337 members, was to be elected by all Hungarians of the age of twenty who possessed property to the value of approximately $150. Meetings of this diet were to be annual and were to be held, no longer at Pressburg, near the Austrian border, but at the interior city of Budapest, the logical capital of the kingdom. Taxation was extended to all classes; feudal servitudes and titles payable by the peasantry were abolished; trial by jury, religious liberty, and freedom of the press were guaranteed. In the second place, it was stipulated that henceforth Hungary should (p. 454) have an entirely separate and a responsible ministry, thus ensuring the essential autonomy of the kingdom. The sole tie remaining between the two monarchies was to be the person of the sovereign. Impelled by the force of circumstances, the Government at Vienna designated Count Louis Batthyány premier of the first responsible Hungarian ministry and, April 10, accorded reluctant assent to the March Laws. These statutes, though later subverted, became thenceforth the _Grundrechte_ of the Hungarian people. *502. The Austrian Constitution of 1848.*--In the meantime, the Austrians were pressing their demand for constitutionalism. The framing of the instrument which had been promised was intrusted by the Emperor to the ministers, and early in April there was submitted to an informal gathering of thirty notables representing various portions of the Empire a draft based upon the Belgium constitution of 1831. This instrument was given some consideration in several of the provincial diets, but was never submitted, as it had been promised in the manifesto of March 15 it should be, to the Imperial Diet, or to any sort of national assembly. Instead it was promulgated, April 25, on the sole authority of the Emperor. The territories to which it was made applicable comprised the whole of the Emperor's dominions, save Hungary and the other Transleithanian lands and the Italian dependencies. By it the Empire was declared an indissoluble constitutional monarchy, and to all citizens were extended full rights of civil and religious liberty. There was instituted a Reichstag, or general diet, to consist of an upper house of princes of the royal family and nominees of the landlords, and a lower of 383 members, to be elected according to a system to be devised by the Reichstag itself. All ministers were to be responsible to this diet. July 22 there was convened at Vienna the first assembly of the new type, and the organization of constitutional government was put definitely under way. *503. The Reaction.*--Recovery, however, on the part of the forces of reaction was rapid. In Hungary the same sort of nationalistic feeling that had inspired the Magyars to assert their rights as against Austria inspired the Serbs, the Croats, and the Roumanians to demand from the Magyar Government a recognition of their several traditions and interests. The purpose of the Magyars, however, was to maintain absolutely their own ascendancy in the kingdom, and every demand on the part of the subject nationalities met only with contemptuous refusal. Dissatisfaction bred dissension, and dissension broke speedily into civil war. With consummate skill the situation was exploited by the Vienna Government, while at the same time the armies of Radetzky and Windischgrätz were stamping out every trace of (p. 455) insurrection in Lombardo-Venetia, in Bohemia, and eventually in Vienna itself. December 2, 1848, the easy-going, incompetent Emperor Ferdinand was induced by the reactionaries to abdicate. His brother, Francis Charles, the heir-presumptive, renounced his claim to the throne, and the crown devolved upon the late Emperor's youthful nephew, Francis Joseph I., whose phenomenally prolonged reign has continued to the present day. Under the guidance of Schwarzenberg, who now became the dominating figure in Austrian politics, the Hungarian March Laws were abrogated and preparations were set on foot to reduce Hungary, as other portions of the Imperial dominions had been reduced, by force of arms. Pronouncing Francis Joseph a usurper, the Magyars rose _en masse_ in defense of their constitution and of the deposed Ferdinand. In the conflict which ensued they were compelled to fight not only the Austrians but also their rebellious Roumanian, Croatian, and Slavonian subjects, and their chances of success were from the outset slender. In a moment of exultation, April 14, 1849, the Diet at Budapest went so far as to declare Hungary an independent nation and to elect Kossuth to the presidency of a supposititious republic. The only effect, however, was to impart to the contest an international character. Upon appeal from Francis Joseph, Tsar Nicholas I. intervened in behalf of the "legitimate" Austrian power; whereupon the Hungarians, seeking in vain for allies, were overcome by the weight of the odds against them, and by the middle of August, 1849, the war was ended. *504. Restoration of Autocracy.*--In Austria and Hungary alike the reaction was complete. In the Empire there had been promulgated, March 4, 1849, a revised constitution; but at no time had it been intended by the sovereign or by those who surrounded him that constitutionalism should be established upon a permanent basis, and during 1850-1851 one step after another was taken in the direction of the revival of autocracy. December 31, 1851, "in the name of the unity of the Empire and of monarchical principles," the constitution was revoked by Imperial patent. At a stroke all of the peoples of the Empire were deprived of their representative rights. Yet so incompletely had the liberal régime struck root that its passing occasioned scarcely a murmur. Except that the abolition of feudal obligations was permanent, the Empire settled back into a status which was almost precisely that of the age of Metternich. Vienna became once more the seat of a government whose fundamental objects may be summarized as (1) to Germanize the Magyars and Slavs, (2) to restrain all agitation in behalf of constitutionalism; and (3) to prevent freedom of thought and the establishment of a free press. Hungary, by reason of her (p. 456) rebellion, was considered to have forfeited utterly the fundamental rights which for centuries had been more or less grudgingly conceded her. She not only lost every vestige of her constitutional system, her diet, her county assemblies, her local self-government; large territories were stripped from her, and she was herself cut into five districts, each to be administered separately, largely by German officials from Vienna. So far as possible, all traces of her historic nationality were obliterated.[653] [Footnote 653: Brief accounts of the revolution of 1848-1849 in Austria-Hungary will be found in Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chaps. 6-7 (bibliography, pp. 887-893), and Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XI., Chap. 4. The most important treatise is H. Friedjung, Österreich von 1848 bis 1860 (2d ed., Stuttgart and Berlin, 1908), the first volume of which covers the period 1848-1851. There is a serviceable account in L. Leger, History of Austria-Hungary from the Beginning to the Year 1878, trans. by B. Hill (London, 1889), Chaps. 30-33. Older accounts in English include W. H. Stiles, Austria in 1848-9 (New York, 1852), and W. Coxe, History of the House of Austria (3d ed., London, 1907). The Hungarian phases of the subject are admirably presented in L. Eisenmann, Le compromis austro-hongroise (Paris, 1904).] V. THE REVIVAL OF CONSTITUTIONALISM: THE AUSGLEICH *505. Constitutional Experiments, 1860-1861.*--The decade 1850-1860 was in Austria-Hungary a period of political and intellectual torpor. Embarrassed by fiscal difficulties and by international complications, the Government at Vienna struggled with desperation to maintain the _status quo_ as against the numerous forces that would have overthrown it. For a time the effort was successful, but toward the close of the decade a swift decline of Imperial prestige compelled the adoption of a more conciliatory policy. The Crimean War cost the Empire both allies and friends, and the disasters of the Italian campaigns of 1859 added to the seriousness of the Imperial position. By 1860 both the Emperor and his principal minister, Goluchowski, were prepared to undertake in all sincerity a reformation of the illiberal and unpopular governmental system. To this end the Emperor called together, March 5, 1860, representatives of the various provinces and instructed them, in conjunction with the Reichsrath, or Imperial Council, to take under consideration plans for the reorganization of the Empire. The majority of this "reinforced Reichsrath" recommended the establishment permanently of a broadly national Reichsrath, or Imperial assembly, together with the reconstitution of the old provincial diets. The upshot was the promulgation, October 20, 1860, of a "permanent and irrevocable" diploma in which the Emperor made known his intention thereafter to share all powers of legislation and finance with the diets of the various portions of the Empire, and (p. 457) with a central Reichsrath at Vienna, the latter to be made up of members chosen by the Emperor from triple lists of nominees presented by the provincial diets. In Hungary this programme was received with favor by the conservative magnates, but the Liberals, led by Deák, refused absolutely to approve it, save on the condition that the constitutional régime of the kingdom, abrogated in 1849, should be regarded as completely restored. At Vienna there had been no intention that the proposed innovation should entail such consequences, and within four months of its promulgation the diploma of 1860 was superseded by a patent of February 26, 1861, whereby the terms demanded by the Deák party were specifically denied. In this patent--the handiwork principally of Anton von Schmerling, Goluchowski's successor in the office of Minister of the Interior--was elaborated further the plan of the new Reichsrath. Two chambers there were to be--an upper, or House of Lords, to be made up of members appointed by the Emperor in consideration of birth, station, or merits and a lower, or House of Representatives, to consist of 343 members (Hungary sending 85 and Bohemia 54), to be chosen by the provincial diets from their own membership. Sessions of the body were to be annual. The new instrument differed fundamentally from the old, not simply in that it substituted a bicameral for a unicameral parliamentary body, but also in that it diverted from the local diets to the Reichsrath a wide range of powers, being designed, indeed, specifically to facilitate the centralization of governmental authority. *506. The Hungarian Opposition.*--By reason chiefly of the refusal of the Deák party to accept for Hungary anything short of the autonomy which had been enjoyed prior to 1849, the new scheme of government was for a time only partially successful. In one after another of the component parts of the Empire the provincial diets were called back to life, and the Reichsrath itself was started upon its career. But the Hungarians held aloof. The position which they assumed was that Hungary had always been a separate nation; that the union with Austria lay only through the person of the monarch, who, indeed, in Hungary was king only after he should have sworn to uphold the ancient laws of Hungary and should have been crowned in Hungary with the iron crown of St. Stephen; that no change in these ancient laws and practices could legally be effected by the emperor-king alone; that the constitution of 1861 was inadequate, not only because it had been "granted" and might as easily be revoked, but because it covered both Austria and Hungary; reduced Hungary to the position of a mere province, and was not at all identical with the Hungarian fundamental law abrogated in 1849. April 6, 1861, the Hungarian Diet was assembled for the first time since the termination of the revolution of 1848, and the (p. 458) patent of the preceding February 26 was laid forthwith before it. After four months of heated debate the body refused definitely to accept the instrument and, on the contrary, adopted unanimously an address drawn up by Deák calling upon the Vienna authorities to restore the political and territorial integrity of the Hungarian kingdom. The sovereign's reply was a dissolution of the Diet, August 21, and a levy of taxes by military execution. Hungary, in turn, refused to be represented in the Reichsrath, or in any way to recognize the new order. *507. Influences toward Conciliation.*--Through four years the deadlock continued. During the period Hungary, regarded by the authorities at Vienna as having forfeited the last vestige of right to her ancient constitution, was kept perpetually in a stage of siege. As time went by, however, it was made increasingly apparent that the surrender by which concord might be restored would have to be made in the main by Austria, and at last the Emperor was brought to a point where he was willing, by an effectual recognition of Hungarian nationality, to supply the indispensable condition of reconciliation. In June, 1865, the sovereign paid a visit to the Hungarian capital, where he was received with unexpected enthusiasm, and September 20 the patent of 1861, which the Hungarians had refused to allow to be put into execution, was suspended. For the moment the whole of the Hapsburg dominion reverted to a state of absolutism; but negotiations were set on foot looking toward a revival of constitutionalism under such conditions that the demands of the Hungarians might be brought into harmony with the larger interests of the Empire. Proceedings were interrupted, in 1866, by the Austro-Prussian war, but in 1867 they were pushed to a conclusion. In anticipation of the international outbreak which came in June, 1866, Deák had reworked a programme of conciliation drawn up in the spring of 1865, holding it in readiness to be employed as a basis of negotiation in the event of an Austrian triumph, as an ultimatum in the event of an Austrian defeat. The Austrians, as it proved, were defeated swiftly and decisively, and by this development the Hungarians, as Deák had hoped would be the case, were given an enormously advantageous position. Humiliated by her expulsion from a confederation which she had been accustomed to dominate, Austria, after the Peace of Prague (August 20, 1866), was no longer in a position to defy the wishes of her disaffected sister state. On the contrary, the necessity of the consolidation of her resources was never more apparent. *508. The Compromise Effected, 1867.*--July 3 occurred the disaster at Sadowa. July 15 the Emperor summoned Deák to Vienna and put to (p. 459) him directly the question, What does Hungary want? Two days later he accorded provisional assent to the fundamentals of the Deák _projet_ and designated as premier of the first parliamentary ministry of Hungary Count Julius Andrássy. The working out of the precise settlement between the two states fell principally to two men--Deák, representing the Hungarian Liberals, and Baron Beust, formerly chief minister of the king of Saxony but in 1866 brought to Vienna and made Austrian chancellor and minister-president. After prolonged negotiation a _projet_, differing from the original one of Deák in few respects save that the unity of the monarchy was more carefully safeguarded, was made ready to be acted upon by the parliaments of the two states. February 17, 1867, the Andrássy ministry was formed at Budapest and May 29, by a vote of 209 to 89, the terms of the Ausgleich, or Compromise, were given formal approval by the Diet. At Vienna the Reichsrath would probably have been disposed to reject the proposed arrangement but for the fact that Beust held out as an inducement the re-establishment of constitutionalism in Austria. The upshot was that the Reichsrath added some features by which the _projet_ was liberalized still further and made provision at the same time for the revision and rehabilitation of the Imperial patent of 1861. During the summer two deputations of fifteen members each, representing the respective parliaments, drew up a plan of financial adjustment between the two states; and by acts of December 21-24 final approval was accorded on both sides to the whole body of agreements. Already, June 8, in the great cathedral at Buda, Francis Joseph had been crowned Apostolic King of Hungary and the royal succession under the terms of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713, after eighteen years of suspension, had been definitely resumed.[654] [Footnote 654: On Austro-Hungarian affairs in the period 1860-1867 see Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 15, XII., Chap. 7 (bibliography, pp. 876-882), and Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XI., Chap. 13. The best treatise is L. Eisenmann, Le compromis austro-hongroise (Paris, 1904). An account by an active participant is J. Andrássy, Ungarns Ausgleich mit Österreich von Jahre 1867 (Leipzig, 1897). The best detailed account in English is Leger, History of Austria-Hungary, Chaps. 34-35. Two important biographies are: A. Forster, Francis Deák, a Memoir (London, 1880), and E. Ebeling, F. F. Graf von Beust (Leipzig, 1870-71).] CHAPTER XXV (p. 460) THE GOVERNMENT AND PARTIES OF AUSTRIA I. THE CONSTITUTION *509. Texts.*--The fundamental law of the Austrian Empire,[655] in so far as it has been reduced to writing, exists in the form of a series of diplomas, patents, and statutes covering, in all, a period of some two hundred years. Of these instruments the most important are: (1) the Pragmatic Sanction of the Emperor Charles VI., promulgated originally April 19, 1713, and in final form in 1724, by which is regulated the succession to the throne; (2) the Pragmatic Patent of the Emperor Francis II., August 1, 1804, in accordance with which the sovereign bears in Austria the Imperial title; (3) the diploma of the Emperor Francis Joseph I., October 20, 1860, by which was introduced in the Empire the principle of constitutional government; (4) the patent of Francis Joseph, February 26, 1861, by which was regulated in detail the nature of this government; and (5) a series of five fundamental laws (_Staatsgrundgesetze_), all bearing the date December 21, 1867, and comprising a thoroughgoing revision and extension of the patent of 1861. In a narrower sense, indeed, the constitution may be said to consist of these five documents, all of which were sanctioned by the crown as a portion of the same general settlement by which the arrangements comprehended in the Ausgleich were effected. Of them, one, in twenty articles, is essentially a bill of rights; a second, in twenty-four sections, is concerned with Imperial representation; a third, in six articles, provides for the establishment of the Reichsgericht, or Imperial court; a fourth, in fifteen articles, covers the subject of the judiciary; and the fifth, in twelve articles, deals with the exercise of administrative and executive powers. [Footnote 655: It should be emphasized that the phrase "Austrian Empire," properly used, denotes Austria alone. Hungary is no part of the Empire. Throughout the following description effort has been made to avoid inaccuracy of expression by referring to Austria-Hungary as the "dual monarchy," or simply as "the monarchy." The nomenclature of the Austro-Hungarian union is cumbersome, but therein it merely reflects the character of the union itself.] *510. The Style of Government.*--Under the provisions of these instruments Austria is constituted a limited monarchy, with a responsible ministry, a bicameral legislative body, and a considerable (p. 461) measure of local self-government. For the exercise, upon occasion, of essentially autocratic power, however, the way was left open through the famous Section 13 of the patent of 1861, become Section 14 of the Law concerning Imperial Representation of 1867. Around no portion of the constitution has controversy raged more fiercely during the past generation. The article reads: "If urgent circumstances should render necessary some measure constitutionally requiring the consent of the Reichsrath, when that body is not in session, such measure may be taken by Imperial ordinance, issued under the collective responsibility of the ministry, provided it makes no alteration of the fundamental law, imposes no lasting burden upon the public treasury, and alienates none of the domain of the state. Such ordinances shall have provisionally the force of law, if they are signed by all of the ministers, and shall be published with an express reference to this provision of the fundamental law. The legal force of such an ordinance shall cease if the Government neglects to present it for the approval of the Reichsrath at its next succeeding session, and indeed first to the House of Representatives, within four weeks of its convention, or if one of the houses refuses its approval thereto."[656] The prolonged exercise of autocratic power might seem here to be sufficiently guarded against, but in point of fact, as was demonstrated by the history of the notable parliamentary deadlock of 1897--1904[657], the government can be, and has been, made to run year after year upon virtually the sole basis of the article mentioned. It is only fair to add, however, that, but for some such practical resource at the disposal of the executive, constitutional government might long since have been broken down completely by the recurrent obstructive tactics of the warring nationalities. [Footnote 656: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 81.] [Footnote 657: See p. 479.] *511. Amendment.*--The constitution promulgated March 4, 1849, made provision for a definite process of amendment. Upon declaration by the legislative power that any particular portion of the fundamental law stood in need of revision, the chambers were to be dissolved and newly elected ones were to take under consideration the proposed amendment, adopting it if a two-thirds majority could be obtained in each house. Upon all such proposals the veto of the Emperor, however, was absolute. Neither the diploma of October 20, 1860, nor the patent of February 26, 1861, contained any stipulation upon the subject, nor did any one of the fundamental laws of 1867 as originally adopted. By act of April 2, 1873, however, passed at the time when the lower house (p. 462) of the Reichsrath was being converted into an assembly directly representative of the people, the Law concerning Imperial Representation was so modified as to be made to include a specific stipulation with respect to constitutional amendment in general. Under the terms of this enactment all portions of the written constitution are subject to amendment at the hand of the Reichsrath. As in European countries generally, no essential differentiation of powers that are constituent from those that are legislative is attempted. The process of revision is made even easier than that prescribed by the ill-fated instrument of 1849. It differs in no respect from that of ordinary legislation save that proposed amendments require a two-thirds vote in each of the chambers instead of a simple majority. Since 1873 there have been adopted several amendments, of which the most notable were those of 1896 and 1907 relative to the election of representatives. *512. The Rights of Citizens.*--For all natives of the various kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrath there exists a common right of Austrian citizenship. The complicated conditions under which citizenship may be obtained, exercised, and forfeited are prescribed in legislative enactments of various dates. One of the five fundamental laws of 1867, however, covers at some length the general rights of citizens, and certain of its provisions are worthy of mention.[658] All citizens, it is declared, are equal before the law. Public office is open equally to all. Freedom of passage of persons and property, within the territory of the state, is absolutely guaranteed, as is both liberty of person and inviolability of property. Every one is declared free to choose his occupation and to prepare himself for it in such place and manner as he may desire. The right of petition is recognized; likewise, under legal regulation, that of assemblage and of the formation of associations. Freedom of speech and of the press, under legal regulation, and liberty of religion and of conscience are guaranteed to all. Science and its teaching is declared free. One has but to recall the repression of individual liberty and initiative by which the era of Metternich was characterized to understand why, with the liberalizing of the Austrian state under the constitution of 1867, it should have been deemed essential to put into the fundamental law these and similar guarantees of personal right and privilege.[659] [Footnote 658: Law concerning the General Rights of Citizens. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 71-74.] [Footnote 659: The texts of the fundamental laws at present in operation are printed in E. Bernatzik, Die österreichischen Verfassungsgesetze (2d ed., Vienna, 1911), and in a collection issued by the Austrian Government under the title Die Staatsgrundgesetze (7th ed., Vienna, 1900). The statutes of 1867 are in Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 378-404, and, in English translation, in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 71-89. The best description in English of the Austrian governmental system is Lowell, _op. cit._; II., Chap. 8. The best extended treatise is J. Ulbrich, Lehrbuch des österreichischen Staatsrechts (Vienna, 1883). Excellent briefer works are L. Gumplowicz, Das österreichische Staatsrecht (3d ed., Vienna, 1907); J. Ulbrich, Österreichisches Staatsrecht (3d ed., Tübingen, 1904), in Marquardsen's Handbuch; and R. von Herrnritt, Handbuch des österreichischen Verfassungsrechtes (Tübingen, 1910). On the workings of the governmental system something may be gleaned from G. Drage, Austria-Hungary (London, 1909); S. Whitman, Austria (New York, 1879) and H. Rumbold, Francis Joseph and his Times (New York, 1909).] II. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY (p. 463) *513. The Emperor's Status.*--The sovereign authority of the Empire is vested in the Emperor. Duties are assigned to the ministers, and privileges are granted to the legislative bodies; but all powers not expressly conferred elsewhere remain with the Emperor as supreme head of the state. The Imperial office is hereditary in the male line of the house of Hapsburg-Lothringen, and the rules governing the succession are substantially those which were laid down originally in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713[660] promulgated by the Emperor Charles VI. to render possible the succession of his daughter Maria Theresa. Females may inherit, but only in the event of the failure of male heirs. By the abdication of the direct heir, the throne may pass to a member of the royal family who stands farther removed, as it did in 1848 when the present Emperor was established on the throne while his father was yet living. By reason of the unusual prolongation of the reign of Francis Joseph, there has been no opportunity in sixty years to put to a test the rules by which the inheritance is regulated. Since the death of the Crown Prince Rudolph the heir-presumptive has been the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, son of the Archduke Charles Louis, and nephew of the ruling Emperor. It is required that the sovereign be a member of the Roman Catholic Church. [Footnote 660: Issued definitely in 1724.] *514. His Powers.*--By fundamental law it is declared that the Emperor is "sacred, inviolable, and irresponsible." His powers of government are exercised largely, however, through ministers who are at least nominally responsible to the Reichsrath, and through officers and agents subordinate to them. Most important among the powers expressly conferred upon the Emperor, and indirectly exercised by him, are: (1) the appointment and dismissal of ministers; (2) the naming of all public officials whose appointment is not otherwise by law provided for; (3) supreme command of the armed forces, with the power of (p. 464) declaring war and concluding peace; (4) the conferring of titles, orders, and other public distinctions, including the appointment of life peers; (5) the granting of pardons and of amnesty; (6) the summoning, adjourning, and dissolving of the various legislative bodies; (7) the issuing of ordinances with the provisional force of law, and (8) the concluding of treaties, with the limitation that the consent of the Reichsrath is essential to the validity of treaties of commerce and political treaties which impose obligations upon the Empire, upon any part thereof, or upon any of its citizens. Further than this, the right to coin money is exercised under the authority of the Emperor; and the laws are promulgated, and all judicial power is exercised, in his name. Before assuming the throne, the Emperor is required to take a solemn oath in the presence of the two houses of the Reichsrath "to maintain inviolable the fundamental laws of the kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrath, and to govern in conformity with them, and in conformity with the laws in general."[661] The present Emperor-King has a civil list of 22,600,000 crowns, half of which is derived from the revenues of Austria and half from those of Hungary. The Imperial residence in Vienna, the Hofburg, has been the seat of the princes of Austria since the thirteenth century. [Footnote 661: Law concerning the Exercise of Administrative and Executive Power, December 21, 1867, § 8. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 88.] *515. The Ministers: Responsibility.*--The Austrian ministry comprises portfolios as follows: Finance, the Interior, Railways, National Defense, Agriculture, Justice, Commerce, Labor, and Instruction and Worship. Three important departments--those of War, Finance, and Foreign Affairs and the Imperial and Royal House--are maintained by the affiliated monarchies in common.[662] And there are usually from one to four ministerial representatives of leading racial elements without portfolio, there being in the present cabinet one such minister for Galicia. All ministers are appointed and dismissed by the Emperor. Under the leadership of a president of the council or premier (without portfolio), they serve as the Emperor's councillors, execute his will, and administer the affairs of their respective branches of the public service. It is provided by fundamental law that they shall be responsible for the constitutionality and legality of governmental acts performed within the sphere of their powers.[663] They are responsible to the two branches of the national parliament alike, and may be interpellated or impeached by either. For impeachment an (p. 465) elaborate procedure is prescribed, though thus far it has not proved of practical utility. Every law promulgated in the Emperor's name must bear the signature of a responsible minister, and several sorts of ordinances--such as those proclaiming a state of siege or suspending the constitutional rights of a citizen--require the concurrent signature of the entire ministry. Every minister possesses the right to sit and to speak in either chamber of the Reichsrath, where the policy of the Government may call for explanation or defense, and where there are at least occasional interpellations to be answered. [Footnote 662: There is a joint ministry of finance, though each of the monarchies maintains a separate ministry for the administration of its own fiscal affairs. On the joint ministries see p. 510.] [Footnote 663: Law concerning the Exercise of Administrative and Executive Power, December 21, 1867, § 9. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 88-89.] Nominally, the parliamentary system is in vogue, but at best it operates only indifferently. Supposedly responsible, collectively and individually, to the Reichsrath, the ministers are in practice far more dependent upon the Emperor than upon the chambers. In France the inability of political parties to coalesce into two great opposing groups largely defeats the best ends of the parliamentary system. In Austria the numerous and ineradicable racial divisions deflect the system further still from the lines upon which theoretically it should operate. No political group is sufficiently powerful to rule alone, and no working affiliation can long be made to subsist. The consequence is, not only that the Government can ordinarily play off one faction against another and secure pretty much its own way, but also that the responsibility of the ministers to the chambers is much less effective in practice than on paper it appears to be.[664] [Footnote 664: W. Beaumont, Cabinets éphémères et ministères provisoires en Autriche, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, March, 1900; H. Hantich, Nouvelle phase du parlementarisme en Autriche, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, February 1, 1910.] III. THE REICHSRATH--THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM *516. The House of Lords.*--The Reichsrath consists of two chambers. The upper is known as the Herrenhaus, or House of Lords; the lower, as the Abgeordnetenhaus, or House of Representatives. The Herrenhaus consists of a somewhat variable number of men who sit in part by _ex-officio_ right, in part by hereditary station, and in part by special Imperial appointment. At the close of 1910 there were in the chamber 266 members, distributed as follows: (1) princes of the Imperial family who are of age, 15; (2) nobles of high rank qualified by the possession of large estates and nominated to an hereditary seat by the Emperor, 74; (3) ecclesiastics--10 archbishops and 8 bishops--who are of princely title inherent in their episcopal seats, 18; and (4) persons nominated by the Emperor for life in recognition of special service rendered to the state or the Church, or unusual distinction (p. 466) attained in literature, art, or science, 159. By law of January 26, 1907, the number of members in the last-mentioned group may not exceed 170, nor be less than 150.[665] Within these limits, the power of the Emperor to create life peers is absolute. The prerogative is one which has several times been exercised to facilitate the enactment of measures upon whose adoption the Government was determined. The president and vice-president of the chamber are appointed from its members by the Emperor at the beginning of each session; but the body chooses all of its remaining officers. The privileges and powers of the Herrenhaus are co-ordinate with those of the Abgeordnetenhaus, save that money bills and bills fixing the number of military recruits must be presented first in the lower chamber. [Footnote 665: It is interesting to observe that this guarantee against the wholesale creation of peers was brought forward with the object of winning for the Government's Universal Suffrage Bill the assent of the upper chamber.] *517. The House of Representatives: Composition.*--The lower chamber, as constituted by fundamental law of 1867, was made up of 203 representatives, apportioned among the several provinces and elected by the provincial diets. The system worked poorly, and a law of 1868 authorized the voters of a province to elect the stipulated quota of representatives in the event that the Diet failed to do so. Still there was difficulty, arising largely from the racial rivalries in the provinces, and by an amendment of April 2, 1873, the right of election was vested exclusively in the enfranchised inhabitants of the Empire. The number of members was at the same time increased to 353, though without modifying the proportion of representatives of the various provinces. Further amendment, in 1896, brought up the membership to 425, where it remained until 1907, when it was raised to the present figure, 516. *518. Early Electoral Arrangements: Law of 1873.*--The broadly democratic electoral system which prevails in the Austrian dominions to-day is a very recent creation. With the introduction of constitutionalism in 1867 the problem of the franchise became one of peculiar and increasing difficulty, and the process by which the Empire has been brought laboriously to its present condition of democracy has constituted one of the most tortuous chapters in recent political history. The conditions by which from the outset the problem was complicated were three in number: first, the large survival of self-assertiveness on the part of the various provinces among whom parliamentary representatives were to be distributed; second, the keenness of the ambitions of the several racial elements for parliamentary power; and third, the utter lack of experience and of traditions (p. 467) on the part of the Austrian peoples in the matter of democratic government. When, in 1873, the right of electing deputies was withdrawn from the provincial diets it was conferred, without the establishment of a new electorate, upon those elements of the provincial populations which had been accustomed to take part in the election of the local diets. These were four in number: (1) the great landowners, comprising those who paid a certain land tax, varying in the several provinces from 50 to 250 florins ($20 to $100), and including women and corporations; (2) the cities, in which the franchise was extended to all males of twenty-four who paid a direct tax of ten gulden annually; (3) chambers of commerce and of industry; and (4) rural communes, in which the qualifications for voting were the same as in the cities. To each of these curiæ, or classes, the law of 1873 assigned a number of parliamentary representatives, to be elected thereafter in each province directly by the voters of the respective classes, rather than indirectly through the diets. The number of voters in each class and the relative importance of the individual voter varied enormously. In 1890, in the class of landowners there was one deputy to every 63 voters; in the chambers of commerce, one to every 27; in the cities, one to every 2,918; and in the rural districts, one to every 11,600.[666] [Footnote 666: Hazen, Europe since 1815, 399.] *519. The Taaffe Electoral Bill of 1893.*--During the period covered by the ministry of Count Taaffe (February, 1879, to October, 1893) there was growing demand, especially on the part of the Socialists, Young Czechs, German Nationalists, and other radical groups, for a new electoral law, and during the years 1893-1896 this issue quite overshadowed all others. In October, 1893, Taaffe brought forward a sweeping electoral measure which, if it had become law, would have transferred the bulk of political power to the working classes, at the same time reducing to impotence the preponderant German Liberal party. The measure did not provide for the general, equal, and direct suffrage for which the radicals were clamoring, and by which the number of voters would have been increased from 1,700,000 to 5,500,000. But it did contemplate the increase of the electorate to something like 4,000,000. This it proposed to accomplish by abolishing all property qualifications of voters in the cities and rural communes[667] and by extending the voting privilege to all adult males who were able to read and write and who had resided in their electoral district a minimum of six months. To avoid the danger of an excess of democracy Taaffe planned to retain intact the curiæ of landed proprietors and chambers of commerce, so that it would still be (p. 468) true that 5,402 large landholders would be represented in the lower house by 85 deputies, the chambers of commerce by 22, and the remainder of the nation--some 24,000,000 people--by 246. Impelled especially by fear of socialism, the Conservatives, the Poles, the German Liberals, and other elements opposed the project, and there never was any real chance of its adoption. By reason of its halfway character the Socialists, in congress at Vienna in March, 1894, condemned it as "an insult to the working classes." Even in Hungary (which country, of course, the measure did not immediately concern) there was apprehension, the ruling Magyars fearing that the adoption of even a partial universal suffrage system in the affiliated state would prompt a demand on the part of the numerically preponderant Slavic populations of Hungary for the same sort, of thing. Anticipating defeat, Taaffe resigned, in October, 1893, before the measure came to a vote. [Footnote 667: By a law of 1882 the direct-tax qualification had been reduced to 5 florins.] *520. The Electoral Law of 1896.*--Under the Windischgrätz and Kielmansegg ministries which succeeded no progress was realized, but the cabinet of the Polish Count Badeni, constituted October 4, 1895, made electoral reform the principal item in its programme and succeeded in carrying through a measure which, indeed, was but a caricature of Taaffe's project, but which none the less marked a distinct stage of progress toward the broad-based franchise for which the radicals were clamoring. The Government's bill was laid before the Reichsrath, February 16, 1896, and was adopted unchanged within the space of two weeks. The general suffrage which the Socialists demanded was established, for the election, however, not of the 353 representatives already composing the lower chamber, but merely of a body of 72 new representatives to be added to the present membership. In the choice of these 72 additional members every male citizen twenty-four years of age who had resided in a given district as much as six months prior to an election was to be entitled to participate; but elections were to be direct only in those districts in which indirect voting had been abolished by provincial legislation. Votes were to be cast, as a rule, by ballot, though under some circumstances orally. All pre-existing classes of voters were left unchanged, and to them was simply added a fifth. The aggregate number of electors in the Empire was raised to 5,333,000. Of the number, however, the 1,732,000 comprised in the original four curiæ were still to elect 353 of the 425 members of the chamber, with the further inequity that many of the persons who profited by the new arrangement were included already in one or another of the older classes, and hence were vested by it with a plural vote. Although, therefore, the voting privilege was now (p. 469) conferred upon millions of small taxpayers and non-taxpayers who never before had possessed it, the nation was still very far from a fair and democratic suffrage system. *521. Renewed Agitation: the Universal Suffrage Law of 1907.*--Throughout the decade following 1896 electoral agitation was continuous and widespread, but not until 1905 did the situation become favorable for further reform. In September of the year mentioned Francis Joseph approved the proposal that universal suffrage be included in the programme of the Fejérváry cabinet in Hungary, and the act was taken at once to mean that the sovereign had arrived at the conclusion that the democratizing of the franchise was inevitable in all of his dominions. In point of fact, by reason of the prolonged parliamentary crisis of late years at Vienna, the Emperor was fast arriving at precisely such a conclusion. Stimulated by current developments in Hungary and in Russia, the Austrian Socialists, late in 1905, entered upon a notable series of demonstrations, and, November 28, Premier Gautsch was moved to pledge the Government to introduce forthwith a franchise reform bill based upon the principle of universal suffrage. February 23, 1906, the promise was redeemed by the presentation in the Reichsrath of proposals for (1) the abolition of the system of electoral curiæ, (2) the extension of an equal franchise to all males over twenty-four years of age and resident in their district a year, (3) the division of Austria racially into compartments so that each ethnic group might be protected against its rivals, and (4) the increase of the number of seats from 425 to 455, a fixed number to be allotted to each province, and in each province to each race, in accordance with numbers and taxpaying capacity. The outlook for the bill in which these proposals were incorporated was at first not promising. The Social Democrats, the Christian Socialists, and the Young Czechs were favorable; the Poles were reserved in their attitude, but inclined to be hostile; practically all of the German Liberals were opposed; and the landed proprietors, long accustomed to dominate within the preponderant German element in the Reichsrath, were violently hostile. In April, 1906, while the bill was pending, the Gautsch ministry found itself without a parliamentary majority and was succeeded by a ministry made up by Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst. This ministry lasted but six weeks, and June 2 the coalition cabinet of Baron Beck assumed office. Convinced that the establishment of universal and direct suffrage would afford the best means of stimulating loyalty to the dynasty, as well as the only practicable means of freeing the Government from parliamentary obstructionism, Emperor Francis Joseph accorded the Beck ministry his earnest support in its purpose to push to a conclusion the task of (p. 470) electoral reform. The effort attained fruition in the memorable Universal Suffrage Law passed by both houses of the Reichsrath in the closing days of 1906 and approved by the Emperor January 26 of the following year. The measure, which was in form an amendment of the fundamental law of December 21, 1867, concerning Imperial Representation, was opposed by the conservative and aristocratic members of both houses and by the extremer representatives of the various nationalities; but, like other portions of the constitutional system of the Empire, it may not be amended save by a two-thirds vote of both houses, and it is likely to endure through a considerable period unchanged. *522. Racial and Geographical Distribution of Seats.*--In the course of the prolonged negotiations between the Government and representatives of the various nationalities by which the preparation of the law was attended there was worked out a fresh allotment of seats to the several racial groups of the Empire, in proportion, roughly, to taxpaying capacity. The total number of seats was raised from 425 to 516. Their distribution among the races, as compared with that formerly existing, was arranged as follows:[668] _Before 1907_ _After 1907_ Germans of all parties 205 233 Czechs 81 108 Poles 71 80 South Slavs (Slovenes, Croats, Serbs) 27 37 Ruthenes 11 34 Italians 18 19 Roumanians 5 5 --- --- 418 516 [Footnote 668: For tables exhibiting comparatively the distribution of seats in 1867, 1873, 1896, and 1907, see W. Beaumont, Le suffrage universel en Autriche: la loi du 26 janvier 1907 in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1907.] The striking feature of this readjustment is, of course, the increased number of seats assigned to the non-German nationalities. In proportion strictly to population, the Germans still possess a larger number of seats than that to which they are entitled. But the aggregate is only 233, while the aggregate of Slavic seats is 259. Even if the former German-Italian _bloc_ were still effective it could control a total of only 257 votes; but, in point of fact, the Italians in the Reichsrath to-day are apt to act with the Slavs rather than with the Germans. After decision had been reached regarding the distribution of seats in accordance with races it remained to effect a distribution geographically among the provinces of the Empire. To each of the several provinces was assigned an aggregate quota which, in turn, (p. 471) was distributed within the province among the racial groups represented in the provincial population. The allotment made, in comparison with that prevailing under the law of 1896, was as follows: _Before 1907_ _After 1907_ Kingdom of Bohemia 110 130 Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, with the grand-duchy of Cracow 78 106 Archduchy of Lower Austria 46 64 Margravate of Moravia 43 49 Duchy of Styria 27 30 Princely County of Tyrol 21 25 Archduchy of Upper Austria 20 22 Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia 12 15 Duchy of Bukovina 11 14 Duchy of Carniola 11 12 Kingdom of Dalmatia 11 11 Duchy of Carinthia 10 10 Duchy of Salsburg 6 7 Margravate of Istria 5 6 Princely County of Görz and Gradisca 5 6 City of Trieste and its territory 5 5 Territory of Vorarlberg 4 4 --- --- 425 516 *523. Electoral Qualifications and Procedure.*--By the law of 1907 the class system of voting was abolished entirely in national elections, and in its stead was established general, equal, and direct manhood suffrage. With insignificant exceptions, every male citizen who has attained the age of twenty-four, and who, at the time the election is ordered, has resided during at least one year in the commune in which the right to vote is to be exercised, is qualified to vote for a parliamentary representative. And any male thirty years of age, or over, who has been during at least three years a citizen, and who is possessed of the franchise, is eligible to be chosen as a representative. Voting is by secret ballot, and an absolute majority of all votes cast is necessary for a choice. In default of such a majority there is a second ballot between the two candidates who at the first test received the largest number of votes. It is stipulated, further, that when so ordered by the provincial diet, voting shall be obligatory, under penalty of fine, and in the provinces of Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Silesia, Salsburg, Moravia, and Vorarlberg every elector is required by provincial regulation to appear at every parliamentary election in his district, and to present his ballot, the penalty for neglect (unless explained to the satisfaction of the proper magistrate) being a fine ranging from one to fifty crowns. In the House of Lords, where there was strong opposition to the (p. 472) principle of manhood suffrage, effort was made to introduce in the act of 1907 a provision for the conferring of a second vote upon all voters above the age of thirty-five. By the Emperor and ministry it was urged, however, that the injection of such a modification would wreck the measure, and when the lower chamber tacitly pledged itself to enact a law designed to prevent the "swamping" of the peers by Imperial appointment at the behest of a parliamentary majority, the plural voting project was abandoned.[669] [Footnote 669: As has been pointed out, the pledge was redeemed in 1907 by a measure fixing the minimum number of life peers at 150 and the maximum at 170. See p. 466.] So far as practicable, the electoral constituencies in the various provinces are arranged to preserve the distinction between urban and rural districts and to comprise racial groups that are essentially homogeneous. In regions, as Bohemia, where the population is especially mixed separate constituencies and registers are maintained for the electors of each nationality, and a man may vote on only the register of his own race and for a candidate of that race. Germans, thus, are obliged to vote for Germans, Czechs for Czechs, Poles for Poles; so that, while there may be a contest between a German Clerical and a German Liberal or between a Young Czech and a Radical Czech, there can be none between Germans and Czechs, or between Poles and Ruthenes. In general, each district returns but one representative. The 36 Galician districts, however, return two apiece. Each elector there, as elsewhere, votes for but one candidate, the device permitting the representation of minorities. The population comprising a constituency varies from 26,693 in Salsburg to 68,724 in Galicia. The average is 49,676.[670] [Footnote 670: On the electoral law of 1907 see W. Beaumont, Le suffrage universel en Autriche: la loi du 26 janvier 1907, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1907; H. Hantich, Le suffrage universel en Autriche, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Feb. 16, 1907; M. E. Zweig, La réforme électorale en Autriche, in _Revue du Droit Public_, April-June and July-Sept., 1907.] *524. The Reichsrath: Sessions and Procedure.*--By the law of 1867 no limit was fixed for the period of service of the parliamentary representative. The life of the Reichsrath, and consequently the tenure of the individual deputy, was terminated only by a dissolution. Under provision of an amendment of April 2, 1873, however, members of the lower chamber are elected for a term of six years, at the expiration of which period, as also in the event of a dissolution, a new election must be held. Representatives are indefinitely eligible for re-election. Vacancies are filled by special elections, which may be held at any time, according to procedure specified by law. Representatives receive a stipend of 20 crowns for each day's attendance, with an allowance for travelling expenses. The fundamental law prescribes that the Reichsrath shall be (p. 473) convened annually, "during the winter months when possible."[671] The Emperor appoints the president and vice-president of the Herrenhaus, from among the members of the chamber, and for the period of a session. The Abgeordnetenhaus elects from its members its president and vice-president. Normally, the sessions of both houses are public, though upon request of the president, or of at least ten members, and by a decision taken behind closed doors, each house possesses the right, in exceptional instances, to exclude spectators. Projects of legislation may be submitted by the Government or by the individual members of the chambers. Measures pass by majority vote; but no act is valid unless at the time of its passage there are present in the lower house as many as 100 members, and in the upper house as many as 40. A curious provision touching the relations of the two houses is that if, on a question of appropriation or of the size of a military contingent, no agreement can be reached between the two houses after prolonged deliberation, the smallest figure approved by either house shall be regarded as voted.[672] By decree of the Emperor the Reichsrath may at any time be adjourned, or the lower chamber dissolved. Ministers and chiefs of the central administration are entitled to take part in all deliberations, and to present their proposals personally or through representatives. Each house may, indeed, require a minister's attendance. Members of the chambers may not be held responsible for any vote cast; and for any utterances made by them they may be held responsible only by the house to which they belong. Unless actually apprehended in a criminal act, no member of either house may be arrested or proceeded against judicially during the continuance of a session, except by the consent of the chamber to which he belongs.[673] [Footnote 671: Law of December 21, 1867, concerning Imperial Representation, § 10. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 77.] [Footnote 672: Law of December 21, 1867, concerning Imperial Representation, § 13. Dodd, Ibid., I., 81.] [Footnote 673: For a collection of the rules of order of the Austrian Parliament see K. and O. Neisser, Die Geschäftsordnung des Abgeordnetenhaus des Reichsrates, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1909).] *525. The Reichsrath: Powers.*--The powers of the Reichsrath are, in general, those ordinarily belonging to a parliamentary body. According to fundamental law of 1867, they comprise all matters which relate to the rights, obligations, and interests of the provinces represented in the chambers, in so far as these matters are not required to be handled conjointly with the proper representatives of the Hungarian portion of the monarchy. The Reichsrath examines and ratifies or rejects commercial treaties, and likewise political treaties which place a fiscal burden on the Empire or any portion of it, impose (p. 474) obligations upon individual citizens, or involve any change of territorial status. It makes provision for the military and naval establishments. It enacts the budget and approves all taxes and duties. It regulates the monetary system, banking, trade, and communication. It legislates on citizenship, public health, individual rights, education, criminal justice and police regulation, the duties and interrelations of the provinces, and a wide variety of other things. It exercises the right of legalizing or annulling Imperial ordinances which, under urgent circumstances, may be promulgated by the Emperor with the provisional force of law when the chambers are not in session.[674] Such ordinances may not introduce any alteration in the fundamental law, impose any lasting burden upon the treasury, or alienate territory. They must be issued, if issued at all, under the signature of all of the ministers, and they lose their legal force if the Government does not lay them before the lower chamber within the first four weeks of its next ensuing session, or if either of the two houses refuses its assent thereto. Each of the houses may interpellate the ministers upon all matters within the scope of their powers, may investigate the administrative acts of the Government, demand information from the ministers concerning petitions presented to the houses, may appoint commissions, to which the ministers must give all necessary information, and may give expression to its views in the form of addresses or resolutions. Any minister may be impeached by either house.[675] [Footnote 674: Issued under warrant of the much-controverted Section 14. See p. 461.] [Footnote 675: Law of December 21, 1867, concerning Imperial Representation, § 21. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 83. A work of value is G. Kolmer, Parlament und Verfassung in Österreich (Vienna, 1909).] IV. POLITICAL PARTIES *526. Racial Elements in the Empire.*--The key to the politics of Austria is afforded by the racial composition of the Empire's population. In our own day there is a tendency, in consequence of the spread of socialism and of other radical programmes which leap across racial and provincial lines, toward the rise of Austrian parties which shall be essentially inter-racial in their constituencies. Yet at the elections of 1907--the first held under the new electoral law--of the twenty-six party affiliations which succeeded in obtaining at least one parliamentary seat all save possibly two comprised either homogeneous racial groups or factions of such groups. Fundamentally, the racial question in Austria has always been that of German _versus_ non-German. The original Austria was preponderantly German; the wealthiest, the best educated, the most widespread of the racial (p. 475) elements in the Empire to-day is the German; and by the Germans it has regularly been assumed that Austria is, and ought to be, essentially a German country.[676] In this assumption the non-German populations of the Empire have at no time acquiesced; and while they have never been able to combine long or effectively against the dominating Germanic element, they have sought persistently, each in its own way, to compel a fuller recognition of their several interests and rights. [Footnote 676: Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 95.] The nationalities represented within the Empire fall broadly into three great groups: the German, the Slavic, and the Latin. In an aggregate population of 26,107,304 in 1900 the Germans numbered 9,171,614, or somewhat more than 35 per cent; the Slavs, 15,690,000, or somewhat more than 60 per cent; and the Latins, 958,065, or approximately 3.7 per cent. The Germans, comprising the most numerous of the individual nationalities, occupy exclusively Upper Austria, Salsburg, and Vorarlberg, the larger portion of Lower Austria, north-western Carinthia, the north and center of Styria and Tyrol, and, in fact, are distributed much more generally over the entire Empire than is any one of the other racial elements. The Slavs are in two principal groups, the northern and the southern. The northern includes the Czechs and Slovaks, dwelling principally in Bohemia and Moravia, and numbering, in 1900, 5,955,397; the Poles, comprising a compact mass of 4,252,483 people in Galicia and Silesia; and the Ruthenes, numbering 3,381,570, in eastern Galicia and in Bukovina. The southern Slavic group includes the Slovenes, numbering 1,192,780, in Carniola, Görz, Gradisca, Istria, and Styria, and the Servians and Croats, numbering 711,380, in Istria and Dalmatia. The peoples of Latin stock are the Italians and Ladini (727,102), in Tyrol, Görz, Gradisca, Dalmatia, and Trieste, and the Roumanians (230,963) in Bukovina. Within many of the groups mentioned there is meager survival of political unity. There are German Clericals, German Progressives, German Radicals, German Agrarians; likewise Old Czechs, Young Czechs, Czech Realists, Czech Agrarians, Czech Clericals, and Czech Radicals. Austrian party history within the past fifty years comprises largely the story of the political contests among the several nationalities, and of the disintegration of these nationalities into a bewildering throng of clamorous party cliques. *527. Centralists and Federalists.*--The more important of the party groups of to-day trace their origins to the formative period in recent Austro-Hungarian constitutional history, 1860-1867. During this period the fundamental issue in the Empire was the degree of centralization which it was desirable, or possible, to achieve in the reshaping (p. 476) of the governmental system. On the one hand were the centralists, who would have bound the loosely agglomerated kingdoms, duchies, and territories of the Empire into a consolidated state. On the other were the federalists, to whom centralization appeared dangerous, as well as unjust to the Empire's component nationalities. Speaking broadly, the Germans, supported by the Italians, comprised the party of centralization; the Slavs, that of federalism. The establishment of the constitution of 1867, as well as of the Compromise with Hungary in the same year, was the achievement of the centralists, and with the completion of this gigantic task there gradually took form a compactly organized political party, variously known as the National German party, the German Liberals, or the Constitutionalists, whose watchwords were the preservation of the constitution and the Germanization of the Empire. For a time this party maintained the upper hand completely, but its ascendancy was menaced not only by the disaffected forces of federalism but by the continued tenseness of the clerical question and, after 1869, by intestine conflict. As was perhaps inevitable, the party split into two branches, the one radical and the other moderate. During the earlier months of 1870 the Radicals, under Hasner, were in control; but in their handling of the vexatious Polish and Bohemian questions they failed completely and, April 4, they gave place to the Moderates under the premiership of the Polish Count Potocki. The new ministry sought to govern in a conciliatory spirit and with the support of all groups, but its success was meager. February 7, 1871, a cabinet which was essentially federalist was constituted under Count Hohenwart. Its decentralizing policies, however, were of such a character that the racial question gave promise of being settled by the utter disintegration of the Empire, and after eight months it was dismissed. *528. Rule of the German Liberals, 1871-1879.*--With a cabinet presided over by Prince Adolf Auersperg the German Liberals then returned to power. Their tenure was prolonged to 1879 and might have been continued beyond that date but for the recurrence of factional strife within their ranks. The period was one in which some of the obstructionist groups, notably the Czechs, fell into division among themselves, so that the opposition which the Liberals were called upon to encounter was distinctly less effective than otherwise it might have been. At no time since 1867 had the Czechs consented to be represented in the Reichsrath, a body, indeed, which they had persisted in refusing to recognize as a legitimately constituted parliament of the Empire. During the early seventies a party of Young Czechs sprang up which advocated an abandonment of passive (p. 477) resistance and the substitution of parliamentary activity in behalf of the interests of the race. The Old Czechs were unprepared for such a shift of policy, and in 1873 they played directly into the hands of the Liberal government by refusing to participate in the consideration of the electoral reform by which the choice of representatives was taken from the provincial diets and vested in the four classes of provincial constituencies. For the carrying of this measure a two-thirds majority was required, and if the Czechs had been willing to vote at all upon it they might easily have compassed its defeat. As it was, the amendment was carried without difficulty. A tenure of power which not even the financial crisis of 1873 could break was, however, sacrificed through factional bickerings. Within both the ministry and the Reichsrath, the dominant party broke into three groups, and the upshot was the dissolution, February 6, 1879, of the ministry and the creation of a new one under the presidency of Count Taaffe, long identified with the Moderate element. Three months later the House of Representatives was dissolved. In the elections that followed the Liberals lost a total of forty-five seats, and therewith their position as the controlling party in both the Reichsrath and the nation. Taaffe retained the premiership, but his Liberal colleagues were replaced by Czechs, Poles, Clericals, and representatives indeed of pretty nearly all of the existing groups save the Germans.[677] [Footnote 677: As at first reconstituted, the ministry contained a German Liberal, but he soon resigned.] *529. The Taaffe Ministry, 1879-1893.*--The prolonged ministry of Count Taaffe comprises the second period of Austrian parliamentary history. Of notably moderate temper, Taaffe had never been a party man of the usual sort, and he entered office with an honest purpose to administer the affairs of the nation without regard to considerations of party or of race. The establishment of his reconstituted ministry was signalized by the appearance of Czech deputies for the first time upon the floor of the national parliament. The Taaffe government found its support in what came to be known as the Right--a quasi-coalition of Poles, Czechs, Clericals, and the Slavic and conservative elements generally.[678] It was opposed by the Left, comprising principally the German Liberals, In 1881 the various factions of the German party, impelled by the apprehension that German ascendancy might be lost forever, drew together again and entered upon a policy of opposition which was dictated purely and frankly by racial aspirations. (p. 478) Attempts to embarrass the Government by obstruction proved, however, only indifferently successful. In 1888 the party was once more reconstructed. [Footnote 678: In the Chamber the Czechs, Poles, and Clericals controlled each approximately 55 votes.] Among the diverse groups by which the Taaffe government was supported there was just one common interest, namely, the prevention of a return to power on the part of the German Liberals. Upon this preponderating consideration, and upon the otherwise divergent purposes of the Government groups, Taaffe built his system. Maintaining rigidly his determination to permit no radical alteration of the constitution, he none the less extended favors freely to the non-Germanic nationalities, and so contrived to prolong through nearly a decade and a half, by federalist support, an essentially centralist government. Government consisted largely, indeed, in perennial bargaining between the executive authorities on the one hand and the parliamentary groups on the other, and in the course of these bargainings it was ever the legislative chambers, not the Government, that lost ground. The bureaucracy increased its hold, the administrative organs waxed stronger, the power of the Emperor was magnified. The ministry became pre-eminently the ministry of the crown, and despite strictly observed constitutional forms the spirit of absolutism was largely rehabilitated.[679] [Footnote 679: The forcefully expressed view of an eminent Austrian authority, written during the parliamentary deadlock which marked the close of the last century, is of interest. "His [Taaffe's] prolonged ministry had decisive effects upon the political life of Austria. It rendered forever impossible a return to Germanizing centralism. It filled the administrative hierarchy with Slavs, who, remaining Slavs, placed at the service of their national propaganda their official influence. In combatting the Liberal party it restored the power of the court, of the aristocracy, of the Church, and it facilitated the obnoxious restoration of clericalism, by which Austria to-day is dominated. It at the same time aroused and corrupted the nationalities and the parties. It habituated them to give rein unceasingly to their ambitions and to seek to attain them less by their own force and labor than by intrigue. The public demoralization, illustrated to-day so clearly by the Austrian crisis, is properly the result of the Taaffe system." M. L. Eisenmann, in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XII., 177.] *530. The German Recovery: Badeni, 1895-1897.*--To the eventual breakdown of the Taaffe régime various circumstances contributed. Two of principal importance were the defection of the Young Czechs and the failure of the several attempts to draw to the support of the Government the moderate German Liberals. At the elections of 1891 the Young Czechs obtained almost the entire quota of Bohemian seats, and at the same time the Liberals recovered enough ground to give them the position of the preponderant group numerically in the lower chamber. Neither of these two parties could be persuaded to accord the (p. 479) Government its support, and during 1891-1893 Taaffe labored vainly to recover a working coalition. Finally, in 1893, as a last resource, the Government resolved to undermine the opposition, especially German Liberalism, by the abolition of the property qualification for voting in the cities and rural communes. The nature of Taaffe's electoral reform bill of 1893 has been explained elsewhere, and likewise the reason for its rejection.[680] Anticipating the defeat of the measure, the premier retired from office October 23, 1893. [Footnote 680: See p. 467.] The Germans now recovered, not their earlier power, but none the less a distinct measure of control. November 12 there was established, under Prince Windischgrätz a coalition ministry, comprising representatives of the German Liberals, the Poles, and the Clericals, and this cabinet was very successful until, in June, 1895, it was wrecked by the secession of the Liberals on a question of language reform in Styria. After four months, covered by the colorless ministry of Count Kielmansegg, Count Badeni became minister-president (October 4, 1895) and made up a cabinet, consisting largely of German Liberals, but bent upon an essentially non-partisan administration. The two tasks chiefly which devolved upon the Badeni ministry were the reform of the electoral system and the renewal of the decennial economic compromise with Hungary, to expire at the end of 1897. The first was accomplished, very ineffectively, through the electoral measure of 1896; the second, by reason of factional strife, was not accomplished at all. *531. The Language Question: Parliamentary Deadlock.*--The elections of 1897 marked the utter dissolution of both the United German Left and the coalition which had borne the designation of the Right. Among the 200 Germans elected to the Chamber there were distinguishable no fewer than eight groups; and the number of groups represented in the aggregate membership of 425 was at least twenty-four. Of these the most powerful were the Young Czechs, with 60 seats, and the Poles, with 59. Profiting by the recently enacted electoral law, the Socialists at this point made their first appearance in the Reichsrath with a total of 14 seats. Taking the Chamber as a whole, there was a Slavo-Clerical majority, although not the two-thirds requisite for the enactment of constitutional amendments. The radical opponents of the Government were represented by the 51 German Liberals only. But no one of the Slavic groups was disposed to accord its support save in return for favors received. In the attempt to procure for itself a dependable majority the Badeni government succeeded but in creating confusion twice confounded. The Young Czechs, whose support appeared (p. 480) indispensable, stipulated as a positive condition of that support that Czech should be recognized as an official language in Bohemia and Moravia, and by ordinances of April-May, 1897, the Government took it upon itself to meet this condition. Within the provinces named the two languages, Czech and German, were placed, for official purposes upon a common footing. The only result, however, was to drive the Germans, already hostile, to a settled course of parliamentary obstruction, and before the year was out the Badeni cabinet was compelled to retire. The Gautsch ministry which succeeded proposed to maintain the equality of the Czech and German tongues in Bohemia; wherefore the German Liberals persisted in their obstructionist policy and declared that they would continue to do so until the objectionable ordinances should have been rescinded. March 5, 1898, the Government promulgated a provisional decree in accordance with which in one portion of Bohemia the official tongue was to be Czech, in another German, and in the third the two together. But no one was satisfied and the ministry resigned. The coalition government of Count Thun Hohenstein which succeeded labored in the interest of conciliation, but with absolutely no success. Parliamentary sittings became but occasions for the display of obstructive tactics, and even for resort to violence, and legislation came to a standstill. By the use of every known device the turbulent German parties rendered impossible the passage of even the most necessary money bills, and the upshot was that, in the summer of 1898, the Government was obliged to fall back upon that extraordinary portion of the Austrian constitution, commonly known as Section 14, by which, in default of parliamentary legislation, the crown is authorized to promulgate ordinances with the force of law. The period of extra parliamentary government here inaugurated was destined to be extended through more than six years and to comprise one of the most remarkable chapters in recent political history. *532. The Nadir of Parliamentarism.*--Following the retirement of the Thun Hohenstein ministry, at the end of September, 1899, the government of Count Clary-Aldingen revoked the language decrees; but the parliamentary situation was not improved, for the Czechs resorted forthwith to the same obstructionist tactics of which the Germans had been guilty and the government had still to be operated principally on the basis of Section 14. A provisional government under Dr. Wittek, at the close of 1899, was followed by the ministry of Dr. Körber, established January 20, 1900; but all attempts at conciliation continued to be unavailing. In September, 1900, the Reichsrath was (p. 481) dissolved and the order for the new elections was accompanied by the ominous declaration of the Emperor that the present appeal to the nation would be the last constitutional means which would be employed to bring the crisis to an end. Amid widespread depression, threats of Hungarian independence, and rumors of an impending _coup d'état_, the elections took place, in January, 1901. The German parties realized the largest gains, but the parliamentary situation was not materially altered, and thereafter, until its fall, December 31, 1904, the Körber ministry continued to govern substantially without parliamentary assistance. In 1901-1902, by various promises, the premier induced the combatants to lay aside their animosities long enough to vote the yearly estimates, a military contingent, and certain much-needed economic reforms. But this was virtually the sole interruption of a six-year deadlock. *533. Electoral Reform and the Elections of 1907.*--With the establishment of the second Gautsch ministry, December 31, 1904, a truce was declared and interest shifted to the carrying out of the Imperial programme of electoral reform. From the proposed liberalization of the suffrage many of the party groups were certain to profit and others had at least a chance of doing so; and thus it came about that the great electoral law of 1907 was carried through its various stages under parliamentary conditions which were substantially normal. Its progress was attended by the fall, in April, 1906, of the Gautsch ministry and, six weeks later, by that of its provisional successor. But by the coalition government of Baron Beck (June 2, 1906 to November 8, 1908) the project was pushed to a successful conclusion, and in its final form the law was approved by the Emperor, January 26, 1907. The promulgation of the new electoral measure was followed, May 14, by a general election, the results of which may be tabulated as shown on the following page. Each of the twenty-six groups here enumerated maintained at the time of the election an independent party organization, although in the Chamber the representatives of certain of them were accustomed to act in close co-operation. To the clericals and conservatives of all shades fell an aggregate of 230 seats; but among the various groups of this type there has never been sufficient coherence to permit the formation of a compact conservative party. Among the liberal and radical groups lack of coherence was, and remains, still more pronounced. The most striking feature of the election of 1907 was the gains made by the Social Democrats and the Christian Socialists, to be explained largely by the extension of the franchise to the non-taxpaying and small taxpaying population. (p. 482) _Seats after _Seats in election of previous 1907_ Chamber_ Social Democrats 90 11 Christian Socialists 67 26 German Clericals 29 29 German Progressives 23 60 German Radicals 24 46 German Agrarians 21 4 Independent Pan-Germans 8 7 Pan-Germans 3 15 Polish Club 54 66 Polish Radicals 16 0 Polish Independent Socialists 3 0 Ruthenes 28 9 Jewish Zionists 3 0 Young Czechs 19 47 Old Czechs 6 3 Czech Realists 2 0 Czech Agrarians 25 5 Czech Clericals 19 2 Czech Radicals 10 8 Slovene Clericals 22 19 Slovene Liberals 3 6 Italian Liberals 4 12 Italian Clericals 10 6 Croats 9 7 Serbs 2 0 Roumanians 5 4 *534. The Elections of 1911.*--The truce by which the election of 1907 was accompanied was not of long duration, and November 8, 1908, the ministry of Baron Beck was driven by German obstructionism to resign. After three months as provisional premier Baron von Bienerth, former Minister of the Interior, made up a cabinet which included representatives of a number of parties and which, despite occasional readjustments of portfolios, exhibited a fair measure of stability throughout upwards of two years. In December, 1910, the Czechs and Poles precipitated a cabinet crisis in consequence of which the ministry was reconstructed (January 9, 1911) in such a manner as to strengthen the Slavic and weaken the Germanic element. But the forces of opposition were not appeased, and as a last resort the Government determined upon a dissolution and an appeal to the country. The results, however, were by no means those which were desired. At the general elections, which took place June 13 and 20, the Christian Socialists, from whom the Government had drawn its most consistent support, were roundly beaten, and June 26 Baron von Bienerth and his colleagues resigned. The ministry thereupon made up was presided (p. 483) over by Baron Gautsch. It, however, endured only until October 31, when it was succeeded by that of Count Stuergkh. The elections of 1911 were hotly contested. The 516 seats to be filled were sought by 2,987 candidates, representing no fewer than fifty-one parties and factions, and second ballotings were required in almost two-thirds of the constituencies. The Czechs returned with undiminished strength, and the German Radicals and Progressives realized substantial gains. The most notable feature, however, was the victory of the Social Democrats over the Christian Socialists, especially in the capital, where the quota of deputies of the one party was raised from ten to nineteen and that of the other was cut from twenty to four. The Christian Socialists, it must be observed, are not socialists in the ordinary meaning of the term. The party was founded by Dr. Lüger a few years ago in the hope that, despite the establishment of manhood suffrage in the Empire, the Social Democrats might yet be prevented from acquiring a primacy among the German parties. It is composed largely of clericals, and in tone and purpose it is essentially reactionary. By maintaining an active alliance with the German Clerical party it contrived to hold in check the Social Democracy throughout the larger portion of the period 1907-1911. But it was handicapped all the while by internal dissension, and the defeat which it suffered at the last elections has relegated it, at least for the time being, to a subordinate place.[681] [Footnote 681: On Austrian party politics see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 94-123; Drage, Austria-Hungary, Chaps, 1, 3, 12; K. Schwechler, Die österreichische Sozialdemokratie (Graz, 1907); S. Marmorek, L'Obstruction au parlement autrichien (Paris, 1908); and E. Benés, Le problème autrichien et la question tchèque; étude sur les luttes politiques des nationalités slaves en Autriche (Paris, 1908). Among valuable articles in periodicals may be mentioned: W. Beaumont, La crise du parlementarisme au Autriche; les élections législatives et la situation politique, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, March 15, 1901; K. Kramer, La situation politique en Autriche, ibid., October 15, 1901; G. L. Jaray, L'Autriche nouvelle: sentiments nationaux et préoccupations sociales, ibid., May 15 and Sept. 15, 1908, and La physionomie nouvelle de la question austro-hongroise, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Dec. 16, 1910; Kolmer, La vie politique et parlementaire en Autriche, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, July 10, 1911; and G. Blondel, Les dernières élections en Autriche-Hongrie, in _La Réforme Sociale_, Aug. 1 and 15, 1911.] V. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT *535. General Principles: the Ordinary Tribunals.*--All judicial power in the Austrian Empire is exercised, and all judgments and sentences are executed, in the name of the Emperor. Judges are appointed for life, by the Emperor or in his name, and they may be removed from (p. 484) office only under circumstances specified by law and by virtue of a formal judicial sentence. On taking the oath of office all judicial officials are required to pledge themselves to an inviolable observance of the fundamental laws. The Law of December 21, 1867, concerning the Judicial Power withholds from the courts the power to pronounce upon the validity of statutes properly promulgated, though they may render judgment on the validity of Imperial ordinances involved in cases before them.[682] With some exceptions, fixed by law, proceedings in both civil and criminal cases are required to be oral and public; and in all cases involving severe penalties, as well as in all actions arising from political crimes and misdemeanors and offenses committed by the press, the guilt or innocence of the accused must be determined by jury. [Footnote 682: Art. 7. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 86.] By the law of 1867 it is stipulated that there shall be maintained at Vienna a Supreme Court of Justice and Cassation (_Oberste Gerichts-und Kassationshof_) for all of the kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrath, and that the organization and jurisdiction of inferior courts shall be determined by law. Of inferior tribunals there have been established 9 higher provincial courts (_Oberlandesgerichte_),[683] 74 provincial and district courts (_Landes-und Kreisgerichte_), and 96 county courts (_Bezirksgerichte_). The provincial and district courts and the county courts, together with a group of jury courts maintained in connection with the provincial and district tribunals, are courts of first instance; the higher provincial courts and the Supreme Court exercise a jurisdiction that is almost wholly appellate. There exist also special courts for commercial, industrial, military, fiscal, and other varieties of jurisdiction. [Footnote 683: Located at Vienna, Graz, Trieste, Innsbrück, Zara, Prague, Brünn, Cracow, and Lemberg.] *536. The Imperial Court.*--In Austria, as in France and other continental countries, cases affecting administration and the administrative officials are withheld from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and are committed to special administrative tribunals. By law of 1867 provision was made for an Imperial Court (_Reichsgericht_), to exercise final decision in conflicts of jurisdiction between the two sets of courts and, in general, in all disputed questions of public law, after the manner of the Court of Conflicts in France. The Imperial Court was organized by law of April 18, 1869. It sits at Vienna, and it is composed of a president and deputy president, appointed by the Emperor for life, and of twelve members and four substitutes, also appointed for life by the Emperor upon nomination by the Reichsrath. It decides finally all conflicts of competence (p. 485) between the administrative and the ordinary judicial tribunals, between a provincial diet and the Imperial authorities, and between the independent public authorities of the several provinces of the Empire. Very important in a country so dominated by a bureaucracy as is Austria is the power which by fundamental law is vested in the Imperial Court to pass final verdict upon the merits of all complaints of citizens arising out of the alleged violation of political rights guaranteed to them by the constitution, after the matter shall have been made the subject of an administrative decision. The purpose involved is to afford the citizen who, believing himself deprived of his constitutional rights, has failed to obtain redress in the administrative courts, an opportunity to have his case reviewed by a tribunal constituted with special view to permanence, independence, and impartiality. High-handed administrative acts which are covered by statute, however, are beyond its reach, for, like all Austrian tribunals, it is forbidden to question the validity of a duly promulgated law.[684] [Footnote 684: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 84-85.] *537. The Provincial Governments: Composition of the Diet.*--Each of the seventeen political divisions of the Empire has a government of its own, established on the basis of its Landesordnung, or provincial constitution. The executive, for affairs that are considered strictly divisional, consists of a provincial council, the _Landesausschuss_, composed of the president of the diet (nominated by the Emperor) as _ex-officio_ chairman and from four to eight members variously elected within the province. Imperial interests are specially represented in the province, however, by a _Statthalter_, or _Landespräsident_, appointed by the crown, and independent of local control. Functions of legislation are vested in a Landtag, or diet. The provincial diet of the modern type came into being under the operation of the Imperial diploma of October 20, 1860 (superseded by that of February 26, 1861), replacing the ancient assembly of estates which in most provinces had persisted until 1848. From 1860 onwards diets were established in one after another of the provinces, until eventually all were so equipped. Originally the diets were substantially uniform in respect to both composition and powers. Aside from certain _ex-officio_ members, they were composed of deputies chosen for six years by four electoral curiæ: the great proprietors, the chambers of commerce, the towns, and the rural communes; and, until 1873, one of their principal functions was the election of the provincial delegation in the lower house of the Reichsrath. Each of the seventeen provincial diets as to-day constituted consists of a single chamber, and in most instances the body is composed of (1) the archbishops (p. 486) and bishops of the Catholic and Orthodox Greek churches; (2) the rectors of universities, and, in Galicia, the rector of the technical high school of Lemberg and the president of the Academy of Sciences of Cracow; (3) the representatives of great estates, elected by all landowners paying land taxes of not less than 100, 200, 400, or 500 crowns, according to the provinces in which their estates are situated; (4) the representatives of towns, elected by citizens who possess municipal rights or pay a stipulated amount of direct taxes; (5) the representatives of boards of commerce and industry, chosen by the members of these bodies; and (6) representatives of the rural communes, elected in eight provinces directly, in the others indirectly, by deputies (Wahlmänner) returned by all inhabitants who pay direct taxes to the amount of 8 crowns yearly. In a few of the provinces there is, besides these, a general electoral class composed of all qualified male subjects of the state over twenty-four years of age;[685] and there are some other variations, as for example, in Moravia, where, by a law of November 27, 1905, the proportional system of representation was introduced. The diets vary in membership from 26 in Vorarlberg and 30 in Görz and Gradisca to 151 in Moravia, 161 in Galicia, and 242 in Bohemia. The deputies are elected in all cases for a period of six years, and the diets assemble annually. But a session may be closed, and the diet may be dissolved, at any time by the presiding officer, under the direction of the Emperor. [Footnote 685: When the class system of voting for members of the Reichsrath was on the point of being abolished by the law of January 26, 1907, there was raised the question as to whether a similar step should not be taken in respect to provincial elections. It was generally agreed, however, that the absence of an aristocratic upper chamber in the provincial diet renders the class system within the province not wholly undesirable. The provinces were encouraged to liberalize their franchise regulations, but not to abandon the prevailing electoral system. The province of Lower Austria led the way by increasing the membership of its diet from 79 to 127, to be elected as follows: 58 by manhood suffrage throughout the province, 31 by the rural communes, 16 by the large landholders, 15 by the towns, and 4 by the chambers of commerce. Two bishops and the rector of the University of Vienna were continued as members.] *538. Functions of the Diet.*--The powers of the diets are not enumerated, but, rather, are residual. By fundamental law of 1867 it is stipulated that "all matters of legislation other than those expressly reserved to the Reichsrath by the present law belong within the power of the Provincial Diets of the kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrath and are constitutionally regulated by such Diets."[686] In certain matters, naturally those of an (p. 487) essentially local character, the diet may act with absolute freedom, save that it is within the competence of the Emperor to veto any of its measures. In other matters, such as education and finance, which fall within the range of the Reichsrath's competence, the powers of the diet are limited and subsidiary. A policy very generally pursued has been that of formulating at Vienna general regulations for the entire Empire, leaving to the diets the task of devising legislation of a local and specific character for the execution of these regulations; though it can hardly be maintained that the results have been satisfactory. The diets are not infrequently radical, and even turbulent, bodies, and it has been deemed expedient ordinarily by the Imperial authorities to maintain a close watch upon their proceedings. [Footnote 686: Law of December 21, 1867, concerning Imperial Representation, § 12. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 79.] *539. The Commune.*--Throughout the Empire the vital unit of local government is the commune. As is true of the province, the commune is an administrative district, and one of its functions is that of serving as an agency of the central government in the conduct of public affairs. Fundamentally, however, the commune is an autonomous organism, rooted in local interest and tradition. As such, it exercises broad powers of community control. It makes provision for the safety of person and property, for the maintenance of the local peace, for the supervision of traffic, for elementary and secondary education, and for a variety of other local interests. Except in respect to affairs managed by the commune as agent of the Imperial government, the local authorities are exempt from discipline at the hand of their superiors, and, indeed, an eminent Austrian authority has gone so far as to maintain that the communes of Austria possess a larger independent competence than do the communes of any other European state.[687] [Footnote 687: J. Redlich, Das Wesen der österreichischen Kommunalverfassung (Leipzig, 1910).] Except in the case of some of the larger towns, which have special constitutions, the rural and urban communes of the Empire are organized upon the same pattern. The executive authority is vested in an elective committee, or council, presided over by a _Vorsteher_, or burgomaster, chosen from the members of the committee. The _Vorsteher_ is not removable by the central authorities, and over his election they possess no control. In certain of the towns the place of the communal committee is taken by a corporation. In every commune there is an assembly (the _Gemeindevertretung_), the members of which are elected for three (in Galicia six) years by all resident citizens who are payers of a direct tax. For the purpose of electing assemblymen the voters are divided into three classes, very much as under the (p. 488) Prussian electoral system, and this arrangement, indeed, comprises virtually the only non-democratic aspect of the communal constitution. In Galicia, Styria, and Bohemia there exists also a district assembly, elected for three years (in Galicia six) and made up of representatives of great estates, the most highly taxed industries and trades, towns and markets, and rural communes. A committee of this body, known as the _Bezirksausschuss_, administers the affairs of the district. CHAPTER XXVI (p. 489) THE GOVERNMENT AND PARTIES OF HUNGARY I. THE CONSTITUTION *540. Antiquity.*--By reason of both its antiquity and its adaptability to varying conditions, the constitution of the kingdom of Hungary deserves to be considered one of the most remarkable instruments of its kind. Like the fundamental law of England, it is embodied in a maze of ancient statutes and customs, and it is the distinctive creation of a people possessed of a rare genius for politics and government. On the documentary side its history is to be traced at least to the Golden Bull of Andrew II., promulgated in 1222; though that instrument, like the contemporary Great Charter in England, comprised only a confirmation of national liberties that were already old.[688] Under Hapsburg domination, from the early sixteenth century onwards, the fundamental political system and the long established laws of the Hungarian kingdom were repeatedly guaranteed. Much of the time they were, in practice, disregarded; but the nationalistic vigor of the Hungarian people invested them with unlimited power of survival, and even during the reactionary second quarter of the nineteenth century they were but held in suspense. [Footnote 688: There is an interesting comparative study of the _Bulla Aurea_ and the Great Charter in E. Hantos, The Magna Carta of the English and of the Hungarian Constitution (London, 1904).] *541. Texts: the "March Laws."*--In large part, the constitution to-day in operation took final form in a series of measures enacted by the Hungarian parliament during the uprising of 1848. Thirty-one laws, in all, were at that time passed, revising the organization of the legislative chambers, widening the suffrage, creating a responsible cabinet, abolishing feudal survivals, and modernizing, in general, the institutions of the kingdom. The broad lines which remained were those marked out in the ancient constitutional order; the new measures merely supplemented, revised, and imparted definite form to pre-existing laws, customs, and jealously guarded rights. Not all of these inherited constitutional elements, however, were included in the new statutes; and to this day it is true that in Hungary, as in (p. 490) Great Britain, a considerable portion of the constitution has never been put into written form. The fate of the measures of 1848 was for a time adverse. The Austrian recovery in 1849 remanded Hungary to the status of a subject province, and it was not until 1867, after seven years of arduous experimentation, that the constitution of 1848 was permitted again to come into operation. The Ausgleich involved as one of its fundamentals a guarantee for all time of the laws, constitution, legal independence, freedom, and territorial integrity of Hungary and its subordinate countries. And throughout all of the unsettlement and conflict which the past half-century has brought in the Austro-Hungarian world the constitution of kingdom and empire alike has stood firm against every shock. The documents in which, chiefly, the written constitution is contained are: (1) Law III. of 1848 concerning the Formation of a Responsible Hungarian Ministry; (2) Law IV. of 1848 concerning Annual Sessions of the Diet; (3) Law XXXIII. of 1874 concerning the Modification and Amendment of Law V. of 1848, and of the Transylvanian Law II. of 1848; and (4) Law VII. of 1885 altering the organization of the Table of Magnates.[689] [Footnote 689: The texts of all of the fundamental laws of Hungary at present in operation are printed in G. Steinbach, Die ungarischen Verfassungsgesetze (3d ed., Vienna, 1900). English translations of the more important are in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 93-111. The standard treatise on the Hungarian constitutional system is S. Rádo-Rotheld, Die ungarische Verfassung (Berlin, 1898), upon which is based A. de Bertha, La constitution hongroise (Paris, 1898). In both of these works the Magyar domination in Hungary is regarded with favor. A readable book is A. de Bertha, La Hongrie moderne de 1849 à 1901; étude historique (Paris, 1901). An older treatise, in three volumes, is A. von Virozil, Das Staatsrecht des Königsreichs Ungarn (Pest, 1865-1866). Valuable works of more recent publication include G. Steinbach, Die ungarischen Verfassungsgesetze (Vienna, 1906); A. Timon, Ungarische Verfassungs-und Rechtsgeschichte (2d ed., Berlin, 1908); H. Marczoll, Ungarisches Verfassungsrecht (Tübingen, 1909); and especially G. von Ferdinandy, Staats und Verwaltungsrecht des Königreichs Ungarn und seiner Nebenländer (Hanover, 1909). Worthy of mention is P. Matter, La constitution hongroise, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, July 15, 1889, and April 15, 1890. Excellent discussions for English readers will be found in J. Andrássy, The Development of Hungarian Constitutional Liberty (London, 1908); C. M. Knatchbull-Hugessen, The Political Evolution of the Hungarian Nation (London, 1908); and P. Alden (ed.), Hungary of To-day (London and New York, 1910). The celebration, in 1896, of the thousandth anniversary of the establishment of the Magyars in Europe was made the occasion of the publication of a multitude of more or less popular books devoted, as a rule, to a review of Hungarian national development. Among them may be mentioned: A. Vambéry, Hungary in Ancient and Modern Times (London, 1897); R. Chélard, La Hongrie millénaire (Paris, 1906); and M. Gelléri, Aus der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart des tausendjährigen Ungarn (Budapest, 1896).] II. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY (p. 491) *542. The Working Executive.*--The constitutional arrangements respecting the executive branch of the Hungarian government are set forth principally in Law III. of 1848 "concerning the Formation of a Responsible Hungarian Ministry." The king attains his position _ipso jure_, by reason of being Emperor of Austria, without the necessity of any distinct act of public law. Within six months of his accession at Vienna he is crowned monarch of Hungary at Budapest, in a special ceremony in which is used the crown sent by Pope Sylvester II. upwards of a thousand years ago to King Stephen. The new sovereign is required to proffer Parliament an "inaugural certificate," as well as to take a coronation oath, to the effect that he will maintain the fundamental laws and liberties of the country; and both of these instruments are incorporated among the officially published documents of the realm. The entire proceeding partakes largely of the character of a contractual arrangement between nation and sovereign. As in Austria, the powers of the crown are exercised very largely through the ministry. And, by reason of the peculiar safeguards in the Hungarian laws against royal despotism, as well as the all but uninterrupted absence of the king from the dominion, the ministry at Budapest not only constitutes the Hungarian executive in every real sense, but it operates on a much more purely parliamentary basis than does its counterpart at Vienna. "His Majesty," says the law of 1848, "shall exercise the executive power in conformity with law, through the independent Hungarian ministry, and no ordinance, order, decision, or appointment shall have force unless it is countersigned by one of the ministers residing at Budapest."[690] Every measure of the crown must be countersigned by a minister; and every minister is immediately and actually responsible to Parliament for all of his official acts. [Footnote 690: Law III. of 1848, § 3. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 94.] *543. Composition and Status of the Ministry.*--The ministry consists of a president of the council, or premier, and the heads of nine departments, as follows: Finance, National Defense, Interior, Education and Public Worship, Justice, Industry and Commerce, Agriculture, the Ministry for Croatia and Slavonia, and the Ministry near the King's Person. The last-mentioned portfolio exists by virtue of the constitutional requirement that "one of the ministers shall always be in attendance upon the person of His Majesty, and shall take part in all affairs which are common to Hungary and the hereditary provinces, and in such affairs he shall, under his responsibility, represent Hungary."[691] All ministers are appointed by the king, (p. 492) on nomination of the premier. All have seats in Parliament and must be heard in either chamber when they desire to speak. They are bound, indeed, to attend the sessions of either house when requested, to submit official papers for examination, and to give "proper explanations" respecting governmental policies. They may be impeached by vote of a majority of the lower chamber, in which event the trial is held before a tribunal of twelve judges chosen by secret ballot by the upper house from among its own members. Inasmuch, however, as the lower house has acquired the power by a simple vote of want of confidence to compel a cabinet to resign, the right of impeachment possesses in practice small value. The ministry is required to submit once a year to the lower house for its examination and approval a statement of the income and needs of the country, together with an account of the income administered by it during the past twelve months.[692] [Footnote 691: Law III. of 1848, § 13. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 94.] [Footnote 692: Law III. of 1848, § 37. Ibid., I., 97.] III. PARLIAMENT--THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM *544. The Table of Magnates.*--The Hungarian parliament consists of two houses, whose official designations are _Förendihaz_--Table, or Chamber, of Magnates--and _Képviselöház_, or Chamber of Deputies. The upper house is essentially a perpetuation of the ancient Table of Magnates which, in the sixteenth century, began to sit separately as an aristocratic body made up of the great dignitaries of the kingdom, the Catholic episcopate (also, after 1792, that of the Orthodox Greek Church), the "supreme courts," and the adult sons of titled families. The reforms of 1848 left the Chamber untouched, though its composition was modified slightly in 1885.[693] At the session of 1910-1911 it contained 16 archdukes of the royal family (eighteen years of age or over); 15 state dignitaries; 2 presidents of the High Courts of Appeal; 42 archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches; 13 representatives of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Unitarian faiths; 236 members of the hereditary aristocracy (i.e., those of the whole number of the nobility who pay a land tax to the amount of at least 6,000 crowns annually); 3 members elected by the provincial diet of Croatia; and 60 life peers, appointed by the crown or chosen by the Chamber of Magnates itself--a total of 387.[694] The membership is therefore exceedingly complex, resting on the (p. 493) various principles of hereditary right, _ex-officio_ qualification, royal nomination, and election. In practice the upper house is distinctly subordinate to the lower, to which alone the ministers are responsible. Any member may acquire, by due process of election, a seat in the lower chamber, and the privilege is one of which the more ambitious peers are not reluctant to avail themselves. Upon election to the lower house a peer's right to sit in the upper chamber is, of course, suspended; but when the term of service in the popular branch has expired, the prior right is revived automatically. [Footnote 693: Law VII. of 1885 altering the Organization of the Table of Magnates. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 100-105.] [Footnote 694: The number is, of course, variable. The old Table of Magnates was a very large body, consisting of more than 800 members.] *545. The Chamber of Deputies: the Franchise.*--By law of 1848, amended in 1874, it is stipulated that the Chamber of Deputies, historically descended from the ancient Table of Nuncios, shall consist of 453 members, "who shall enjoy equal voting power, and who shall be elected in accordance with an apportionment made on the basis of population, territory, and economic conditions."[695] Of the total number of members, 413 are representatives of Hungary proper and 40 are delegates of the subordinate kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia. This kingdom possesses its own organs of government, including a unicameral diet which exercises independent legislative power in all internal affairs. Its forty deputies take part in the proceedings at Budapest only when subjects are under consideration which are of common concern to all of the countries of St. Stephen's crown, such as questions pertaining to finance, war, communications, and relations with Austria.[696] [Footnote 695: Law V. of 1848 concerning the Election of Representatives, § 5. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 105.] [Footnote 696: On the status of the Croatian kingdom see p. 507.] The election of deputies is governed by an elaborate statute of November 10, 1874, by which were perpetuated the fundamentals of the electoral law of 1848. In respect to procedure, the system was further amended by a measure of 1899. Qualifications for the exercise of the suffrage are based on age, property, taxation, profession, official position, and ancestral privileges. Nominally liberal, they are, in actual operation, notoriously illiberal. The prescribed age for an elector is twenty years, indeed, as compared with twenty-four in Austria; but the qualifications based upon property-holding are so exacting that they more than offset the liberality therein involved. These qualifications--too complicated to be enumerated here--vary according as they arise from capital, industry, occupation, or property-holding. With slight restrictions, the right to vote is possessed without regard to property or income, by members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, professors, notaries public, (p. 494) engineers, surgeons, druggists, graduates of agricultural schools, foresters, clergymen, chaplains, and teachers. On the other hand, state officials, soldiers in active service, customs employees, and the police have no vote; servants, apprenticed workingmen, and agricultural laborers are carefully excluded; and there are the usual disqualifications for crime, bankruptcy, guardianship, and deprivation by judicial process. In an aggregate population of approximately 20,000,000 to-day there are not more than 1,100,000 electors. *546. The Magyar Domination.*--The explanation of this state of affairs is to be sought in the ethnographical composition of Hungary's population. Like Austria, Hungary contains a _mélange_ of races and nationalities. The original Hungarians are the Magyars, and by the Magyar element attempt has been made always to preserve as against the affiliated German and Slavic peoples an absolute superiority of social, economic, and political power. The Magyars occupy almost exclusively the more desirable portion of the country, i.e., the great central plain intersected by the Danube and the Theiss, where they preponderate decidedly in as many as nineteen counties. Clustered around them, and in more or less immediate touch with kindred peoples beyond the borders, are the Germans and the Slavs--the Slovaks in the mountains of the north, the Ruthenes on the slopes of the Carpathians, the Serbs on the southeast, and the Croats on the southwest. When the census of 1900 was taken the total population of Hungary (including Croatia-Slavonia) was 19,254,559. Of this number 8,742,301 were Magyars; 8,029,316 were Slavs; 2,135,181 were Germans; and 397,761 were of various minor racial groups. To put it differently, the Magyars numbered 8,742,301; the non-Magyars, 10,512,258. The fundamental fault of the Hungarian electorate is that it has been shaped, and is deliberately maintained, in the interest of a race which comprises numerically but 45.4 per cent of the country's population.[697] So skillfully, indeed, have electoral qualifications and electoral proceedings been devised in the Magyar interest that the non-Magyar majority has but meager representation, and still less influence, at Budapest.[698] Even in Hungary proper the electorate in 1906 comprised but 24.4 per cent of the male population over twenty years of age; and, despite the disqualifications that have been mentioned one-fourth of the men who vote are officials or employees of the state. [Footnote 697: It is but fair to say that in Hungary proper the Magyar percentage in 1900 was 51.4.] [Footnote 698: Of the 413 representatives of Hungary at Budapest in 1909, but 26 were non-Magyars, and after the elections of June, 1910, but 7.] *547. The Demand for Electoral Reform: the Franchise Reform Bill (p. 495) of 1908.*--In recent years, especially since the Austrian electoral reform of 1906-1907, there has been in Hungary an increasingly insistent demand that the Magyar parliamentary hegemony be overthrown, or at least that there be assured to the non-Magyar peoples something like a proportionate share of political influence. As early as 1905 the recurrence of legislative deadlocks at Budapest influenced Francis Joseph to ally himself with the democratic elements of the kingdom and to declare for manhood suffrage; and in the legislative programme of the Fejérváry government, made public October 28, 1905, the place of principal importance was assigned to this reform. Fearing the swamping of the popular chamber by the Slavs and Germans, the Magyars steadily opposed all change, and for the time being the mere threat on the part of the Government was sufficient to restore tolerable, if not normal, parliamentary conditions. The Wekerle coalition cabinet of 1900 announced electoral reform as one of its projected tasks, but as time elapsed it became apparent that no positive action was likely to be taken. During 1907 and 1908 riotous demonstrations on the part of the disappointed populace were frequent, and at last, November 11, 1908, Count Andrássy, Minister of the Interior, introduced in the Chamber the long-awaited Franchise Reform Bill. The measure fell far short of public expectation. It was drawn, as Count Andrássy himself admitted, in such a manner as not "to compromise the Magyar character of the Hungarian state." After a fashion, it conceded manhood suffrage. But, to the end that the Magyar hegemony might be preserved, it imposed upon the exercise of the franchise such a number of restrictions and assigned to plural voting such an aggregate of weight that its concessions were regarded by those who were expected to be benefited by it as practically valueless. The essentials of the measure were: (1) citizens unable to read and write Hungarian should be excluded from voting directly, though they might choose one elector for every ten of their number, and each elector so chosen should be entitled to one vote; (2) every male citizen able to read and write Hungarian should be invested, upon completing his twenty-fourth year and fulfilling a residence requirement of twelve months, with one vote; (3) electors who had passed four standards of a secondary school,[699] or who paid yearly a direct tax amounting to at least twenty crowns ($4.16), or who fulfilled various other conditions, should be entitled to two votes; and (4) electors who had completed the course of secondary instruction, or who paid a direct tax of 100 crowns (approximately $21), should (p. 496) be possessed of three votes. As before, voting was to be oral and public. In the preamble of the measure the cynical observation was offered that "the secret ballot protects electors in dependent positions only in so far as they break their promises under the veil of secrecy." It was announced that the passage of the bill would be followed by the presentation of a scheme for the redistribution of seats. [Footnote 699: Equivalent to the completion of one-half of the course of secondary instruction.] *548. Rejection of the Bill.*--According to calculations of the _Neue Freie Presse_, the effect of the measure would have been to increase the aggregate body of electors from 1,100,000 to 2,600,000, and the number of votes to something like 4,000,000. The number of persons entitled to three votes was estimated at 200,000; to two votes, at 860,000; to one vote, at 1,530,000; to no vote, at 1,270,000. An aggregate of 1,060,000 persons in the first two classes would cast 2,320,000 votes; an aggregate of 2,800,000 in the last two would cast 1,530,000 votes. The number of persons participating in parliamentary elections would be more than doubled, but political power would remain where it was already lodged. The measure would have operated, indeed, to strengthen the Magyar position, and while the Germans would have profited somewhat by it, the Slavs would have lost largely such power as they at present possess. Based as the scheme was upon a curious elaboration of the educational qualification, it was recognized instantly, both in the kingdom and outside, as an instrument of deliberate Magyar domination. Among the Slavic populations the prevalence of illiteracy is such that the number of persons who could attain the possession of even one direct vote would be insignificant. By the Socialists, and by the radical and Slavic elements generally, the scheme was denounced as a sheer caricature of the universal, equal, and direct suffrage for which demand had been made. Upon the introduction of the bill parliamentary discord broke out afresh, and through 1909 there was a deadlock which effectually prevented the enactment of even the necessary measures of finance. In January, 1910, the sovereign at last succeeded in securing a new ministry, presided over by Count Hedérváry, and in the programme of this Government the introduction of manhood suffrage was accorded a place of principal importance. June 26, 1910, the Speech from the Throne, at the opening of the newly elected parliament, announced that a franchise bill would be submitted "on the basis of universal suffrage and in complete maintenance of the unitary national character of the Hungarian state." Various circumstances co-operated, however, to impose delay and, despite the sovereign's reiterated interest in the reform, no action as yet has been taken. The Hungarian franchise remains the most illiberal and the most antiquated in Europe. The (p. 497) racial situation seems utterly to preclude the possibility of a reform that will be in all respects satisfactory; indeed, it seems almost to preclude the possibility of reform at all. Yet, that the pressure will be continued until eventually there shall be an overhauling of the present inadequate system can hardly be doubted.[700] [Footnote 700: On the question of the Hungarian suffrage see S. Aberdam, La crise hongroise, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Oct. 10, 1909, and Les récentes crises politiques en Hongrie, in _Revue des Sciences Politiques_, May-June and July-Aug., 1912; G. Louis-Jaray, Le suffrage universel en Hongrie, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, February 16, 1909; R. Henry, La crise hongroise, ibid., June 1, 1910; J. Mailath, Les élections générales hongroises, ibid., Aug. 16, 1910, and The Hungarian Elections, in _Contemporary Review_, Oct., 1910; F. de Gerando, Le radicalisme hongroise, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, July, 1911; A. Duboscq, La réforme électorale en Hongrie, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, July 1, 1912; S. Huszadik, La Hongrie contemporaine et le suffrage universel (Paris, 1909); and B. Auerbach, Races et nationalités en Autriche-Hongrie (2d ed., Paris, 1910).] *549. Electoral Procedure.*--Elections are conducted in each town or _comitat_ (county) by a central electoral committee of at least twelve members, chosen by the municipal council of the town or by the general council of the _comitat_. The list of voters in each district is drawn up by a sub-committee of this body. When an election is to be held, the Minister of the Interior fixes, thirty days in advance, a period of ten days during which the polling must be completed. As in Great Britain, the elections do not take place simultaneously, and a candidate defeated in one constituency may stand, and possibly be successful, in another. All polling within a particular town or _comitat_, however, is concluded within one day. Candidates may be nominated by any ten electors of the district, and candidacies may be declared until within thirty minutes of the hour (eight o'clock A. M.) for the polling to begin. Voting is everywhere public and oral. Each elector, after giving his name and establishing his identity, simply proclaims in a loud voice the name of the candidate for whom he desires to have his vote recorded. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority, the central committee fixes a date (at least fourteen days distant) for a second polling, on which occasion the contest lies between the two candidates who at the first balloting polled the largest number of votes. Prior to a law of 1899 defining jurisdiction in electoral matters, Hungarian elections were tempestuous, and not infrequently scandalous. Beginning with the elections of 1901, however, electoral manners have shown considerable improvement; though ideal conditions can hardly be realized until oral voting shall have been replaced by the secret ballot.[701] Any elector who has attained the age of twenty-four, (p. 498) is a registered voter, and can speak Magyar (the official language of Hungarian parliamentary proceedings) is eligible as a candidate. Deputies receive a stipend of 4,800 crowns a year, with an allowance of 1,600 crowns for house rent. [Footnote 701: Seatus Viator, Corruption and Reform in Hungary: a Study of Electoral Practice (London, 1911).] *550. Parliamentary Organization and Procedure.*--The national parliament assembles in regular session once a year at Budapest. Following a general election, the Chamber of Deputies meets, under the presidency of its oldest member, after a lapse of time (not exceeding thirty days) fixed by the royal letters of convocation. The Chamber of Magnates being convoked by the crown at the same date, all members repair to the royal palace to hear the Speech from the Throne, which is delivered by the king in person or by an especially appointed royal commissioner.[702] The lower chamber then passes upon the validity of the election of its members, though by law of 1899 the actual exercise of this jurisdiction is committed in large part to the Royal High Court.[703] The president and vice-president of the Chamber of Magnates are appointed by the king from the members of that house; the secretaries are elected by the house from its own members, by secret ballot. The lower house elects, from its members, all of its officials--a president, two vice-presidents, and a number of secretaries. The presidents of the two houses are chosen for the entire period of the parliament; all other officials are chosen annually at the beginning of a session. [Footnote 702: King Francis Joseph I. has been absent upon this important occasion but once since 1867. Apponyi, in Alden, Hungary of To-day, 166.] [Footnote 703: Ibid., 166-175.] Each house is authorized, at its first annual session after an election, to adopt an order of business and to make the necessary regulations for the maintenance of peace and propriety in its deliberations. The president, with the aid of sergeants-at-arms, is charged with the strict enforcement of all such rules. Sittings of the two houses are required to be public, but spectators who disturb the proceedings may be excluded. The maximum life of a parliament was raised, in 1886, from three years to five. It is within the power of the king, however, not only to extend or to adjourn the annual session, but to dissolve the lower chamber before the expiration of the five-year period. In the event of a dissolution, orders are required to be given for a national election, and these orders must be so timed that the new parliament may be assembled within, at the most, three months after the dissolution. And there is the further requirement that, in the event of a dissolution before the budget shall have (p. 499) been voted for the ensuing year, the convocation of the new parliament shall be provided for within such a period as will permit the estimates for the succeeding year to be considered before the close of the current year. *551. The Powers of Parliament: the Parliamentary System.*--In the Hungarian constitutional system Parliament is in a very real sense supreme. The king can exercise his prerogatives only through ministers who are responsible to the lower chamber, and all arrangements pertaining to the welfare of the state fall within the competence of the legislative branch. Within Parliament it is the Chamber of Deputies that preponderates. Aside from the king and ministry, it alone enjoys the power of initiating legislation; and the opposition with which the Chamber of Magnates may be disposed to meet its measures invariably melts away after a show of opinion has been made. By a simple majority vote in the lower chamber a minister may be impeached for bribery, negligence, or any act detrimental to the independence of the country, the constitution, individual liberty, or property rights. Trial is held before a tribunal composed of men chosen by secret ballot by the Chamber of Magnates from its own members. For the purpose thirty-six members in all are required to be elected. Of the number, twelve may be rejected by the impeachment commission of the lower house, and twelve others by the minister or ministers under impeachment. Those remaining, at least twelve in number, try the case. Procedure is required to be public and the penalty to be "fixed in proportion to the offense."[704] [Footnote 704: Law III. of 1848 concerning the Formation of a Responsible Hungarian Ministry, §§ 33-34. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 97.] The statement which has sometimes been made that the parliamentary system operates to-day in the kingdom of Hungary in a fuller measure than in any other continental country requires qualification. Nominally, it is true, an unfavorable vote in the Deputies upon a Government measure or action involves the retirement of a minister, or of the entire cabinet, unless the crown is willing to dissolve the Chamber and appeal to the country; and no Government project of consequence can be carried through without parliamentary approval. Practical conditions within the kingdom, however, have never been favorable for the operation of parliamentarism in a normal manner. In the first place, the parliament itself is in no wise representative of the nation as a whole. In the second place, the proceedings of the body are not infrequently so stormy in character that for months at a time the essential principles of parliamentarism are hopelessly subverted. Finally, and most fundamental of all, at no period in the kingdom's history have there been two great parties, contending on (p. 500) fairly equal terms for the mastery of the state, each in a position to assume direction of the government upon the defeat or momentary discomfiture of the other. From 1867 to 1875, as will appear, there was but one party (that led by Deák) which accepted the Compromise, and hence could be intrusted with office; and from 1875 to the present day there has been but one great party, the Liberal, broken at times into groups and beset by more or less influential conservative elements, but always sufficiently compact and powerful to be able to retain control of the government. Under these conditions it has worked out in practice that ministries have retired repeatedly by reason of decline of popularity, internal friction, or request of the sovereign, and but rarely in consequence of an adverse vote in Parliament. IV. POLITICAL PARTIES *552. The Question of the Ausgleich.*--Throughout half a century the party history of Hungary has centered about two preponderating problems, first, the maintenance of the Compromise with Austria and, second, the preservation of the political ascendancy of the Magyars. Of these the first has been the more fundamental, because the ascendancy of the Magyars was, and is, an accomplished fact and upon the perpetuation of that ascendancy there can be, among the ruling Magyars themselves, no essential division. The issue upon which those elements of the population which are vested with political power (and which, consequently, compose the political parties in the true sense) have been always most prone to divide, is that of the perpetuation and character of the Ausgleich. To put it broadly, there have been regularly two schools of opinion in respect to this subject. There have been the men, on the one hand, who accept the arrangements of 1867 and maintain that by virtue of them Hungary, far from having surrendered any of her essential interests, has acquired an influence and prestige which otherwise she could not have enjoyed. And there have been those, on the other hand, who see in the Ausgleich nothing save an abandonment of national dignity and who, therefore, would have the arrangement thoroughly remodelled, or even abrogated outright. Under various names, and working by different methods, the parties of the kingdom have assumed almost invariably one or the other of these attitudes. *553. Formation of the Liberal Party.*--As has been pointed out, the Compromise was carried through the Hungarian parliament in 1867 by the party of Deák. Opposed to it was the Left, who favored the maintenance of no union whatsoever with Austria save through the crown. The (p. 501) first ministry formed under the new arrangement, presided over by Count Andrássy, was composed of members of the Deák party, and at the national elections of 1869 this party obtained a substantial, though hard-won, majority. In 1871 Andrássy resigned to become the successor of Count Beust in the joint ministry of foreign affairs at Vienna, and two years later Deák himself, now an aged man, withdrew from active political life. There followed in Hungary an epoch of political unsettlement during the course of which ministries changed frequently, finances fell into disorder, and legislation was scant and haphazard. The Deák party disintegrated and, but for the fact that the Left gradually abandoned its determination to overthrow the Ausgleich, the outcome might well have been a constitutional crisis, if not war. As it was, when, in February, 1875, the leader of the Left, Kálman Tisza, publicly acknowledged his party's conversion to the Austrian affiliation, the fragments of the Deák party amalgamated readily with the Left to form the great Liberal party by which the destinies of Hungary have been guided almost uninterruptedly to the present day. Except for the followers of Kossuth, essentially irreconcilable, the Magyars were now united in the support of some sort of union with Austria, and most of them were content for the present to abide by the arrangement of 1867. Before the close of 1875 Tisza was established at the head of a Liberal cabinet, and from that time until his fall, in March, 1890, he was continuously the real ruler of Hungary. *554. The Liberal Ascendancy: Tisza, Szápáry, Wekerle, and Bánffy.*--The primary policy of Tisza was to convert the polyglot Hungarian kingdom into a centralized and homogeneous Magyar state, and to this end he did not hesitate to employ the most relentless and sometimes unscrupulous means. Nominally a Liberal, he trampled the principles of liberalism systematically under foot. To the disordered country, however, his strong rule brought no small measure of benefit, especially in respect to economic conditions. He supported faithfully the Compromise of 1867; but when, in 1877, the commercial treaty between the two halves of the monarchy expired he contrived to procure increased advantages for Hungary, and among them the conversion of the Austrian National Bank into a joint institution of the two states. Opposition to the Tisza régime arose from two sources principally, i.e., the Kossuth party of Independence, which clung still to the principles of 1848, and the National party, led by the brilliant orator Count Albert Apponyi, distinguishable from the Independence group, on the one hand, by its provisional acquiescence in the Ausgleich and (p. 502) from the Liberals, on the other, by its still more enthusiastic advocacy of Magyarization. At Vienna, Tisza was regarded as indispensable; but growing discontent in Hungary undermined his position and March 13, 1890, he retired from office. With the fall of Tisza there was inaugurated a period of short ministries whose history it would be unprofitable to attempt to recount in detail. The Liberal party continued in control, for there had appeared no rival group of sufficient strength to drive it from power. But the rise of a series of issues involving the relations of church and state injected into the political situation a number of new elements and occasioned frequent readjustments within the ministerial group. The ministry of Count Szápáry, which succeeded that of Tisza was followed, November 21, 1892, by that of Dr. Sandor Wekerle, and it, in turn, after a number of the religious bills had been passed, was succeeded, January 11, 1895, by a cabinet presided over by Baron Bánffy. At the elections of 1896 the Liberals were overwhelmingly triumphant, acquiring in the lower chamber a majority of two to one. The Nationalist contingent was reduced from 57 to 35. *555. The Era of Parliamentary Obstructionism.*--The period covered by the Bánffy ministry (January, 1895, to February, 1899) was one of the stormiest in Hungarian parliamentary history. At the close of 1897 the decennial economic agreement with Austria came automatically to an end, and despite its best efforts the Government was unable to procure from Parliament an approval of a renewal of the arrangement. Through two years successively the existing agreement was extended provisionally for twelve months at a time. It was only during the ministry of Széll, who took office in February, 1899, that a renewal was voted, covering the period to 1907. In Hungary there is no constitutional provision equivalent to Section 14 of the constitution of Austria, but during 1897-1899 the utter breakdown of legislation at Budapest drove Premier Bánffy to a policy of government by decree very similar to that which was at the same time being employed at Vienna. The Government had all of the while a substantial majority, but the obstructionist tactics of the Independence group, the Apponyi Nationalists, and the Clericals were of such a nature that normal legislation was impossible. Under the régime of Széll (February, 1899, to May, 1903), who was a survivor of the old Deák group, constitutionalism was rehabilitated and the Liberals who had been alienated by Bánffy's autocratic measures were won back to the Government's support. Nationalist obstruction likewise diminished, for the primary object of Apponyi's followers had been to drive Bánffy from power. The brief ministry of Count Khuen-Hedérváry (May 1 to September (p. 503) 29, 1903) was followed by a ministry presided over by Count István [Stephen] Tisza, son of Kálman Tisza, premier from 1875 to 1890. The principal task of the younger Tisza's ministry was to effect an arrangement whereby the Hungarian army, while remaining essentially Hungarian, should not be impaired in efficiency as a part of the dual monarchy's military establishment. During parliamentary consideration of this subject obstruction to the Government's proposals acquired again such force that, under the accustomed rules of procedure, no action could be taken. November 18, 1904, the opposition shouted down a Modification of the Standing Orders bill, designed to frustrate obstruction, and would permit no debate upon it; whereupon, the president of the Chamber declared the bill carried and adjourned the house until December 13, and subsequently until January 5, 1905. The opposition commanded now 190 votes in a total of 451. When the date for the reassembling arrived members of the obstructionist groups broke into the parliament house and by demolishing the furniture rendered a session for the time impossible. In disgust Tisza appealed to the country, only to be signally defeated. The Government carried but 152 seats. The Kossuth party of Independence alone carried 163; the Liberal dissenters under Andrássy got 23; the Clerical People's party, 23; the Bánffy group, 11; and the non-Magyar nationalities, 8. Tisza sought to retire, but not until June 17, 1905, would the sovereign accept his resignation. *556. The Government's Partial Triumph.*--Incensed by the prolonged, and in many respects indefensible, character of the parliamentary deadlock, Francis Joseph resolved to establish in office an essentially extra-constitutional ministry which should somehow contrive to override the opposition, and likewise to set on foot a movement looking toward the revolutionizing of Hungarian parliamentary conditions by the introduction of manhood suffrage. Under the ministry of Baron Fejérváry, constituted June 21, 1905, there was inaugurated a period of frankly arbitrary government. Parliament was prorogued repeatedly, and by censorship of the press, the dragooning of towns, and the dismissal of officers the Magyar population was made to feel unmistakably the weight of the royal displeasure. For awhile there was dogged resistance, but in time the threat of electoral reform took the heart out of the opposition. Outwardly a show of resistance was maintained, but after the early months of 1906 the Government may be said once more to have had the situation well in hand. Two events of the year mentioned imparted emphasis to the profound change of political conditions which the period of conflict had produced. The first was the establishment, under the premiership of the Liberal (p. 504) leader Dr. Wekerle, of a coalition cabinet embracing a veritable galaxy of Hungarian statesmen, including Francis Kossuth, Count Andrássy, and Count Apponyi. The second was the all but complete annihilation, at the national elections which ensued, of the old Liberal party, and the substitution for it, in the rôle of political preponderance, of the Kossuth party of Independence. The number of seats carried by this rapidly developing party was 250, or more than one-half of the entire number in the Chamber. *557. The Parliamentary Conflict Renewed.*--The Wekerle cabinet entered office pledged to electoral reform, although in the subject it in reality cherished but meager interest. In 1908, as has been related, it was impelled by popular pressure to submit a new electoral scheme;[705] but that scheme was conceived wholly in the Magyar interest and did not touch the real problem. It very properly failed of adoption. Meanwhile the ministry fell into hopeless disagreement upon the question of whether Hungary should consent to the renewal of the charter of the Austro-Hungarian Bank (to expire December 31, 1910) or should hold out for the establishment of a separate Hungarian Bank, and, April 27, 1909, Premier Wekerle tendered his resignation. At the solicitation of the sovereign he consented to retain office until a new ministry could be constituted, which, in point of fact, proved to be until January 17, 1910. Added to the problem of the Bank was an even more vexatious one, that, namely, of the Magyarization of the Hungarian regiments. The extremer demands in the matter of Magyarization emanated, of course, from the Independence party, though upon the issue the party itself became divided into two factions, the extremists being led by Justh and the more moderate element by Kossuth. The coalition was disrupted utterly; the Wekerle ministry dragged on simply because through many months no other could be brought together to take its place. The year 1909 passed without even the vote of a budget. [Footnote 705: See p. 495.] January 17, 1910, Count Hedérváry succeeded in forming a cabinet, and there ensued a lull in the political struggle. At the elections of June, the Government--representing virtually the revived Liberal party--carried 246 seats, while the two wings of the Independence party secured together only 85. The Clericals were reduced to 13 and the non-Magyars to 7. Under the leadership of István Tisza there was organized, at the beginning of 1910, a so-called "National Party of Work," which by the emphasis which it laid upon its purpose of practical achievement commended itself to large elements of the nation. By the Hedérváry government it was announced that the (p. 505) franchise would be reformed in such a manner as to maintain, without the employment of the plural vote, the historical character of the Magyar state; but the bitterness of Magyar feeling upon the subject continued to preclude all possibility of action. The embarrassments continually suffered by the Hedérváry ministry reached their culmination in the winter of 1911-1912, at which time the relations between Austria and Hungary became so strained that Emperor Francis Joseph threatened to abdicate unless pending difficulties should be adjusted. The question of most immediate seriousness pertained to the adoption of new regulations for the military establishment, but the electoral issue loomed large in the background. The retirement of the Hedérváry cabinet, March 7, 1912, and the accession of a ministry presided over by Dr. de Lukacs affected the situation but slightly. The new premier made it clear that he would labor for electoral reform, and issue was joined with him squarely upon this part of his programme by the aristocracy, the gentry, the Chamber of Magnates, and all the adherents of Andrássy, Apponyi, and Kossuth, with the deliberately conceived purpose of frightening the Government, and especially the Emperor-King, into an abandonment of all plans to tamper with existing electoral arrangements. During the earlier months of the ministry efforts of the premier to effect a working agreement with the forces of opposition were but indifferently successful.[706] [Footnote 706: For a brief account of Hungarian party politics to 1896 see Lowell, Governments and Parties, II., 152-161. For references to current periodicals see p. 497.] V. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT *558. Law and Justice.*--The law of Hungary, like that of England, is the product of long-continued growth. It consists fundamentally of the common law of the mediæval period (first codified by the jurist Verböczy in the sixteenth century), amplified and modernized in more recent times, especially since the reforms of 1867, so that what originally was little more than a body of feudal customs has been transformed into a comprehensive national code. Hungarian criminal law, codified in 1878, is recognized to be the equal of anything of the kind that the world possesses. Since 1896 there has been in progress a codification of the civil law, and the task is announced to be approaching completion. There are numerous special codes, pertaining to commerce, bankruptcy, and industry, whose promulgation from time to time has marked epochs in the economic development of the nation. The lower Hungarian tribunals, or courts of first instance, comprise 458 county courts, with single judges, and 76 district courts, (p. 506) with two or more judges each. Both exercise jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases; but the jurisdiction of the county courts in civil cases extends only to suits involving not more than 1,200 crowns, while in criminal cases these tribunals are not competent to impose punishment exceeding a single year's imprisonment. The district courts serve as courts of appeal from the county courts. Of superior courts there are fourteen--twelve "royal tables," or courts of appeal, a Supreme Court of Justice at Agram, and a Royal Supreme Court at Budapest. The twelve contain, in all, 200 judges; the Royal Supreme Court contains 92. All judges are appointed by the king. Once appointed, they are independent and irremovable. Only Hungarian citizens may be appointed, and every appointee must have attained the age of twenty-six, must be of good moral character, must be familiar with the language of the court in which he is to serve, and must have passed the requisite legal examinations. Salaries vary from 3,840 to 10,000 crowns. Supreme administrative control of the judicial system is vested in the Minister of Justice. The sphere of his authority is regulated minutely by parliamentary statute. In the main, he supervises the judges, attends to the legal aspects of international relations, prepares bills, and oversees the execution of sentences. *559. Local Government: the County.*--The principal unit of local government in Hungary is the county. The original Hungarian county instituted by St. Stephen about the year 1000, was simply a district, closely resembling the English county or the French department, at the head of which the king placed an officer to represent the crown in military and administrative affairs. Local self-government had its beginning in the opposition of the minor nobility to this centralizing agency, and in periods of royal weakness the nobles usurped a certain amount of control, first in justice, later in legislation, and finally in the election of local officials, which in time was extended legal recognition. At all points the county became substantially autonomous. Indeed, by 1848 Hungary was really a confederation of fifty-two counties, each not far removed from an aristocratic republic, rather than a centralized state. For a time after 1867 there was a tendency toward a revival of the centralization of earlier days. In 1876 laws were enacted which vested the administration of the county in a committee composed in part of members elected within the county, but also in part of officials designated by the crown; and a statute of 1891 went still further in the direction of bureaucratic centralization. More recently, however, the county has undergone a slight measure of democratization. Exclusive of Croatia-Slavonia, there are in Hungary to-day 63 (p. 507) rural counties and 36 urban counties or towns with municipal rights. In Croatia-Slavonia the numbers are 8 and 4 respectively. The urban counties are in reality municipalities and are essentially separate from the rural counties in which they are situated. The governmental system of the county comprises a council of twenty, composed half of members chosen by the electors for six years and half of persons who pay the highest taxes, together with an especially appointed committee which serves as the local executive. At the head of the assembly is the _föispán_, or lord lieutenant, appointed by the crown. Legally, the counties may withhold taxes and refuse to furnish troops, but there is no popular representation in the true sense in the county governments. The franchise is confined to the very restricted parliamentary electorate. The subject races and the working classes are unrepresented and the real possessors of power are the Magyar landowners. *560. Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia.*--To the kingdom of Hungary proper are attached certain _partes adnexæ_ which enjoy a large measure of political autonomy. Dalmatia, united to Hungary at the beginning of the twelfth century, belongs _de jure_ to Hungary and _de facto_ to Austria; Croatia and Slavonia belong both _de jure_ and _de facto_ to Hungary.[707] Croatia and Slavonia, as Hungarian dominions, have always possessed a peculiar status. They are inalienable portions of the kingdom, and in all that pertains to war, trade, and finance they are on precisely the same footing as any other part of the state. In other matters, however, i.e., in religion, education, justice, and home affairs generally, they enjoy a wide range of independent control. The administration of common affairs is vested in the Hungarian ministry, which must always contain a minister with the special function of supervision of Croatian interests. In the parliament at Budapest Croatia-Slavonia is represented by 40 members (sent from its own diet) in the Chamber of Deputies and three members in the Chamber of Magnates. These arrangements exist in virtue originally of an agreement concluded between the Magyars and the Croats in 1868, and they are closely analogous to the relationships established by the Compromise of the previous year between Hungary and Austria. The compact of 1868 was renewed upon several occasions prior to 1898, (p. 508) since which time it has been intermittently under process of revision. Among the Croats there has long been insistent demand for its fundamental modification. The charge, in general, is that as at present administered the arrangement operates all but exclusively to the benefit of the Hungarians.[708] The Wekerle coalition ministry of 1906 promised a redress of grievances, but none was forthcoming, and in more recent years, especially 1907-1908, riots and other anti-Magyar demonstrations have been not uncommon in the territories. [Footnote 707: Until 1848 the grand-principality of Transylvania also enjoyed a considerable measure of autonomy. In 1848 it was united with Hungary. In 1849 it regained its ancient independence, but in 1867 it was again joined with Hungary. By legislation of 1868 and 1876 it was fully incorporated in the kingdom, 75 seats being awarded it in the Chamber of Deputies at Budapest in lieu of its provincial diet, which was abolished.] [Footnote 708: Under the agreement 44 per cent of the Croatian-Slavonian revenue is retained for local needs and the remaining 56 per cent is devoted to common expenditures of the kingdom upon the army, public works, and the national debt. It is alleged, among other things, that this apportionment is unjust, and, furthermore, that the Hungarian authorities systematically divert local funds to national uses.] The local Croatian-Slavonian diet is a unicameral body consisting of 90 deputies elected by districts, and of dignitaries (ecclesiastics, prefects of counties, princes, counts, and barons) to the number of not more than half of the quota of elected members. The executive consists of the three departments of Interior and Finance, Culture and Education, and Justice. At the head of each is a chief, and over them all presides an official known as the _Banus_. The _Banus_ is appointed by the crown on the nomination of the premier. He is _ex-officio_ a member of the Chamber of Magnates, and it is his function to supervise all matters of administration in the provinces, under the general direction of the Croatian minister, who constitutes the vital tie between the central government at Budapest and the dependent territories. Local government is administered in eight rural and four urban counties.[709] [Footnote 709: An English version of the statute of 1868 regulating the status of Croatia-Slavonia is printed in Drage, Austria-Hungary, 767-783. For extended discussions of the subject see Drage, _op. cit._, Chap. ii; Geosztanyi, in P. Alden (ed.), Hungary of To-day, Chap. ii; G. Horn, Le Compromis de 1868 entre la Croatie et la Hongrie (Paris, 1907); G. de Montbel, La condition politique de la Croatie-Slavonie dans la monarchie austro-hongroise (Toulouse, 1909); and R. Gonnard, Entre Drave et Save; études économiques, politiques, et sociales sur la Croatie-Slavonie (Paris, 1911). See also R. Henry, La Hongrie, la Croatie, et les nationalités, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Aug. 16, 1907; J. Mailath Hongrie et Croatie, ibid., Nov. 1, 1907.] CHAPTER XXVII (p. 509) AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: THE JOINT GOVERNMENT *561. The Ausgleich.*--The unique political relation which subsists to-day between the Empire of Austria and the kingdom of Hungary rests upon the Ausgleich, or Compromise, of 1867, supplemented at certain points by agreements of more recent date. The fundamental terms of the arrangement, worked out by the Emperor Francis Joseph, Deák, and Baron Beust, were incorporated in essentially identical statutes enacted by the Hungarian Parliament and the Austrian Reichsrath December 21 and 24 of the year mentioned. Between the demand of Hungary, on the one hand, for independence (save only in respect to the crown), and that of Austria, on the other, for the thoroughgoing subordination of the Hungarian to an Imperial ministry, there was devised a compromise whose ruling principle is that of dualism rather than that of either absolute unity or subordination. Under the name Austria-Hungary there was established a novel type of state consisting of an empire and a kingdom, each of which, retaining its identity unimpaired, stands in law upon a plane of complete equality with the other. Each has its own constitution, its own parliament, its own ministry, its own administration, its own courts. Yet the two have but one sovereign and one flag, and within certain large and important fields the governmental machinery and public policy of the two are maintained in common. The laws which comprise the basis of the arrangement are the product of international compact. They provide no means by which they may be amended, and they can be amended only in the manner in which they were adopted, i.e., by international agreement supplemented by reciprocal parliamentary enactment.[710] [Footnote 710: Drage, Austria-Hungary. Chap. 12; H. Friedjung, Der Ausgleich mit Ungarn (Leipzig, 1877); Count Andrássy, Ungarns Ausgleich mit Österreich von Jahre 1867 (Leipzig, 1897); L. Eisenmann, Le compromis austro-hongroise (Paris, 1904). The Austrian and Hungarian texts of the Ausgleich laws, with German versions in parallel columns, are printed in I. Zolger, Der staatsrechtliche Ausgleich zwischen Österreich und Ungarn (Leipzig, 1911). English versions are in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 114-122, and Drage, Austria-Hungary, 744-750, 753-766. In a speech in the Hungarian Chamber November 23, 1903, Count István Tisza sought to demonstrate that, properly, there is no such thing as an Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich--that the two instruments of 1867 are not only of different date but are essentially independent, each being revocable at will by the power by which it was enacted. An able polemic in opposition to the views of Tisza is to be found in F. Tezner, Ausgleichsrecht und Ausgleichspolitik (Vienna, 1907). Tezner is an Austrian publicist.] I. THE COMMON ORGANS OF GOVERNMENT (p. 510) *562. The Emperor-King.*--Of organs of government which the two dominions possess in common, and by which they are effectually tied together administratively, there are three: (1) the monarch; (2) the ministries of Foreign Affairs, War, and Finance; and (3) the Delegations. The functions and prerogatives of the monarch are three-fold, i.e., those which he possesses as emperor of Austria, those which belong to him as king of Hungary, and those vested in him as head of the Austro-Hungarian union. In theory, and largely in practice, the three sets of relationships are clearly distinguished. All, however, must be combined in the same individual. The law of succession is the same, and it would not be possible for Francis Joseph, for example, to vacate the kingship of Hungary while retaining the Imperial office in the co-ordinated state. But there is a coronation at Vienna and another at Budapest; the royal title reads "Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, etc., and Apostolic King of Hungary"; and the relations of the sovereign with each of the two governments are most of the time conducted precisely as if the other of the two were non-existent. In the capacity of dual sovereign the monarch's principal functions comprise the command of the army and navy,[711] the appointment of heads of the joint ministries, the promulgation of ordinances applying to the states in common, and the giving of assent to measures enacted by the dual legislative body. [Footnote 711: As an illustration of the sensitiveness of the Hungarians in the matter of their Austrian relations the fact may be cited that in 1889, after prolonged effort, an arrangement was procured in accordance with which the joint sovereign, in the capacity of commander of the armed forces, is known as Emperor _and_ King, not as Emperor-King.] *563. The Joint Ministries.*--By the Compromise of 1867 the three departments of administration which most obviously require concentration and uniformity were established upon a basis of community between the two governmental systems. The first of these is the ministry of Foreign Affairs. Neither Austria nor Hungary as such maintains diplomatic intercourse with other powers; Under the direction of the Foreign Minister (known, until 1871, as the Imperial Chancellor) are maintained all relations with foreign governments, through a diplomatic and consular service which represents in every respect the monarchy as a whole. Commercial treaties, and treaties (p. 511) stipulating changes of territory or imposing burdens upon the state or upon any part of it, require the assent of both the parliament at Vienna and that at Budapest. The second common ministry is that of War. With respect to military and naval administration there has been no little misunderstanding, and even ill-feeling, between the two states. The instruments of 1867 vest the supreme command of the army and navy in the joint monarch, yet the armed establishments of the states are maintained on the basis of separate, even if approximately identical, laws, and each is placed under the immediate supervision of a separate minister of national defence. Each country maintains its independent arrangements for the raising of the yearly contingent of recruits. It is only after the quotas have been raised that the dual monarch can exercise his power of appointing officers and regulating the organization of the forces. The authority of the joint war minister is confined largely to matters of secondary importance, such as equipment and the commissariat. Only a close understanding between the ministries at Vienna and Budapest can be depended upon, in the last analysis, to avert an utter breakdown of the admittedly precarious military establishment.[712] [Footnote 712: V. Duruy, L'Armée austro-hongroise, in _Revue de Paris_, Jan. 15, 1909; M. B., L'Armée autrichienne, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, May, 1909; Com. Davin, La marine austro-hongroise, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Aug. 16, 1909.] The third common ministry is that of Finance. Each of the two states maintains an independent finance ministry and carries its own budget, because, within certain limitations, the administration of fiscal matters is left to the states in their separate capacities; but questions of joint expenditure, the establishment of the joint budget, and the examination of accounts are committed to a common ministry at Vienna. The powers of the joint minister of finance are, in point of fact, limited. Like the other joint ministers, he may not be a member of either the Austrian or the Hungarian cabinet, nor may he have access to the separate parliaments. His function is essentially that of a cashier. He receives the contributions made by the two states to the common expenses and hands them over to the several departments. Until the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1908, it devolved upon him, by special arrangement, to administer the affairs of these semi-dependent territories. *564. Fiscal and Economic Arrangements.*--In 1867 it was agreed that the common expenditures of Austria and Hungary should be met, in so (p. 512) far as possible, from the joint revenues, especially the customs, and that all common outlays in excess of these revenues should be borne by the states in a proportion to be fixed at decennial intervals by the Reichsrath and the Hungarian Parliament. Other joint interests of an economic nature--trade, customs, the debt, and railway policy--were left likewise to be readjusted at ten-year intervals. In respect to contributions, the arrangement hit upon originally was that all common deficits should be made up by quotas proportioned to the tax returns of the two countries, namely, Austria 70 per cent and Hungary 30 per cent. As has been pointed out, the periodic overhauling of the economic relationships of the two states has been productive of frequent and disastrous controversy. The task was accomplished successfully in the law of June 27, 1878, and again in that of May 21, 1887. But the readjustment due in 1897 had the curious fortune not to be completed until the year in which another readjustment was due, i.e., 1907. To the parliamentary contests, at both Vienna and Budapest, by which the decade 1897--1907 was filled some allusion has been made.[713] They involved distinctly the most critical test of stability to which the Ausgleich has been subjected since its establishment. During the period various features of the pre-existing arrangements were continued in force by royal decree or by provisional parliamentary vote, but not until October, 1907, were the economic relation of the two states put once more upon a normal basis. Throughout the decade the Emperor-King exercised repeatedly the authority with which he is invested by law of 1867 to fix the ratio of contributions for one year at a time, when action cannot be had on the part of the legislative bodies. The ratio prevailing during the period was Austria 66-46/49 per cent and Hungary 33-3/49 per cent. [Footnote 713: See pp. 479-481, 502-504.] By the agreement of 1907, concluded for the usual ten-year period, the Hungarian quota was raised from the figure mentioned to 36.4 per cent. The customs alliance, established in 1867 and renewed in 1878 and 1887, was superseded by a customs and commercial treaty, in accordance with which each state maintains what is technically a separate customs system, although until the expiration of existing conventions with foreign powers in 1917 the tariff arrangements of the two states must remain identical. Under the conditions which have arisen the customs unity of the monarchy is likely to be disrupted in fact, as already it is in law, upon the advent of the year mentioned. Thereafter commercial treaties with foreign nations will be negotiated in the name of the two states concurrently and will be signed, not merely by the common minister of foreign affairs, but also by a special (p. 513) Austrian and a special Hungarian representative.[714] [Footnote 714: L. Louis-Jaray, Les relations austro-hongroises et le nouveau compromis économique, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, Jan. 16 and Feb. 1, 1908; and Les dispositions économiques du nouveau compromis austro-hongrois, in _Revue Économique Internationale_, March, 1908.] *565. The Delegations: Organization and Sessions.*--All legislative power of the Reichsrath and of the Hungarian Parliament, in so far as it relates to the joint affairs of the states, is exercised by two "delegations," one representing each of the two parliaments. The Austrian Delegation consists of sixty members, twenty of whom are chosen by the Herrenhaus from its own members, and the other forty of whom are elected by the Abgeordnetenhaus in such manner that the deputies from each province designate a number of delegates allotted to them by law. The Hungarian Delegation consists likewise of sixty members, twenty elected by and from the upper, forty by and from the lower, chamber, with the further requirement that there shall be included four of the Croatian members of the Chamber of Deputies and one of the Croatians in the Chamber of Magnates. All members of both Delegations are elected annually and may be re-elected. They must be convoked by the Emperor-King at least once a year. Every device is employed to lay emphasis upon the absolute equality of the two Delegations, and of the states they represent, even to the extent of having the sessions held alternately in Vienna and Budapest. The two bodies meet in separate chambers, each under a president whom it elects, but the proposals of the Government are laid before both at the same time by the joint ministry. In the Austrian Delegation all proceedings are conducted in the German tongue; in the Hungarian, in Magyar; and all communications between the two are couched in both languages. Sittings, as a rule, are public. In the event of a failure to agree after a third exchange of communications there may be, upon demand of either Delegation, a joint session. Upon this occasion there is no debate, but merely the taking of a vote, in which there must participate an absolutely equal number of members of the two organizations. *566. The Delegations: Powers.*--The members of the common ministry have the right to share in all deliberations of the Delegations and to present their projects personally or through deputies. They must be heard whenever they desire. Each Delegation, on the other hand, has a right to address questions to the joint ministry, or to any one of its members, and to require answers and explanations. By concurrent vote of the two bodies a joint minister may be impeached. In such a (p. 514) case the judges consist of twenty-four independent and legally trained citizens representing equally the two countries, chosen by the Delegations, but not members thereof. The power is one very unlikely to be exercised; in truth, the responsibility of the ministers to the Delegations is more theoretical than actual. The functions of the Delegations are severely restricted. They extend in no case beyond the common affairs of the two states; and they comprise little more than the voting of supplies asked by the Government and a certain supervision of the common administrative machinery. Of legislative power, in the proper sense, the two bodies possess virtually none. Practically all law in the dual monarchy takes the form of statutes enacted concurrently by the separate parliaments of Austria and Hungary. The system is not ideal. It involves delay, confusion, and an excess of partisan wrangling. Probably upon no other basis, however, would even the semblance of an Austro-Hungarian union be possible. The existing arrangement operates somewhat to the advantage of Hungary, because the Hungarian Delegation is a body which votes solidly together, whereas the Austrian is composed of mutually hostile racial and political groups. II. THE TERRITORIES OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA *567. Annexation of the Provinces, 1908.*--By the Congress of Berlin, in 1878, Austria was authorized, ostensibly in the interest of the peace of Europe, to occupy and administer the neighboring provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina; and from that date until 1908, although the provinces continued under the nominal sovereignty of the Sultan of Turkey, their affairs were managed regularly by the Austro-Hungarian minister of finance. The eventual absorption of the territories by the dual monarchy was not unexpected, but it came in virtue of a _coup_ by which the European world was thrown for a time into some agitation. The revolution at Constantinople during the summer of 1908, accompanied by the threatened dissolution of European Turkey, created precisely the opportunity for which the authorities at Vienna had long waited. October 5, Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria proclaimed the complete separation of Bulgaria from the Sultan's dominions and assumed the title of king. Two days later Emperor Francis Joseph proclaimed to the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina the immediate extension of Austro-Hungarian sovereignty over them, alleging that the hour had arrived when they ought to be raised to a higher political level and accorded the benefits of Austro-Hungarian constitutionalism. Among the population of the annexed provinces the Roman Catholic (p. 515) element approved the union, but the Greek Orthodox and Mohammedan majority warmly opposed it. The people of the provinces are Servian in race, and in the interest of the Servian union which it was hoped at some time to bring about Servia and Montenegro protested loudly, and even began preparations for war. The annexation constituted a flagrant infraction of the Berlin Treaty, and during some weeks the danger of international complications was grave. Eventually, however, on the understanding that the new possessor should render to Turkey certain financial compensation, the various powers more or less grudgingly yielded their assent to the change of status. *568. The Constitution of 1910: the Diet.* At the time of the annexation it was promised that the provinces should be granted a constitution. The pledge was fulfilled in the fundamental laws which were promulgated by the Vienna Government February 22, 1910. The constitution proper consists of a preamble and three sections, of which the first relates to civil rights, the second to the composition of the Diet, and the third to the competence of the Diet. Under the terms of the preamble the pre-existing military and administrative arrangements are perpetuated. The civil rights section extends to the annexed provinces the principal provisions of the Austrian constitution in respect to equality before the law, freedom of personal movement, the protection of individual liberty, the independence of judges, freedom of conscience, autonomy of recognized religious communities, the right of free expression of opinion, the abolition of restrictive censorship, the freedom of scientific investigation, secrecy of postal and telegraphic communications, and the rights of association and public meeting. The second section creates a diet of seventy-two elected and twenty _ex-officio_ representatives, fifteen of the latter being dignitaries of the Mohammedan, Servian, Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic religious communities. The presidential bureau, consisting of one president and two vice-presidents, is appointed annually by the crown at the opening of the session. Each creed is regularly to be represented in the bureau, the presidential office being held by a Servian, a Mohammedan, and a Croat in annual rotation. To be valid, the decisions of the Diet require the presence of a majority of the members, except when ecclesiastical matters are under discussion. Upon such occasions the presence of four-fifths of the Diet, and a two-thirds majority, is required. The third section excludes from the legislative competence of the Diet all joint Austro-Hungarian affairs and questions pertaining to the armed forces and to customs arrangements. The Diet is, however, (p. 516) empowered to elect a national council of nine members and to commission it to lay the views of the Diet before the Austro-Hungarian Government. In all other matters, such as civil, penal, police and commercial law, industrial and agrarian legislation, sanitation, communications, taxation, the provincial estimates, the issue and conversion of loans, and the sale or mortgaging of provincial property, the Diet has a free hand. Government measures to be submitted to the Diet require, however, the previous sanction of the Austrian and the Hungarian cabinets, whose assent is also necessary before bills passed by the Diet can receive the sanction of the crown. *569. The Electoral System.*--Subsequent statutes regulate the franchise and electoral procedure. First of all, the seventy-two elective seats in the Diet are divided among the adherents of the various religious denominations, the Servians receiving 31, the Mohammedans 24, and the Catholic Croats 16. One seat is reserved for a representative of the Jews. The seats are divided, furthermore, into three curiæ, or electoral classes, eighteen being allotted to a first class composed of large landed proprietors and the heaviest taxpayers, twenty to a second class composed of urban electors, and thirty-four to a third class composed of rural electors. The franchise is bestowed upon all subjects of the crown, born in the provinces or possessing one year's residential qualification, who are of the male sex and have completed their twenty-fourth year. In the first of the three classes women possess the franchise, although they may exercise it only by male deputy. Candidates for election must have completed their thirtieth year and must be of the male sex and in full enjoyment of civil rights. Civil and railway servants, as well as public school teachers, are not eligible. In the first and second classes votes are recorded in writing, but in the third, or rural, class, voting, by reason of the large proportion of illiterates, is oral. In the second and third (urban and rural) classes the system of single-member constituencies has been adopted. The provinces are divided into as many Servian, Mohammedan, and Catholic constituencies, with separate registers, as there are seats allotted to the respective creeds. For the Jews all the towns of the two provinces form a single constituency.[715] [Footnote 715: The texts of the organic acts of 1910 are printed in K. Lamp, Die Rechtsnatur der Verfassung Bosniens und der Herzegowina vom 17 Februar 1910, in Jahrbuch des Öffentlichen Rechts (Tübingen, 1911), V.; L. Geller, Bosnisch-herzegowinische Verfassungs und politische Grundgesetze (Vienna, 1910); and in Zeitschrift für Völkerrecht und Bundesstaatsrecht, IV., No. 5. See also F. Komlössy, Das Rechtsverhältniss Bosniens und des Herzegowina zu Ungarn (Pressburg, 1911).] PART VII.--THE LOW COUNTRIES (p. 517) CHAPTER XXVIII THE GOVERNMENT OF HOLLAND I. A CENTURY OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT Geographical juxtaposition, combined with historical circumstance, has determined that between the two modern kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, widely as they differ in many fundamental characteristics, relations should be continuous and close. Both nations have sprung from groups of provinces comprised within the original Low Countries, or Netherlands. Following the memorable contest of the Dutch with Philip II. of Spain, the seven provinces to the north achieved their independence at the beginning of the seventeenth century and, under the name of the United Provinces, built up a system of government, republican in form though in operation much of the time really autocratic, which survived through more than two hundred years. The ten provinces to the south continued under the sovereignty of Spain until 1713, when by the Treaty of Utrecht they were transferred to Austria. They did not attain the status of independent nationality until 1831. *570. The French Domination, 1793-1814.*--The constitutional arrangements operative in the Holland and Belgium of to-day are to be regarded as products largely of the era of the French Revolution and of the Napoleonic domination. Between 1795 and 1810 both groups of Low Country provinces were absorbed by France, and both were forced quite out of their accustomed political channels. The provinces comprising the Austrian Netherlands were overrun by a French army early in 1793. By decree of October 1, 1795, they were incorporated in the French Republic, being erected into nine departments; and by the Treaty of Lunéville, February 9, 1801, they were definitely ceded by Austria to France.[716] February 1, 1793, the French Republic declared war upon Holland. During the winter of 1794--1795 the Dutch provinces were (p. 518) occupied, and by the Treaty of The Hague, May 16, 1795, they were erected into a new nationality known as the Batavian Republic, under the protection of France.[717] The constitution of the old republic was thoroughly overhauled and the stadtholderate, long in the possession of the house of Orange, was abolished. To the considerable body of anti-Orange republicans the coming of the French was, indeed, not unwelcome. May 24, 1806, the Batavian Republic was converted by Napoleon into the kingdom of Holland, and Louis Bonaparte, younger brother of the French Emperor, was set up as the unwilling sovereign of an unwilling people. Nominally, the new kingdom was both constitutional and independent; practically, it was an autocracy and a dependency of France. King Louis labored conscientiously to safeguard the interests of his Dutch subjects, but in vain. After four years he abdicated, under pressure; whereupon, July 9, 1810, an Imperial edict swept away what remained of the independent status of the Dutch people and incorporated the kingdom absolutely with France. The ancient provinces were replaced by seven departments; to the Dutch were assigned six seats in the French Senate, three in the Council of State, and twenty-five in the Legislative Body; a lieutenant-general was established at the head of the administrative system; and no effort was spared to obliterate all survivals of Dutch nationality. [Footnote 716: L. Delplace, La Belgique sous la domination française, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1896); L. de Lanzac de Laborie, La domination française en Belgique, 2 vols. (Paris, 1895).] [Footnote 717: L. Legrand, La révolution française en Hollande: la république batave (Paris, 1894).] *571. The Settlement by the Congress of Vienna: the Constitution of 1815.*--With the overthrow of Napoleon the fate of both the Dutch and the Belgian provinces fell to the arbitrament of the allied powers. In the first Treaty of Paris, concluded May 30, 1814, between the Allies on the one side and France on the other, it was stipulated that the Belgian territories should be joined with Holland and that the whole, under the name of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, should be assigned to the restored house of Orange, in the person of William I., son of the stadtholder William V. Already, consequent upon the Dutch revolt which followed the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, William had been recalled from his eighteen-year exile. December 1, 1813, he had accepted formally the sovereignty of the Dutch provinces, and early in 1814 a constitution had been drawn up and put in operation. The desire of the Allies, particularly of Great Britain, was that there should be brought into existence in the Low Countries a state which should be sufficiently powerful to constitute a barrier to possible aggressions of France upon the north. The union of the Belgian with the Dutch provinces, was intended furthermore, to compensate the Dutch in (p. 519) some measure for their losses of colonial possessions to Great Britain during the war. By the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, June 9, 1815, and by the second Peace of Paris, November 20 following, the arrangement was ratified. With Holland and the Austrian Netherlands were united in the new state the bishopric of Liège, the duchy of Limburg, and the duchy (henceforth to be known as the grand-duchy) of Luxemburg. The last-mentioned territory, while included in the Germanic Confederation, was bestowed upon the Dutch sovereign in compensation for German principalities ceded by him at this time to Prussia.[718] March 15, 1815, William began his reign under the new régime in Holland, and September 27 following he was crowned at Brussels. [Footnote 718: These ceded territories comprised the ancestral domains of the house of Nassau which lay in Germany--Dietz, Siegen, Hadamar, and Dillenburg. The grand-duchy of Luxemburg was joined with the Netherlands by a personal union only, and in its capital, as a fortress of the German Confederation, was maintained a Prussian garrison. William dealt with the territory, however, precisely as if it were an integral part of his kingdom, extending to it the constitution of 1815 and administering its affairs through the agency of Dutch officials. At the time of the Belgian revolt, in 1830, Luxemburg broke away from Dutch rule and there ensued in the history of the grand-duchy an anomalous period during which the legal status of the territory was hotly disputed. In 1839 the Conference of London assigned to Belgium that portion of the grand-duchy which was contiguous to her frontiers and remanded the remainder to the status of an hereditary possession of the house of Nassau. In 1856 a separate constitution was granted the people of the territory, and in 1867, following the dissolution of the old Germanic Confederation, the grand-duchy was declared by an international conference at London to be a sovereign and independent (but neutral) state, under the guaranty of the powers. The connection between Luxemburg and Holland was thereafter purely dynastic. Until the death of William III., in 1890, the king of the Netherlands was also grand-duke of Luxemburg; but with the accession of Queen Wilhelmina the union of the two countries was terminated, by reason of the fact that females were at that time excluded from the throne of the grand-duchy. A law of 1907, however, vested the succession in the princess Marie, eldest daughter of the reigning Grand-Duke William; and upon the death of her father, Feb. 26, 1912, this heiress succeeded to the grand-ducal throne. The head of the state is the grand-duke (or grand-duchess). There is a council of state nominated by the sovereign and a chamber of deputies of 53 members, elected directly by the cantons for six years. The state has an area of but 998 square miles and a population (in 1910) of 259,891. P. Eyschen, Das Staatsrecht des Grossherzogtums Luxemburg (Tübingen, 1910).] In fulfillment of a promise made his people, King William promulgated, August 24, 1815, a new constitution, drafted by a commission consisting of an equal number of Dutch and Belgian members. The instrument provided for a States-General of two chambers, one consisting of members appointed for life by the crown, the other composed of an equal number (55) of Dutch and Belgian deputies elected by the provincial estates. Bills might be rejected, but might not (p. 520) be originated or amended, by this assembly. The suffrage was severely restricted; trial by jury was not guaranteed; the budget was to be voted for a number of years at a time; ministers were declared responsible solely to the king; and, all in all, there was in the new system little enough of liberalism. When the instrument was laid before a Belgian assembly it was overwhelmingly rejected. None the less it was declared in effect, and it continued the fundamental law of the united dominions of William I. until 1830. *572. The Belgian Revolution, 1830-1831.*--Friction between the Dutch and the Belgians was from the outset incessant. The union was essentially an artificial one, and the honest efforts of the king to bring about a genuine amalgamation but emphasized the irreconcilable differences of language, religion, economic interest, and political inheritance that separated the two peoples. The population of Belgium was 3,400,000; that of Holland but 2,000,000. Yet the voting power of the former in the lower legislative chamber was no greater than that of the latter, and in fact the Dutch were able all the while to maintain in that body a small working majority. Administrative offices were filled, in large part, by Dutchmen, and the attitude quite commonly assumed (in a measure, without doubt, unconsciously) by the public authorities strongly suggested that Holland was the preponderating power and Belgium little more than so much subjugated territory. The upshot was discontent and eventual rebellion. In 1828 the principal political parties of Belgium, the Catholics and the Liberals, drew together in the "Union," the object of which was to bring about the recognition of Belgian independence, or, in the event that this should prove impossible of attainment, the establishment of thoroughgoing Belgian autonomy, with no union with Holland save of a purely personal character through the crown. Inspired by the success of the July Revolution in France, and hopeful of obtaining French assistance, the Belgians in August, 1830, broke into open revolt. After a period of violence, a provisional government at Brussels, October 4, 1830, proclaimed Belgium's independence and summoned a national congress to which was committed the task of drawing up a scheme of government. Aroused by the imminent loss of half of his dominion, King William, after an ineffectual display of military force, offered concessions; and the States-General went so far as to authorize the establishment in the southern provinces of a separate administrative system, such as at one time would have met the Belgian demand. The day for compromise, however, had passed. The Belgian congress voted overwhelmingly for the establishment of an independent monarchy, adopted (February 7, 1831) a liberal constitution, and, (p. 521) after offering the throne without avail to the Duke of Nemours, second son of Louis Philippe of France, selected as king the German Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who, under the title of Leopold I., was crowned July 21 of the same year. *573. The Independence of Belgium.*--These proceedings involved the overturning of an arrangement which the Allies in 1815 had considered essential to the security of Europe. Several considerations, however,--among them the outbreak of insurrection in Poland,--induced the powers to acquiesce with unexpected readiness in the dissolution of the loose-jointed monarchy. December 20, 1830, a conference of the five principal powers at London formally pronounced in favor of a permanent separation, and when, in August, 1831, a Dutch army crossed the frontier and inflicted upon the Belgians an overwhelming defeat, a French force compelled the invaders to surrender the fruits of their victory and to retire from the country. A treaty of separation was drawn up by the London conference under date of November 25, 1831, under whose terms there were recognized both the independence and the neutrality of the new Belgian monarchy. William of Holland protested and flatly refused to sign the instrument. The British and French governments compelled him outwardly to acquiesce in the agreement, although it was not until April 19, 1839, that he gave it his formal assent. Embittered by his losses and chagrined by the constitutional amendments to which his own people compelled him to submit, he abdicated in 1840 in favor of his son.[719] [Footnote 719: On the constitutional aspects of Dutch-Belgian history in the period 1815-1840 see Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 16 (bibliography, pp. 848-851); D. C. Boulger, History of Belgium, 2 vols. (London, 1909), I.; Stern, Geschichte Europas, IV., Chap. 2. General works of importance include J. B. Nothomb, Essai historique et politique sur la révolution belge, 3 vols. (4th ed., Brussels, 1876); C. White, The Belgian Revolution, 2 vols. (London, 1835); C. V. de Bavay, Histoire de la révolution belge de 1830 (Brussels, 1873); L. Hymans, Histoire politique et parlementaire de la Belgique de 1814 à 1830 (Brussels, 1869); J. J. Thonissen, La Belgique sous le règne de Leopold Ier, 3 vols. (Louvain, 1861).] *574. Constitutional Revision in Holland.*--After 1831 the constitutional development of Holland and that of Belgium move in separate channels.[720] In Holland the fundamental law of 1815 was retained, but the modifications which have been introduced in it, notably in 1840, 1848, and 1887, have so altered its character as to have made of it an essentially new instrument. The revision of 1840 was forced upon the king by the Liberals, whose position was strengthened by the fiscal chaos into which the nation had fallen (p. 522) under the previous autocratic régime. The reformers got very much less than they demanded. Instead of the ministerial responsibility and the public control of the finances for which they asked they procured only an arrangement to the effect that the budget should be submitted to the States-General every two years and the colonial balance sheet yearly, together with certain changes of detail, including a curtailment of the civil list and a reduction of the membership of the States-General in consequence of the loss of Belgium. Yet these reforms were well worth while. [Footnote 720: For that of Belgium see p. 534.] During the reign of William II. (1840-1849) the demand for constitutional revision was incessant. The king was profuse in promises, but vacillating. In 1844, and again in 1845, a specific programme of revision failed of adoption. By 1848, however, economic distress and popular discontent had become so pronounced that the sovereign was forced to act. The overthrow of Louis Philippe at Paris, too, was not without effect. March 17 the king named a state commission of five members which was authorized to draft a revision of the constitution, and the resulting instrument, after being adopted in an extraordinary session of the States-General, was promulgated November 3. The revision of 1848 introduced into the Dutch constitutional system many fundamental changes. Instead of being appointed by the crown, members of the upper branch of the States-General were thereafter to be elected by the provincial estates; and in the choice of members of the lower house, direct popular elections were substituted for indirect. The ministers of the king were made responsible to the States-General, and the powers of the legislative body were otherwise increased through the extension of its authority over colonial affairs, provision for a regular annual budget, and, most of all, recognition of the right to initiate and to amend projects of legislation. Constitutional government in Holland may be said virtually to have had its beginning in 1848. *575. The Constitution To-day.*--Through several decades following the accession of William III., in 1849, the political history of Holland comprises largely a story of party strife, accentuated by the efforts of the various political groups--especially the Liberals, the Conservatives, and the Catholics--to apply in practice the parliamentary system.[721] The death of Prince Alexander, June 21, 1884, occasioned a constitutional amendment to provide for the accession of a female sovereign and the establishment of a regency, and three years later a parliamentary deadlock compelled the king to authorize a general revision of the fundamental law whereby the (p. 523) number of citizens in possession of the franchise was more than tripled. The constitution of Holland at the present day is the amended instrument of November 6, 1887. It comprises more than two hundred articles, being, indeed, one of the lengthiest documents of its kind in existence. Like most European constitutions, it may be amended by the ordinary legislative organs, though under specially prescribed conditions. The first step in the amending process consists in the adoption by the legislative chambers of a resolution affirming that there is sufficient reason for taking under consideration the amendment or amendments in hand. Following the promulgation of this resolution the chambers are required to be dissolved. The newly elected houses then take up the project for final disposition, and if by a two-thirds vote they adopt it, and if the sovereign assents, it goes into operation.[722] [Footnote 721: Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 23.] [Footnote 722: Arts. 194-197. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 118. The text of the constitution, in English translation, is printed in Dodd, II., 80-119. An excellent annotated edition of the instrument, in Dutch, is G. L. van den Helm, De Grondwet voor het koningrijk der Nederlanden (The Hague, 1889). An elaborate commentary is contained in J. T. Buijs, De Grondwet, 3 vols. (Arnheim, 1883-1888). One of the best expositions of the Dutch constitutional system is L. de Hartog, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs der Niederlande (Freiburg, 1886), in Marquardsen's Handbuch, though this work antedates the amendments of 1887. More recent is J. van Hamel, Staats-und Verwaltungsrecht des Königreichs der Niederlande (Hanover, 1910).] II. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY *576. Status of the Sovereign.*--The government of Holland[723] is in form a constitutional, hereditary monarchy. Until 1884 the royal succession was vested exclusively in the direct male line of the house of Orange-Nassau in the order of primogeniture. The death, however, in the year mentioned, of the sole surviving male heir occasioned, as has been stated, an amendment of the constitution authorizing the succession of a female heir, in default of a male; and, upon the death of William III., November 23, 1890, the throne accordingly passed to his only daughter, the present Queen Wilhelmina.[724] In default of a legal heir, the successor to the throne is to be designated by a law presented by the crown and acted upon by a joint meeting of the legislative chambers, each house containing for this purpose double its usual (p. 524) number of members. In the event of the minority or the incapacity of the sovereign a regency is established, and the regent is named by law enacted by the States-General in joint session.[725] [Footnote 723: The official title is "The Kingdom of the Netherlands." In ordinary usage, however, the term "Holland" is more commonly employed.] [Footnote 724: Wilhelmina was at the time but ten years of age. Until she attained her majority, August 31, 1898, a regency was exercised by the Queen-Dowager Emma. E. Lemonon, La succession au trône néerlandais, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, December 1, 1908.] [Footnote 725: Arts. 20-21. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 84.] The sovereign, at accession, is installed in a public joint meeting of the two chambers in the city of Amsterdam, and is required to take oath always "to observe and maintain the constitution;" whereupon the members of the chambers solemnly pledge themselves "to do everything that a good and loyal States-General ought to do." The person of the monarch is declared inviolable. For the maintenance of the royal establishment the constitution stipulates that, in addition to the revenue from the crown lands, the sovereign shall be entitled to a yearly income, to be paid out of the national treasury, together with summer and winter residences, the maximum public expenditure upon which, however, is restricted to 50,000 florins a year. At each accession the amount of the annual stipend is fixed by law for the entire reign. William II.'s civil list was 1,000,000 guilders, but at the accession of William III. in 1849 the amount was reduced to 600,000, where it has remained to the present day. The family of Orange is possessed of a large private fortune, most of which was accumulated by William I. from a variety of commercial and industrial ventures. The Prince of Orange, as heir apparent, is accorded by the state an annual income of 100,000 florins, which is increased to 200,000 upon his contracting a marriage authorized by law. *577. The Ministry.*--Associated with the sovereign is a Council of State, consisting of the Prince of Orange (when above eighteen years of age) and of a variable number of members appointed by the crown. The number of members is at present fourteen. By the terms of the constitution the sovereign is required to submit for discussion in the Council of State all matters to be presented to the States-General, and all general administrative questions of the kingdom and of its colonies and possessions throughout the world.[726] Besides this advisory Council of State there is a Council of Ministers, comprising the heads of nine executive departments established by the sovereign. Nominally the ministers are appointed and dismissed by the crown at will, but actually the parliamentary system has acquired sufficient foothold to impose upon the sovereign a considerable measure of restriction at this point. All decrees and orders must be countersigned by the head of one of the ministerial departments; and it is expressly stipulated that responsibility for all royal acts shall lie with the ministers.[727] The heads of ministerial (p. 525) departments are privileged to occupy seats in both branches of the States-General, but unless elected regularly as members they possess only a deliberative voice in the proceedings of the chamber in which they sit.[728] [Footnote 726: Art. 75. Ibid., II., 94.] [Footnote 727: Art. 54. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 90.] [Footnote 728: Art. 94. Ibid., II., 99.] *578. The Exercise of Executive Powers.*--Despite the liberalizing tendencies which underlie Dutch constitutional history since 1815, the powers of the crown are still enormous. Executive authority is vested solely in the sovereign and the ministers, and there are not a few acts of importance which the sovereign may perform quite independently. The sovereign exercises supreme control over foreign relations, declares war, concludes and ratifies treaties,[729] confers titles of nobility, appoints to public offices, coins money, grants pardons in cases of penalties imposed by judicial sentence, maintains supreme control over the land and naval forces, settles certain types of disputes arising between provinces, or between provinces and communes or corporations, issues general administrative regulations, recommends projects of law to the States-General, and approves or rejects all measures adopted by that body. The sovereign is, however, in no sense above the law. Many things may not be done at all, save under the authority of a regularly enacted piece of legislation. Dispensations from legal provisions, for example, may be granted by the crown only under the authority of law. In still other respects the sweeping grants of power contained within the constitution are tempered by counter-balancing stipulations. Thus, the sovereign has the right to coin money; but it is also prescribed that "the monetary system shall be regulated by law."[730] And the crown has "supreme control of the colonies and possessions of the kingdom in other parts of the world;" but "the regulations for the conduct of the government in the colonies and possessions shall be established by law."[731] [Footnote 729: Save that treaties which provide for modifications of the boundaries of the state, or impose a public pecuniary obligation, or contain any other provision touching legal rights, may not be approved by the crown until after sanction shall have been accorded by the States-General, unless the power has been reserved to the crown by law to conclude such a treaty. Art. 59. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 91.] [Footnote 730: Art. 61. Ibid., II., 91.] [Footnote 731: Art. 61. Ibid.] III. THE STATES-GENERAL AND POLITICAL PARTIES *579. The Chambers: Earlier Electoral Arrangements.*--Legislative power within the kingdom is vested jointly in the sovereign and a States-General, or parliament, of two chambers. The upper chamber consists of (p. 526) fifty members elected in varying proportions by the "estates," or representative assemblies, of the eleven provinces.[732] The term of office is nine years, and one-third of the members retire triennially. Male citizens who have attained the age of thirty, who are in full control of their property, and who have not been disqualified by judicial sentence, are eligible to membership, provided either that they are among the heaviest payers of direct national taxes or that they hold, or have held, one or more principal public offices designated by law.[733] [Footnote 732: The provincial quotas are as follows: South Holland, 10; North Holland, 9; North Brabant and Gelderland, 6 each; Friesland, 4; Overyssel, Groningen, and Limberg, 3 each; Zealand, Utrecht, and Drenthe, 2 each. Prior to the constitutional revision of 1848 members of the upper house were appointed by the king.] [Footnote 733: Art. 90. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 98.] The lower chamber consists of one hundred members elected directly by the voters of the kingdom for a term of four years. Under the original constitution of 1815 members of the lower house were chosen by the provincial estates. Direct election was introduced by the constitutional revision of 1848. During several decades the franchise, based upon taxpaying qualifications, was narrowly restricted. After 1870 the Liberals carried on a persistent campaign in behalf of a broader electorate, and by a constitutional amendment of 1887 the franchise was extended to all males twenty-three years of age and over, who are householders paying a minimum house-duty, lodgers who for a time have paid a minimum rent, or who are possessed of "signs of fitness and social well-being." The provisions relating to householders and lodgers alone increased the electorate at a stroke from approximately 100,000 to 300,000. The precise meaning and application of the phrase "fitness and social well-being" were left to be defined by law, and through upwards of a decade political controversy in Holland centered principally about this question. The coalition Catholic-Conservative ministry of 1888-1891 refused flatly to sanction the enactment of any sort of law upon the subject. In 1893 the Liberal Minister of the Interior, Tak van Poortvliet, brought forward a project whereby it was proposed to put upon the qualifying phrase an interpretation of well-nigh the broadest possible character. A man was to be regarded as fulfilling the educational requirement if he were able to write, and the social requirement if simply he were not a recipient of public charity. By the adoption of this scheme the number of electors would have been raised to something like 800,000, and Holland would have attained a reasonable approximation of manhood suffrage. The Moderate Liberals, the Conservatives, and most of the Catholics opposed the proposition, and the elections of 1894 (p. 527) proved the supporters of the van Poortvliet programme to be in the minority. The total strength of the "Takkians" in the new chamber was 46, of whom 35 were Liberals; that of the "anti-Takkians" was 54, of whom 24 were Catholics. *580. The Electoral Law of 1896 and the Question of Electoral Reform.*--In the newly constituted ministry it fell to Samuel van Houten, leader of a radical group that had opposed the van Poortvliet project, to prepare an alternative measure. In the notable electoral law of 1896 the compromise proposals of van Houten were definitely accepted, and they constitute the essential features of the electoral system at the present day. Under this arrangement the members of the lower chamber are elected in one hundred single-member districts by male citizens of the age of twenty-five and over, who meet any one of the following qualifications: (1) payment of a direct tax of at least one florin; (2) payment of a minimum rental as householders or lodgers; (3) proprietorship or rental of a vessel of at least twenty-four tons; (4) the earning of a wage or salary varying from 275 to 550 florins a year; (5) investment of one hundred florins in government bonds, or of fifty florins in a savings bank; and (6) the passing of an examination required for entrance upon a public office or upon a private employment. By the reform of 1896 the number of voters in the realm was increased to 700,000. In 1905 there was created a royal commission of seven members to which was assigned the task of considering and reporting proposals relative to proportional representation, the salaries of members, and other questions of constitutional revision. The Government, however, reserved to itself specifically the right to bring forward proposals relating to the actual extension of the franchise. The report of this commission, submitted late in 1907, recommended, among other things, the introduction of proportional representation and (by a vote of six out of seven) the extension of the franchise to women. These suggestions failed of adoption, but late in 1910 a new commission was appointed, under the presidency of the Conservative premier Heemskerk, and to this body was given power to propose changes in any portion whatsoever of the governmental order. The successful operation of proportional representation in adjoining countries, especially Belgium and Sweden, renders it probable that the system will be adopted ultimately in Holland. The future of woman's suffrage is more problematical. Women already possess the right to vote in the proceedings of the dike associations if they are taxpayers or if they own property adjoining the dikes, and in June, 1908, the Lutheran Synod gave women the right to vote in ecclesiastical affairs on a (p. 528) footing with men. Since 1894 there has been a National Woman's Suffrage Society, to which was added, in 1906, a Woman's Suffrage League; and women are freely admitted to membership in the political clubs maintained by the adherents of the various parties. Any male citizen who has attained his thirtieth year, who is in full possession of property, and who has not been disqualified by judicial sentence, is eligible to a seat in the popular chamber. By constitutional provision, members are allowed, in addition to travelling expenses, a salary of 2,000 florins a year; and, under law of May 4, 1889, members of the upper house who do not live in the place of meeting receive a _per diem_ of ten florins during the continuance of each session. *581. The States-General: Organization and Powers.*--The constitution requires that the States-General shall assemble at least once each year and that its regular annual session shall be opened on the third Tuesday in September. The sovereign may convoke an extraordinary session at any time; but regular sessions are not dependent upon the royal summons. The crown possesses the right to dissolve the houses, separately or simultaneously; but a decree of dissolution must contain an order for the election of the new house, or houses, within fourteen days, and for the assembling of the houses within two months.[734] Except in the event of a dissolution, a regular session is required to extend through at least twenty days; but upon the expiration of the twenty-day period the sovereign may terminate the sitting whenever in his judgment "the interests of the state no longer require its continuance."[735] The president of the upper house is appointed by the crown from among the members for the period of one session. The corresponding officer of the lower house is similarly appointed from a list of three members submitted by the chamber. Each house appoints, from non-members, its clerk and such other officials as may be required; each examines the credentials of its newly elected members and renders final verdict upon their validity; and each regulates the details of its own procedure. Except when one-tenth of the members of a chamber request the closing of the doors, or the president deems such a step necessary, sessions are public. Neither house may take action upon any matter unless at least half of its members are present, and final action upon all propositions is taken by an absolute majority of the members present. A portion of the business of the States-General is transacted in joint sessions of the two houses. In joint session the two are regarded as one chamber, under the presidency of the president of the upper house. For the changing (p. 529) of the order of royal succession or the appointment of an heir to the throne, the constitution requires that the membership of each chamber be doubled. In such an event there is added to the regular members of each house an equal number of extraordinary members, elected in the same manner as the regular members.[736] [Footnote 734: Art. 73. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 94.] [Footnote 735: Art. 103. Ibid., II., 100.] [Footnote 736: Art. 83. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 96.] In the proceedings of the States-General the lower chamber enjoys a distinct preponderance. The upper chamber, indeed, is commonly regarded as constitutionally the weakest body of its kind in Europe. It possesses neither the power to initiate legislation, general or financial, nor power to amend projects of law. Any measure which comes before it must be accepted or rejected as it stands. Bills may be originated either by the Government or by members of the lower chamber, and it is required that the sovereign shall send all recommendations, whether pertaining to laws or to other matters, to the lower house, in a written message or by committee.[737] The projects of the general financial laws must be presented annually to the lower house in the name of the crown, immediately after the opening of the regular session. No taxes may be levied save by law. In addition to its powers of a purely legislative character, the States-General is authorized to investigate, either as separate chambers or in joint session, the executive conduct of public affairs.[738] Under stipulated conditions, the States-General, by a two-thirds vote, and with the assent of the crown, may amend the constitution.[739] [Footnote 737: Art. 110. Ibid., II., 101.] [Footnote 738: Art. 95. Ibid., II., 99.] [Footnote 739: See p. 523.] *582. Political Parties: Election of 1903.*--Since the middle of the nineteenth century political preponderance has alternated irregularly between two principal party groups. One of these is the Liberals, representative especially of the commercial towns, and falling into the two general categories of Moderates and Progressives. The other is the Conservatives, consisting largely of orthodox Protestants, especially the Calvinistic peasantry, and supported, as a rule, by the Catholics. In more recent times the Socialists have made their appearance as a distinct political element, but thus far they have cast in their lot regularly with the Liberals. Between 1871 and 1888 the Liberals were in power continuously; and, after a brief interval covered by a Conservative-Catholic ministry, they regained control and kept it throughout the decade 1891-1901. In 1901 a coalition ministry was created, under the premiership of the Conservative Dr. Kuyper. This lasted until 1903. In the spring of the year mentioned the lower house rejected an (p. 530) important measure relating to higher education upon whose enactment the Kuyper ministry was determined. The Chamber was dissolved and in June elections were held. Prior to the elections the Chamber contained 58 Ministerialists and 42 anti-Ministerialists (Liberals and Socialists). The opposition elements were far from united. The Socialists insisted upon an immediate amendment of the constitution to provide for universal suffrage; the Progressive Liberals favored only the eventual adoption of such an amendment; the Moderate Liberals were opposed to it altogether. None the less, the result of the elections was to terminate the Conservative majority and to replace it by a slender but indubitable Liberal majority of four. The Conservatives carried 48 seats; the Liberals 45; and the Socialists 7. The Kuyper ministry forthwith resigned. *583. The Political Situation Since 1909.*--The period from June, 1905, to December, 1907, was covered by the two successive Liberal ministries of Borgesius and De Meester. Each was essentially colorless. Efforts to bring about an extension of the suffrage failed, and during 1907 the Liberal majority virtually disappeared. The upshot was that, February 8, 1908, there was created a new ministry, under Dr. Heemskerk, whose members were drawn from the Conservatives. At the general election of June 11, 1909, the Conservatives recovered supremacy completely. Following the grouping which prevails at the present day, the results of this election were as follows: (1) Anti-Revolutionaries (largely rural Calvinists), 23 members; (2) Historic Christians, 12; (3) Roman Catholics, 25--a total Conservative quota of 60; (4) Free Liberals, 4; Union Liberals, 21; Liberal Democrats, 8; Socialists, 7--a total Liberal contingent of 40. Furthermore, while the Conservatives were compactly organized, the Liberals were divided hopelessly among themselves and quite unable to offer substantial resistance to their opponents. With a majority of 20 in the lower chamber and of 19 in the upper, with a popular vote in excess by 80,000 of that of the Liberals, and with a ministry in office which, if not brilliant, was at least popular, the Conservatives came off from the campaign in a position to maintain through an extended period, so far as may be foreseen, their control of public affairs. Quite the contrary of the contemporary situation in Belgium, the rifts which separate the various Liberal groups tend in Holland to deepen, and the political impotence of Liberalism consequently to be accentuated.[740] [Footnote 740: On Dutch political parties see P. Verschave, La Hollande politique; le rôle des catholiques néerlandais depuis dix ans, in _Le Correspondant_, April 10, 1908; Les élections générales et la situation politique aux pays-bas: l'organisation de la campagne électorale, ibid., Nov. 25, 1909; and La Hollande politique; un parti catholique en pays protestant (Paris, 1910).] IV. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (p. 531) *584. Judicial Principles.*--The constitution guarantees various fundamental personal rights, including those of petition, assembly, free speech, and equality before the law in all matters pertaining to the protection of person and property. It likewise undertakes to guarantee the individual against partiality and arbitrariness in the administration of justice. Except in unusual cases, prescribed by law, no one may be taken into custody except upon a warrant issued by a judge, stating specifically the reason for arrest. No one may be removed against his will from the jurisdiction of the tribunal in which he has a right to be tried. General confiscation of the property of a person adjudged guilty may not be imposed as a penalty for any offense. Save in exceptional cases, specified by law, or when in the opinion of the judge public order and morals forbid, the sessions of all courts are required to be public. Judgments must be pronounced in public session. They must be accompanied by a statement of the considerations upon which they are based, and, in criminal cases, by a citation of the specific provisions of law upon which the sentence is founded.[741] [Footnote 741: Arts. 149-161. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 110-112.] *585. The Courts.*--Justice is administered throughout the kingdom in the name of the crown, and all judicial officers are appointed by the crown. Within the constitution provision is made only for a supreme tribunal known as the High Court (_Hooge Raad_) of the Netherlands, sitting at The Hague. Minor courts exist by virtue of ordinary law. The judges of the High Court, five in number, are appointed by the crown from lists prepared by the lower house of the States-General. The junctions of the High Court are of large importance. On appeal from inferior tribunals it may annul any judicial proceeding, decree, or judgment held by it to be unwarranted by law. It is charged with the duty of seeing that suits are properly tried and decided, and that judicial officials comply with the laws. Inferior judges are appointed normally for life, but under conditions prescribed by law they may be dismissed or relieved of their duties by decision of the High Court. Finally, the High Court constitutes a tribunal before which, upon charges brought by either the sovereign or the lower chamber, members of the States-General, heads of the ministerial departments, governors-general, members of the Council of State, and commissioners of the crown in the provinces, may be prosecuted upon charge of offenses committed in office. Such prosecution may be instituted (p. 532) either during an official's tenure of office or after his retirement.[742] [Footnote 742: Arts. 162-166. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 112-113.] Of inferior tribunals there are three grades. At the bottom are the cantonal courts, 106 in number, consisting each of a single judge and taking cognizance of claims under 200 guilders, breaches of police regulations, and other cases of a minor nature. Next are the district courts, 23 in number, each consisting of three judges and exercising within the _arrondissement_ jurisdiction in matters of more weight. Still above the district tribunals are five courts of appeal, each comprising a body of three judges. Trial by jury is unknown in Holland. *586. Local Government: the Province.*--The constitution of the Netherlands is somewhat peculiar in that it prescribes at length not merely the form and character of the national government, but also the arrangements that shall prevail respecting the governments of the provinces and the communes throughout the kingdom. Of provinces there are eleven; of communes, 1,123. The importance of the province is enhanced by the fact that the nation has sprung from a pure confederation, the original autonomy of the federated provinces having never been wholly obliterated under the present centralized régime. Each province has its own representative body, or "provincial estates," a unicameral assembly whose members are chosen directly for six years by all inhabitants of the province who are entitled to vote for members of the lower house of the States-General. Half of the members retire every three years. The number of members varies, according to the population of the province, from eighty in South Holland to thirty-five in Drenthe. The assembly meets at least twice a year. Its powers are extensive, although it can perform no legislative act without the assent of the crown. It enacts ordinances, levies taxes, prepares and submits to the sovereign an annual budget, controls in certain respects the municipalities, and elects those members of the upper branch of the States-General to which the individual province is entitled. For the exercise of executive authority within the province there are two agencies. The provincial assembly appoints from its own members a committee of six, known as the "deputed states," to which, in accordance with conditions fixed by law, the daily administration of affairs is intrusted. Furthermore the sovereign appoints and establishes in each province a commissioner who is charged with the execution of royal orders and with a general supervision of the acts of the local authorities. This royal commissioner presides over the deliberations of both the provincial estates and the committee of six, possessing in the committee the power also of voting. He is (p. 533) distinctly the chief magistrate of the province, and at the same time the effective tie between the central and the provincial governments.[743] [Footnote 743: Arts. 127-141. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 105-108.] *587. Local Government: the Commune.*--In all essential respects the government of the Dutch communes is prescribed by the national constitution, with the result that that government is characterized by uniformity no less thoroughgoing than is the communal government of France. Within each commune is a council of from seven to forty-five members elected directly by the people of the commune for a term of six years under franchise arrangements identical with those obtaining in the election of members of the provincial estates, save that no one, although otherwise qualified to vote for communal councillors, may exercise the privilege unless he contributes a minimum amount yearly to the communal rates. One-third of the members of the council retire every two years. The council meets publicly as frequently as business requires. It enacts by-laws, levies taxes, supervises education, and represents the interests of the commune, if occasion arises, before the sovereign, the States-General, and the provincial estates. All of its legislative acts are liable to veto by the crown, and the municipal budget requires regularly the approval of the committee of the provincial estates. Executive authority within the commune is vested in a burgomaster, or mayor, appointed by the sovereign for a term of six years, and a board of two to six _wethouders_, or aldermen, elected by and from the council. The burgomaster presides in the council and, as a representative of the royal authority, may suspend for a period of thirty days any measure enacted.[744] [Footnote 744: Arts. 142-148. Ibid., II., 108-110.] CHAPTER XXIX (p. 534) THE GOVERNMENT OF BELGIUM I. THE CONSTITUTION--THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY *588. The Constitution: Liberalism and Stability.*--The constitution of the kingdom of Belgium was framed, consequent upon the declaration of Belgian independence October 4, 1830, by a national congress of two hundred elected delegates. It was promulgated February 7, 1831, and July 21 of the same year the first independent Belgian sovereign, Leopold I., took oath to observe and maintain it. Circumstances conspired to give the instrument a pronouncedly liberal character. Devised in the midst of a revolution brought on principally by the autocratic rule of King William I., it is, and was intended to be, uncommonly explicit in its definition of the royal prerogative. There were Belgians in 1831, indeed, who advocated the establishment of a republic. Against such a course various considerations were urged, and with effect; but the monarchy which was set up, owing clearly its existence to popular suffrage, is of the strictly limited, constitutional type. "All powers," it is asserted in the fundamental law, "emanate from the people."[745] The principles of liberalism are the more in evidence by reason of the fact that the framers of the constitution deliberately accepted as models the French instruments of 1791 and 1830 and were likewise influenced profoundly by their admiration for the constitutional system of Great Britain. [Footnote 745: Art. 25. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 130.] A striking testimony to the thoroughness with which the work was done, and to the advanced character of the governmental system established, is the fact that the text of the Belgian fundamental law endured through more than half a century absolutely unchanged, and, further, that when in our own generation the task of amendment was undertaken not even the most ardent revisionists cared to insist upon more than the overhauling of the arrangements respecting the franchise. Leopold I.(1831-1865), and Leopold II. after him (1865-1909), frankly recognized the conditional basis of the royal tenure and, although conspicuously active in the management of public affairs, afforded (p. 535) by their conduct slight occasion for popular criticism or disaffection. Even the revolutionary year 1848 passed without producing in Belgium more than a mere ripple of unrest. In 1893 the constitution was amended to provide for universal male suffrage, and in 1899 a further amendment instituted a system of proportional representation. Otherwise, the instrument stands to-day virtually as it was put into operation in 1831. It need hardly be remarked that, in Belgium as elsewhere, the written constitution does not by any means contain the whole of the actually operative political system. Numerous aspects of parliamentarism, and of other well-established governmental forms and practices, depend for their sanction upon the conventions, rather than upon the law, of the constitution; but they are none the less real and enduring. *589. Content and Amendment.*--The written constitution of Belgium, like that of Holland, is comprehensive in scope. It comprises an extended bill of rights; a detailed definition of the framework of the national executive, legislative, and judicial departments; special provisions relating to finance and the army; and an enumeration of the principles underlying the provincial and communal administration. It contains a total of 139 articles, of which eight, being temporary in character, are inoperative. The process of amendment is identical with that which prevails in Holland. Upon declaration by the legislative chambers to the effect that a specified amendment is desirable, the chambers are _ipso facto_ dissolved. If the chambers thereupon elected approve the proposition by a two-thirds vote, and the sovereign accords it his sanction, it is declared adopted.[746] [Footnote 746: Art. 131. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 146. The text of the constitution of Belgium, in English translation, is printed in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 126-148, and in the _Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_, May, 1896, Supplement (translation by J. M. Vincent). French texts of the constitution and of important laws will be found in F. Larcier, Code politique et administratif de la Belgique (2d ed., Brussels, 1893). The standard commentary is J. J. Thonissen, La constitution belge (3d ed., Brussels, 1879). Works of value relating to the amendments of 1893-1894 are C. Thiebault et A. Henry, Commentaire législatif des articles révisés de la constitution belge (Brussels, 1894), and Beltjens, La constitution belge révisée (Liège, 1895). The best treatises on the Belgian constitutional system are P. Errera, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Belgien (Tübingen, 1909), and Traité de droit public belge: droit constitutionnel, droit administratif (Paris, 1908), and O. Orban, Le droit constitutionnel de la Belgique, 3 vols. (Liège, 1906-1911). An older but excellent work is A. Giron, La droit public de la Belgique (Brussels, 1884). A convenient elementary book on the subject is F. Masson et C. Wiliquet, Manuel de droit constitutionnel (7th ed., Brussels, 1904). A useful volume is E. Flandin, Institutions politiques de l'Europe contemporaine (2d ed., Paris, 1907), I.] *590. The Crown.*--Kingship in Belgium is hereditary in the (p. 536) direct male line in the order of primogeniture. In default of male descendants, the king, with the consent of the legislative chambers, may name his successor.[747] A king or heir to the throne attains his majority at the age of eighteen. In the event of a minority, or of the incapacity of the sovereign, the two houses are required to meet in a single assembly for the purpose of making provision for a regency. The powers of regent may not be conferred upon two or more persons jointly, and during the continuance of a regency no changes may be made in the constitution.[748] If by chance the throne should fall wholly vacant, the choice of a sovereign would devolve upon the legislative chambers, specially re-elected for the purpose, and deliberating in joint session. The civil list of the crown is fixed at the beginning of a reign. That of Leopold II., as established by law of December 25, 1865, was 3,300,000 francs, and that of the present sovereign, Albert I., is the same. [Footnote 747: This privilege was conferred by an amendment (Art. 61) adopted September 7, 1893.] [Footnote 748: Arts. 60, 79-85. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 136, 138-139.] *591. The Ministers and the Parliamentary System.*--The Council of Ministers consists of ten heads of executive departments. These, together with a variable number of ministers without portfolio, comprise the Council of State, an advisory body convened by the crown as occasion requires. All ministers are appointed, directly or indirectly, and all may be dismissed, by the king. All must be Belgian citizens, and no member of the royal family may be tendered an appointment. Ministers are all but invariably members of one or the other of the legislative houses, principally of the House of Representatives.[749] Whether members or not, they are privileged to attend all sessions and to be heard at their own request. The houses, indeed, possess the right to demand their attendance. But no minister may vote, save in a house of which he is a member.[750] [Footnote 749: The minister of war, regularly an active military official, has been usually not a legislative member. Aside from this one post, however, the custom of selecting ministers exclusively from the chambers has been followed almost as rigorously in Belgium as in Great Britain. And so largely are the ministers taken from the lower house that the Senate not infrequently has no representative at all in the cabinet.] [Footnote 750: Arts. 86-91. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 139-140.] Belgium is one of the few continental states in which the parliamentary system is thoroughly operative. At no point is the constitution more explicit than in its stipulation of the responsibility of ministers. Not only is it declared that the king's ministers are responsible; it is stipulated that "no decree of the king shall take effect unless it is countersigned by a minister, who, by that act alone, renders himself responsible for it"; also that "in no case shall the verbal or (p. 537) written order of the king relieve a minister of responsibility."[751] The House of Representatives is vested with the right to accuse ministers and to arraign them before the Court of Cassation; and the king may not pardon a minister who has been sentenced by this tribunal, save upon request of one of the two legislative chambers. A ministry which finds that it cannot command the support of a majority in the House of Representatives has the right to determine upon the dissolution of either of the houses, or of both. If after a general election there is still lack of harmony, the ministry, as would be the procedure in a similar situation in Great Britain, retires from office, the sovereign calls upon an opposition party leader to assume the premiership and to form a cabinet, and the remainder of the ministers are selected from the dominant parties by this official, in consultation with the king. By reason of the multiplicity of party groups in Belgium, the king is apt to be allowed somewhat wider latitude in the choice of a premier than is possible in Great Britain.[752] [Footnote 751: Arts. 63-64, 89. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 137, 140.] [Footnote 752: Dupriez, Les Ministres, I., 210-230; O. Kerchove de Denterghem, De la responsabilité des ministres dans le droit public belge (Paris, 1867).] *592. The Exercise of Executive Powers.*--The powers of the executive, exercised nominally by the king, but actually by the ministry, are closely defined in the constitution; and there is the stipulation, unusual in European constitutions, that the king shall possess no powers other than those which the constitution, and the special laws enacted under the constitution, confer explicitly upon him.[753] Under the conditions that have been explained, the king appoints all officials who are attached to the general administrative and foreign services, but other officials only in so far as is expressly authorized by law. He commands the forces by land and sea, declares war, and concludes peace. He negotiates treaties, with the limitation that treaties of commerce and treaties which impose a burden upon the state, or place under obligation individual Belgian citizens, take effect only after receiving the approval of the two houses; and with the further condition that no cession, exchange, or acquisition of territory may be carried through save by warrant of a law. The king promulgates all legislative measures, and he is authorized to issue all regulations and decrees necessary for the execution of the laws. In theory he possesses the power of the veto, but in the Belgian, as in parliamentary governments generally, there is no occasion for the actual exercise of this power. The king convokes, prorogues, and dissolves the chambers; though the provisions of the constitution (p. 538) relating to the legislative sessions are so explicit that the crown is left small discretion in the matter. The king, finally, is authorized to remit or to reduce the penalties imposed by the tribunals of justice, to coin money, to confer titles of nobility (which must be purely honorary), and to bestow military orders in accordance with provisions of law.[754] [Footnote 753: Art. 78. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 138.] [Footnote 754: Arts. 66-67. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 137-138.] II. THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT--THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM *593. The Senate.*--The Belgian parliament consists of two houses, both elective and both representative of the nation as a whole. The upper house, or Senate, is composed of 112 members, chosen for a term of eight years. With respect to the method of their election, the members fall into two categories. Under constitutional provision, as amended by law of September 7, 1893, a number of senators equal to one-half the number of members of the House of Representatives is elected directly by the voters, in proportion to the population of the several provinces. The electorate which returns these senators is identical with that which returns the deputies, and by law of December 29, 1899, the principle of proportional representation, as applied in elections of the lower chamber, is applied to senatorial elections within each province. A second group of members consists of those elected by the provincial councils, to the number of two for each province having fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, of three for each province having from 500,000 to 1,000,000 inhabitants, and of four for each province having more than 1,000,000 inhabitants. The proportion of senators elected directly by the people is approximately three-fourths, being at present 76 to 26. Prior to the amendment of 1893 all members of the Senate were chosen by the same electorate which chose the members of the lower chamber. Inasmuch as only payers of direct taxes to the amount of 2,000 francs a year were eligible as senators, the upper house represented almost exclusively the interests of wealth. By vesting in the provincial councils the choice of a portion of the senators, who should be eligible regardless of taxpaying qualifications, it was hoped to impart to the Senate a more broadly representative character. At the same time the tax qualification for popularly elected members was reduced by a third. It may be noted that there is a possibility of a small non-elective element in the Senate. According to the terms of the constitution, the sons of the king, or if there be none, the Belgian princes of the branch of the royal family designated to succeed to the throne, shall be by right senators at the age of eighteen, though without deliberative vote until the (p. 539) age of twenty-five.[755] Prior to his accession to the throne, in 1909, the present sovereign Albert I., nephew and heir-presumptive of Leopold II., was entitled to a senatorial seat. There is at present no representative of royalty who is eligible. [Footnote 755: Art. 58. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 135.] All elective senators must be Belgian citizens and Belgian residents, at least forty years of age, and in the unrestricted enjoyment of civil and political rights. Senators elected by the provincial councils are subject to no property qualifications,[756] but those elected directly by the people must be drawn from either payers of as much as 1,200 francs of direct national taxes or proprietors or lessees of Belgian real estate of an assessed income of at least 12,000 francs. In provinces, however, where the number of eligible persons falls short of the proportion of one for every 5,000 inhabitants, the list is completed by the addition of such a number of the heaviest taxpayers of the province as may be necessary to establish this proportion.[757] Save passes on the national railways, senators receive no salary or other emolument. [Footnote 756: They may not be, and may not have been within two years preceding their election, members of the assembly which returns them.] [Footnote 757: Art. 56. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 135.] *594. The House of Representatives: Earlier Electoral Arrangements.*--The lower legislative chamber consists of deputies elected directly by the voters of the kingdom. The number of seats is determined by law, under the general provision that it may not exceed the proportion of one for 40,000 inhabitants. Prior to 1899 it was 152; to-day it is 186. The term is four years. Half of the membership retires every two years, though in the event of a dissolution the house is entirely renewed.[758] The qualifications which the constitution requires of deputies are those of citizenship, residence in Belgium, attainment of the age of twenty-five, and possession of civil and political rights. Deputies receive an honorarium of 4,000 francs a year, together with free transportation upon all State and concessionary railways between the places of their respective residences and Brussels, or any other city in which a session may be held. [Footnote 758: This is true also of the Senate.] The Belgian electoral system at the present day is noteworthy by reason of three facts: (1) it is based upon the principle of universal manhood suffrage; (2) it embraces a scheme of plural voting; and (3) it provides for the proportional representation of parties. Under the original constitution of 1831 the franchise, while not illiberal for the time, was restricted by property qualifications of a somewhat sweeping character. Deputies were elected by those citizens only who paid yearly a direct tax varying in amount, but in no instance of less than twenty florins. In 1848 there was enacted a series of (p. 540) electoral laws whereby the property qualification was reduced to a uniform level of twenty florins and the number of voters was virtually doubled. With this arrangement the Liberals were by no means satisfied, and agitation in behalf of a broader electorate was steadily maintained. As early as 1865 the Liberal demands were actively re-enforced by those of organizations of workingmen, and in 1870 the Catholic ministry found itself obliged to sanction a considerable extension of the franchise in elections within the provinces and the communes. After 1880 the brunt of the electoral propaganda was borne by the Socialists, and the campaign for constitutional revision was directed almost solely against the 47th article of the fundamental law, in which was contained the original stipulation respecting the franchise. Since 1830 the population of Belgium had all but doubled, and there had been in the country an enormous increase of popular intelligence and of economic prosperity. That in a population of 6,000,000 (in 1890) there should be an electorate of but 135,000 was a sufficiently obvious anomaly. The broadly democratic system by which members of the French Chamber of Deputies and of the German Reichstag were elected was proclaimed by the revisionists to be the ideal which it was hoped to realize in Belgium. *595. The Electoral Reform Act of 1893.*--In 1890 the Catholic ministry, recognizing in part the justice of the demand, and preferring, if there were to be revision, to carry it through, rather than to incur the risk of having it carried through by a radical cabinet, yielded to the pressure and consented to the formal consideration of the electoral question upon the floors of the two chambers. Three years of intermittent, but animated, discussion ensued. At length, in May, 1892, the chambers were able to agree upon the primary proposition that some sort of revision was necessary. Then came the dissolution which is required by the constitution in such a case, followed by a general election. The newly chosen chambers, which for the purpose in hand comprised virtually a constituent convention, entered upon their task later in the same year. In both the Catholics maintained a majority, but by reason of the requirement of a two-thirds vote for the adoption of a constitutional amendment, they were none the less obliged to rely upon the Liberals for a certain amount of support. In the scheme of revision which was finally adopted all parties had some substantial share. No fewer than fourteen distinct programmes of reform were laid before the chambers.[759] The Conservatives, in general, desired the introduction of a system based upon occupation combined with the (p. 541) payment of taxes; the majority of the Liberals sought to secure special recognition for electors of approved capacity--in brief, an educational qualification; the Radicals inside, and the Socialists outside, Parliament carried on a relentless propaganda in behalf of universal, direct, and equal suffrage. The rejection in committee (April, 1893) of a plan of universal suffrage occasioned popular demonstrations which required the calling out of the military, and when it was proposed to stop with a reduction of the age limit for voters there were threats of a universal industrial strike. In the end all elements wisely receded from their extreme demands and it was found possible to effect agreement upon a compromise. A Catholic deputy--Albert Nyssens, professor at the University of Louvain--came forward with a scheme for manhood suffrage, safeguarded by the plural vote, and September 3, 1893, the plan was adopted.[760] [Footnote 759: It will be remembered that for the purpose of considering constitutional amendments the chambers meet in joint session.] [Footnote 760: The Nyssens scheme was brought to the attention of the Belgian people through the medium of a pamphlet entitled "Le suffrage universel tempéré."] *596. The Franchise To-day.*--By the terms of the law of 1893, one vote is allotted to every male Belgian citizen who has attained the age of twenty-five years, who is in unrestricted enjoyment of his civil and political rights, and who has been resident at least one year in a given commune. There is nothing whatsoever in the nature of either an educational or a property qualification. Having conferred, however, upon the mass of male citizens the right to vote, the law proceeds to define the conditions under which a citizen may be entitled to two votes, or even three. One supplementary vote is conferred upon (1) every male citizen over thirty-five years of age, married or a widower, with legitimate offspring, and paying to the state as a householder a tax of not less than five francs, unless exempt by reason of his profession, and (2) every male citizen over twenty-five years of age owning real estate to the assessed value of 2,000 francs, or possessing income from land corresponding to such valuation, or who for two years has derived a minimum interest return of one hundred francs a year from Belgian funds, in the form of either government bonds or obligations of the Belgian government savings-bank. Two supplementary votes are conferred upon citizens over twenty-five years of age who (1) hold a diploma from an institution of higher learning, or an indorsed certificate testifying to the completion of a course of secondary education of the higher grade; or (2) occupy or have occupied a public office, hold or have held a position, practice or have practiced a profession, which presupposes the knowledge imparted in secondary instruction of the higher grade--such offices, (p. 542) positions, and professions to be defined from time to time by law.[761] [Footnote 761: Art. 47. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 132-133.] What, therefore, the law of 1893 does is, broadly, to confer upon every male citizen one vote and to specify three principal conditions under which this basal voting power may be augmented. As the head of a family, the citizen's suffrage may be doubled. By reason of his possession of property or of capital, it likewise may be doubled. On the basis of a not unattainable educational qualification, it may be tripled. Under no circumstances may an individual be entitled to more than three votes. The plural vote of Belgium differs, therefore, from that of Great Britain, not only in that it is based upon a variety of qualifications of which property ownership is but one, but also in that there is fixed an absolute and reasonably low maximum of votes. It is of interest further to observe that voting is declared by the Belgian constitution to be obligatory. Failure to appear at the polls, without adequate excuse made to the election officer, is a misdemeanor, punishable by law. The citizen may, if he likes, evade the law by depositing a blank ballot. But he must deposit a ballot of some sort.[762] [Footnote 762: On the earlier aspects of Belgian electoral reform see J. Van den Heuvel, De la révision de la constitution (Brussels, 1892); L. Arnaud, La révision belge, 1890-1893 (Paris and Brussels, 1894); La réforme électorale en Belgique, in _Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1894; E. Van der Smissen, L'État actuel des partis politiques en Belgique, ibid., Sept., 1898. An important work by a leading socialist and a deputy from Brussels is L. Bertrand, Histoire de la démocratie et du socialisme en Belgique depuis 1830, 2 vols. (Brussels and Paris, 1906-1907). Mention may be made also of E. Vandervelde et J. Destree, Le socialisme en Belgique (2d ed., Paris, 1903) and the older work of E. de Laveleye, Le parti clérical en Belgique (Brussels, 1874). A careful study is J. Barthélemy, L'organisation du suffrage et l'expérience belge (Paris, 1912). In 1910-1911 the number of parliamentary electors was 1,697,619, of whom 993,070 had one vote, 395,866 had two votes, and 308,683 had three votes.] III. PARTIES AND ELECTORAL REFORM SINCE 1894--PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE *597. The Adoption of Proportional Representation, 1899.*--The first election held under the law of 1893, that of October 14, 1894, demonstrated that by that measure the number of electors had been multiplied almost exactly by ten. The total number of voters was now 1,370,000; the number of votes cast was 2,111,000. Contrary to general expectation, the election gave the Catholics an overwhelming majority in the lower chamber. They obtained 105 seats, the Socialists 29, and the Liberals only 18. The elections of 1896 and 1898 gave the (p. 543) Catholics a still more pronounced preponderance. At the beginning of 1899 the parties of the opposition could muster in the lower house only forty votes and in the upper only thirty-one. The Liberal party was threatened with extinction. Its popular strength, however, was still considerable, and from both Liberals and Socialists there arose an insistent demand for the adoption of a scheme whereby the various parties should be accorded seats in the law-making bodies in proportion to their popular vote. The idea of proportional representation was not at this time in Belgium a new one. It had been formulated and defended in the lower chamber as early as 1866. Since 1881 there had been maintained a national reform organization whose purpose was in part to propagate it; and it is worthy of note that at the time of the revision of 1893 the ministry, led by the premier Beernaert, had advocated its adoption.[763] In 1895 the principle was introduced in a statute relating to communal elections. Following a prolonged contest, which involved the retirement of two premiers, a bill extending the plan to parliamentary elections was pressed upon the somewhat divided Catholic forces and, December 29, 1899, was enacted into law. Under the provisions of this measure deputies and the popularly elected senators continue to be chosen within the arrondissement by _scrutin de liste_. Within each arrondissement the seats to be filled are distributed among the parties in proportion to the party strength as revealed at the polls, the allotment taking place in accordance with the list system formulated by Victor d'Hondt, of the University of Ghent. The number of deputies elected in an arrondissement varies from three to twenty-one. When an elector appears at the polls he presents his official "summons" to vote and receives from the presiding officer one, two, or three ballot papers according to the number of votes to which he is entitled. He takes these papers to a private compartment, marks them, places them in the ballot-box, and has returned to him his letter of summons stamped in such a way as to show that he has fulfilled the obligation imposed upon him by law. The candidates of the various parties are presented in lists, and the task of the elector is merely to indicate his approval of one list for each of the votes to which he is entitled. This he does by pencilling white spots contained in the black squares at the head of the lists or against the names of individual candidates. He may pencil only the spot at the (p. 544) head of a list, thereby approving the order in which the candidates have been arranged by the party managers; or, by marking spaces opposite names of candidates, he may indicate his preference for a different order. [Footnote 763: Another interesting proposal in 1893 was that at the discretion of the crown a legislative measure might be submitted to direct popular vote. By reason of the fear that such a scheme would vest in the crown an excess of power the experiment was not tried.] *598. How Seats Are Allotted.*--The process of the apportionment of seats may be illustrated by a hypothetical case. Let it be assumed that within a given arrondissement four lists of parliamentary candidates have been presented and that at the polls an aggregate vote of 33,000 is distributed as follows: Catholics, 16,000; Liberals, 9,000; Socialists, 4,500; and Christian Democrats, 3,500. Let it be assumed, further, that the arrondissement is entitled to eight seats. The total number of votes for each list is divided successively by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and the results are arrayed thus: _Christian_ _Catholic_ _Liberal_ _Socialist_ _Democrat_ _List_[764] _List_ _List_ _List_ Divided by 1 16,000 9,000 4,500 3,500 Divided by 2 8,000 4,500 2,250 1,750 Divided by 3 5,333 3,000 1,500 1,166 Divided by 4 4,000 2,250 1,125 875 Divided by 5 3,200 1,800 900 700 [Footnote 764: In point of fact, the lists as published and as placed before the voter are indicated merely by number.] The eight highest numbers (eight being the number of seats to be filled) are then arranged in order of magnitude as follows: 16,000 9,000 8,000 5,333 4,500 4,500 4,000 3,500 The lowest of these numbers, 3,500, becomes the common divisor, or the "electoral quotient." The number of votes cast for each list is divided by this quotient, and the resulting numbers (fractions being disregarded) indicate the quota of seats to which each of the parties is entitled. In the case in hand the results would be: 16,000 divided by 3,500 = 4 Catholic seats 9,000 divided by 3,500 = 2 Liberal seats 4,500 divided by 3,500 = 1 Socialist seat 3,500 divided by 3,500 = 1 Christian Democrat seat *599. The Making up of the Lists.*--Lists of candidates are made (p. 545) up, and the order in which the names of candidates appear is determined, by the local organizations of the respective parties. In order to be presented to the electorate a list must have the previously expressed support of at least one hundred electors. A candidate may stand as an independent, and his name will appear in a separate "list," providing his candidacy meets the condition that has been mentioned; and it is within the right of any organization or group, political or non-political, to place before the electorate a list. The power of the organization responsible for the presentation of a list to fix the order of candidates' names is not a necessary feature of the proportional system and it has been the object of much criticism, but it is not clear that serious abuse has arisen from it. Candidates whose names stand near the top of the list are, of course, more likely to be elected than those whose names appear further down, for, under the prevailing rules, all votes indicated in the space at the head of a list form a pool from which the candidates on the list draw in succession as many votes as may be necessary to make their individual total equal to the electoral quotient, the process continuing until the pool is exhausted. Only by receiving a large number of individual preferential votes can a candidate be elected to the exclusion of a candidate whose name precedes his.[765] [Footnote 765: Valuable books dealing with proportional representation in Belgium are G. Lachapelle, La représentation proportionnelle en France et en Belgique (Paris, 1911); F. Goblet d'Alviella, La représentation proportionelle en Belgique, and La représentation proportionelle intégrale (Paris, 1910); Barriéty, La représentation proportionelle en Belgique (Paris, 1906); Dubois, La représentation proportionelle soumise à l'expérience belge (Lille, 1906); and J. Humphreys, Proportional Representation (London, 1911). A careful account is contained in the Report and Evidence of the British Royal Commission on Electoral Systems (1910), Report, Cd. 5,163; Evidence, Cd. 5,352. Useful articles are: E. Mahaim, Proportional Representation and the Debates upon the Electoral Question in Belgium, in _Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science_, May, 1900; E. Van der Smissen, La représentation proportionnelle en Belgique et les élections générales de mai 1900, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July-Sept., 1900; and J. Humphreys, Proportional Representation in Belgium, in _Contemporary Review_, Oct., 1908.] *600. The Elections of 1906, 1908, and 1910.*--The first parliamentary election following the adoption of the proportional system--that of May, 1900--left the Catholics with a larger preponderance in the lower chamber than they had dared expect.[766] None the less, the effect of the change was distinctly to revive the all but defunct Liberal party, to stimulate enormously the aspirations of the Socialists, and, in (p. 546) general, to replace the crushing Catholic plurality of former years by a wide distribution of seats among representatives of the various parties and groups. Prior to the election of 1890 the Catholic majority was 32. The election of 1900 left it at 16; that of 1902, at 26; that of 1904, at 20; that of 1906, at 12; that of 1908, at 8; and that of 1910, at 6. Following the elections which took place in five of the nine provinces in 1906, party strength in the Chamber was as follows: Catholics, 89; Liberals, 46; Socialists, 30; Christian Democrats, 1. After the elections in the other four provinces in 1908, it was: Catholics, 87; Liberals, 43; Socialists, 35; Christian Democrats, 1. [Footnote 766: It will be recalled that the term of deputies is four years, half retiring every two years. There is, therefore, a parliamentary election, but not throughout the entire country, every second year.] The elections of May, 1910,[767] were contested with unusual keenness by reason of the fact that the Liberal-Socialist coalition seemed to have, for the first time in a quarter of a century, a distinct chance for victory. The Catholics were notoriously divided upon certain public issues, notably Premier Schollaert's Compulsory Military Service bill, and it was believed in many quarters that their tenure of power was near an end. The Liberal hope, however, was doomed to disappointment; for, although both Liberals and Socialists realized considerable gains in the popular vote in some portions of the kingdom, in only a single constituency was the gain sufficient to carry a new seat. The consequence was that the Catholic majority was reduced, but not below six, and party strength in the Chamber stood: Catholics, 86; Liberals, 45; Socialists, 34; Christian Democrats, 1. Among reasons that may be assigned for the Liberal failure are the fact that the country was prosperous and not disposed to precipitate a change of governments, the alienation of some voters by the working relations that had been established between the Liberals and the Socialists, and the advantage that regularly accrues to the Catholics from the plural vote. [Footnote 767: In the five provinces of Brabant, Anvers, Namur, West Flanders, and Luxemburg, the term of whose deputies was about to expire.] *601. The Catholic Triumph in 1912.*--During the years 1910-1912 the Catholic tenure of power, prolonged uninterruptedly since 1884, seemed more than once on the point of being broken. Most of the time, however, the legislative machine performed its functions sufficiently well with a majority of but half a dozen seats, and the drift of affairs operated eventually to strengthen the Catholic position. In March, 1911, Premier Schollaert introduced an education bill looking toward the placing of church schools upon a footing financially with the schools maintained by the communes, and the opposition to this measure acquired such intensity that the author of the bill was forced to retire. But his successor, De Broqueville, a man of conciliatory temperament, formed a new Catholic cabinet which, by falling back (p. 547) upon a policy of "marking time," contrived to stave off a genuine defeat. In the municipal elections held throughout the country October 15, 1911, the Liberal-Socialist candidates were very generally successful, but the parliamentary elections which took place June 2, 1912, had the unexpected result of entrenching the Catholic party more securely in power than in upwards of a decade. The combined assault of the Liberals and the Socialists upon "clericalism" fell flat, and against the Government's contention that the extraordinary and incontestable prosperity of the country merited a continuance of Catholic rule no arguments were forthcoming which carried conviction among the voters. The Catholic vote showed an increase of 130,610, the Liberal and Socialist opposition an increase of 40,402, and the Christian Democrats a decrease of 4,692. The new chamber consists of 101 Catholics, 45 Liberals, 38 Socialists, and 2 Christian Democrats, giving the Government a clear majority of sixteen. The elections were marked by grave public unrest, involving widespread strikes and anti-clerical demonstrations, with some loss of life. More clearly than before was exhibited in this campaign the essentially bourgeois and doctrinaire character of the present Liberal party. The intimate touch with the masses which in the days of its ascendancy, prior to 1884, the party enjoyed has been lost, and more and more the proletariat is looking to the Socialists for propagation of the measures required for social and industrial amelioration. *602. The Demand for Further Reform.*--A project upon which the Socialists and Liberals in the last election, as upon several former occasions, have found it possible to unite is the abolition of the plural vote. Almost immediately after the adoption of the amendment of 1893 the Socialists declared their purpose to wage war unremittingly upon this feature of the new system. In its stead they demanded that there be substituted the rule of _un homme, un vote_, "one man, one vote," with the age limit reduced to twenty-one years. Following the triumph of the Catholics in 1900, the agitation of the Socialists was redoubled, and in it the Liberals very generally joined. Between the two groups there arose seemingly irreconcilable differences of method, the Liberals being unable to approve the obstructionism and other violent means employed by their allies. In time, however, the Socialist methods became more moderate, and the realization on the part of both elements that only by fighting together might they hope to win induced a fuller and more durable co-operation between the two. For the time being the Socialists have subordinated to the establishment of universal and equal suffrage all other features of their political and industrial programme.[768] Upon the desirability of maintaining (p. 548) proportional representation all parties are agreed, and it is probably but a question of time until the principle will be applied fully, as it is not to-day, in the elections of the provinces and communes. [Footnote 768: August 15, 1911, Socialists and Liberals combined in an anti-plural-vote demonstration in Brussels in which 150,000 people are estimated to have taken part. For an able defense of plural voting under the system prevailing in Belgium see L. Dupriez, L'Organisation du suffrage universel en Belgique. Cf. E. Van der Smissen, La question du suffrage universel en Belgique, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Sept., 1902. On recent aspects of Belgian politics consult L. Dupriez, L'évolution des partis politiques en Belgique et les élections de mai 1906, ibid., Sept., 1906; A. Kahn, Les élections belges, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, June 16, 1910; and J. Van den Heuvel, Les élections belges, in _Le Correspondant_, June 25, 1912. J. H. Humphreys, Proportional Representation in Belgium, in _Contemporary Review_, Oct., 1908, contains a concrete account of the elections of 1908. A useful volume is A. Fromes, Code électoral belge (Brussels, 1908).] *603. The Legislative Chambers: Organization and Procedure.*--The two houses meet by established right on the second Tuesday in November of each year, at the Palais de la Nation, in Brussels. A regular session must continue through a period of at least forty days. The king may convene the chambers in extraordinary session. He may adjourn them, save that in no case may an adjournment exceed the term of one month; nor may it be renewed during the same session, without the consent of the houses. Finally, the king may dissolve the chambers, or either of them; but the act of dissolution must include an order for an election within forty days and a summons of the newly elected parliament to meet within two months.[769] [Footnote 769: Arts. 70-72. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 137.] Each house judges the qualifications of its members and decides all contests arising in relation thereto; each elects, at the opening of a session, its president, vice-president, secretaries, and other officials; each determines by its own rules the manner in which its powers shall be exercised. Sessions are normally public; but by vote of an absolute majority, taken at the instigation of the president or of ten members, either body may decide to consider a specific subject behind closed doors. Votes are taken _viva voce_ or by rising, but a vote on a bill as a whole must always be by roll call and _viva voce_. Except on propositions pertaining to constitutional amendments and a few matters (upon which a two-thirds vote is required), measures are passed by absolute majority. They must, however, be voted upon article by article. From the essentially democratic character of the Belgian government, it follows that the powers of the legislative chambers are comprehensive. The functions of legislation are vested by the constitution conjointly in the king and the two houses, but in practice they are exercised (p. 549) in a very large measure by the houses alone. Each house, as well as the crown, possesses full rights of legislative initiative, though it is required that all laws relating to the revenues or expenditures of the state, or to military contingents, shall be voted first by the House of Representatives. Authoritative interpretation of measures enacted is confided exclusively to the legislative power, and each house is guaranteed the right to inquire into the conduct of public affairs and to compel the attendance of ministers for the purpose of interpellation, although the lower house alone is given power to formulate charges against public officials and to arraign them before the Court of Cassation. IV. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT *604. The Courts.*--Aside from special military, commercial, and labor tribunals, the courts of Belgium comprise a symmetrical hierarchy modelled upon that created under the Code Napoléon. At the bottom are the courts of the 222 cantons, each consisting of a single justice of the peace, vested in ordinary breaches of police regulations with sole authority, though in more serious cases associated with the burgomaster of the commune. Next above are the tribunals of first instance, one in each of the twenty-six arrondissements into which the kingdom is divided, and each consisting of three judges. The court of first instance serves as a court of appeal from the decisions of the cantonal tribunal, and at the same time it possesses original jurisdiction in more serious cases of crime and misdemeanors within the arrondissement. Above the courts of first instance stand the three courts of appeal, sitting at Brussels, Ghent, and Liège. That at Brussels consists of four chambers. At the apex is the Court of Cassation, sitting at the capital. In this supreme tribunal there is but a single judge, but associated with him is a large staff of assistants. The function of the Court of Cassation is to determine whether the decisions of inferior tribunals are in accord with the law and to annul such as are not. It is of interest to observe, however, that it is the Court of Cassation that tries a minister upon charges preferred by the House of Representatives, and this is the only circumstance under which the tribunal exercises any measure of original jurisdiction. The creation of the Court of Cassation and of the three courts of appeal is specifically provided for within the constitution. All inferior tribunals are created by law, and none are permitted to be established otherwise. For the trial of criminal cases there are special tribunals, in three grades: police courts, correctional courts, and courts of assize. All judges and justices of the peace are appointed by the king for life. Members of the courts of appeal and the presidents and (p. 550) vice-presidents of the courts of original jurisdiction are selected from two double lists presented, the one by these courts and the other by the provincial councils. Members of the Court of Cassation are selected from two double lists presented, the one by the Senate and the other by the Court itself. All other judicial officers are appointed by the crown independently. Except for urgent reasons of public order or morals, sessions of all tribunals are public, and every judgment must be pronounced in open court. Unlike Holland, Belgium has a well developed system of trial by jury. Jury trial is guaranteed by the constitution in all criminal cases and in all cases involving political or press offenses. As in England and the United States, it is the function of the jury to determine whether or not the accused is guilty and that of the court to explain the law and to pronounce sentence. A jury consists regularly of twelve members.[770] [Footnote 770: Arts. 92-107. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 140-142. Roubion, La séparation des pouvoirs administratif et judiciaire en Belgique (Paris, 1905).] *605. Local Government: Province and Arrondissement.*--Upon the subject of local government the constitution of Belgium is less explicit than is that of Holland. Aside from specifying that provincial and communal institutions shall be regulated by law, it contents itself with an enumeration of certain principles--among them direct elections, publicity of sittings of provincial and communal councils, publicity of budgets and accounts--whose application is regularly to be maintained.[771] Of local governmental units there are three:[772] the province, the arrondissement, and the commune. The provinces are nine in number.[773] In each is a council, elected by all resident citizens who are entitled to participate in the direct election of senators. The term is eight years, half of the membership being renewed every four years. The council meets at least once a year, on the first Tuesday in July. Its sessions must not exceed four weeks in length nor be briefer than fifteen days. Special sessions may be called by the king. The council considers and takes action upon substantially all legislative, administrative, and fiscal affairs which concern the province alone. It elects from its own members a permanent deputation of six men which is charged with the government of the province while the council is not in session. This deputation is presided over by the governor-general of the province who is appointed by the crown and who serves as the principal intermediary between the provincial (p. 551) and the central governments. [Footnote 771: Arts. 108-109. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 142-143.] [Footnote 772: Not including the canton, which exists purely for judicial purposes. It is the jurisdiction of the justice of the peace.] [Footnote 773: Antwerp, Brabant, East Flanders, West Flanders, Hainaut, Liège, Limburg, Luxemburg, and Namur.] The arrondissement, or district (twenty-six in number), is important chiefly as an electoral and judicial unit. Members of the lower house of the national parliament are elected within the arrondissement under the scheme of proportional representation which has been described; and, as has been pointed out, each arrondissement is the seat of a court of first instance. *606. The Commune.*--In Belgium, as in France and other continental countries, the vital organism of local government is the commune. The total number of communes in the kingdom is 2,629. The principal agency of government within each is a council. Members of this council are elected for a term of eight years, under arrangements of a somewhat complicated character determined by the population of the commune. Voting is _viva voce_; plural votes (to a maximum of four) are authorized; and seats, under certain conditions, are allocated in accordance with the principle of proportional representation. A somewhat singular fact is that the aggregate communal electorate of the kingdom is perceptibly smaller than the provincial or the national. The fact arises largely from the circumstance that the communal voter is required to have been domiciled at least three years in the commune, while residence of but a single year is required for participation in provincial and parliamentary elections.[774] [Footnote 774: In 1902, 1,146,482 communal electors cast a total of 2,007,704 votes. In 1910-1911 there were 1,440,141 provincial, and 1,300,514 communal, voters.] The administrative body of the commune consists of a burgomaster, or mayor, appointed by the crown (in communes whose population exceeds 5,000 elected by the communal council) for a term of ten years, and a college of _échevins_, or aldermen, elected by and from the communal council. The burgomaster is head of the local police, and to him and to the council fall the keeping of the register of births, marriages, and deaths, the making and enforcing of local ordinances, and, in general, the safeguarding of the welfare of the community. The more important measures of the communal council become valid only after they have received the approval of the provincial deputation, or even of the ministry at Brussels; and there are special officials, known as _commissaires d'arrondissement_, appointed by the provincial deputation, to maintain supervision over the communes and their governing authorities. A fundamental characteristic, indeed, of Belgian administration is the combination of constant supervision by the central power with a really large measure of local autonomy.[775] [Footnote 775: Dupriez, Les Ministres, 262-276; E. de Laveleye, Local Government and Taxation, in Cobden Club Essays (London, 1875).] PART VIII.--SCANDINAVIA (p. 553) CHAPTER XXX THE GOVERNMENT OF DENMARK I. DEVELOPMENT PRIOR TO 1814 The kingdom of Denmark is among the smallest of European states. Its area is but 15,582 square miles, which is less than one-third of that of the state of New York, and its population, according to the returns of 1911, is but 2,775,076. The nation is one whose social experiments, economic enterprises, and political practices abound in interest. As a power, it counts nowadays for little. Time was, however, when it counted for much, and the developments by which the kingdom has been reduced to its present status among the nations comprise one of the remarkable chapters of modern European history. *607. Union of Kalmar, 1397.*--The maximum of Danish dominion was attained by virtue of the Union of Kalmar, in 1397, whereby the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were united under the regency of Margaret, daughter of the Danish king Valdemar IV.[776] By the terms of this arrangement the native institutions and the separate administration of each of the three states were guaranteed; and, in point of fact, so powerless at times during succeeding generations was the Danish sovereign in his over-sea dominions that for all practical purposes each of the three affiliated kingdoms may be regarded as having retained essentially its original independence. During an extended period at the middle of the fifteenth century Sweden even had a king of her own. None the less, there was a form of union, and at times the preponderance of Denmark tended to reduce the northern nations to the status of mere dependencies. The union with Sweden lasted only a century and a quarter. Under the leadership of Gustavus Vasa the Swedish people, in 1523, effectually regained their independence, although in accordance with the Treaty of Malmö, in 1524, certain of the southernmost Swedish provinces remained for a time under Danish control.[777] It was the lot of Norway, on the (p. 554) other hand, not alone to be brought more thoroughly into subjection to Denmark than was Sweden, but to continue under Danish sovereignty until 1814, and even at that date to pass instantly from the control of Denmark into that of Sweden, rather than to regain her ancient independence. [Footnote 776: The nominal sovereign was Margaret's great-nephew, Eric of Pomerania, who was elected at a convention of representatives of the three kingdoms held simultaneously with the establishment of the Union. Eric was deposed in 1439.] [Footnote 777: R. N. Bain, Scandinavia, a Political History of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (Cambridge, 1905), Chap. 3; P. B. Watson, The Swedish Revolution under Gustavus Vasa (London, 1889).] *608. The Loss of Norway, 1814.*--The loss of Norway by Denmark was an incident of the Napoleonic wars. During the course of those wars Denmark, as long as was practicable, maintained a policy of neutrality. But in 1807, after she had rejected an offer of a British alliance, she was attacked by a British fleet, and thereupon she became the firmest and most persistent of the allies of Napoleon. Thus it came about that when the contest of the powers drew to an end Denmark had the misfortune to be found upon the losing side. Sweden stood with the Allies, and the upshot was that, to compensate that nation for her loss of Finland to Russia and of Pomerania to Prussia, the Allies gave their consent, in 1812-1813, to the dismemberment by Sweden of the Danish dominion. The work was accomplished by the French marshal Bernadotte, crown prince of Sweden (by adoption) from 1810, and later king (1818-1844). By the Treaty of Kiel, January 14, 1814, Norway was ceded perforce by Denmark to Sweden, and by the Congress of Vienna, later in the year, the transfer was accorded the formal approval of the powers. The Norwegians objected and proceeded to elect as their king a Danish prince; but in the end they were compelled to submit. Denmark was unable to do more than make ineffectual protest. *609. Political Development: the Revolution of 1660.*--The governmental system with which Denmark emerged from the era of Napoleon was essentially that which had been in operation in the kingdom since the second half of the seventeenth century. Prior to a remarkable revolution which, in 1660, followed the conclusion of a costly war with Sweden, monarchy in Denmark was limited and almost uniformly weak. Through three hundred years the kings were elected by the Rigsrad, or senate, and the conditions of their tenure were such as to preclude both the independence of action and the accumulation of resources which is essential to absolutism. As early as 1282 the nobles were able to extort from the crown a _haandfaestning_, or charter, and almost every sovereign after that date was compelled, once at least during his reign, to make a grant of chartered privileges. To the Danehof, or national assembly, fell at times a (p. 555) goodly measure of authority, although eventually it was the Rigsrad that procured the supreme control of the state. The national assembly comprised the three estates of the nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses;[778] the senate was a purely aristocratic body. [Footnote 778: In the Swedish diet the peasantry constituted a fourth estate, but in Denmark no political power was possessed by this class.] In 1660 there occurred a revolution in consequence of which the monarchy was rehabilitated and a governmental system which long had been notoriously disjointed and inefficient was replaced by a system which, if despotic, was at least much superior to that which theretofore had been in operation. The nobles, discredited by the calamities which their misrule had brought upon the nation, were compelled to give way, and the estates represented in the Danehof surrendered, in a measure voluntarily, a considerable portion of the privileges to which they had been accustomed to lay claim. The monarchy was put once more upon an hereditary basis and its powers were materially enlarged. The intent of the aggressive sovereign of the day, Frederick III., was to proceed with caution, but not to stop halfway. By the promulgation of two monumental documents the road was thrown open to thoroughgoing absolutism. One of these was the "Instrument, or Pragmatic Sanction, of the King's Hereditary Right to the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway," dated January 10, 1661. The other was the _Kongelov_, or "King's Law," of November 14, 1665, a state paper which has been declared to have "the highly dubious honor of being the one written law in the civilized world which fearlessly carries out absolutism to its last consequences."[779] In the _Kongelov_ it was made _lèse-majesté_ in any manner to usurp or infringe the king's absolute authority; it was asserted that the moment the sovereign ascends the throne crown and scepter are vested in him by his own right; and the sole obligation of the king was affirmed to be to maintain the indivisibility of the realm, to preserve the Christian faith in accordance with the Augsburg Confession, and to execute faithfully all of the provisions of the _Kongelov_ itself. Such were the principles upon which, during upwards of two centuries thereafter, the government of the Danish kingdom was based. Absolutism was all but unrelieved; but it is only fair to add that most of the sovereigns, according to the light which they possessed, sought to govern in the interest of their subjects.[780] [Footnote 779: Bain, Scandinavia, 266.] [Footnote 780: For sketches of Danish political history prior to 1814 see Bain, Scandinavia, Chaps. 2, 4, 7, 10, 15; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, III., Chap. 14, IV., Chap. 15; VI., Chap. 17; VII., Chap. 23; IX., Chap. 23. An important Danish work is P. F. Barfod, Danmarks Historie, 1319-1536 (Copenhagen, 1885).] II. THE RISE OF CONSTITUTIONALISM, 1814-1866 (p. 556) *610. The Provincial Diets.*--Gradually after 1814 the kingdom recovered from the depression into which by its loss of territory and its staggering indebtedness it had been plunged, and with the recovery came a revived political spirit as well as a fresh economic stimulus. The sixteen years between the Treaty of Kiel and the revolutionary year 1830 were almost absolutely devoid of political agitation, but after 1830 there set in, in Denmark as in most continental countries, a liberal movement whose object was nothing less than the establishment of a constitutional system of government. To meet in some measure the demands which were made upon him, King Frederick VI. called into being, by decrees of 1831 and 1834, four Landtags, or diets, one in each of the provinces of the realm--Schleswig, Holstein, Jutland, and the Islands.[781] The members of these assemblies, comprising burgesses, landowners, and peasants, were to be chosen by the landed proprietors for a term of six years, and they were to meet biennially for the discussion of laws and taxes and the drawing up of petitions. A few landowners, professors, and ecclesiastics were to be appointed to membership by the crown. The function of each of the four bodies was purely consultative. [Footnote 781: The ordinance establishing the provincial assemblies was promulgated May 28, 1831, but the assemblies did not come into existence until after the supplementary decrees of May 15, 1834. In 1843 Iceland was granted "home rule," with the right to maintain an independent legislature.] *611. Royal Opposition to Reform.*--From the point of view of the Liberals, whose aim was the institution of a national parliamentary system, the king's concession was too meager to comprise more than a bare beginning. Throughout the remainder of the reign agitation was kept up, although at the hand of a sovereign whose fundamental political principle was the divine right of kings, little that was more substantial was to be expected. Christian VIII., who succeeded Frederick in December, 1839, brought with him to the throne a reputation for enlightened and progressive views. Further, however, than to pledge himself to certain administrative reforms the new sovereign displayed scant willingness to go. One liberal project after another was repelled, and press prosecutions and other coercive measures were brought to bear to discourage propaganda. It was in this period, however, that there arose a preponderating issue whose settlement was destined eventually to exert a powerful influence in the establishment of constitutional government in Denmark, i.e., the question of the policy to be pursued in respect to the affiliated duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg.[782] During the (p. 557) later years of the reign successive ministries grappled vainly with this problem, and the political forces of the kingdom came to be divided with unprecedented sharpness by the conflict between the separatist tendency and the demand for immediate and complete incorporation. The king himself was brought eventually to consent to the framing of a constitution for the whole of his dominions, as a means of holding the realm together; but he died, January 20, 1848, before the task had been completed. [Footnote 782: Holstein and Lauenburg were German in population and were members of the German Confederation. Southern Schleswig also was inhabited by German-speaking people, though the duchy did not belong to the Confederation. Schleswig and Holstein had been joined with Denmark under a precarious form of union since the Middle Ages. Lauenburg was acquired, with the assent of the Allies, in 1814-1815 in partial compensation for the loss of Norway.] *612. The Constitutions of 1848-1849.*--Within eight days the constitution was promulgated by the new sovereign, Frederick VII. Under its provisions there was established a parliament representative of all of the Danish dominions. Neither the Danes nor the inhabitants of the duchies, however, were satisfied, and in Holstein there broke out open rebellion. Prussia intervened in behalf of the disaffected duchies, and Great Britain and Russia in behalf of the Danish Government. The result was the triumph of the Government; but in the meantime the rescript by which the common constitution had been promulgated was withdrawn. In its place was published a decree which provided for the establishment of a bicameral national assembly (Rigsdag), of whose 152 members 38, nominated by the crown, were to form a Landsthing, or upper chamber, and the remaining 114, elected by the people, were to comprise a Folkething, or house of representatives. In the early summer of 1849 a constitution embodying these arrangements was drawn up; and June 5, after having been adopted by the new Rigsdag, the instrument was approved by the crown. For the moment the question of the duchies seemed insoluble, and this second constitution was extended to Jutland and the Islands only, i.e., to Denmark proper. Its adoption, however, is a landmark in Danish constitutional history. Under its terms the autocracy of the _Kongelov_ was formally abandoned and in its place was substituted a limited monarchy in which legislative powers were to be shared by the crown with an elective diet and the executive authority was to be exercised by ministers responsible to the legislative body. As will appear, it was this constitution of June 5, 1849, that, with revision, became permanently the fundamental law of the kingdom.[783] [Footnote 783: Bain, Scandinavia, Chap. 16; Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 24 (bibliography, pp. 961-962); Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, X., Chap. 18; C. F. Allen, Histoire de Danemark depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à nos jours (Copenhagen, 1878).] *613. The Problem of the Duchies.*--Following prolonged (p. 558) international conferences, there was issued, January 28, 1852, a new constitutional decree by which it was provided that the kingdom proper and Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg should have a common constitution for common affairs, but that each of the territories should enjoy autonomy in the management of its separate concerns. An ultra-conservative constitution which had been worked out by the Rigsdag in consultation with the Landtags of the duchies, was promulgated October 2, 1855. No sooner had the instrument been put in operation, however, than stubborn opposition to its provisions arose, both from the duchies themselves and from the interested powers of Germany. November 28, 1858, the Danish Government yielded in so far as to consent to the withdrawal of the constitution from Holstein and Lauenburg. Through several years thereafter the question of the duchies overshadowed all else in Danish politics and in Danish diplomatic relations. March 30, 1863, a royal decree recognized the essential detachment of Holstein from the monarchy and vested the legislative power of the duchy solely in the king and the local estates. Later in the year, however, the premier Hall proposed and carried through the Rigsdag a constitution which contemplated again the incorporation of Schleswig with the kingdom. To this instrument the Council of State, November 13, gave its assent, and, five days later, with the approval of the new sovereign, Christian IX., it became law. So far as Denmark was concerned, the solution of the question of the duchies was now at hand. In the name of Prussia and Austria, Bismarck demanded summarily that the November constitution be rescinded. War ensued, and by the Treaty of Vienna, October 30, 1864, Denmark, in defeat, yielded all claim to Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. After continuing for a time a bone of contention between the leading German states, these territories were incorporated, subsequent to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, in the kingdom of Prussia. Denmark, shorn of a million of population and approximately one-third of her territory, was reduced in power and area to substantially her present proportions.[784] [Footnote 784: Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 16; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XI., Chap. 12; J. W. Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire (New York, 1909), Chap. 8; H. Delbrück, Der Deutsch-Dänische Krieg, 1864 (Berlin, 1905).] *614. The Revised Constitution of 1866.*--The loss of the duchies, while humiliating, cut the Gordian knot, of Danish political reconstruction. July 28, 1866, the constitution of July 5, 1849, in revised form, (p. 559) was re-issued, and this instrument continues to the present day the fundamental law of the kingdom. Its ultimate adoption was the achievement largely of the agricultural interests in the Rigsdag; but the king, Christian IX., though not in sympathy with the parliamentary ideal of government, gave it his cordial support. The constitution is an elaborate document, in ninety-five articles. In addition to the customary specifications relating to the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the government, it contains a wide variety of guarantees respecting religion, freedom of speech and of the press, liberty of assemblage and of petition, and uniformity of judicial procedure, which, taken together, comprise a very substantial bill of rights.[785] The method of its amendment is not materially unlike that prevailing in Holland, Belgium, and a number of other continental countries. Proposals regarding alterations or additions may be submitted at any time within either branch of the Rigsdag. In the event of the adoption of a proposal of the kind by both chambers, it becomes the duty of the Government, provided it favors the change, to dissolve the Rigsdag and to order a general election. If the newly chosen Rigsdag adopts the proposed amendment without change and the crown formally approves it, the modification goes forthwith into effect.[786] Constitutional amendments since 1866 have been, however, neither numerous nor important.[787] [Footnote 785: Arts. 80-94. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 278-280.] [Footnote 786: Art. 95. Ibid., I., 280.] [Footnote 787: The text of the Danish constitution, in English translation, is printed in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 267-281; H. Weitemeyer, Denmark (London, 1891), 203-217; and British and Foreign State Papers, LVIII. (1867-1868), 1,223 ff. The best brief treatise on the Danish constitutional system is C. Goos and H. Hansen, Das Staatsrecht des Königsreichs Dänemark (Freiburg, 1889), in Marquardsen's Handbuch. A Danish edition of this work was issued at Copenhagen in 1890. The best extended commentaries are H. Matzen, Den Danske Statsforfatningsret (3d ed., Copenhagen, 1897-1901) and C. G. Holck, Den Danske Statsforfatningsret (Copenhagen, 1869). T. H. Aschehoug, Den Nordiske Statsret (Copenhagen, 1885) is a useful study, from a comparative point of view, of the constitutional law of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.] III. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY *615. The King: Status and Powers.*--The form of the Danish government is declared by the constitution to be that of a limited monarchy.[788] The throne is hereditary, and the succession is regulated by a law of July 31, 1853, adopted in pursuance of the Treaty of London of May (p. 560) 8, 1852, wherein the powers bestowed the Danish succession upon Prince Christian, of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and the direct male descendants of his union with the Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel, niece of Christian VIII. of Denmark.[789] By the constitution it is required of the king that he shall not become the ruler of any country other than Denmark without the consent of the Rigsdag, that he shall belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church (the national church of Denmark, supported by the state), and that before assuming the throne he shall give in writing before the Council of State an assurance, under oath, that he will maintain inviolate the constitution of the kingdom.[790] The royal civil list is fixed by law for the term of the reign. That of the present sovereign, Frederick VIII., is one million kroner annually. [Footnote 788: Art. 1. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 267.] [Footnote 789: Prince Christian became, in 1863, King Christian IX.] [Footnote 790: One original text of this pledge must be preserved in the archives of the crown, another in those of the Rigsdag. Art. 7. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 267.] The powers of the king are comprehensive. Within the limitations prescribed by the constitution, he exercises "supreme authority over all the affairs of the kingdom." He appoints to all offices, dismisses from office, and transfers from one office to another. He declares war and makes peace. He concludes and terminates treaties of alliance and of commerce, on condition only that an agreement which involves a cession of territory or a change of existing international relations must receive the assent of the Rigsdag. He exercises the power of pardon and of amnesty, save that without the consent of the Folkething he may not relieve ministers of penalties arising from impeachment proceedings. He grants such licenses and exemptions from the laws as are authorized by statute. He convenes the Rigsdag in regular session annually and in extraordinary session at will, adjourns it, and dissolves either or both of the houses. He may submit to it projects for consideration or drafts of laws, and his consent is necessary to impart legal character to any of the measures which it enacts. He orders the publication of statutes and sees that they are executed. Finally, when the need is urgent and the Rigsdag is not in session, he may promulgate ordinances, provided, first, that they are not contrary to the constitution, and, second, that they are laid before the Rigsdag at its ensuing meeting. *616. The Ministry and the Parliamentary System.*--For the measures of the government the king is not personally responsible. His powers are exercised through ministers, who are appointed and may be removed by him, and whose number and functions are left to his determination. The ministries are nine in number, as follows: Foreign Affairs, (p. 561) Interior, Justice, Finance, Commerce, Defense, Agriculture, Public Works, and Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs. Collectively the ministers form the Council of State, over which the king presides and in which the heir to the throne, if of age, is entitled to a seat. All laws and important public matters are apt normally to be discussed in the Council of State. There is also, however, a Council of Ministers, consisting simply of the nine heads of departments under the presidency of an additional minister designated by the crown, and to this body are referred in practice many minor subjects that call for consideration. The ministers, so the constitution affirms, are responsible for the conduct of the government.[791] The king's signature of a measure gives it legal character only if accompanied by the signature of one or more of the ministers, and ministers may be called to account by the Folkething, as well as by the king, for their conduct in office. There is, furthermore, a special Court of Impeachment for the trial of ministers against whom charges are brought. On the surface, these arrangements seem to imply the existence of a parliamentary system of government, with a ministry answerable singly and collectively to the popular legislative chamber. In point of fact, however, there has been all the while much less parliamentarism in Denmark than seemingly is contemplated in the constitution, and it is hardly too much to say that since the adoption of the present constitution the most interminable of political controversies in the kingdom has been that centering about the question of the responsibility of ministers. Until at least within the past decade, the practice of the crown has been regularly to appoint ministers independently and to maintain them in office in disregard of, and even in defiance of, the wishes of the popular branch of the legislature. The desire of the Liberals has been to inaugurate a thoroughgoing parliamentary régime, under which the sovereign should be obligated to select his ministers from the party in control of the Folkething and the ministers, in turn, should be responsible to the Folkething, in fact as well as in theory, for all of their official acts. Throughout the prolonged period covered by the ministry of Jakob Estrup (1875-1894) the conflict upon this issue was incessant. During the whole of the period Estrup and his colleagues commanded the support of a majority in the Landsthing, but were accorded the votes of only a minority in the lower chamber. After the elections of 1884, indeed, the Government could rely upon a total of not more than nineteen votes in that chamber. [Footnote 791: Art. 12. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 268.] *617. The Establishment of Ministerial Responsibility.*--Under the continued stress of this situation constitutionalism broke down (p. 562) completely. The Government, finding its projects of military and naval reform persistently thwarted and its budgets rejected, stretched its prerogatives beyond all warrant of law. Provisional measures, in the form of royal ordinances, and arbitrary decisions multiplied, and budgets were adopted and carried into execution without so much as the form of parliamentary sanction. In time the forces of opposition fell into disagreement and the more moderate element was brought to the point of compromise. Between the Conservatives and the National Liberals, on the one hand, by whom the Government had been supported, and the conciliatory element of the Liberal opposition, on the other, a truce was arranged, and in 1894, for the first time in nine years, it was found possible to enact the annual finance law in regular manner. In this same year Estrup's retirement cleared the way for the appointment of a moderate Conservative ministry. Under Estrup's successors the conflict was continued, but not so vigorously as before. More and more the political center of gravity shifted to the Folkething, and when the general elections of 1901 returned to that body an overwhelming majority of Liberals, Christian IX. was at last compelled to give way and to call into being a Liberal ("Left Reform") ministry. It is too much to say that the parliamentary system is as yet completely established in Denmark. There is, however, a closer approximation to it than ever before, and there is every prospect of the ultimate and thorough triumph of the essential parliamentary principle. In 1908, and again in 1909, a ministry was virtually forced to resign by the pressure of parliamentary opposition. IV. THE RIGSDAG--POLITICAL PARTIES *618. The Landsthing.*--The Rigsdag is composed of two chambers--the Landsthing, or Senate, and the Folkething, or House of Representatives. The Landsthing consists of 66 members, of whom 12 are appointed by the king, seven are elected in Copenhagen, 45 are elected in the larger electoral divisions comprising rural districts and towns, one is elected in Bornholm, and one is chosen by the Lagthing of the Faröe Islands.[792] The king's appointment of members is made for life, from among active or former members of the Folkething. Elected members serve regularly eight years, one-half retiring every four years. The seven members for Copenhagen are chosen by an electoral college composed of (1) electors chosen by all citizens who are entitled (p. 563) to vote for members of the Folkething, in the ratio of one elector for every 120 voters or major fraction thereof, and (2) an equal number of electors chosen by the voters who, during the preceding year, have been assessed upon a taxable income of not less than 2,000 rix-dollars. The members elected from the rural districts and towns are chosen indirectly, after a manner analogous to that in operation in the capital.[793] The result is a very successful combination of the principles of indirect popular election and indirect representation of property. In all cases the election of members takes place according to the principles of proportional representation.[794] Every person eligible to the Folkething is eligible to the Landsthing, provided he has resided in his electoral circle, or district, during the year preceding his election. [Footnote 792: Art. 34. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 272. The status of the Faröe Islands is that of an integral portion of the kingdom, not that of a dependency. It is analogous to the status of Algeria in the French Republic. No other outlying Danish territory is represented in the Rigsdag.] [Footnote 793: For details see Art. 37 of the constitution. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 272.] [Footnote 794: It is of interest to observe that Denmark was the first nation to make use of a system of proportional representation. The principle was introduced originally as early as 1855, in the constitution promulgated in that year, and it was retained through the constitutional changes of 1863 and 1866, although its application was restricted to the election of members of the upper chamber. An account of its introduction is contained in La représentation proportionnelle (Paris, 1888), published by the French Society for the Study of Proportional Representation.] *619. The Folkething.*--The Folkething is composed of deputies chosen directly by manhood suffrage for a term of three years. By the constitution it is stipulated that as nearly as practicable there shall be one member for every 16,000 inhabitants. In point of fact, the total membership of the Chamber is but 114, whereas at the ratio indicated it should be upwards of 170. Deputies are elected by secret ballot (since 1901), in single-member districts. The franchise is extended to all male citizens of good reputation who have attained the age of thirty years, except those who are in actual receipt of public charity, those who have at one time been recipients of public charity and have rendered no reimbursement therefor, those who are in private service and have no independent household establishment, and those who are not in control of their own property. The voter must have resided a minimum of one year in the circle in which he proposes to vote.[795] With the exception of non-householders in private service, of persons under guardianship, and of recipients of public charity, all male citizens who have completed their twenty-fifth year are qualified for election. Curiously enough, it is thus possible for a citizen to become a member of the Folkething before he is old enough to vote at a national election. Members of both chambers receive, in addition to travelling expenses, regular payment for their services at the (p. 564) rate of ten kroner per day during the first six months of a session, and six kroner for each day thereafter. [Footnote 795: Art. 30. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 271.] During recent years there has been no small amount of agitation in behalf of a more democratic electoral system. In April, 1908, there was enacted an important piece of legislation whereby the franchise in municipal elections was conferred upon all resident taxpayers of the age of twenty-five, men and women alike; and, beginning with the elections of 1909, women have both voted and held office regularly within the municipalities. By the legislation of 1908 the number of persons qualified to vote at local elections was practically doubled. Early in 1910 a measure was passed in the Folkething whereby the age limit for voters in parliamentary elections was reduced from thirty to twenty-five years and the suffrage was conferred upon women and upon persons engaged in service. This measure did not become law, but in the Folkething elected May 20 of the same year Premier Berntsen introduced a new bill of essentially the same nature. The question of proportional representation was deferred, the bill providing for (1) the reduction of the voting age to twenty-five; (2) the increase of the number of deputies to 132; and (3) the extension of the suffrage in national elections to women, together with eligibility for seats in both of the legislative chambers. This measure likewise failed; but at the opening of Parliament in October, 1912, fresh proposals upon the subject were introduced. *620. The Rigsdag: Sessions and Powers.*--The Rigsdag is required to meet in regular session on the first Monday in October of every year. Each house determines the validity of the election of its members; each makes its own regulations concerning its order of business and the maintenance of discipline; each elects its own president, vice-presidents, and other officers. Each has the right to propose bills, each may present addresses to the king, and the consent of each is necessary to the enactment of any law. By provision of the constitution the annual budget must be laid on the table of the Folkething at the beginning of each regular session, and no tax may be imposed, altered, or abolished save by law. Each house is required to appoint two salaried auditors whose business it is to examine the yearly public accounts and to determine whether there have been either unrecorded revenues or unauthorized expenditures. For the adjustment of conflicts between the two chambers there is provided a method whereby there may be constituted a joint conference committee similar to that employed under like circumstances in the American Congress.[796] Sessions are public, and a majority of the membership constitutes (p. 565) a quorum. With the consent of the house to which he belongs, any member may propose subjects for consideration and may request explanations from the Government concerning them. Ministers are entitled to appear and to speak in either chamber as often as they may desire, provided they do not otherwise infringe upon the order of business. By reason of the uncertain status of ministerial responsibility the right of interpellation means as yet but little in practice. The minister may or may not reply to inquiries, and in any case he is not obliged by unfavorable opinion or an adverse vote to retire. [Footnote 796: Art. 53. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 274.] *621. Political Parties: the Ministry of Estrup, 1875-1894.*--Prior to 1848 the preponderating public issues of Denmark were concerned chiefly with the introduction in the kingdom of a constitutional type of government. Between 1848 and 1864, they related all but exclusively to the status of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. During the closing quarter of the past century they centered principally in the titanic conflict which a growing and indomitable majority in the Folkething, representing a no less determined majority of the nation, waged with King Christian IX. and his advisers in behalf of the enforcement of constitutional limitations upon the crown and of ministerial responsibility to the national legislative body. The prolonged struggle between the Government and the parliamentary majority had its beginning in 1872, when the various radical groups in the Folkething, drawing together under the designation of the United Left, rejected a proposed budget and passed a vote of want of confidence in the Conservative Government. The avowed purpose of the disaffected elements was to force the ministry of Holstein of Holsteinborg to retire, to compel the sovereign to select his ministers from the parliamentary majority, and to enforce the principle of ministerial responsibility to the lower legislative chamber. Supported by the king and the Landsthing, however, the ministry refused to resign. June 11, 1875, there was called to the premiership an able and aggressive statesman, Jakob Estrup, who through the next nineteen years continuously maintained the Government's position against the most desperate of parliamentary assaults. During the whole of this period Estrup commanded the support of the Landsthing, but was opposed by large majorities in the Folkething and throughout the country. The struggle raged principally upon questions of finance. Estrup, who retained for himself the portfolio of finance, was bent upon the strengthening of Danish armaments, and over the protest of the Folkething huge budgets were put into effect again and again by simple ordinance of the crown. From 1882 onwards ordinary legislation was at a standstill, and during (p. 566) nine years after 1885 there was not one legal grant of supplies. The constitution was reduced well nigh to waste paper. *622. Later Conservative Governments: the Triumph of the Left.*--In 1886 the Radicals, despairing of overthrowing the Estrup government by obstruction, resorted for the first time to negotiation. Not until April 1, 1894, however, was the parliamentary majority able to agree with the Government and the Landsthing upon a budget which, by being made retroactive, legalized the irregular fiscal expedients of the past two decades. In August of the same year Estrup was succeeded in the premiership by Reedtz-Thott who, although a Conservative, and hence a supporter of the Government's position, was more favorable to conciliation than had been his predecessor. The struggle, however, was by no means ended. The elections of 1895 and of 1898 resulted in decisive victories for the Liberals and Radicals, and in the Chamber the Government was confronted by an overwhelming majority comprising a Moderate Left, a Reform or Radical Left, and a group of Social Democrats. Even in the Landsthing the Government's hold was growing less substantial. Reedtz-Thott, none the less, clung to office until December, 1899, and after his retirement there followed two more Conservative ministries--those of Hörring (December, 1899, to April, 1900) and of Sehested (April, 1900, to July, 1901). On July 16, 1901, occurred the most notable political event in a half-century of Danish history. Confronted by a majority of 106 to 8 in the Folkething, besieged by widespread popular opinion, and possessing no longer a dependable majority in the Landsthing, the aged Christian IX. gave way, with such grace as he could muster, and summoned to the premiership Professor Deuntzer, by whom was constituted a pure Left Reform ministry. At the partial elections of September 19, 1902, the Conservatives lost absolutely their majority in the upper chamber, while in the Folkething party strength was so redistributed that, while the Conservatives retained their eight seats, the Social Democrats acquired fourteen and the Left Reform party seventy-seven. The elections of June 16, 1903, wrought but insignificant changes of status. *623. The Christensen Ministry (1905-1908) and the Elections of 1906.*--As was to be expected of a party whose rôle had been regularly one of mere opposition, the Left Reform, after gaining office, developed a certain amount of internal discord. In January, 1905, the Deuntzer ministry broke up and a more homogeneous and moderate cabinet was organized under the Left Reform leader Christensen. This ministry contrived to retain office until October, 1908. At the elections of May 29, 1906, the Government took its stand upon manhood suffrage (p. 567) in parliamentary elections, equal suffrage in municipal elections (in accordance with the principle of proportional representation) for all taxpayers, and the reform of both the administrative and judicial systems. Its bitterest opponents were its former allies, the Radical Left (which had split off from the Left Reform party after the formation of the Christensen ministry) and the Social Democrats, though neither of these parties put forward a programme which was in any measure specific. After an unusually spirited contest the Government was found to have lost three seats, the Social Democrats to have gained eight, the Radical Left to have lost four, and the Conservatives to have gained two. The resulting grouping in the Folkething was as follows: Left Reform (Ministerialists), 55; Moderate Left, 9; Radical Left, 9; Social Democrats, 24; Conservatives, 13; Independents, 3; member for Faröe Islands, 1. At the partial renewal of the Landsthing in September, 1906, the Government lost five seats, and with them the majority which, aided by the Moderate Left and the Free Conservatives,[797] it had been able since 1901 to control. The consequence of its losses was that the Christensen ministry drew appreciably toward the Conservative elements of the Rigsdag, as against the Radicals and Socialists. [Footnote 797: A group which, after the formation of the Deuntzer ministry, split off from the Conservatives in the upper chamber.] *624. Ministerial Instability, 1908-1912.*--October 11, 1908, largely by reason of the scandal in which it was involved by the embezzlements of the minister of the interior Alberti, the ministry of Christensen was replaced by a cabinet formed by Neergaard. It in turn retired, July 31, 1909, defeated upon bills to which it was committed for the strengthening of the national fortifications. The Holstein-Ledreborg ministry which succeeded was able to secure the passage of the bills, but, October 22, 1909, it was forced out on a vote of want of confidence. At the election of May 25, 1909, in which the military bills comprised the principal issue, the Left Reform government had continued to lose ground, while the Radicals (though not the Social Democrats) and the Conservatives had gained. October 28, 1909, a new ministry was formed by the Radical leader Zahle. In the Folkething the Radicals possessed 20 seats only, but with the aid of the Social Democrats, possessing 24, they hoped to be able to attain some measure of success. The hope proved vain. April 18, 1910, the Folkething was dissolved, and there followed another spirited campaign in which the military question was preponderant. The Radical government, with its Socialist allies, went before the country on a platform which proposed the repeal of the defense measures passed during the previous (p. 568) year. But at the elections of May 20 both Radicals and Social Democrats obtained precisely the respective number of seats which they had before possessed, while 69 deputies were returned by the groups which were favorable to the execution of the contested measures. July 1, the Zahle ministry resigned and was succeeded by a cabinet formed by Klaus Berntsen, leader of the Moderate Left. The new ministry, although drawn exclusively from the Left, was well received by the Conservatives, who pledged it their continued support against the Radical-Socialist coalition.[798] [Footnote 798: The salient facts relating to the political history of Denmark since 1870 may be gleaned from the successive volumes of the _Annual Register_. Works of importance dealing with the subject include N. Neergaard, Danmarks Riges Historie siden 1852 (Copenhagen, 1909); H. Holm, Forligets förste Rigsdagssamling 1894-1895 (Copenhagen, 1895), and Kampen om Ministeriet Reedtz-Thott (Copenhagen, 1897); H. Barfod, Hans Majestaet Kong Christian IX. (Copenhagen, 1888); and A. Thorsöe, Kong Christian den Niende (Copenhagen, 1905).] V. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT *625. General Principles: the Courts.*--In the Danish constitution there are laid down a number of general principles with respect to the judicial branch of the government, but the organization of the courts is left almost entirely to be regulated by law. It is stipulated that judges, who are appointed by the crown, may not be dismissed except in consequence of judicial sentence, nor transferred against their wishes from one tribunal to another, unless in the event of a reorganization of the courts;[799] that they shall exercise their functions strictly in compliance with law; that in criminal cases and cases involving political offenses trial shall be by jury; that in the administration of justice there shall be, so far as practicable, publicity and oral procedure; and that it shall be within the competence of the courts to decide all questions relative to the extent of the powers of the public officials. [Footnote 799: At the age of sixty-five they may be retired on full salary.] The tribunals that have been established by law comprise, beginning at the bottom, the magistracies of the _herreds_, or hundreds, and the justiceships of the towns; a superior court (_Overret_), with nine judges, at Viborg, and another, with twenty judges, at Copenhagen; and a Supreme Court (_Höjesteret_), with a chief justice, twelve associate judges, and eleven special judges, at Copenhagen. Of hundred magistrates (_herredsfogder_) and town justices (_byfogder_) there are, in all, 126. Appeal in both civil and criminal cases lies from them to the superior courts, and thence to the supreme tribunal. There is, in addition, a Court of Impeachment (_Rigsret_), composed of the members of the Supreme Court, together with an equal number of (p. 569) members of the Landsthing elected by that body as judges for a term of four years. The principal function of this tribunal is the trial of charges brought against ministers by the king or by the Folkething.[800] [Footnote 800: Arts. 68-74. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 276-277.] *626. The Administration of Justice Act, 1908.*--In May, 1908, a long-standing demand of the more progressive jurists was met in part by the passage of an elaborate Administration of Justice bill, whereby there was carried further than previously the separation of the general administrative system of the kingdom from the administration of justice. Not until the enactment of this measure were the constitutional guarantees of jury trial, publicity of judicial proceedings, and the independence of the judiciary put effectively in force. Curiously enough, the drafting and advocacy of the bill fell principally to a minister, Alberti, who was on the point of being proved one of the most deliberate criminals of the generation. The measure, which comprised 1,015 clauses, introduced no modification in the existing hierarchy of tribunals, but it readjusted in detail the functions of the several courts and defined more specifically the procedure to be employed in the trial of various kinds of cases. One provision which it contains is that a jury shall consist of twelve men, that any person who is eligible for election to the Folkething is eligible for selection as a juryman, and that jury service is obligatory. On the ground that it fell short of fulfilling the essential pledges of the constitution, the Radical and Socialist members of the Rigsdag vigorously opposed the measure.[801] [Footnote 801: The bill was carried in the Folkething by a vote of 57 to 42; in the Landsthing by a vote of 38 to 5.] *627. Local Government.*--For administrative purposes the kingdom is divided into 18 Amter, or counties. In each is an Amtmand, or governor, who is appointed by the crown, and an Amtsrad, or council, composed of members elected indirectly within the county. The counties are divided into hundreds, which exist principally for judicial purposes, and the hundreds are divided into some 1,100 parishes. In each town is a burgomaster, who is appointed by the crown, and who governs with or without the assistance of aldermen. Copenhagen, however, has an administrative system peculiar to itself. Its burgomaster, elected by the town council, is merely confirmed by the crown. CHAPTER XXXI (p. 570) THE SWEDISH-NORWEGIAN UNION AND THE GOVERNMENT OF NORWAY I. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT TO 1814 *628. Sweden in Earlier Modern Times.*--During the centuries which intervened between the establishment of national independence under the leadership of Gustavus Vasa in 1523 and the end of the Napoleonic era, the political system of the kingdom of Sweden oscillated in a remarkable manner between absolutism and liberalism. The establishment of a national parliamentary assembly antedated the period of union with Denmark (1397-1523); for it was in 1359 that King Magnus, embarrassed by the unmanageableness of the nobility and obliged to fall back upon the support of the middle classes, summoned representatives of the towns to appear before the king along with the nobles and clergy, and thus constituted the first Swedish Riksdag. By an ordinance of Gustavus Adolphus in 1617, what had been a turbulent and ill-organized body was transformed into a well-ordered national assembly of four estates--the nobles, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasants--each of which met and deliberated regularly apart from the others. There was likewise a Rigsrad, or senate, which comprised originally a grand council representative of the semi-feudal landed aristocracy, but which by the seventeenth century had come to be essentially a bureaucracy occupying the chief offices of state at the pleasure of the crown. Under Gustavus Adolphus and his earlier successors, especially Charles XI. (1660-1697), however, the government took on the character of at least a semi-absolutism. The Rigsdag retained the right to be consulted upon important foreign and legislative questions, but the power of initiative was exercised by the sovereign alone. The Riksdag of 1680 admitted that the king was responsible for his acts only to God, and that between him and his people no intermediary was needed; and in 1682 the same body recognized as vested in the crown the right freely to interpret and amend the law.[802] [Footnote 802: Bain, Scandinavia, Chaps. 8, 11; Cambridge Modern History, IV. Chaps. 5, 20; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, III., Chap. 14; IV.; Chap. 15.] *629. Weakness of the Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century.*--A new (p. 571) chapter in Swedish constitutional history was inaugurated by the calamities incident to the turbulent reign of the Mad King of the North, Charles XII. (1697-1718), and the Great Northern War, brought to a culmination by the cession to Russia in the Peace of Nystad, August 30, 1721, of all the Baltic provinces which Sweden had possessed. Early in the reign of Frederick I. (1720-1751), chiefly by laws of 1720-1723, the government was converted into one of the most limited of monarchies in Europe. The sovereign was reduced, indeed, to a mere puppet, his principal function being that of presiding over the deliberations of the Rigsrad. Virtually all power was vested in the Riksdag. A secret committee representative of the four estates prepared all measures, controlled foreign relations, and appointed all ministers, and laws of every kind were enacted by the affirmative vote of three of the four orders. The constitutional system, while nominally monarchical, became essentially republican. In operation, however, it was hopelessly cumbersome, and throughout half a century the political activities of the kingdom comprised little more than a wearisome struggle of rival factions.[803] [Footnote 803: Bain, Scandinavia, Chaps. 12-13; Cambridge Modern History, V., Chaps. 18-19; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, VI., Chap. 17.] Under Gustavus III. (1771-1792), nephew of Frederick the Great of Prussia, the pendulum swung back again distinctly toward absolutism. The Riksdag, according to its custom, sought at the opening of the reign to impose upon the new sovereign a renunciatory coronation oath. Gustavus, however, raised objection, and the contest became so keen that the king resolved upon a _coup d'état_ whereby to accomplish a restoration of the pristine independence and vigor of the royal office. The plan was laid with care and was executed with complete success. August 20, 1772, there was forced upon the estates, almost at the bayonet's point, a constitution which had been contrived specifically to transform the weak and disjointed quasi-republic into a compact monarchy. The monarchy was to be limited, it is true, but the framework of the state was so reconstructed that the balance of power was certain to incline toward the crown. Without the approval of the Riksdag no law might be enacted and no tax levied; but the estates might be summoned and dismissed freely by the king, and in him was vested exclusively the power of legislative initiative. Under this instrument the government of Gustavus III., and in even a larger measure that of Gustavus IV. (1792-1809),[804] was pronouncedly autocratic. [Footnote 804: Gustavus IV., being a minor at his accession, did not assume control of the government until November 1, 1796.] *630. Sweden in the Napoleonic Period.*--Sweden is one of the (p. 572) many European nations which in the course of the Napoleonic period acquired a new constitutional system, but one of the few in which the fundamentals of the system at that time established have been maintained continuously to the present day. Sweden was drawn into the Napoleonic wars at an early stage of their progress. December 3, 1804, Gustavus IV. cast in his fortunes on the side of the foes of France, and although in 1806-1807 Napoleon sought to detach him from the Allies, all effort in that direction failed. The position of Gustavus, however, was undermined in his own country by his failure to defend Finland on the occasion of the Russian invasion of 1808, and March 29, 1809, yielding to popular pressure, and hoping to save the crown for his son, he abdicated. By the Riksdag the royal title, withheld from the young Prince Gustavus, was bestowed upon the eldest brother of Gustavus III., who, under the name of Charles XIII., was proclaimed June 5. On the same day the Riksdag ratified formally an elaborate _regerings-formen_, or fundamental law, which, amended from time to time, has been preserved to the present day as the constitution of the kingdom.[805] [Footnote 805: See p. 589. Bain, Scandinavia, Chap. 14; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, VII., Chap. 23; VIII., Chap. 23.] *631. Constitutional Development of Norway to 1814.*--During more than four centuries, from the Union of Kalmar, in 1397, to the Treaty of Kiel, January 14, 1814, Norway was continuously subordinated more or less completely to Denmark. The political history and constitutional development of the nation, therefore, had little opportunity to move in normal channels. Prior to the Union the royal power was considerable, and at times virtually absolute, although an ever present obstacle to the consolidation of the monarchy was the independent spirit of the nobility. By the fourteenth century, however, the old landed aristocracy, decimated by civil war and impoverished by the loss of the fur trade to Russia, had been so weakened that it no longer endangered in any degree the royal supremacy. From the end of the thirteenth century we hear of a _palliment_, or parliament, which was summoned occasionally at the pleasure of the king. But at no time had this gathering assumed the character of an established national legislative body. From the point of view of political status the history of Norway under the Union falls into four fairly clearly marked periods. The first, extending from 1397 to the accession of Christian I. in 1450, culminated in an unsuccessful attempt on the part of the Norwegians to throw off the Danish yoke. The second, extending from 1450 to the recognition of Frederick I. as king in Norway in 1524, was marked (p. 573) by a still closer union between the two kingdoms. The third, beginning with the accession of Frederick and closing with the Danish revolution of 1660, was a period in which, largely in consequence of the Protestant Revolt, Norway was reduced virtually to the level of a subjugated province. The fourth, inaugurated by the rehabilitation of the monarchy in Denmark in 1660, witnessed the raising of Norway from the status of subjection to the rank of a sovereign, hereditary kingdom on a footing of approximate equality with Denmark. The period closed with a widespread revival of the nationalist spirit, one of the first fruits of which was the obtaining, in 1807, of an administrative system separate from that of Denmark and, in 1811, of the privilege of founding at Christiania a national university.[806] [Footnote 806: Bain, Scandinavia, Chaps. 4, 5, 7, 10, 15; H. H. Boyesen, A History of Norway from the Earliest Times (2d ed., London, 1900).] II. THE SWEDISH-NORWEGIAN UNION, 1814-1905 *632. Bernadotte and the Treaty of Kiel.*--As has been pointed out, the kingdom of Sweden acquired independence of Denmark near the end of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The liberation of Norway was delayed until the era of Napoleon, and when it came it meant, not the independence which the Norwegians craved, but forced affiliation with their more numerous and more powerful neighbors on the east. The succession of events by which the new arrangement was brought about was engineered principally by Napoleon's ex-marshal Bernadotte. May 28, 1810, Prince Charles Augustus of Augustenburg, whom the Riksdag had selected as heir to the infirm and childless Charles XIII., died, and after a notable contest, Bernadotte was agreed upon unanimously by the four estates (August 21) as the new heir. November 5 the adventuresome Frenchman received the homage of the estates and was adopted by the king as crown prince under the name of Charles John.[807] By reason of the infirmity of the sovereign, Bernadotte acquired almost at once virtual control of the government. From the outset he believed it to be impossible for Sweden to recover Finland; but he believed no less that she might recoup herself, with the assent of the powers, by the acquisition of the Danish dominion of Norway. In March and April, 1813, Great Britain and Russia were brought to the point of giving the desired assent, and by the Treaty of Kiel, January 14, 1814, the king of Denmark, under pressure applied by the (p. 574) Allies, made the desired surrender.[808] [Footnote 807: Upon the death of Charles XIII., February 5, 1818, the "prince" succeeded to the throne under the name of Charles XIV. He reigned until 1844.] [Footnote 808: C. Schefer, Bernadotte roi (Paris, 1899); L. Pingaud, Bernadotte, Napoléon, et les Bourbons (Paris, 1901); G. R. Lagerhjelm, Napoleon och Carl Johan, 1813 (Stockholm, 1891).] *633. The Movement for Norwegian Independence: the Constitution of 1814.*--In Norway there was small disposition to accept the new arrangement. Instead there was set up the theory that when the Danish sovereign renounced his claim to the throne of his northern dominion the Norwegian state legally reverted forthwith to its former condition of independence. Upon this assumption 112 representatives of the nation, of whom 82 were opposed to union with Sweden, met at the Eidsvold iron-works near Christiania, and drew up a liberal constitution modelled principally on the French instrument of 1791, under which was established a national Storthing, or parliament. May 17, furthermore, Prince Christian Frederick, the Danish governor of the country, was elected king of Norway. From the Swedish point of view these sovereign acts were absolutely invalid, and upon Norway's rejection of mediation by the powers Bernadotte invaded the country at the head of a Swedish army. In a short, sharp campaign the Norwegians were hopelessly beaten,[809] and the upshot was that Christian Frederick was forced to abdicate (October 7, 1814), the Storthing was compelled to give its assent to the union with Sweden (October 20), the Eidsvold constitution was revised (November 4) to bring it into accord with the conditions of the union, and the Storthing went through the formality of electing Charles XIII. king of Norway and of recognizing Bernadotte as heir to the throne. Fifty of the one hundred ten articles of the Eidsvold constitution were retained unaltered; the remainder were revised or omitted. Amended upon a number of subsequent occasions, this constitution of November 4, 1814, has continued in operation to the present day as the _Grundlov_, or fundamental law, of the Norwegian state. No constitution was ever born of a more interesting contest for national dignity and independence. [Footnote 809: G. Björlin, Der Krieg in Norwegen, 1814 (Stuttgart, 1895).] *634. Nature of the Union.*--The union of the two states was of a purely personal character; that is to say, it was a union solely through the crown. Each of the kingdoms maintained its own constitution, its own ministry, its own legislature, its own laws, its own financial system, its own courts, its own army and navy. The legal basis of the affiliation was the _Riksakt_, or Act of Union, of August, 1815,--an ultimate agreement between the two states which in Norway was formally adopted by the Storthing as a part of the Norwegian fundamental (p. 575) law, but which in Sweden was regarded as a treaty, and hence was never incorporated by the Rigsdag within the constitution. In each of the states the functions and status of the crown were regulated by constitutional provisions; and the character of the royal power was by no means the same in the two. In Sweden, for example, the king possessed independent legislative power and his veto was absolute; in Norway he possessed no such independent prerogative and his veto was only suspensive. There was a common ministry of war and another of foreign affairs; beyond this the functions of a common administration were vested in a complicated system of joint councils of state. Matters of common concern lying outside the jurisdiction of the crown were regulated by concurrent resolutions or laws passed by the Riksdag and the Storthing independently. But in all matters of internal legislation and administration the two kingdoms were as separate as if no legal relations had been established between them. There was not even a common citizenship. *635. Causes of Friction.*--From the outset the union was menaced by perennial friction. Differences between the two kingdoms in respect to language, manners, and economic concerns were pronounced; differences of social and political ideas were still more considerable; differences in governmental theories and institutions were seemingly irreconcilable. In Sweden the tone of the political system, until far in the nineteenth century, was distinctly autocratic, and that of the social system aristocratic; in Norway the principle that preponderated was rather that of democracy. Between the two states there was disagreement upon even the fundamental question of the nature of the union. The Swedish contention was that at the Peace of Kiel Norway was ceded to Sweden by Denmark and that the mere fact that, following the unsuccessful attempt of the Norwegians to establish their independence, Sweden had chosen to grant the affiliated kingdom a separate statehood and local autonomy did not contravene Norway's essentially subordinate position within the union. The Norwegians, on the other hand, maintained that, in the last analysis, they comprised an independent nation and that their union with Sweden rested solely upon their own sovereign decision in 1814 to accept Charles XIII. as king; from which the inference was that Norway should be dealt with as in every respect co-ordinate with Sweden. The conflicts which sprang from these differences of conception were frequent and serious. There was no disguising the fact that the administration of the joint affairs of the kingdoms was conducted from a point of view that was essentially Swedish, and the history of the union throughout the (p. 576) period of its existence is largely a story of the struggle on the part of the Norwegians, through the medium of the Storthing, to attain in practice the fully co-ordinate position which they believed to be rightfully theirs. Again and again amendments to the constitution in the interest of the royal power were submitted by successive sovereigns, only to be rejected by the Storthing. In 1860 the Swedish estates insisted upon a revision of the Act of Union which should include the establishment of a common parliament for the two countries, in which, in approximate accordance with population, there would be twice as many Swedish members as Norwegian. The Storthing, naturally enough, rejected the proposition. In 1869 the Storthing fortified its position by adopting a resolution in accordance with which its sessions, theretofore triennial, were made annual, and in 1871 the first annual Storthing rejected an elaborate modification of the Act of Union, to which the Conservative ministry of Stang had been induced to lend its support, whereby the supremacy of Sweden would have been recognized explicitly and the bonds of the union would have been tightened correspondingly. Two years later the new sovereign, Oscar II. (1872-1907), gave reluctant assent to a measure by which the office of viceroy in Norway was abolished. Thereafter the head of the government at Christiania was the president of the ministry, or premier; and, following a prolonged contest, in the early eighties there was forced upon the crown the principle of ministerial responsibility (in Norway). *636. The Question of the Consular Service.*--The rock upon which the union foundered eventually, however, was Norway's participation in the management of diplomatic and consular affairs. The subject was one which had been left in 1814 without adequate provision, and throughout the century it gave rise to repeated difficulties. In 1885, and again in 1891, there was an attempt to solve the problem, but upon each occasion the only result was a deadlock, the Storthing insisting upon, and the Swedish authorities denying, Norway's right, as an independent kingdom, to participate equally with Sweden in the conduct of the foreign relations of the two states. In 1892 the Storthing resolved upon the establishment of an independent Norwegian consular service; but to this the king would not assent. Norwegian trading and maritime interests had come to be such that, in the opinion of the commercial and other influential classes of the kingdom, separateness of consular administration was indispensable, and upon the success of this reform was made to hinge eventually the perpetuity of the union itself. Throughout several years the deadlock continued. At the Norwegian elections of 1894 and 1897 the Liberals were overwhelmingly successful, and it was made increasingly apparent that the Norwegian people (p. 577) were veering strongly toward unrestricted national independence. July 28, 1902, a lengthy report was submitted by a Swedish-Norwegian Consular Commission, constituted upon Swedish initiative earlier in the year, in which the practicability of two entirely separate consular systems was asserted, and, March 24, 1903, an official _communiqué_ announced the conclusion of an agreement between representatives of the two countries under which there were to be worked out two essentially identical codes of law for the government of the two systems. Upon the nature of these codes, however, there arose serious disagreement, and when, in 1904, the Boström ministry of Sweden submitted as an absolute condition that any Norwegian consul might be removed from office by the Swedish foreign minister, the entire project was brought to naught. *637. The Norwegian Declaration of Independence: the Separation.*--March 1, 1905, the Norwegian ministry presided over by Hagerup resigned and was replaced by a ministry made up by Christian Michelsen, which included representatives of both the Liberal and Conservative parties. May 23 the Storthing, by unanimous vote, passed a new bill for the establishment of Norwegian consulships. The king, four days later, vetoed the measure; whereupon the Michelsen government resigned. The king refused to accept the resignation; the ministers refused to reconsider it. June 7 Michelsen and his colleagues placed their resignation in the hands of the Storthing, and that body, impelled at last to cut the Gordian knot, adopted by unanimous vote a resolution to the effect (1) that, the king having admitted his inability to form a Government, the constitutional powers of the crown had become inoperative, and (2) that Oscar II. having ceased to act as king of Norway, the union with Sweden was to be regarded as _ipso facto_ dissolved. By another unanimous vote the ministerial group was authorized to exercise temporarily the prerogatives hitherto vested in the sovereign. On the part of certain elements in Sweden there was a disposition to resist Norwegian independence, and for a time there was prospect of war. The mass of the people, however, cared but little for the maintenance of the union. The prevailing national sentiment was expressed with aptness by the king himself when he affirmed that "a union to which both parties do not give their free and willing consent will be of no real advantage to either." June 20 the Riksdag was convened in extraordinary session to take under advisement the situation. Dreading war, this body eventually decided to sanction negotiations looking toward a separation, provided, however, that the Norwegian people, either through the agency of a newly elected (p. 578) Storthing or directly by referendum, should avow explicitly their desire for independence. During a recess of the Riksdag a Norwegian plebiscite was taken, August 13, with the result that 368,211 votes were cast in favor of the separation and but 184 against it. Two weeks later eight commissioners representing the two states met at Karlstad, in Sweden, and negotiated a treaty, signed September 23, wherein the terms of the separation were specifically fixed. This instrument, approved by the Storthing October 9 and by the reassembled Riksdag October 16, provided for the establishment of a neutral, unfortified zone on the common frontier south of the parallel 61° and stipulated that all differences between the two nations which should prove impossible of adjustment by direct negotiation should be referred to the permanent court of arbitration at the Hague, provided such differences should not involve the independence, integrity, or vital interests of either nation. October 27 King Oscar formally relinquished the Norwegian crown. III. THE NORWEGIAN CONSTITUTION--CROWN AND MINISTRY *638. The Revised Fundamental Law.*--In Norway there was widespread sentiment in favor of the establishment of a republic. The continuance of monarchy was regarded, however, as the course which might be expected to meet with most general approval throughout Europe, and in a spirit of conciliation the Storthing tendered to King Oscar an offer to elect as sovereign a member of the Swedish royal family. The offer was rejected; whereupon the Storthing selected as a candidate Prince Charles, second son of the then Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark, the late King Frederick VIII. November 12 and 13, 1905, the Norwegian people, by a vote of 259,563 to 69,264, ratified the Storthing's choice, the advocates of a republic recording some 33,000 votes. The new sovereign was crowned at Trondhjem June 22, 1906. By assuming the title of Haakon VII. he purposely emphasized the essential continuity of the present Norwegian monarchy with that of mediæval times.[810] [Footnote 810: Haakon VI. reigned 1343-1380, shortly before the Union of Kalmar. For brief accounts of the relations of Sweden and Norway under the union see Bain, Scandinavia, Chap. 17; Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 24, XII., Chap. 11; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, X., Chap. 18; XI., Chap. 12; XII., Chap. 7. The best general treatise is A. Aall and G. Nikol, Die Norwegische-schwedische Union, ihr Bestehen und ihre Lösung (Breslau, 1912). From the Norwegian point of view the subject is well treated in F. Nansen, Norge og Foreningen med Sverige (Christiania, 1905), in translation, Norway and the Union with Sweden (London, 1905); from the Swedish, in K. Nordlung, Den svensk-norska krisen (Upsala and Stockholm, 1905), in translation. The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis, A History with Documents (Stockholm, 1905). Worthy of mention are R. Pillons, L'Union scandinave (Paris, 1899); A. Mohn, La Suède et la révolution norvégienne (Geneva and Paris, 1906); and Jordan, La séparation de la Suède et de la Norvège (Paris, 1906). A useful survey is P. Woultrin, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, Jan. 15 and March 15, 1906.] The fundamental law of Norway to-day is the Eidsvold constitution (p. 579) of April, 1814, revised, November 4 following, to comport with the conditions of the union with Sweden. The original instrument was not only democratic in tone, but doctrinaire. With little in the nature of native institutions upon which to build, the framers laid hold of features of the French, English, American, and other foreign systems, in the effort to transplant to Norwegian soil a body of political forms and usages calculated to produce a high order of popular government. No inconsiderable portion of these forms and usages survived the revision enforced by the failure to achieve national independence. Of this portion, however, several proved impracticable, and constitutional amendments after 1814 were numerous. Upon the establishment of independence in 1905 the fundamental law was modified further by the elimination from it of all reference to the former Swedish affiliation. The constitution to-day comprises one hundred twelve articles, of which forty-six deal with the executive branch of the government, thirty-seven with citizenship and the legislative power, six with the judiciary, and twenty-three with matters of a miscellaneous character. The process of amendment is appreciably more difficult than that by which changes may be introduced in the Swedish instrument.[811] Proposed amendments may be presented in the Storthing only during the first regular session following a national election, and they may be adopted only at a regular session following the ensuing election, and by a two-thirds vote. It is required, furthermore, that such amendments "shall never contravene the principles of the constitution, but shall relate only to such modifications in particular provisions as will not change the spirit of the instrument."[812] [Footnote 811: See p. 589.] [Footnote 812: Art. 112. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 143. An English version of the Norwegian constitution is printed in Dodd, ibid., II., 123-143, and in H. L. Braekstad, The Constitution of the Kingdom of Norway (London, 1905). The standard treatise on the Norwegian system of government is T. H. Aschehoug, Norges Nuvaerende Statsforfatning (2d ed., Christiania, 1891-1893); but a more available work is an earlier one by the same author, Das Staatsrecht der vereinigten Königreiche Schweden und Norwegen (Freiburg, 1886), in Marquardsen's Handbuch. The most recent and, on the whole the most useful, treatise is B. Morgenstierne, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Norwegen (Tübingen, 1911).] *639. The Crown and the Council.*--The government of Norway, like (p. 580) that of Sweden and of Denmark, is in form a limited hereditary monarchy. The popular element in it is both legally and actually more considerable than in the constitutional system of either of the sister Scandinavian states; none the less, the principle of monarchy is firmly entrenched, and, as has been pointed out, not even the overturn of 1905 endangered it seriously. The constitution contains provisions respecting the succession to the throne, the conduct of affairs during a minority, and the establishment of a regency, which need not be recounted here, but which are designed to meet every possible contingency. In the event of the absolute default of a legal successor the Storthing is empowered to elect. Supreme executive authority is vested in the king, who must be an adherent of the Lutheran Church, and who at his accession is required to take oath in the presence of the Storthing to govern in conformity with the constitution and laws. Associated with the king is a Council of State, upon which, since the king may be neither censured nor impeached, devolves responsibility for virtually all executive acts. The Council consists of a minister of state, or premier, and at least seven other members. All are appointed by the crown, and all must be Norwegian citizens not less than thirty years of age and adherents of the established Lutheran faith. The king may apportion the business of state among the councillors as he desires. There are at present, in addition to the ministry of state, eight ministerial portfolios, i.e., Foreign Affairs, Justice, Worship and Instruction, Agriculture, Labor, Finance, Defense, and Commerce, Navigation and Industry. All ministers are regularly members of the Storthing, though by the constitution the crown is authorized for special reasons to add to the Council members who possess no legislative seats. The heir to the throne, if eighteen years of age, is entitled to a seat in the Council, but without vote or responsibility. *640. The Exercise of Executive Powers.*--Most of the powers which are possessed by the king may be exercised by him only in conjunction with the Council. Like the fundamental law of Sweden, that of Norway stipulates that, while it shall be the duty of every member of the Council to express his opinion freely, and of the king to give ear to all such opinions, it "shall remain with the king to decide according to his own judgment."[813] None the less, the acts of the crown are, as a rule, those not only, legally, of the king _in_ council but, actually, of the king _and_ council. With the exception of military commands, all orders issued by the king must be countersigned by the minister of state, and ministers may be impeached at any time by (p. 581) the Odelsthing before the Rigsret, or Court of Impeachment; so that, in effect, there is a close approach to the parliamentary system of ministerial responsibility. Under these conditions, the crown appoints all civil, ecclesiastical, and military officials; removes higher officials (including the ministers) without previous judicial sentence; pardons offenders after conviction; regulates religious services, assemblies, and meetings; issues and repeals regulations concerning commerce, customs, industry, and public order; and enforces the laws of the realm. The king is commander-in-chief of the land and naval forces, though these forces may not be increased or diminished, or placed at the service of a foreign sovereign or state, without the consent of the Storthing. And the king has the power to mobilize troops, to commence war and conclude peace, to enter into and to withdraw from alliances, and to send and to receive ambassadors.[814] [Footnote 813: Art. 30. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 128.] [Footnote 814: Arts. 16, 17, 20-26. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 125-127.] IV. THE STORTHING--POLITICAL PARTIES *641. Electoral System: the Franchise.*--Among the legislatures of Europe that of Norway is unique. In structure it represents a curious cross between the principles of unicameral and bicameral organization. It comprises essentially a single body, which, however, for purely legislative purposes is divided into two chambers, or sections, the Lagthing and the Odelsthing. This division is made subsequent to the election of the members, so that representatives are chosen simply to the Storthing as a whole. The elections take place every third year. There are forty-one urban, and eighty-two rural, districts, and every district returns one member--a total of 123. Formerly the franchise rested, as in Sweden, upon a property qualification; but by a series of suffrage reforms within the past decade and a half it has been brought about that in respect to electoral privileges Norway is to-day the most democratic of European countries. In 1898 the Liberal government of Steen procured the enactment of a measure which long had occupied a leading place in the programme of the radical elements. By it the parliamentary franchise was conferred upon all male citizens of a minimum age of twenty-five years who have resided at least five years in Norway and who have suffered no judicial impairment of civil rights. The effect was to double at a stroke the national electorate. In 1901 the same Government carried an important bill by which the suffrage in municipal elections was conferred upon male citizens without restriction (save that of age), upon all unmarried women twenty-five years of age who pay taxes on (p. 582) an annual income of not less than 300 kronor, and upon all married women of similar age whose husbands are taxed in equivalent amounts. During ensuing years there was widespread agitation in behalf of the parliamentary franchise for women, and the Liberal party made this one of the principal items in its programme. June 14, 1907, by a vote of 73 to 48, the Storthing rejected a proposal that women be given the parliamentary franchise on the same terms as men, but by the decisive majority of 96 to 25 it conferred the privilege upon all women who were in possession of the municipal franchise under the law of 1901. The rapidity with which woman's suffrage sentiment had developed is indicated by the fact that as late as 1898 a proposal looking toward the including of women in the parliamentary electorate had received in the Storthing a total of but 33 votes. By the legislation of 1907 Norway became the first of European nations to confer upon women, under any conditions, the privilege of voting for members of the national legislative body and of sitting as members of that body. At the elections of 1909, the first in which women participated, no revolutionizing effects were observed. The electorate, however, was increased by approximately 300,000, which was somewhat over half of the kingdom's total female population of the requisite age.[815] April 30, 1910, the Constitutional Committee of the Storthing, by a majority of four to three, recommended that parliamentary suffrage be extended to women on equal terms with men, i.e., without reference to taxpaying qualifications. The recommendation was rejected, but during the next month the Odelsthing voted, 71 to 10, and the Lagthing, 24 to 7, to apply the principle of it in municipal elections. Thus the municipal electorate was enlarged by approximately 200,000, and the way was prepared, as many believe, for the adoption eventually of the Committee's original recommendation. Prior to an amendment of May 25, 1905, parliamentary elections were indirect. In the urban districts one elector was chosen for every fifty voters, and in the rural districts, one for every one hundred. Now, however, elections are direct. Each petty political unit having a municipal government of its own comprises a voting precinct. If at the first ballot no candidate in the district receives a majority of all the votes cast, a second ballot is taken, when a simple plurality is decisive. A noteworthy feature of the system is the fact that voters who on account of illness, military service, or other valid reason, are unable to appear at the polls are permitted to transmit their votes in writing to the proper election officials. [Footnote 815: At the election of 1909 the total number of parliamentary electors was 785,358. The number of votes recorded, however, was but 487,193.] *642. Qualifications, Sessions, and Organization.*--No one may be (p. 583) chosen a member of the Storthing unless he or she is thirty years of age, a resident of the kingdom of ten years' standing, and a qualified voter in the election district in which he or she is chosen; but a former member of the Council of State, if otherwise qualified, may be elected to represent any district.[816] Under recent legislation every member of the Storthing receives a salary of three thousand kroner a year, in addition to travelling expenses. The Storthing meets in regular session annually, without regard to summons by the crown. The constitution fixed originally as the date of convening the first week-day after October 10 of each year; but, May 28, 1907, the Storthing adopted an amendment whereby, beginning with 1908, the meeting time was changed to the first week-day after January 10. For sufficient reasons, an extraordinary session may be convoked by the king at any time. The length of sessions is indeterminate, except that an extraordinary session may be adjourned by the crown at will, and no session, extraordinary or regular, may be prolonged beyond two months without the king's consent. At its first regular session following a general election the Storthing divides itself into two chambers. A fourth of the membership is designated to constitute the Lagthing, the remaining three-fourths comprise the Odelsthing; and the division thus effected holds until the succeeding election. Each chamber elects its own president, secretary, and other officers. Sessions are public, and business may not be transacted unless at least two-thirds of the members are present. [Footnote 816: Arts. 59-64. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 134-135.] *643. Powers and Procedure of the Storthing.*--The powers of the Storthing, as enumerated in the constitution, include the enactment and the repeal of laws; the levying of taxes, imposts, and duties; the appropriating and the borrowing of money; the regulating of the currency; the examining of treaties concluded with foreign powers; the inspection of the records of the Council of State; the making of provision for the auditing of the national accounts; and regulation of the naturalization of foreigners.[817] All bills are required to be presented first in the Odelsthing, by one of the members of the body, or by the Government, through a councillor of state. Only in the event that a measure passes the Odelsthing is it presented at all in the Lagthing, for the sole function of the smaller chamber is to act as a check upon the larger one. The Lagthing may either approve or reject a bill which the Odelsthing submits, but may not amend it. A measure rejected is returned, with reasons for the rejection. Three courses are then open to the Odelsthing: to drop the measure, to submit it in amended form, or to resubmit it unchanged. When a bill from the (p. 584) Odelsthing has been twice presented to the Lagthing, and has been a second time rejected, the two chambers are convened in joint session, and in this consolidated body proposals are carried by a two-thirds vote. All questions pertaining to the revision of the constitution are required to be voted upon in this manner. [Footnote 817: Art. 75. Ibid., II., 136.] *644. The Veto Power.*--A bill passed by the Storthing is laid forthwith before the king. If he approves it, the measure becomes law. If he does not approve it, he returns it to the Odelsthing with a statement of his reasons for disapproval. A measure which has been vetoed may not again be submitted to the king by the same Storthing. The royal veto, however, is not absolute. "If," says the constitution, "a measure has been passed without change by three regular Storthings convened after three separate successive elections, and separated from each other by at least two intervening regular sessions, without any conflicting action having in the meantime been taken in any session between its first and last passage, and is then presented to the king with the request that his majesty will not refuse his approval to a measure which the Storthing, after the most mature deliberation, considers beneficial, such measure shall become law even though the king fails to approve it...."[818] In the days of the Swedish union the precise conditions under which the royal veto might be exercised were the subject of interminable controversy. In respect to ordinary legislation the stipulations of the constitution were plain enough, but in respect to measures which in essence comprised constitutional amendments the silence of that instrument afforded room for wide differences of opinion. An especially notable conflict was that which took place in the early eighties respecting a proposal to admit the Norwegian ministers to the Storthing with the privilege of participation in the deliberations of that body. The measure was passed by overwhelming majorities by three Storthings after three successive general elections, and in accordance with the constitution, under the Norwegian interpretation, it ought thereupon to have been recognized as law. The king, however, not only refused to approve the bill, but asserted firmly that his right to exercise an absolute veto in constitutional questions was "above all doubt"; and when the Storthing pronounced the measure law without the royal sanction, both crown and Swedish ministry avowed that by them it would not be recognized as valid. In the end (in 1884) the Storthing won, but the issue was revived upon numerous occasions. Under the independent monarchy of 1905 there has been no difficulty of the sort; nor, in view of the eminently popular aspect of kingship in Norway to-day, (p. 585) is such difficulty likely to arise. [Footnote 818: Art. 79. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 137-138.] *645. Political Parties: Liberals and Conservatives.*--Prior to the accession of Oscar II., in 1872, the preponderating fact in the political development of the kingdom was the gradual growth of parliamentary power on the part of the representatives of the peasantry. Between 1814 and 1830 the business of the Storthing was conducted almost wholly by members of the upper and official classes, but during the decade 1830-1840 the peasantry rose to the position of a highly influential class in the public affairs of the nation. The first of the so-called "peasant Storthings" was that of 1833. In it the peasant representatives numbered forty-five, upwards of half of the body. Under the leadership of Ole Ueland, who was a member of every Storthing between 1833 and 1869, the peasant party made its paramount issue, as a rule, the reduction of taxation and the practice of economy in the national finances. After 1870 the intensification of the Swedish-Norwegian question led to the drawing afresh of party lines, and until the separation of 1905, the new grouping continued fairly stable. By the amalgamation of the peasant party, led by Jaabaek, and the so-called "lawyers" party, led by Johan Sverdrup, there came into being in the seventies a great Liberal party (the Venstre, or Left) whose fundamental purpose was to safeguard the liberties of Norway as against Swedish aggression. Until 1884 this party of nationalism was obliged to content itself with the rôle of opposition. Governmental control was lodged as yet in the Conservatives, whose attitude toward Sweden was distinctly conciliatory. In 1880 the Conservative leader, Frederick Stang, resigned the premiership, but his successor was another Conservative, Selmer. At the elections of 1882 the Liberals obtained no fewer than 82 of the 114 seats in the Storthing. Still the Conservatives refused to yield. In the meantime the Odelsthing had brought the entire ministry to impeachment before the Rigsret for having advised the king to interpose his veto to the measure giving ministers seats in Parliament. Early in 1883 Selmer and seven of his colleagues were sentenced to forfeiture of their offices, and the remaining three were fined. March 11, 1884, the king announced his purpose to abide by the decision of the court, distasteful to him as it was, and the Selmer cabinet was requested to resign. An attempt to prolong yet further the tenure of the Conservatives failed completely, and, June 23, 1884, the king sent for Sverdrup and authorized the formation of the first Liberal ministry in Norwegian history. The principal achievement of the new government was the final enactment of the long-contested (p. 586) measure according parliamentary seats to ministers. To this project the king at last gave his consent. *646. The Ministerial Succession to 1905.*--The Sverdrup ministry endured almost exactly four years. In 1887 the party supporting it split upon a question of ecclesiastical policy, and at the elections of 1888 the Conservatives obtained fifty-one seats, while of the sixty-three Liberals returned not more than twenty-six were really in sympathy with Sverdrup. July 12, 1889, Sverdrup and his colleagues resigned. Then followed a rapid succession of ministries, practically every one of which met its fate, sooner or later, upon some question pertaining to the Swedish union: (1) that of Emil Stang[819] (Conservative), July 12, 1889, to March 5, 1891; (2) that of Johannes Steen (Liberal), which lasted until April, 1893; (3) a second Stang ministry, to February, 1895; and (4) the coalition ministry of Professor Hagerup, to February, 1898. At the elections of 1897 the Liberals won a signal victory, carrying seventy-nine of the one hundred fourteen seats, and in February of the next year there was established a second Steen ministry, under whose direction, as has appeared, there was carried the law introducing manhood suffrage. Steen retired in April, 1902, and another Liberal government, that of Blehr, held office until October, 1903. At the elections of 1903 the Conservatives and Moderates obtained sixty-three seats, the Liberals fifty, and the Socialists four. A second Hagerup ministry filled the period between October 23, 1903, and March 1, 1905, and upon its retirement there was constituted, under circumstances which involved temporarily the all but complete annihilation of party lines, a coalition ministry under Christian Michelsen, at whose hands was brought about immediately the separation from Sweden and the constitutional readjustments of 1905. [Footnote 819: Son of the earlier premier, Frederick Stang.] *647. Party History Since the Separation.*--Following the subsidence of the excitement attending the separation the party alignments of earlier days tended rapidly to reappear. The old issues, however, had been disposed of, and in their place sprang up new ones, largely social and economic in character. At the elections of 1906 the subjects to which the Liberals gave most prominence were female suffrage, old age pensions, and sickness and unemployment insurance. The Michelsen government, which was essentially Conservative, issued a moderate reform programme and, alleging that former party lines were obsolete, called upon the citizens of all classes for support. The elections were notable chiefly by reason of the fact that the Social Democrats increased their quota in the Storthing to eleven. Despite attacks of the more radical Left, the Michelsen cabinet stood firm (p. 587) until October 28, 1907, when the premier, by reason of ill health, was obliged to retire. Lövland, the minister of foreign affairs, succeeded; but, March 14, 1908, on a vote of want of confidence, his ministry was overthrown. A new cabinet was made up thereupon by the Liberal leader, Gunnar Knudsen. At the elections of 1909--the first in which women participated--this Liberal government lost the slender majority which it had possessed, and January 27, 1910, it resigned. Prior to the elections there were in the Storthing fifty-nine Liberals, fifty-four Conservatives and Moderates, and ten Social Democrats. Afterwards there were sixty-three Conservatives and Moderates, forty-seven Liberals, eleven Social Democrats, and two Independents. The popular vote of the Social Democrats was much in excess of that at any former election, but it was so distributed that the party realized from it but a single additional legislative seat. Upon the resignation of Knudsen the premiership was offered to Michelsen, whose health, however, precluded his accepting it. February 1, 1910, a Conservative-Moderate ministry was made up by Konow. February 19, 1912, it was succeeded by another ministry of the same type, under the premiership of the former president of the Storthing, Bratlie. At the elections of November 12, 1912, the Government lost heavily to the Liberals and to the Social Democrats. The socialist quota now numbers twenty-three.[820] [Footnote 820: A brief account of Norwegian political parties to 1900 will be found in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XII., 266-274; to 1906, in Cambridge Modern History, XII., 280-290. For additional references see pp. 578-579.] V. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT *648. The Courts.*--For the administration of civil justice the kingdom of Norway is divided into 105 districts--eighty rural and twenty-five urban--in each of which there is a court of first instance composed of two justices chosen by the people. There are three higher tribunals, each with a chief justice and two associates. At the top stands the Höiesteret, or Supreme Court, consisting of a chief justice and six associates. The decisions of the Supreme Court may be neither appealed nor reviewed. For the trial of criminal cases, as regulated by law of July 1, 1887, there exist two types of tribunals: (1) the Lagmandsret, consisting of a president and ten jurors and (2) the Meddomsret, consisting of a judge and two non-professional assistants chosen for each case. There are in the kingdom four Lagdömmer, or jury districts, each divided into circuits corresponding, as a rule, to the counties. The jury courts take cognizance of the more serious cases. "No (p. 588) one," the constitution stipulates, "shall be tried except in accordance with law or punished except by virtue of a judicial sentence; and examination by means of torture is forbidden."[821] The members of the Lagthing, together with those of the Supreme Court, comprise the Rigsret, or Court of Impeachment. This tribunal tries, without appeal, cases involving charges of misconduct in office brought by the Odelsthing against members of the Council of State, the Supreme Court, or the Storthing.[822] [Footnote 821: Art. 96. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 141.] [Footnote 822: Arts. 86-87. Ibid., II., 139.] *649. Local Government.*--For purposes of administration the kingdom is divided into twenty regions--the cities of Christiania and Bergen and eighteen _Amter_, or counties. At the head of each is an Amtmand, or prefect, who is appointed by the crown. The principal local unit is the _Herred_, or commune, of which there are upwards of seven hundred, mostly rural parishes. As a rule, the government of the commune is vested in a body of twelve to forty-eight representatives and a Formaend, or council, elected by and from the representatives and comprising one-fourth of their number. Every third year the representatives choose from among the members of the council a chairman and a deputy chairman; and, under the presidency of the Amtmand, the chairmen of the rural communes within each county meet yearly as an Amtsthing, or county diet, and adopt the budget of the county. Since the municipal electoral law of 1910 members of the communal councils are chosen on a basis of universal suffrage for both men and women. CHAPTER XXXII (p. 589) THE GOVERNMENT OF SWEDEN I. THE CONSTITUTION--THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY *650. The Fundamental Laws.*--The constitution of the kingdom of Sweden is one of the most elaborate instruments of its kind in existence. It comprises a group of fundamental laws of which the most comprehensive is the _regerings-formen_ of June 6, 1809, in 114 articles.[823] Closely related are (1) the law of royal succession of September 26, 1810; (2) the law of July 16, 1812, on the liberty of the press; and (3) the law of June 26, 1866, providing for a reorganization of the legislative chambers. The organs and powers of government are defined in much detail, but there is nothing equivalent to the bill of rights which finds a place in most European constitutions. The process of amendment is easy and minor amendments have been frequent. Amendments may originate with either the crown or the legislative houses, and any amendment which receives the assent of the crown is declared to be adopted if, after having been proposed or approved by one Riksdag, it is sanctioned by the succeeding one. Through the re-election of the lower chamber, which must intervene between the two stages, the people have some opportunity to participate in the amending process.[824] [Footnote 823: See p. 572.] [Footnote 824: Arts. 81-82. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 240. In 1908 the ex-premier Staaff proposed that when the two chambers should disagree upon questions concerning the constitution and general laws resort should be had to a popular referendum; but the suggestion was negatived by the upper house unanimously and by the lower by a vote of 115 to 78. The text of the Swedish constitution, together with the supplementary fundamental laws of the kingdom, is contained in W. Uppström, Sveriges Grundlager och konstitutionela stadgar jemte kommunallagarne samt Norges Grundlov (6th ed., Stockholm, 1903). An English version is printed in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 219-251, and a French one in Dareste, Constitutions Modernes (3d ed.), II., 46-114. The best brief treatise upon Swedish constitutional history is P. Fahlbeck, La constitution suédoise et le parlementarisme moderne (Paris, 1905). The best description of the Swedish government as it was a quarter of a century ago is T. H. Aschehoug, Das Staatsrecht der vereinigten königreiche Schweden und Norwegen (Freiburg, 1886), in Marquardsen's Handbuch. The principal treatise in Swedish is C. Naumann, Sveriges statsförfatningsrätt (2d ed., Stockholm, 1879-1884).] *651. The Crown and the Ministry.*--At the head of the state (p. 590) stands the king. The monarchy is hereditary, and the crown is transmitted in the male line in the order of primogeniture. It is required that the king shall belong invariably to the Lutheran Church and that at his accession he shall take an oath to maintain scrupulously the laws of the land. With the king is associated a Statsrad, or Council of State, appointed by the crown "from among capable, experienced, honest persons of good reputation, who are Swedes by birth, and who belong to the pure, evangelical faith."[825] By constitutional requirement the Council is composed of eleven members, one of whom is designated by the king as minister of state and president of the council, or premier. Of the eleven eight are heads of the departments, respectively, of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Land Defense, Naval Defense, Home Affairs, Finance, Agriculture, and Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs. The president and two other members are ministers without portfolio. [Footnote 825: Art. 4. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 220.] *652. The Exercise of Executive Powers.*--The powers of the Swedish executive are large. A few are exercised by the crown alone; some by the crown in conjunction with a small specified number of ministers; the majority by the crown and entire ministry conjointly. The king acts independently as the commander-in-chief of the land and naval forces of the kingdom. He may conclude treaties and alliances with foreign powers, after having consulted the minister of state, the minister of foreign affairs, and one other member of the Council. But if he wishes to declare war or to conclude peace he must convene in special session the full membership of the Council and must require of each member separately his opinion. "The king may then," it is stipulated, "make and execute such a decision as he considers for the best interests of the country."[826] In other words, in such a matter the king is obliged to consult, but not necessarily to be guided by, his ministerial advisers. [Footnote 826: Art. 13. Ibid., 223.] In general, it may be affirmed that this is the principle which underlies the organization of the Swedish executive. After having been prepared by one or more of the ministers, projects are considered by the king in council; but the right of ultimate decision rests with the king. It is thus that appointments to all national offices are made, titles of nobility are conferred, ordinances are promulgated, texts of new laws are framed, and questions of peace and war are determined. Nominally, the ministers are responsible to the Riksdag for all acts of the Government. But the constitution plainly states that after matters have been discussed in the Council "the king alone shall have the power to decide."[827] If the king's decision is palpably (p. 591) contrary to the constitution or the general laws, the ministers are authorized to enter protest. But that is all that they may do. The ministers have seats in the Riksdag, where they participate in debate and, in the name of the crown, initiate legislation. But their responsibility lies so much more directly to the king than to the legislature that what is commonly understood as the parliamentary system can hardly be said to exist in the kingdom. [Footnote 827: Art. 9. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 221.] II. THE RIKSDAG: ELECTORAL SYSTEM *653. Establishment of the Bicameral System, 1866.*--Until past the middle of the nineteenth century the Swedish Riksdag, or diet, comprised still an assemblage of the four estates of the realm--the nobles, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasants. Throughout several decades a preponderating political question was that of substituting for this essentially mediæval arrangement a modern bicameral legislative system. In 1840 the Riksdag itself insisted upon a change, but the king, Charles XIV., refused to give his assent. During the reign of Oscar I. (1844-1859) several proposals were forthcoming, but none met with acceptance. It was left to Charles XV. (1859-1872), in collaboration with his able minister of justice, Baron Louis Gerhard de Geer, to effect the much-needed reform. In January, 1863, the Government submitted to the Estates a measure whereby there was to be constituted a Riksdag of two chambers--an upper one, which should be essentially an aristocratic senate, and a lower, whose members should be elected triennially by the people. In 1865 all of the four estates acted favorably upon the bill and, January 22, 1866, the measure was promulgated by the crown as an integral part of the fundamental law of the kingdom. September 1, 1866, there were held the first national elections under the new system. Since 1866 the upper chamber has represented principally the old estates of the nobles and clergy, and the lower has comprised the combined representatives of the townsmen and peasants. The one has been conservative, and even aristocratic; the other, essentially democratic. But the reform has contributed greatly to the breaking up of the ancient rigidity of the Swedish constitution and has opened the way for a parliamentary leadership on the part of the commons which was impossible so long as each of four orders was in possession of an equal voice and vote in legislative business. *654. The Upper Chamber.*--The membership of both houses of the Riksdag is wholly elective, that of the upper indirectly, and that of the (p. 592) lower directly, by the people. The upper house consists of 150 members chosen by ballot, after the principle of proportional representation, for a term of six years by the twenty-five Landsthings, or provincial representative assemblies, and by the corporations of five of the larger towns--Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Norrköping, and Gäfle. These electoral bodies are arranged in six groups, in one of which an election takes place in September of every year. The franchise arrangements under which they are themselves chosen are still determined principally with reference to property or income, but they are no longer so undemocratic as they were prior to the electoral reform of 1909, and whereas the elections were previously indirect, they are now direct. No person may be elected to the upper chamber who is not of Swedish birth, who has not attained his thirty-fifth year, and who during three years prior to his election has not owned taxable property valued at 50,000 kroner or paid taxes on an annual income of at least 3,000 kroner.[828] A member who at any time loses these qualifications forthwith forfeits his seat. Members formerly received no compensation, but under the reform measure of 1909 they, as likewise members of the lower chamber, are accorded a salary of 1,200 kroner for each session of four months, and, in the event of an extra session, 10 kroner a day, in addition to travelling expenses. [Footnote 828: These amounts were substituted in 1909 for 80,000 and 4,000 respectively.] *655. The Lower Chamber.*--As constituted by law of 1894, modified by the reform act of 1909, the lower chamber consists of 230 members chosen under a system of proportional representation in fifty-six electoral districts, each of which returns from three to seven deputies. The number of members to be chosen in each of the districts is determined triennially, immediately preceding the balloting. Prior to the franchise law of 1909 the suffrage was confined, through property qualifications, within very narrow bounds. The electorate comprised native Swedes twenty-five years of age or over who were qualified as municipal voters and who possessed real property to the taxed value of 1,000 kroner, or who paid taxes on an annual income of at least 800 kroner, or who possessed a leasehold interest for at least five years of a taxable value of 6,000 kroner. In 1902 it was demonstrated by statistics that of the entire male population of the kingdom over twenty-one years of age not more than thirty-four per cent could meet these qualifications. *656. Beginnings of the Movement for Electoral Reform.*--As early as 1895 insistent demand began to be made in many quarters for an extension of the franchise, and in the Riksdag of 1896 Premier Boström introduced a moderate measure looking toward that end and involving the introduction of proportional representation. The bill, (p. 593) however, was defeated. Agitation was continued, and in 1900 the Liberals made electoral reform the principal item of their programme. In 1901 there was passed a sweeping measure for the reorganization of the army whereby were increased both the term of military service and the taxes by which the military establishment was supported. Argument to the effect that such an augmentation of public burdens ought to be accompanied by an extension of public privileges was not lost upon the members of the Conservative Government, and at the opening of the Riksdag of 1902 the Speech from the Throne assigned first place in the legislative calendar to a Suffrage Extension bill. March 12 the measure was laid before the chambers. The provisions of the bill were, in brief, (1) that every male citizen, already possessed of the municipal franchise, who had completed his twenty-fifth year and was not in arrears in respect to taxes or military service, should be entitled to vote for a member of the lower national chamber; and (2) that every voter who was married, or had been married, or had completed his fortieth year, should be entitled to two votes. By reason of its plural voting features the measure was not well received, even though the plural vote was not made in any way dependent upon property. It was opposed by the Liberals and the Social Democrats, and members even of the Conservative Government which had introduced it withheld from it their support. Amidst unusual public perturbation the Liberals drew up a counter-proposal, which was introduced in the lower chamber April 16. It contemplated not simply one vote for all male citizens twenty-five years of age who possessed the municipal franchise, but also a sweeping extension of the municipal franchise itself. The upshot was the adoption by the Riksdag of a proposal to the effect that the Government, after conducting a thorough investigation of the entire subject, should submit, in 1904, a new measure based upon universal suffrage from the age of twenty-five. *657. The Conservative Proposal of 1904.*--The issue was postponed, but agitation, especially on the part of the Social Democrats, was redoubled. February 9, 1904, the Government laid before the lower chamber a new suffrage bill embodying the recommendations of a commission appointed some months previously to conduct the investigation which had been ordered. The principal provisions of the measure were (1) that every male municipal taxpayer who had attained his twenty-fifth year, and was not deficient in respect to his fiscal or military obligations, should be entitled to one vote for a member of the Chamber; and (2) that the 230 legislative seats should be distributed among thirty-three electoral districts, and should be filled by deputies chosen according to the principle of (p. 594) proportional representation. The introduction of this measure became the signal for the appearance of a multitude of projects dealing with the subject, most of which discarded proportional representation but imposed still fewer restrictions upon the franchise. In the upper house the Government's proposal, modified somewhat to meet the demands of the agrarian interests, was passed by a vote of 93 to 50; but in the lower chamber the substance of it was rejected by the narrow margin of 116 to 108. In view of the continued support of the upper house and the meagerness of the opposition majority in the lower, the Government, at the opening of the Riksdag of 1905, submitted afresh its suffrage bill without material modification. Again there was a deluge of counter-proposals, the most important of which was that introduced March 18 by Karl Staaff, in behalf of the Liberals, to the effect that every citizen in good standing of the age of twenty-four should be entitled to one vote, and that the Chamber should consist of 165 rural and 65 urban members, chosen in single-member constituencies. May 3 and 4 the Government's bill was carried in the upper house by a vote of 93 to 50, but lost in the lower by a vote of 114 to 109. Upon Staaff's project the lower house was almost equally divided. *658. The Proposal of the Staaff Government, 1906.*--Upon the resignation of the Lundeberg cabinet, October 28, 1905, following the Norwegian separation, a Liberal ministry was made up by Staaff, and when, January 15, 1906, the Riksdag reassembled in regular session the new Government was ready to push to a conclusion the electoral controversy. February 24 Premier Staaff introduced an elaborate measure comprising an amplification of that which had been brought forward by him a year earlier. By stipulating that at the age of twenty-four every man of good character should have one vote the scheme proposed enormously to enlarge the quota of enfranchised citizens, and by apportioning representatives among the town and country districts in the ratio of 65 to 165 it promised to reduce materially the existing over-representation of the towns. It excluded from the franchise bankrupts, persons under guardianship, and defaulters in respect to military service; it required for election at the first ballot, though not at the second, an absolute majority; it stipulated that a rearrangement of constituencies, in accordance with population, should be made every nine years by the king. It gave no place to the principle of proportional representation which had appeared in the proposals of the Conservative ministries of 1904 and 1905; and while favorable mention was made of female suffrage, the authors of the measure avowed the opinion that the injection of (p. 595) that issue at the present moment would endanger the entire reform programme. Amidst renewed public demonstrations the usual flood of counter-projects, several stipulating female suffrage, made its appearance. The upper chamber, dominated by the Conservatives, held out for proportional representation, and, May 14, it negatived the Staaff proposal by a vote of 125 to 18. The day following the bill was passed in the lower chamber by a majority of 134 to 94, and a little later proportional representation was rejected by 130 votes to 98. *659. A Compromise Bill Adopted, 1907.*--Upon the Conservative Government of Lindman which succeeded devolved the task of framing a measure upon which the two chambers could unite. A new bill made its appearance February 2, 1907. Its essential provisions were (1) that the members of the lower chamber should be elected by manhood suffrage (with the limitations specified in the Liberal programme of 1906) and proportional representation; (2) that the number of electoral districts should be fixed at fifty-six, each to return from three to seven members; (3) that members of the upper chamber should be elected by the provincial Landsthings and the municipal councils for six years instead of nine as hitherto, and by proportional representation; and (4) that the municipal suffrage, which forms the basis of the elections to the Landsthing, should be democratized in such a manner that, whereas previously a wealthy elector might cast a maximum of 100 votes in the towns and 5,000 in the rural districts,[829] henceforth the maximum of votes which might be cast by any one elector should be forty. By the Liberals and Social Democrats this measure was denounced as inadequate, although on all sides it was admitted that the changes introduced by it were so sweeping as to amount to a positive revision of the constitution. The spokesmen of the Liberal Union reintroduced the Staaff bill of 1906, and the Social Democrats brought forward a new measure which accorded a prominent place to female suffrage. February 8 the two chambers elected a joint committee to investigate and report upon the Government's project. Various amendments were added to the bill, e.g., one whereby members of the upper chamber henceforth should receive an emolument for their services, and eventually, May 14, the measure was brought to a vote. Despite the apprehensions of the Government, it was carried. In the lower house the vote was 128 to 98; in the upper, 110 to 29. [Footnote 829: Under the prevailing system, each elector in the towns had one vote for every 100 kroner income, subject to a limit of 100 votes; each one in the country had ten votes for every 100 kroner income, subject to a limit of 5,000 votes.] *660. Final Enactment, 1909: Woman's Suffrage.*--The measure (p. 596) comprised a series of constitutional amendments, and, in accordance with the requirements in such cases, it remained in abeyance until a newly elected Riksdag (chosen in 1908 and assembled in 1909) should have had an opportunity to take action upon it. In the Riksdag of 1908 ex-Premier Staaff introduced a measure granting female suffrage in parliamentary elections and extending it in municipal elections. But both chambers negatived this and every other proposal offered upon the subject, preferring to support the Government in its purpose to keep the issue of woman's suffrage in the background until the reforms of 1907 should have been carried to completion. Early in the session of 1909 the "preliminary resolution" of 1907 was given the final approval of the chambers. The Liberals, being now interested principally in the woman's suffrage propaganda, did not combat the measure, so that the majorities for its adoption were overwhelming. The enactment of this piece of legislation constitutes a landmark in Swedish political history. Through upwards of a decade the question of franchise reform had overshadowed all other public issues and had distracted attention from various pressing problems of state. Denounced still by the extremists of both radical and conservative groups, the new law was hailed by the mass of the nation with the most evident satisfaction.[830] The question of woman's suffrage remains. At the elections of 1908 the Liberal party emulated the Social Democrats in the incorporation of this project in its programme, and, April 21, 1909, the Constitutional Committee of the Riksdag recommended the adoption of a measure whereby women should be accorded the parliamentary suffrage and eligibility to sit as members of either chamber. In May, 1911, the essentials of this recommendation were accepted by the lower chamber by a vote of 120 to 92, but by the upper they were rejected overwhelmingly. At the opening of the Riksdag of 1912 the Speech from the Throne announced the purpose of the Government to introduce a measure for the enfranchisement of women, and during the session the promise was redeemed by the bringing (p. 597) forward of a bill in accordance with whose terms every Swede, without distinction of sex, over twenty-four years of age and free from legal disabilities, may vote for members of the lower chamber. [Footnote 830: In the main, the scheme of proportional representation adopted in Sweden is similar to that in operation in Belgium (see pp. 542-545). Electors are expected to write at the head of their ballot papers the name or motto of their party. The papers bearing the same name or emblem are then grouped together, the numbers in each group are ascertained, and the seats available are allotted to these groups in accordance with the d'Hondt rule, irrespective of the number of votes obtained by individual candidates. The candidate receiving the largest number of votes is declared elected. The papers on which his name appears are then marked down to the value of one-half, the relative position of the remaining candidates is ascertained afresh, and the highest of these is declared elected, and so on. Unlike the Belgian system, the Swedish plan provides for the allotment of but a single seat at a time. Humphreys, Proportional Representation, 296-313.] III. THE RIKSDAG IN OPERATION--POLITICAL PARTIES *661. Organization and Procedure.*--By the Riksdag law of 1866 the king is required to summon the chambers annually and empowered to convene extraordinary sessions as occasion may demand. It is within the competence of the king in council to dissolve either or both of the chambers, but in such an event a general election must be ordered forthwith, and the new Riksdag is required to be assembled within three months after the dissolution.[831] The president and vice-presidents of both houses are named by the crown; otherwise the chambers are permitted to choose their officials and to manage their affairs independently. It is specifically forbidden that either house, or any committee, shall deliberate upon or decide any question in the presence of the sovereign. The powers of the Riksdag cover the full range of civil and criminal legislation; but no measure may become law without the assent of the crown. In other words, the veto which the king possesses is absolute. At the same time, the king is forbidden, save with the consent of the Riksdag, to impose any tax, to contract any loan, to dispose of crown property, to alienate any portion of the kingdom, to change the arms or flag of the realm, to modify the standard or weight of the coinage, or to introduce any alteration in the national constitution. Measures may be proposed, not only by the Government, but by members of either house. The relations between the two houses are peculiarly close. At each regular session there are constituted certain joint committees whose function is the preparation and preliminary consideration of business for the attention of both chambers. Most important among these committees is that on laws, which, in the language of the constitution, "elaborates projects submitted to it by the houses for the improvement of the civil, criminal, municipal, and ecclesiastical laws."[832] Other such committees are those on the constitution, on finance, on appropriations, and on the national bank. [Footnote 831: Art. 109. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 249.] [Footnote 832: Art. 53. Ibid., II., 234.] *662. Powers.*--The stipulations of the constitution which relate to finance are precise. "The ancient right of the Swedish people to tax themselves," it is affirmed, "shall be exercised by the Riksdag alone."[833] The king is required at each regular session to lay (p. 598) before the Riksdag a statement of the financial condition of the country in all of its aspects, both income and expenses, assets and debts. It is made the duty of the Riksdag to vote such supplies as the treasury manifestly needs and to prescribe specifically the objects for which the separate items of appropriation may be employed; also to vote two separate amounts of adequate size to be used by the king in emergency only, in the one instance in the event of war, in the other, when "absolutely necessary for the defense of the country, or for other important and urgent purposes." [Footnote 833: Art. 57. Ibid., 234.] Finally, the Riksdag is authorized and required to exercise a supervisory vigilance in relation to the several branches of the governmental system. One of the functions of the Constitutional Committee is that of inspecting the records of the Council of State to determine whether there has been any violation of the constitution or of the general laws; and in the event of positive findings the Committee may institute proceedings before the Riksrâtt, or Court of Impeachment. At every regular session the Riksdag is required to appoint a solicitor-general, ranking equally with the attorney-general of the crown, with authority to attend the sessions of any of the courts of the kingdom, to examine all judicial records, to present to the Riksdag a full report upon the administration of justice throughout the nation, and, if necessary, to bring charges of impeachment against judicial officers. Every third year the Riksdag appoints a special commission to determine whether all of the members of the Supreme Court "deserve to be retained in their important offices." Every third year, too, a commission of six is constituted which, under the presidency of the solicitor-general, overhauls the arrangements respecting the liberty of the press.[834] [Footnote 834: Arts. 96-100. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 244-245.] *663. Political Parties: Military and Tariff Questions.*--In Sweden, as in European countries generally, the party alignment which lies at the root of contemporary politics is that of Conservatives and Liberals. Much of the time, however, within the past half-century party demarcations have been vague and shifting, being determined largely in successive periods by the rise and disappearance of various preponderating public issues. The first great question upon which party affiliations were shaped after the accession of Oscar II. in 1872 was that of national defense. The army and navy were recognized at that time to be hopelessly antiquated, and the successive Conservative ministries of the seventies were resolved upon greatly increased expenditures in the interest of military and naval rehabilitation. Against this programme was set squarely that of rigid economy, urged by the strongly organized Landtmannapartiet, or (p. 599) Agricultural party, representing the interests of the landed proprietors, large and small, of the kingdom. The Landtmannapartiet was founded in 1867, immediately following the reconstitution of the Riksdag under the law of 1866, and through several decades it comprised the dominating element in the lower chamber, in addition to possessing at times no inconsiderable amount of influence in the upper one. Throughout the period covered by the Conservative ministry of Baron de Geer (1875-1880) and the Agricultural party's government under Arvid Posse (1880-1883) there was an all but unbroken deadlock between the upper chamber, dominated by the partisans of military expenditure, and the lower, dominated equally by the advocates of tax-reduction. It was not until 1885 that a ministry under Themptander succeeded in procuring the enactment of a compromise measure increasing the obligation of military service but remitting thirty per cent of the land taxes. By this legislation the military and tax issues were put in the way of eventual adjustment. Already there had arisen a new issue, upon which party lines were chiefly to be drawn during the later eighties and earlier nineties. This was the question of the tariff. The continued distress of the agrarian interests after 1880, arising in part from the competition of foreign foodstuffs, suggested to the landed interests of Sweden that the nation would do well to follow in the path already entered upon by Germany. The consequence was the rise of a powerful protectionist party, opposed by a free trade party with which were identified especially the merchant classes. In 1886 the agrarians procured a majority in the lower chamber, and by 1888 they were in control of both branches. The free trade Themptander ministry was thereupon replaced by the protectionist ministry of Bildt, under which, in 1888, there were introduced protective duties on cereals, and later, in 1891-1892, on manufactured commodities. Step by step, the customs policy developed by Sweden during the middle of the century was reversed completely. *664. Politics Since 1891.*--July 10, 1891, the Conservative Erik Gustaf Boström, became premier, and thereafter, save for a brief interval covered by the von Otter ministry (September, 1900, to July, 1902) this able representative of the dominant agrarian interests continued uninterruptedly at the helm until the Norwegian crisis in the spring of 1905. With the elimination, however, of the tariff issue from the field of active politics, Premier Boström adopted an attitude on public questions which, on the whole, was essentially independent. In the later nineties there arose two problems, neither entirely new, which were destined long to occupy the attention of the Government almost to the exclusion of all things else. One of these was the (p. 600) readjustment with Norway. The other was the question of electoral reform. The one affected considerably the fate of ministries, but did not alter appreciably the alignment of parties; the other became the issue upon which party activity largely turned through a number of years. All parties from the outset professed to favor electoral reform, but upon the nature and extent of such reform there was the widest difference of sentiment and policy. During the course of the contest upon this issue the Liberal party tended to become distinctly more radical than it had been in the nineties; and it is worthy of note that the rise of the Social Democrats to parliamentary importance falls almost entirely within the period covered by the electoral controversy. The first Social Democratic member of the Riksdag was elected in 1896. From 1906 to 1911 the Conservative ministry of Lindman, supported largely by the landholding elements of both chambers, maintained steadily its position. At the elections of 1908 the Liberals realized some gains, and at those of 1911 both they and the Social Democrats cut deeply into the Conservative majority. When, in September, 1911, it appeared that the Liberals had procured 102 seats in the lower chamber, the Social Democrats 64, and the Conservatives but 64, the Lindman government promptly resigned and a new ministry was made up by the Liberal leader and ex-premier Staaff. The invitation which was extended the Social Democrats to participate in the forming of the ministry was declined. In October the upper chamber was dissolved, for the first time in Swedish history, and at the elections which were concluded November 30 the Liberals and Social Democrats realized another distinct advance. Before the elections the chamber contained 116 Conservatives, 30 Liberals, and 4 Social Democrats; following them the quotas were, respectively, 87, 51, and 12.[835] [Footnote 835: V. Pinot, Le parlementarisme suédois, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Sept. 10, 1912.] IV. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT *665. The Courts.*--In theory the judicial power in Sweden, being lodged ultimately in the crown, is indistinguishable from the executive; in practice, however, it is essentially independent. The constitution regulates with some minuteness the character of the principal tribunal, the _Högsta Domstolen_, or Supreme Court, but leaves the organization of the inferior courts to be determined by the king and the Riksdag. The Supreme Court consists of eighteen "councillors of justice" appointed by the crown from among men of experience, honesty, and known legal learning. The functions of the court are largely (p. 601) appellate, but it is worthy of note that in the event that a request is made of the king by the lower courts, or by officials, respecting the proper interpretation of a law, the Supreme Court is authorized to furnish such interpretation, provided the subject is a proper one for the consideration of the courts. Cases of lesser importance may be heard and decided in the Supreme Court by five, or even four, members, when all are in agreement. In more important cases at least seven judges must participate. When the king desires he may be present, and when present he possesses two votes in all cases heard and decided. When the question is one of legal interpretation he is entitled to two votes, whether or not he actually attends the proceedings. All decisions are rendered in the name of the king. The inferior tribunals comprise 212 district courts, or courts of first instance, and three higher courts of appeal (_hofrâtter_), situated at Stockholm, Jönköping, and Kristianstad. In the 91 urban districts the court consists of the burgomaster and at least two aldermen; in the 121 rural districts, of a judge and twelve elected and unpaid peasant proprietors serving as jurymen. No person occupying judicial office may be removed save after trial and judgment. *666. Local Government.*--The kingdom is divided into twenty-five administrative provinces or counties (_lân_).[836] The principal executive official in each is a _landshöfding_, or prefect, who is appointed by the crown and assisted by a varying number of bailiffs and sub-officials. Each province has a Landsthing, or assembly, which meets for a few days annually, in September, under the presidency of a member designated by the crown. All members are elected directly by the voters of the towns and rural districts, in accordance with the principle of proportional representation, and under a body of franchise regulations which, while much liberalized in 1909, still is based essentially upon property-holding. The function of the Landsthing is the enactment of provincial legislation and the general supervision of provincial affairs. In a few of the larger towns--Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Norrköping, and Gäfle--these functions are vested in a separate municipal council. The conditions under which purely local affairs are administered are regulated by the communal laws of March 21, 1862. Each rural parish and each town comprises a self-governing commune. Each has an assembly, composed of all taxpayers, which passes ordinances, elects minor officials, and decides petty questions of purely communal concern. [Footnote 836: One of these comprises simply the city of Stockholm.] PART IX.--THE IBERIAN STATES (p. 603) CHAPTER XXXIII THE GOVERNMENT OF SPAIN I. THE BEGINNINGS OF CONSTITUTIONALISM *667. The Napoleonic Régime and the National Resistance.*--It was the fortune of the kingdom of Spain, as it was that of the several Italian states, to be made tributary to the dominion of Napoleon; and in Spain, as in Italy, the first phase of the growth of constitutional government fell within the period covered by the Corsican's ascendancy. Starting with the purpose of punishing Portugal for her refusal to break with Great Britain, Napoleon, during the years 1807-1808, worked out gradually an Iberian policy which comprehended not only the subversion of the independent Portuguese monarchy but also the reduction of Spain to the status of a subject kingdom. In pursuance of this programme French troops began, in February, 1808, the occupation of Spanish strongholds, including the capital. The aged Bourbon king, Charles IV., was induced to renounce his throne and the crown prince Ferdinand his claim to the succession, and, June 6, Joseph Bonaparte, since 1806 king of Naples, was designated sovereign. An assembly of ninety-one pliant Spanish notables, convened at Bayonne in the guise of a junta, was influenced both to "petition" the Emperor for Joseph's appointment and to ratify the _projet_ of a Napoleonic constitution. Napoleon's seizure of the crown of Spain was an act of sheer violence, and from the outset Joseph was considered by his subjects a simple usurper. The establishment of the new régime at Madrid became the signal for a national uprising which not only compelled the Emperor seriously to modify his immediate plans and to lead in person a campaign of conquest, but contributed in the end to the collapse of the entire Napoleonic fabric. Upon the restoration of some degree of order there followed the introduction of a number of reforms--the sweeping away of the last vestiges of feudalism, the abolition of the tribunal of the Inquisition, the reduction of the number of monasteries and convents by a third, and the repeal of all internal customs. (p. 604) But the position occupied by the alien sovereign was never other than precarious. At no time did he secure control over the whole of the country, and during the successive stages of the Peninsular War of 1807-1814 his mastery of the situation diminished gradually to the vanishing point. At the outset the principal directing agencies of the opposition were the irregularly organized local juntas which sprang up in the various provinces, but before the end of 1808 there was constituted a central junta of thirty-four members, and in September, 1810, there was convened at Cadiz a general Cortes--not three estates, as tradition demanded, but a single assembly of indirectly elected deputies of the people. *668. The Constitution of 1812.*--Professing allegiance to the captive Ferdinand, the Cortes of 1810 addressed itself first of all to the prosecution of the war and the maintenance of the national independence, but after a year it proceeded to draw up a constitution for a liberalized Bourbon monarchy. Save the fundamental decree upon which rested nominally the government, of Joseph Bonaparte, this constitution, promulgated March 19, 1812, was the first such instrument in Spanish history. It was, of course, the first to emanate from Spanish sources. Permeating it throughout were the radical principles of the French constitution of 1791. It asserted unreservedly the sovereignty of the people and proclaimed as inviolable the principle of equality before the law. Executive authority it intrusted to the king, but the monarch was left so scant a measure of independence that not only might he never prorogue or dissolve the Cortes, but not even might he marry or set foot outside the kingdom without express permission. For the actual exercise of the executive functions there were created seven departments, or ministries, each presided over by a responsible official. The fundamental powers of state were conferred upon a Cortes of one chamber, whose members were to be elected for a term of two years by indirect manhood suffrage. Various features of the French constitution which experience had shown to be ill-advised were reproduced blindly enough, among them the ineligibility of members of the legislative body for re-election and the disqualification of ministers to sit as members. The government of the towns was intrusted to the inhabitants; that of the provinces, to a governor appointed by the central authorities and an assembly of deputies popularly chosen for a term of four years. As the starting point of Spanish constitutional development the fundamental law of 1812 is of genuine interest. It is not to be imagined, however, that the instrument reflects with any degree of accuracy the political sentiment and ideals of the mass of the Spanish people. On the contrary, it was the work of a slender (p. 605) democratic minority, and it was never even submitted to the nation for ratification. It was a product of revolution, and at no time was there opportunity for its framers to put it completely into operation.[837] [Footnote 837: For brief accounts of the Napoleonic régime in Spain see Cambridge Modern History, IX., Chap. 11 (bibliography, pp. 851-853); Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, IX., Chap. 6; A. Fournier, Life of Napoleon the First, 2 vols., (new ed. New York, 1911), II., Chaps. 14-15; J. H. Rose, Life of Napoleon I. (London, 1902), Chap. 28; M. A. S. Hume, Modern Spain, 1788-1898 (London, 1899), Chaps. 2-4; and H. B. Clarke, Modern Spain, 1815-1898 (Cambridge, 1906), Chap. 1. Of the numerous histories of the Peninsular War the most celebrated is W. Napier, History of the War in the Peninsula and the South of France, 1807-1814, 10 vols. (London, 1828).] *669. The Restoration and the Reign of Ferdinand VII.*--Upon the fall of Napoleon the legitimate sovereign, under the name of Ferdinand VII., was established forthwith upon the Spanish throne. At one time he had professed a purpose to perpetuate the new constitution, but even before his return to Madrid he pronounced both the constitution and the various decrees of the Cortes "null and of no effect," and when the Cortes undertook to press its claims to recognition it found itself powerless. In the restoration of absolutism the king was supported not only by the army, the nobility, and the Church, but also by the mass of the people. For constitutional government there was plainly little demand, and if Ferdinand had been possessed of even the most ordinary qualities of character and statesmanship, he might probably have ruled successfully in a perfectly despotic manner throughout the remainder of his life. As it was, the reaction was accompanied by such glaring excesses that the spirit of revolution was kept alive, and scarcely a twelvemonth passed in the course of which there were not menacing uprisings. In January, 1820, a revolt of unusual seriousness began in a mutiny at Cadiz on the part of the soldiers who were being gathered for service in America. The revolt spread and, to save himself, the king revived the constitution of 1812 and pledged himself to a scrupulous observance of its stipulations. The movement, however, was doomed to prompt and seemingly complete failure. The liberals were disunited, and the two years during which the king was virtually a prisoner in their hands comprised a period of sheer anarchy. The powers of the Holy Alliance, moreover, in congress at Verona (1822), adopted a programme of intervention, in execution of which, in April, 1823, the French government sent an army across the Pyrenees under the command of the Duke of Angoulême. A six months' campaign, culminating in the capture of Cadiz, whither the Cortes had carried the king, served effectively to crush the revolution and to reinstate the sovereign completely in the position which he had (p. 606) occupied prior to 1820. Then followed a fresh period of repression, in the course of which the constitution of 1812 was again set aside, and throughout the remaining decade of the reign the government of the kingdom was both despotic and utterly unprogressive.[838] [Footnote 838: On the period covered by Ferdinand's reign see Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 7 (bibliography, pp. 808-811); Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, X., Chap. 6; Clarke, Modern Spain, Chaps. 2-4, and Hume, Modern Spain, 1788-1898, Chaps. 5-6. Extended works which touch upon the constitutional aspects of the period include: H. Gmelin, Studien zur Spanischen Verfassungsgeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1905); G. Diercks, Geschichte Spaniens (Berlin, 1895); A. Borrego, Historia de las Cortes de España durante el siglo XIX. (Madrid, 1885); and M. Calvo y Martin, Regimem parlamentario de España en el siglo XIX. (Madrid, 1883). A valuable essay is P. Bancada, El sentido social de la revolucion de 1820, in _Revista Contemporânea_ (August, 1903).] II. POLITICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1833-1876 *670. Maria Christina and the Estatuto Real of 1834.*--Ferdinand VII. died September 29, 1833, leaving no son. Regularly since the establishment of the Bourbon dynasty the succession in Spain had been governed by the principle of the Salic Law, imported originally from France. But, to the end that the inheritance might fall to a daughter rather than to his brother, Don Carlos, Ferdinand had promulgated, in 1830, a Pragmatic Sanction whereby the Salic principle was set aside. Don Carlos and his supporters refused absolutely to admit the validity of this act, but Ferdinand was succeeded by his three-year-old daughter, Isabella, and the government was placed in the hands of the queen-mother, Maria Christina of Naples, as regent.[839] Her administration of affairs lasted until 1840. From the constitutional point of view the period was important solely because, under stress of circumstances, the regent was driven to adopt a distinctly liberal policy, and, in time, to promulgate a new constitutional instrument. Don Carlos, supported by the nobility, the clergy, and other reactionary elements, kept up a guerilla war by which the tenure of the "Christinos" was endangered continuously. The regent was herself a thoroughgoing absolutist, but her sole hope lay in the support of (p. 607) the liberals, and to retain that it was necessary for her to make large concessions. The upshot was that in April, 1834, she issued a royal statute (_Estatuto Real_), whereby there was established a new type of Cortes, comprising two chambers instead of one. The upper house, or Estamento de Proceres, was essentially a senate; the lower, or Estamento de Procuradores, was a chamber of deputies. Members of the Procuradores were to be elected by taxpayers for a term of three years. Upon the Cortes was conferred power of taxation and of legislation; but the Government alone might propose laws, and the Cortes, like its ancient predecessor, was allowed no initiative save that of petitioning the Government to submit measures upon particular subjects. A minimum of one legislative session annually was stipulated; but the sovereign was left free otherwise to convoke and to dissolve the chambers at will. Ministers were recognized to be responsible solely to the crown. [Footnote 839: In the mediæval states of Spain there was no discrimination against female succession. The Spanish Salic Law was enacted by a decree of Philip V. in 1713, at the close of the War of the Spanish Succession. Its original object was to prevent the union of the crowns of France and Spain. In view of the change which had come in the international situation, Charles IV., supported by the Cortes, in 1789 abrogated the act of 1713 and re-established the law of _Siete Partidas_ which permitted the succession of women. This measure was recorded in the archives, but was not published at the time; so that what Ferdinand VII. did was simply to publish, May 19, 1830, at the instigation of the Queen, this _pragmatica_, or law, of 1789. The birth of Isabella occurred the following October 10.] *671. The Constitution of 1837.*--Toward the establishment of constitutional government the Statute of 1834 marked some, albeit small, advance. The Moderados, or moderate liberals, were disposed to accept it as the largest concession that, for the present, could be expected. But the Progressistas, or progressives, insisted upon a revival of the more democratic constitution of 1812, and in 1836 the regent was compelled by a widespread military revolt to sign a decree pledging the Government to this policy. A constituent Cortes was convoked and the outcome was the promulgation of the constitution of June 17, 1837, based upon the instrument of 1812, but in respect to liberalism standing midway between that instrument and the Statute of 1834. Like the constitution of 1812, that of 1837 affirmed the sovereignty of the nation and the responsibility of ministers to the legislative body. On the other hand, the Cortes was to consist, as under the Statute, of two houses, a Senate and a Congress. The members of the one were to be appointed for life by the crown; those of the other were to be elected by the people for three years. In a number of respects the instrument of 1837 resembled the recently adopted constitution of Belgium, even as the Statute of 1834 had resembled the French Charter of 1814. In the words of a Spanish historian, the document of 1837 had the two-fold importance of "assuring the constitutional principle, which thenceforth was never denied, and of ending the sentiment of idolatry for the constitution of 1812."[840] [Footnote 840: R. Altamira, in Cambridge Modern History, X., 238.] *672. The Constitution of 1845.*--October 12, 1840, the regent Maria Christina was forced by the intensity of civil discord to abdicate and to withdraw to France. Her successor was General Espartero, leader of the Progressistas and the first of a long line of military men to whom it has fallen at various times to direct the governmental (p. 608) affairs of the Spanish nation. November 8, 1843, the princess Isabella although yet but thirteen years old, was declared of age and, under the name of Isabella II., was proclaimed sovereign. Her reign, covering the ensuing twenty years, comprised distinctly an era of stagnation and veiled absolutism. Nominally the constitution of 1837 continued in operation until 1845. At that time it was replaced by a revised and less liberal instrument, drawn up by the Moderados with the assistance of an ordinary Cortes. The duration of the Cortes was extended from three to four years, severer restrictions upon the press were established, supervision of the local authorities was still further centralized, and the requirement that the sovereign might not marry without the consent of the Cortez was rescinded. In the course of a revolutionary movement in 1854 there was convoked a constituent Cortes, dominated by Moderates and Progressives. The constitution which this body framed, comprising essentially a revival of the instrument of 1837, was never, however, put in operation. In the end, by a royal decree of 1856, the constitution of 1845 was amended and re-established. Save for some illiberal amendments of 1857,[841] which were repealed in 1864, this instrument of 1845 continued in operation until 1868. Throughout the period, however, constitutionalism was hardly more than a fiction.[842] [Footnote 841: One established conditions under which senatorial seats might be made hereditary.] [Footnote 842: Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 7; XI., Chap. 20; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, X., Chap. 6; XI., Chap. 9; Hume, Modern Spain, Chaps. 7-12; Clarke, Modern Spain, Chaps. 5-11; Mariano, La Regencia de D. Baldomero Espartero (Madrid, 1870); J. Perez de Guzman, Las Cortes y los Gobiernos del reinado de Da Isabel II., in _La España Moderna_, 1903.] *673. The Constitution of 1869: King Amadeo.*--By a revolt which began in September, 1868, the queen was compelled to flee from the country, and, eventually, June 25, 1869, to abdicate. A provisional government effected arrangements for the election of a Cortes by manhood suffrage, and this Cortes, convened at the capital, February 11, 1869, addressed itself first of all to the task of drafting a new national constitution. A considerable number of members advocated the establishment of a republic; but for so radical an innovation there was clearly no general demand, and in the end the proposition was rejected by a vote of 214 to 71. June 1 a constitution was adopted which, however, marked a large advance in the direction of liberalism. It contained substantial guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, liberty of religion, and the right of petition and of public assembly, and in unequivocal terms the sovereignty of the people was affirmed afresh. A Cortes of two houses was provided (p. 609) for, the members of the Senate to be chosen indirectly by the people through electoral colleges and the provincial assemblies, those of the Congress to be elected by manhood suffrage, the only qualification for voting being the attainment of the age of twenty-five years and possession of ordinary civil rights. Pending the selection of a sovereign, a regency was established under Marshal Serrano. Among the several dignitaries who were considered--Alfonso (son of the deposed Isabella) the Duke of Montpensier, Ferdinand of Savoy (brother of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy), King Luiz of Portugal, Ferdinand of Saxony, Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and Prince Amadeo, duke of Aosta, second son of Victor Emmanuel--favor settled eventually upon the last named, who was elected November 19, 1870, by a vote of 191 to 120. At the end of 1870 the new sovereign arrived in Spain, and February 2, 1871, he took oath to uphold the recently established constitution. From the outset, however, his position was one of extreme difficulty. He was opposed by those who desired a republic, by the Carlists, by the adherents of the former crown prince Alfonso, and by the clergy; and as a foreigner he was regarded with indifference, if not antipathy, by patriotic Spaniards generally. February 10, 1873, wearied by the turbulence in which he was engulfed, he resigned his powers into the hands of the Cortes, and by that body his abdication was forthwith accepted. It is a sufficient commentary upon the political character of the reign to observe that within the twenty-four months which it covered there were no fewer than six ministerial crises and three general elections. *674. The Republic (1873-1875): Monarchy Restored.*--The breakdown of the elective monarchy, following thus closely the overthrow of absolutism, cleared the way for the triumph of the republicans. The monarchist parties, confronted suddenly by an unanticipated situation, were able to agree upon no plan of action, and the upshot was that, by a vote of 258 to 32, the Cortes declared for a republic and decreed that the drafting of a republican constitution should be undertaken by a specially elected convention. Although it was true, as Castelar asserted, that the monarchy had perished from natural causes, that the republic was the inevitable product of existing circumstance, and that the transition from the one to the other was effected without bloodshed, it was apparent from the outset that republicanism had not, after all, struck root deeply. A constitution was drawn up, but it was at no time really put into operation. The supporters of the new régime were far from agreed as to the kind of republic, federal or (p. 610) centralized, that should be established;[843] the republican leaders were mutually jealous and prone to profitless theorizing; the nation was lacking in the experience which is a prerequisite of self-government.[844] At home the republic was opposed by the monarchists of the various groups, by the clergy, and by the extreme particularists, and abroad it won the recognition of not one nation save the United States. The presidency of Figueras lasted four months; that of Pi y Margall, six weeks; that of Salmeron, a similar period; that of Castelar, about four months (September 7, 1873, to January 3, 1874). Castelar, however, was rather a dictator than a president, and so was his Conservative successor Serrano. By the beginning of 1874 it was admitted universally that the only escape from the anomalous situation in which the nation found itself lay in a restoration of the legitimist monarchy, in the person of Don Alfonso, son of Isabella II. The collapse of the republic was as swift and as noiseless as had been its establishment. The principal agency in it was the army, which, in December, 1874, declared definitely for Alfonso, after he had pledged himself to a grant of amnesty and the maintenance of constitutional government. December 31 a regency ministry under the presidency of Cánovas was announced, and the new reign began with the landing of the young sovereign at Barcelona, January 10, 1875. Between the premature and ineffective republicanism of the past year, on the one hand, and the absolutism of a Carlist government, on the other, the constitutional monarchy of Alfonso XII. seemed a logical, and to the mass of the Spanish people, an eminently satisfactory, compromise.[845] [Footnote 843: Castelar favored a consolidated and radical republic; Serrano, a consolidated and conservative republic; Pi y Margall, a federal republic, on the pattern of the United States; Pavia, a republic which should be predominantly military.] [Footnote 844: In this connection may be mentioned a remark of General Prim, one of the leading spirits in the provisional government of 1868. When asked why at that time he did not establish a republic his reply was: "It would have been a republic without republicans." There was no less a dearth of real republicans in 1873-1874.] [Footnote 845: On the revolutionary and republican periods see Cambridge Modern History XI., Chap. 20 (bibliography, pp. 945-949); Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XII., Chap. 9; Hume, Modern Spain, Chap. 10; V. Cherbuliez, L'Espagne politique, 1868-1873 (Paris, 1874); W. Lauser, Geschichte Spaniens von dem Sturz Isabellas, 1868-1875 (Leipzig, 1877); E. H. Strobel, The Spanish Revolution, 1868-1875 (London, 1898); E. Rodriguez Solis, Historia del partido republicano español (Madrid, 1893); Pi y Margall, Amadeo de Saboya (Madrid, 1884); H. R. Whitehouse, Amadeus, King of Spain (New York, 1897). A significant work is E. Castelar, Historia del movimiento republicano en Europa (Madrid, 1873-1874). Special works dealing with the restoration include A. Houghton, Les origines de la restauration des Bourbons en Espagne (Paris, 1890); Diez de Tejada, Historia de la restauracion (Madrid, 1879).] III. THE PRESENT CONSTITUTION (p. 611) *675. The Constitution Adopted.*--The year following the re-establishment of the monarchy was consumed largely in the suppression of the Carlists and the reorganization of the government. During this period Cánovas, at the head of a strong Conservative and Clerical ministry, ruled virtually as a dictator, and sooner or later most vestiges of the republic were swept away, while the nation was won over solidly to the new order. At the election of the first Cortes of the Restoration, January 22, 1876, the principle of manhood suffrage was continued in operation, though so docile did the electorate prove that Cánovas was able to secure, in both chambers, a heavy majority which was ready to vote at the Government's behest a franchise system of a much less liberal type. The first important task of this Cortes was the consideration and adoption of a new national constitution. As to the sort of constitution most desirable there was, as ever, wide difference of opinion. The Conservatives favored a revival of the instrument of 1845. The Liberals much preferred a restoration of that of 1869. A commission of thirty-nine, designated May 20, 1875, by a junta convened by Cánovas, had evolved with some difficulty an instrument which combined various features of both of these earlier documents, and by the Cortes of 1876 this proposed constitution was at length accorded definite, though by no means unanimous, assent (June 30). This instrument was put forthwith into operation, and it has remained to this day, substantially without alteration, the fundamental law of Spain. Based essentially upon the constitution of 1845, it none the less exhibits at many points the influence of the liberal principles which underlay the instrument of 1869. *676. Contents: Guarantees of Individual Liberty.*--In scope the constitution is comprehensive. Its text falls into thirteen "titles" and eighty-nine articles. Like the constitution of Italy, it contains no provision for its own amendment; but in Spain, as also in Italy, the distinction between constituent and legislative powers is not sharply drawn and a simple act of the legislative body is in practice adequate to modify the working constitution of the kingdom. Among the thirteen titles one of the most elaborate is that in which are defined the rights and privileges of Spanish subjects and of aliens resident in Spain.[846] Among rights specifically guaranteed are those of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, peaceful assemblage, the formation of associations, petition, unrestrained choice of professions, and eligibility to public offices and employments, "according to (p. 612) merit and capacity." Immunities guaranteed include exemption from arrest, "except in the cases and in the manner prescribed by law"; exemption from imprisonment, except upon order of a competent judicial official; freedom from molestation on account of religious opinions, provided due respect for "Christian morality" be shown;[847] and exemption from search of papers and effects and from confiscation of property, save by authority legally competent. It is forbidden that either the military or the civil authorities shall impose any penalty other than such as shall have been established previously by law. Certain guarantees, i.e., those respecting arrest, imprisonment, search, freedom of domicile, freedom of speech and press, assemblage, and associations, may, under provision of the constitution, be suspended throughout the kingdom or in any portion thereof, but only when demanded by the security of the state, and then only temporarily and by means of a specific law. In no case may any other guarantee which is named in the constitution be withdrawn, even temporarily. When the Cortes is not in session the Government may suspend, through the medium of a royal decree, any one of the guarantees which the Cortes itself is authorized to suspend, but at the earliest opportunity such a decree must be submitted to the Cortes for ratification. It need hardly be pointed out that the opportunity for the evasion of constitutionalism which is created by this power of suspension is enormous, and anyone at all familiar with the history of public affairs in Spain would be able to cite numerous occasions upon which, upon pretexts more or less plausible, the guarantees of the fundamental law have been set at naught.[848] [Footnote 846: No. 1. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 199-203.] [Footnote 847: By Article II Roman Catholicism is declared to be the religion of the state. "The nation," it is stipulated further, "binds itself to maintain this religion and its ministers." Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 201.] [Footnote 848: An official text of the constitution of 1876 is published by the Spanish Government under the title Constitución politica de la monarchia Española y leyes complementarias (4th ed., Madrid, 1901). The texts of all of the Spanish constitutions of the nineteenth century are printed in the first volume of Muro y Martinez, Constituciones de España y de las demas naciones de Europa, con la historia general de España (Madrid, 1881); also in the first volume--Constituciones y reglamentos (Madrid, 1906)--of a collection projected by the Spanish Government under the title of Publicaciones Parlamentarias. English versions of the instrument of 1876 appear in British and Foreign State Papers, LXVII. (1875-1876), 118 ff., and Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 199-216. An excellent brief treatise on Spanish constitutional development is H. Gmelin, Studien zur spanischen Verfassungsgeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1905); on Spanish constitutional law, M. Torres Campos, Das Staatsrecht des Königreichs Spanien (Freiburg, 1889), in Marquardsen's Handbuch; on Spanish administrative law, V. Santamaria de Paredes, Curso de derecho administrativo (5th ed., Madrid, 1898); and on the comparative aspects of Spanish institutions, R. de Oloriz, La Constitución española comparada con las de Inglaterra, Estados-Unidos, Francia y Alemania (Valencia, 1904). More extended works of importance include V. Santamaria de Paredes, Curso de derecho politico (6th ed., Madrid, 1898), and A. Posada, Tratado de derecho administrativo (Madrid, 1897-1898). A monumental collection of laws relating to Spanish administrative affairs is M. Martinez Alcubilla, Diccionario de la administración Española, Peninsular y Ultramarina (5th ed., 1892-1894), to which is added annually an appendix containing texts of the most recent laws and decrees. Special treatises of importance are M. M. Calvo, Regimen parlamentario en España (Madrid, 1883); J. Costa, Oligarquia y Caciquismo como la forma actual del Gobierno en España (Madrid, 1903); and Y. Guytot, L'évolution politique et sociale de l'Espagne (Paris, 1899). Mention may be made of R. Fraoso, Las constituciones de España, in _Revista de España_, June-July, 1880.] IV. THE CROWN AND THE MINISTRY (p. 613) *677. The Rules of Succession.*--Executive power in the kingdom is vested solely in the crown, although in practice it devolves to a large degree upon the council of ministers. Kingship is hereditary, and in regulation of the succession the constitution lays down the general principle that an elder line shall always be preferred to younger ones; in the same line, the nearer degree of kinship to the more remote; in the same degree of kinship, the male to the female; in the same sex, the older to the younger person. By the original constitution Alfonso XII. was declared to be the legitimate sovereign, and provision was made that if the line of legitimate descendants of Alfonso should be extinguished, his sisters should succeed in the established order; then his aunt (the sister of his mother Isabella II.) and her legitimate descendants; and, finally, the descendants of his uncles, the brothers of Ferdinand VII.[849] It will be recalled that the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830 abolished in Spain the Salic principle and restored the ancient right of females to inherit. Spain is, indeed, one of the few European states in which this right exists. At the same time, as has been pointed out, when the degree of kinship is identical, preference is accorded the male. Thus it came about that the present sovereign, Alfonso XIII., the posthumous son of Alfonso XII., took precedence over his two sisters, both of whom were older than he, and the elder of whom, Maria de las Mercedes, actually was queen from the death of her father, November 25, 1885, until the birth of her brother, May 17, 1886.[850] [Footnote 849: Arts. 59-61. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 211.] [Footnote 850: She was, however, but a child five years of age.] *678. Regencies.*--Any member of the royal family who may be incapable of governing, or who by his conduct may have forfeited his claim to the good-will of the nation, may be excluded from the succession by (p. 614) law. Disputes concerning rights or facts involved in the succession are to be adjusted by law, and in event that all of the family lines mentioned in the constitution should be extinguished it would become the duty of the Cortes to make such disposal of the crown as might be adjudged "most suitable to the nation."[851] Both the sovereign and the heir presumptive are forbidden to marry any person who by law is excluded from the succession. They are, indeed, forbidden to contract a marriage at all until after the Cortes shall have examined and approved the stipulations involved. The age of majority of the sovereign is fixed at sixteen years. When the king is a minor, his father or his mother, or, in default of a living parent, the relative who stands next in the order of succession, is constituted regent, provided always that such person be a Spaniard at least twenty years of age and not by law excluded from the succession. Should there be no one upon whom the regency may lawfully devolve, it is the duty of the Cortes to appoint a regency of one, three, or five persons. If, at any time, in the judgment of the Cortes, the sovereign becomes incapacitated to rule, a regency is required to be vested in the crown prince, provided he be sixteen years of age. In default of a qualified crown prince the regency devolves upon the queen; and in default of both son and queen, upon a person determined in accordance with the rules already mentioned. [Footnote 851: Art. 62. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 212.] *679. Powers of the Crown.*--The powers of the crown are of the sort common among continental monarchies. By the constitution they are thrown into two groups, i.e., those which may be exercised freely and independently and those which may be exercised only upon the authorization of a special law. Enumeration of the first group begins with the sweeping statement that "the power of executing the laws is vested in the king, and his authority extends to everything which conduces to the preservation of public order at home and the security of the state abroad, in conformity with the constitution and the laws."[852] Powers specifically named include the approval and promulgation of the laws; the issuing of decrees, regulations, and instructions designed to facilitate the execution of the laws; the appointment and dismissal of ministers and of civil officials generally; command of the army and navy and direction of the land and naval forces; the declaration of war and the conclusion of peace;[853] the conduct of diplomatic and commercial relations with foreign states; the pardoning of offenders; the control of the coinage; (p. 615) and the conferring of honors and distinctions of every kind. Of powers which the sovereign may exercise only in pursuance of authority specially conferred by law there are five, as follows: alienation, cession, or exchange of any portion of Spanish territory; incorporation of new territory; admission of foreign troops into the kingdom; ratification of all treaties which are binding individually upon Spaniards, and of treaties of offensive alliance which stipulate the payment of subsidies to any foreign power, or which relate especially to commerce; and abdication of the crown in favor of the heir-presumptive. [Footnote 852: Art. 50. Ibid., II., 210.] [Footnote 853: It is required that subsequent to a declaration of war or the conclusion of peace the king shall submit to the Cortes a report accompanied by pertinent documents.] *680. The Ministry: Organization and Functions.*--In Spain, as in constitutional states generally, the powers appertaining to the executive are exercised in the main by the ministers. Concerning the ministry the constitution has little to say. It, in truth, assumes, rather than makes specific provision for, the ministry's existence. It confers upon the crown the power freely to appoint and to dismiss ministers; it stipulates that ministers may be senators or deputies and may participate in the proceedings of both legislative chambers, but may vote only in the chambers to which they belong; and, most important of all, it enjoins that ministers shall be responsible, and that no order of the king may be executed unless countersigned by a minister, who thereby assumes personal responsibility for it. This principle of ministerial responsibility, which found its first expression in Spain in the constitution of 1812, is enforced nowadays sufficiently, at least, to ensure the nation, through the Cortes, some actual control over the policies and measures of the executive. Of ministries there are at present nine, as follows: Foreign Affairs; Justice; Finance; War; Marine; Interior; Public Instruction and Fine Arts; Commerce; and Public Works. At the head of the ministerial council is a president, or premier, who, under royal approval, selects his colleagues, but ordinarily assumes himself no portfolio. It is the function of the ministers not only to serve as the heads of executive departments and to explain and defend in the legislative chambers the acts of the government, but, in their collective capacity, to formulate measures for presentation to the Cortes and, especially, to submit every year for examination and discussion a general budget, accompanied by a scheme of taxation or other proposed means of meeting prospective expenditures. In each chamber there is reserved for the ministers of the crown a front bench to the right of the presiding official. The practice of interpellation exists, although ministries rarely retire by reason of a vote of censure arising therefrom. But any minister may be impeached by the Congress before the Senate. In Spain, as in France and Italy, the parliamentary system is nominally in (p. 616) operation; but, as in the countries mentioned, the multiplicity and instability of party groups render the workings of the system totally different from what they are in Great Britain. Ministries are invariably composite rather than homogeneous in political complexion, with the consequence that they are unable to present a solid front or long to retain their hold upon the nation's confidence. V. THE CORTES *681. The Senate: Composition.*--The legislative powers of the kingdom are vested in "the Cortes, together with the king." The Cortes consists of two co-ordinate chambers, the Senate and the Congress of Deputies. In the composition of the Senate the prescriptive, appointive, and elective principles are curiously intertwined, the chamber containing one group of men who are members in their own right, another who are appointed by the crown and sit for life, and a third who are elected by the corporations of the state and by the large taxpayers. In number the first two categories jointly may not exceed 180; the third is fixed definitely at that figure. In point of fact the life senators nominated by the crown number 100, while the quota of prescriptive members varies considerably. This last-mentioned group comprises grown sons of the sovereign and of the heir-presumptive; the admirals of the navy and the captains-general of the army; the patriarch of the Indies and the archbishops; the presidents of the Council of State, the Supreme Court, the Court of Accounts, and the Supreme Councils of War and Marine, after two years of service; and grandees of Spain[854] in their own right, who are not subjects of another power and who have a proved yearly income of 60,000 pesetas ($12,000) derived from real property of their own, or from rights legally equivalent to real property.[855] [Footnote 854: The rank of grandee (_grande_) is a dignity conferred by the sovereign, either for life or as an hereditary honor.] [Footnote 855: Art. 21. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 204]. *682. Appointment and Election of Senators.*--Appointment of senators by the crown is made by special decree, in which must be stated the grounds upon which each appointment is based. In the selection of appointees the sovereign is not entirely free, but since the constitution designates no fewer than twelve classes from which appointments may be made, the range of choice is large. Among the categories enumerated are the presidents of the legislative chambers; deputies who have been members of as many as three congresses, or who have served during as many as eight sessions; ministers of the crown; bishops; grandees; lieutenant-generals of the army and vice-admirals of the navy, of (p. 617) two years' standing; ambassadors, after two years of active service, and ministers plenipotentiary, after four years; presidents and directors of the half-dozen royal academies, and persons who in point of seniority belong within the first half of the list of members of these respective bodies; head professors in the universities, who have held this rank and have performed the duties pertaining to it through a period of four years; and a variety of other administrative, judicial, and professional functionaries. Persons belonging to any one of these groups, however, are eligible for appointment only in the event that they enjoy an annual income of 7,500 pesetas ($1,500), derived from property of their own or from salaries of permanent employments, or from pensions or retirement allowances. In addition to the classes mentioned persons are eligible who for two years have possessed an annual income of 20,000 pesetas, or who have paid into the public treasury a direct tax of 4,000 pesetas, provided that in addition they possess titles of nobility, or have been members of the Cortes, provincial deputies, or mayors in capitals of provinces or in towns of more than 20,000 inhabitants. Appointments are made regularly for life. The conditions under which the quota of 180 elected senators are chosen were defined by a statute of February 8, 1877. One senator is chosen by the clergy in each of the nine archbishoprics; one by each of the six royal academies; one by each of the ten universities; five by the economic societies; and the remaining 150 by electoral colleges in the several provinces. The electoral college is composed of members of the provincial deputations and of representatives chosen from among the municipal councillors and largest taxpayers of the towns and municipal districts. But no one may become a senator by election who would be ineligible, under the conditions above mentioned, to be appointed to a seat by the crown. And it is required in all cases that to become a senator one must be a Spaniard, must have attained the age of thirty-five, must have the free management of his property, and must not have been subjected to criminal proceedings, nor have been deprived of the exercise of his political rights. The term of elected senators is ten years. One-half of the number is renewed every five years; but upon a dissolution of the elected portion of the chamber by the crown, the quota is renewed integrally.[856] [Footnote 856: Arts. 20-26. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 203-206.] *683. The Congress of Deputies: Composition and Election.*--The lower legislative chamber is composed of deputies chosen directly by the inhabitants of the several electoral districts into which the kingdom is divided. From the adoption of the present constitution until 1890 the franchise was restricted severely by property qualifications. (p. 618) A reform bill which became law June 29, 1890, however, re-established in effect the scheme of manhood suffrage which had been in operation during the revolutionary epoch 1869-1875. Under the provisions of a law of August 8, 1907, by which the electoral system was further regulated, the franchise is conferred upon all male Spaniards who have attained the age of twenty-five, who have resided in their electoral district not less than two years, and who have not been deprived judicially of their civil rights.[857] Except, indeed, in the case of certain judicial officials and of persons more than seventy years of age, the exercise of the voting privilege is, as in Belgium and in some of the Austrian provinces, compulsory. The constitution requires that there shall be at least one deputy for every 50,000 inhabitants. The total membership of the Congress is at present 406. In the majority of districts but a single deputy is chosen, but in twenty-eight of the larger ones two or more are elected by _scrutin de liste_, with provision for the representation of minorities. In districts in which two or three deputies are to be chosen, each elector votes for one fewer than the number to be elected; in districts where from four to seven are to be chosen, the elector votes for two fewer than the total number; and where the aggregate number is eight to ten, or more than ten, he votes for three or four fewer, respectively. Any Spaniard who is qualified for the exercise of the suffrage is eligible for election, and for indefinite re-election, as a deputy, save that no member of the clergy may be chosen. The term of membership is five years, though by reason of not infrequent dissolutions the period of service is actually briefer. As is true also of senators, deputies receive no pay for their services.[858] [Footnote 857: There is the customary regulation that soldiers and sailors in active service may not vote.] [Footnote 858: J. Vila Serra, Manual de elecciones de Diputados a Cortes (Valencia, 1907); J. Lon y Albareda, Nueva ley electoral de 8 de Agosto de 1907, comentada (Madrid, 1907); M. Vivanco y L. San Martin, La reforma electoral (Madrid, 1907).] *684. Sessions and Status of the Chambers.*--The Cortes, consisting thus of the Senate and the Congress of Deputies, is required by the constitution to be convened by the crown in regular session at least once each year. Extraordinary sessions may be held, and upon the death or incapacitation of the sovereign the chambers must be assembled forthwith. To the crown belongs the power not only to convene, but also to suspend and to terminate the sessions, and to dissolve, simultaneously or separately, the Congress and the elective portion of the Senate. In the event, however, of a dissolution, the sovereign is obliged to convene the newly constituted Cortes within the space of three months. Except when it devolves upon the Senate to exercise (p. 619) its purely judicial functions, neither of the chambers may be assembled without the other. In no case may the two chambers sit as a single assembly, or deliberate in the presence of the sovereign. Each body is authorized to judge the qualifications of its members and to frame and adopt its own rules of procedure. The Senate elects its secretaries, but its president and vice-president are designated, for each session, and from the senators themselves, by the crown. The Congress, on the other hand, elects from its membership all of its own officials. Sessions of both chambers are public, though "when secrecy is necessary" the doors may be closed. A majority of the members constitutes a quorum, and measures are passed by a majority vote. No senator or deputy may be held to account by legal process for any opinion uttered or for any vote cast within the chamber to which he belongs; and, save when taken in the commission of an offense, a member is entitled to all of the safeguards against arrest and judicial proceedings which are extended customarily to members of legislative bodies in constitutional states.[859] [Footnote 859: It is to be observed that these guarantees are not quite absolute. During the crisis of 1904 the Maura government required the Congress to suspend the legislative immunity of no fewer than 140 members, and for the first time since 1834 deputies were handed over to the courts to be tried for offenses of a purely political character.] *685. Functions and Powers of the Cortes.*--The function of the Cortes is primarily legislative. Each chamber shares with the crown the right to initiate measures, and no proposal can become law until it has received the sanction of the two houses. Rejection of a bill by either chamber, or by the crown, precludes the possibility of a reappearance of the project during the continuance of the session. Measures relating to taxation and to the public credit must be presented, in the first instance, in the Congress of Deputies, and it is made the specific obligation of the Government every year to lay before that body for examination and approval a budget of revenues and expenditures. Only upon authority of law may the Government alienate property belonging to the state, or borrow money on the public credit. Under Spanish constitutional theory the Cortes is the agent of the sovereign nation. It is authorized, therefore, not only to discharge the usual functions of legislation but also to do three other things of fundamental importance. In the first place, it receives from the sovereign, from the heir-apparent, and from the regent or regency of the kingdom, the oath of fidelity to the constitution and the laws. In the second place, under provisions contained within the constitution, it elects the regent or regency and appoints a guardian for a (p. 620) minor sovereign. Finally, to maintain the responsibility of ministers to the lower chamber, and, through it, to the nation, the Congress is authorized to impeach, and the Senate to try, at any time any member of the Government.[860] [Footnote 860: Arts. 32-47. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 207-209. On the Cortes may be consulted, in addition to the constitutional treatises mentioned on pp. 612-613, A. Borrego, Historia de las Cortes de Españo durante el siglo XIX. (Madrid, 1885), and A. Pons y Umbert, Organizaciôn y funcionamento de las Cortes segun las constituciones españolas y reglamentacion de dicho cuerpo colegislador (Madrid, 1906).] VI. POLITICAL PARTIES *686. Party Groups After 1869.*--Since the dawn of constitutionalism political life in Spain has comprised much of the time a sheer game between the "ins" and the "outs", in which issues have counted for little and the schemings of the caciques, or professional wire-pullers and bosses, have counted for well-nigh everything. For the exercise of independent popular judgment upon fundamental political questions aptitude has been meager and opportunity rare. Political parties there have been, and still are, and certain of them have exhibited distinct power of survival. Yet it must be observed that even the stablest of them are essentially the creatures of the political leaders and that at no time have they exhibited the broadly national rootage of political parties in other states of western Europe. Party cleavages in Spain had their beginning early in the nineteenth century, but for the origins of the groups which share in an important manner nowadays in the politics of the kingdom it is not necessary to return to a period more remote than that of the revolution of 1868. Subsequent to the expulsion of Queen Isabella at least four groups were thrown into more or less sharp relief. One was the Carlists, supporters of the claims of Don Carlos and, in respect to political principle, avowed absolutists. A second comprised the Republicans, led by Castelar, whose demand for the establishment of a republic, rejected in 1869, carried the day upon the breakdown of the Amadeo monarchy four years later. Between the Carlists, on the one hand, and the Republicans, on the other, stood the mass of the political leaders, and, so far as may be judged, of the nation also. All were agreed upon the general principle of constitutional monarchy. But upon the precise nature of the government which had been established and of the public policy which ought to be pursued there was, and could be, little agreement. The consequence was a sharp-cut cleavage, by which there were set off in opposition to each other two large parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals; and, save for the brief (p. 621) ascendancy of the Republicans in 1873-1874, it is these two parties which have shared between them the government of the kingdom from the establishment of the limited monarchy in 1869 to the present day. Both of these leading parties have been pledged continuously to maintain the constitution and all of the popular privileges--freedom of speech, liberty of the press, safety of property, the right of establishing associations, and the like--guaranteed by that instrument. Upon the _methods_ by which these things shall be maintained the parties originally divided and still are disagreed. Fundamentally, the policy of the Liberals is to commit the guardianship of public privileges to the courts of justice, while that of the Conservatives is to retain it rather in the hands of the ministerial and administrative authorities. In the normal course of development the Liberal party has tended to draw to itself those liberal elements generally which are satisfied to rely upon legal means for the realization of their purposes, e.g., the free-traders, the labor forces, and many of the socialists. Similarly the Conservative party has attracted a considerable proportion of the reactionaries, especially the Ultramontanes, by whom special stress is placed upon the maintenance of peace with the Vatican, and many representatives of the old Moderate party which was swept out of existence by the overturn of 1868. *687. Liberals and Conservatives: Cánovas and Sagasta.*--The first public act of Alfonso XII., following his proclamation as king, December 29, 1874, was to call to his side in the capacity of premier Cánovas del Castillo, by whom was formed a strong Conservative ministry. Consequent upon the convocation of the Cortes of 1876 and the adoption of the new constitution of that year, the various groups of Liberals were drawn into a fairly compact opposition party, supporting the Alfonsist dynasty and the new constitutional régime, but proposing to labor, by peaceful means, for the restoration of as many as possible of the more liberal features of the constitution of 1869. It is of interest to observe that the party, in its earlier years, was encouraged by Cánovas, on the theory that there would be provided by it a natural and harmless outlet for inevitable ebullitions of the liberal spirit. Under the able leadership of Sagasta the development of the party was rapid, and in 1881 Cánovas determined to give the country a taste of Liberal rule. Following a collusive "defeat" the premier retired, whereupon Sagasta was designated premier and a Liberal ministry was established which held office somewhat more than two years. By the Republicans and other radical forces the ministry of Sagasta was harassed unsparingly, just as had been that of Cánovas, and the actual working policies of (p. 622) the two differed in scarcely any particular. Within the Liberal ranks, indeed, a "dynastic Left" became so troublesome that Sagasta, after two years, yielded office to the leader of the disaffected elements, Posada Herrera. The only effect of the experiment was to demonstrate that between the Conservatives led by Cánovas and the Liberals led by Sagasta there was no room for a third party. In 1885 Cánovas returned to power, but for only a brief interval, for upon the establishment of the regency of Queen Christina, following the death of Alfonso XII., November 25, 1885, Sagasta was called upon to form the first of a series of ministries over which he presided continuously through the ensuing five years. In the memorable Pact of El Pardo it had been agreed between the Liberal and Conservative leaders that each would assist the other in the defense of the dynasty and of the constitution, and although Sagasta had avowed the intention of reintroducing certain principles of the constitution of 1869 he was pledged to proceed in a cautious manner and a conciliatory spirit. The elections of 1884 yielded a substantial Conservative majority in both chambers of the Cortes. None the less the Conservatives accorded the Liberal government their support, until by the elections of 1886 the Liberals themselves acquired control of the two houses. Throughout three years Castelar and the more moderate Republicans co-operated actively with the Government in the re-introduction of jury trial, the revival of liberty of the press, and a number of other liberal measures; but the Government was annoyed continually by attacks and intrigues participated in by both the less conciliatory Republicans and the Carlists. The crowning achievement of the Sagasta ministry was the carrying through of the manhood suffrage act of June 29, 1890. Within a month after the promulgation of the suffrage law the regent gave Sagasta to understand that the time had arrived for a change of leaders. The Cánovas ministry which was thereupon established endured two and a half years, and was given distinction principally by its introduction, in 1892, of the thoroughgoing protectionist régime which prevails in Spain to-day. The Conservatives falling into discord, Cánovas resigned, December 8, 1892; and at the elections of the following year the Conservatives carried only one hundred seats in the Chamber. During the period from December, 1892, to March, 1895, Sagasta was again at the helm. *688. The American War and Ministerial Changes, 1895-1902.*--Between 1895 and 1901 there was a rapid succession of ministries, virtually all of which were both made and unmade by situations arising from (p. 623) the war in Cuba and the subsequent contest with the United States. In the hope of averting American intervention a new Cánovas government, established in 1895, brought forward a measure for the introduction of home rule in Cuba, but while the bill was pending, Cánovas was assassinated, August 9, 1897, and the proposition failed. The new Conservative cabinet of General Azcarraga soon retired, and although the Sagasta government which succeeded recalled General Weyler from Cuba and inaugurated a policy of conciliation, the situation had got beyond control and war with the United States ensued. By the succession of Spanish defeats the popularity of the Liberal régime was strained to the breaking point, and at the close of the war Sagasta's ministry gave place to a ministry formed by the new Conservative leader Silvela. The elections of April 16, 1899, yielded the Silvelists a majority and the ministry, reconstituted September 28 of the same year, retained power until March 6, 1901. At that date the Liberals gained the upper hand once more; and, with two brief intervals, Sagasta remained in office until December 3, 1902. Within scarcely more than a month after his final retirement, the great Liberal leader passed away. *689. Parties Since the Death of Sagasta.*--A second Silvela ministry, established December 6, 1902, brought the Conservatives again into power. This ministry, which lasted but a few months, was followed successively by four other Conservative governments, as follows: that of Villaverde, May, 1903, to December, 1903; that of Antonio Maura y Montanes, December, 1903, to December, 1904; the second of General Azcarraga, December, 1904, to January, 1905; and the second of Villaverde, from January, 1905, to June, 1905. Of these the most virile was that of Maura, a former Liberal, whose spirit of conciliation and progressiveness entitled him to be considered one of the few real statesmen of Spain in the present generation. Following the death of Sagasta the Liberals passed through a period of demoralization, but under the leadership of Montero Rios they gradually recovered, and in June, 1905, the government of Villaverde was succeeded by one presided over by Rios. At the elections of September 10, 1905, the Ministerialists secured 227 seats and the Conservatives of all groups but 126 (the remainder being scattered); but discord arose and, November 29 following, the cabinet of Rios resigned. Upon the great ecclesiastical questions of the day--civil marriage, the law of associations, and the secularization of education--both parties, but especially the Liberals, were disrupted completely, and during the period of but little more than a year between the retirement of Rios and the return to power of Maura, January 24, 1907, no fewer than five ministries sought successively to grapple (p. 624) with the situation. Under Maura a measure of stability was restored. The premier, although a Catholic, was moderately anti-clerical. His principal purpose was to maintain order and to elevate the plane of politics by a reform of the local government. At the elections of April 21, 1907, the Conservatives won a victory so decisive that in the Congress they secured a majority of 88 seats over all other groups combined.[861] The fall of the Maura ministry, October 21, 1909, came in consequence largely of the Moroccan crisis, but more immediately by reason of embarrassment incident to the execution of the anarchist-philosopher Señor Ferrer. The Liberal ministry of Moret, constituted October 22, 1909, lacked substantial parliamentary support and was short-lived. February 9, 1910, there was established under Canalejas, leader of the democratic group, a cabinet representative of various Liberal and Radical elements and made up almost wholly of men new to ministerial office.[862] [Footnote 861: The exact distribution of seats was as follows: Conservatives, 256; Liberals, 66; Solidarists, 53; Republicans, 32; Democrats, 9; Independents, 8.] [Footnote 862: November 12, 1912, Premier Canalejas was assassinated. He was succeeded by the president of the Congress of Deputies, Alvaro de Romanones, under whom the Liberal ministry was continued in office.] *690. The Elections of 1910.*--The first important act of Canalejas was to persuade the sovereign, as Moret had vainly sought to do, to dissolve the Cortes, to the end that the Liberal ministry might appeal to the country. The elections were held May 10. They were of peculiar interest by reason of the fact that now for the first time there was put into operation an electoral measure of the recent Maura government whereby it is required that every candidate for a seat in the lower chamber shall be placed in nomination by two ex-senators, two ex-deputies, or three members of the general council of the province. This regulation had been opposed by the Republicans and by the radical elements generally on the ground that it put in the hands of the Government power virtually to dictate candidacies in many electoral districts, and the results seemed fairly to sustain the charge. May 1, in accordance with a provision of the law, 120 deputies--upwards of one-third of the total number to be chosen--were declared elected, by reason of having no competitors. Of these 70 were Liberals, 39 were Conservatives, and the remainder belonged to minor groups. In the districts in which there were contests the Government also won decisively a few days later, as it did likewise in the senatorial elections of May 15. The results of the elections, as officially reported, may be tabulated as follows: (p. 625) CONGRESS OF DEPUTIES | Elected indirectly | by the people, May 15 | | | | Elected by | | the corporations, | | etc., May 15 | | | | | | SENATE | | | Total elected | | | | | | | | Immovable portion | | | | of Senate | | | | | | | | | | Grand | | | | | Total | | | | | | Liberals 229 92 11 103 70 173 Dissenting Liberals 0 3 0 3 0 3 Conservatives 107 35 7 42 77 119 Republicans 40 3 1 4 0 4 Carlists 9 4 0 4 2 6 Regionalists 8 4 1 5 0 5 Integrists 7 0 0 0 0 0 Independents 5 1 1 2 16 18 Socialists 1 0 0 0 0 0 Catholics 0 5 0 5 8 13 ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ 406 147 21 168 173[863] 341 [Footnote 863: Some seats vacant.] *691. Republicanism and Socialism.*--Among other accounts, the elections of 1910 were notable by reason of the return to the Congress for the first time of a socialist member. In Madrid, as in other centers of population, the Government concluded with the Conservatives an _entente_ calculated to hold in check the rising tide of socialism and republicanism. Under the stimulus thus afforded the Socialists at last responded to the overtures which the Republicans had long been making, and the coalition which resulted was successful in returning to Parliament the Socialist leader Iglesias, together with an otherwise all but unbroken contingent of Republicans. In Barcelona and elsewhere Republican gains were decisive. None the less the Republican forces continue to be so embarrassed by factional strife as to be not really formidable. The Socialists, however, exhibit a larger degree of unity. As in Italy, France, and most European countries, they are growing both in numbers and in effectiveness of organization. In Spain, as in Italy, the historic parties which have been accustomed to share between them the control of the state have, in reality, long since lost much of the vitality which they once possessed. The terms "Liberal" and "Conservative" denote even less than once they did bodies of men standing for recognized political principles, or even for recognized political policies. The field for the development of parties which shall take more cognizance of the nation's actual conditions and be more responsive to its demands seems wide and, on the whole, not unpromising.[864] [Footnote 864: On political parties in Spain two older works are A. Borrego, Organizaciôn de los Partidos (Madrid, 1855) and El Partido Conservador (Madrid, 1857). Two valuable books are E. Rodriguez Solis, Historia del partido republicano español (Madrid, 1893) and B. M. Andrade y Uribe, Maura und di Konservativen Partei in Spanien (Karlsruhe, 1912). The subject is sketched excellently to 1898 in Clarke, Modern Spain, Chaps. 14-16. In the domain of periodical literature may be mentioned A. Marvaud, Les élections espagnoles de mai 1907, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1907; C. David, Les élections espagnoles, in _Questions Diplomatiques et Coloniales_, May 16, 1907; A. Marvaud, Un aspect nouveau du Catalanisme, ibid., June 16, 1907; La situation politique et financière de l'Espagne, ibid., Dec. 16, 1908; La rentrée des Cortes et la situation en Espagne, ibid., June 16, 1910. A well-informed sketch is L. G. Guijarro, Spain since 1898, in _Yale Review_, May, 1909.] VII. THE JUDICIARY AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (p. 626) *692. Law and Justice.*--The law of Spain is founded upon the Roman law, the Gothic common law, and, more immediately, the Leyes de Toro, a national code promulgated by the Cortes of Toro in 1501. By the constitution it is stipulated that the same codes shall be in operation throughout all portions of the realm and that in these codes shall be maintained but one system of law, to be applied in all ordinary civil and criminal cases in which Spanish subjects shall be involved. The civil code which is at present in operation was put in effect throughout the entire kingdom May 1, 1889. The penal code dates from 1870, but was amended in 1877. The code of civil procedure was put in operation April 1, 1881, and that of criminal procedure, June 22, 1882. A new commercial code took effect August 22, 1885. "The power of applying the laws in civil and criminal cases," says the constitution, "shall belong exclusively to the courts, which shall exercise no other functions than those of judging and of enforcing their judgments."[865] What courts shall be established, the organization of each, its powers, the manner of exercising them, and the qualifications which its members must possess, are left to be determined by law. The civil hierarchy to-day comprises tribunals of four grades: the municipal courts, the courts of first instance, the courts of appeal, and the Supreme Court at Madrid. The justices of the peace of the municipal courts are charged with the registration of births and deaths, the preparation of voting lists, the performance of civil marriage, and the hearing of petty cases to the end that conciliation, if possible, may be effected between the litigants. No civil case may be brought in any higher court until effort shall have been made to adjust it in a justice's tribunal. In each of the 495 _partidos judiciales_, or judicial districts, of the kingdom is a court of first instance, empowered to take cognizance of all causes, both civil and criminal. From these tribunals lies appeal in civil cases to fifteen _audiencias territoriales_. By a law of April 20, 1888--the measure by which was introduced the use of the jury in (p. 627) the majority of criminal causes--there were established forty-seven _audiencias criminales_, one in each province of the kingdom, and these have become virtually courts of assize, their sessions being held four times a year. Finally, at Madrid is established a Supreme Court, modelled on the French Court of Cassation, whose function it is to decide questions relating to the competence of the inferior tribunals and to rule on points of law when appeals are carried from these tribunals. Cases involving matters of administrative law, decided formerly by the provincial councils and the Council of State, are disposed of now in the _audiencias_ and in the fourth chamber of the Supreme Court.[866] [Footnote 865: Art. 76. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 213.] [Footnote 866: G. Marin, La jurisdiction contentieuse administrative en Espagne, in _Revue du Droit Public_, Oct.-Dec., 1906.] Justice is administered in the name of the king. All judgments must be pronounced in open court, and by the constitution it is guaranteed specifically that proceedings in criminal matters shall be public. In every tribunal the state is represented by _abogados fiscales_ (public prosecutors) and counsel nominated by the crown. Magistrates and judges, appointed by the crown, may not be removed, suspended, or transferred, save under circumstances minutely stipulated in the organic judicial laws. But judges are responsible personally for any violation of law of which they may be guilty. *693. Local Government: the Province and the Commune.*--Prior to 1833 the Spanish mainland comprised thirteen provinces, by which were preserved in a large measure both the nomenclature and the geographical identity of the ancient kingdoms and principalities from which the nation was constructed. In the year mentioned the number of provinces was increased to forty-seven, at which figure it remains at the present day. The essential agencies of government in the province are two--the governor and the _diputacion provincial_, or provincial council. The governor is appointed by the crown and it is his function, under the direction of the Minister of the Interior, to represent the central government in the provincial council and in the general administrative business of the province. The provincial council is composed of members chosen by the voters of the province, which means, under the law of June 28, 1890, all male Spaniards of the age of twenty-five. Under the presidency of the governor the body meets yearly, and in the intervals between sessions it is represented by a _commission provinciale_, or provincial committee, elected annually. The size of the council varies roughly according to the population of the province. The smallest governmental unit is the commune, and the number of (p. 628) communes in the kingdom is approximately 8,000. In each is an _ayuntamiento_, or council, the members of which, varying in number from five to thirty-nine, are elected for four years (one-half retiring biennially) by those residents of the commune who are qualified to vote for members of the provincial councils. To serve as the chief executive officer of the municipality the _ayuntamiento_ regularly elects from its own number an _alcalde_, or mayor, although in the larger towns appointment of the mayor is reserved to the crown. *694. Principles of Local Control.*--After stipulating that the organization and powers of the provincial and municipal councils shall be regulated by law, the constitution lays down certain fundamental principles to be observed in the enactment of such legislation. These are (1) the management of the local interests of the province and the commune shall be left entirely to the respective councils; (2) the estimates, accounts, and official acts of these bodies shall invariably be made public; (3) the fiscal powers of the councils shall be so determined that the financial system of the nation may never be brought in jeopardy; and (4) in order to prevent the councils from exceeding their prerogatives to the prejudice of general and established interests the power of intervention shall be reserved to the sovereign and, under certain circumstances, to the Cortes.[867] The theory, carried over from the liberal constitution of 1869, is that within the spheres marked out for them by law the provinces and the municipalities are autonomous. And it undoubtedly is true that, compared with the system in operation prior to 1868, the present régime represents distinct decentralization. None the less it must be said that in practice there is ever a tendency on the part of the central authorities to encroach upon the privileges of the local governing agencies, and through several years there has been under consideration a reorganization of the entire administrative system in the direction of less rather than more liberalism. In 1909 a Local Administration bill devised by the recent Maura ministry was adopted by the lower chamber of the Cortes. This measure, which was combatted with vigor by the Liberal party, proposed to enlarge the fiscal autonomy of the communes, but at the same time to modify the provincial and municipal electoral system by the establishment of an educational qualification, by the admission of corporations to electoral privileges, and by otherwise lessening the weight of the vote of the individual citizen. In the Senate the measure met determined opposition, and as yet its fate is uncertain.[868] [Footnote 867: Art. 84. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 215.] [Footnote 868: J. Gascon y Marin, La réforme du régime local en Espagne, in _Revue du Droit Public_, April-June, 1909.] CHAPTER XXXIV (p. 629) THE GOVERNMENT OF PORTUGAL I. A CENTURY OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT *695. The Napoleonic Subjugation and the Constitution of 1820.*--The government of Portugal at the opening of the nineteenth century was no less absolute than was that of Spain, The Cortes was extinct, and although Pombal, chief minister during the period 1750-1777, had caused all Portuguese subjects to be made eligible to public office and had introduced numerous economic and administrative reforms, nothing had been permitted to be done by which the unrestricted authority of the crown might be impaired. The country was affected but slightly by the Revolution in France. In 1807, however, it fell prey to Napoleon and the royal family was obliged to take refuge in the dependency of Brazil. With the aid of the English the power of the conqueror was broken in 1808, and through a number of years the government was administered nominally by a commission designated by the absentee regent, Dom John, though actually by a British dictatorship. In 1815 Brazil was raised to the rank of a co-ordinate kingdom, and from that year until 1822 the official designation of the state was "the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves." In 1816 the mad queen Maria I. died and the regent succeeded to the affiliated thrones as John VI. His original intention was to remain in America, but in 1820 a general revolt in Portugal culminated in the calling of a national assembly by which there was framed a constitution reproducing the essentials of the Spanish instrument of 1812, and by this turn of events the sovereign was impelled, in 1821, to set sail for the mother country, leaving as regent in Brazil his son Dom Pedro. Fidelity to the new constitution was pledged perforce, but the elements of reaction gathered strength swiftly, and before the close of 1823 the instrument was abrogated. The only tangible result of the episode was the creation of a constitutional party which thereafter was able much of the time to keep absolutism upon the defensive.[869] [Footnote 869: In the meantime a revolt which was impending in Brazil at the time of King John's withdrawal had run its course. September 7, 1822, the regent Dom Pedro, who freely cast in his lot with the revolutionists, proclaimed the country's independence, and some weeks later he was declared constitutional emperor. Protest from Lisbon was emphatic, but means of coercing the rebellious colony were not at hand, and, in 1825, under constraint of the powers, King John was compelled to recognize the independence of his transoceanic dominion.] *696. The Constitutional Charter of 1826: Miguelist Wars.*--The (p. 630) death of John VI., March 10, 1826, precipitated a conflict of large importance in the history of Portuguese constitutionalism. The heir to the throne was Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, who as sovereign of Portugal, assumed the title Pedro IV. Having inaugurated his reign by the grant of a constitutional charter whereby there was introduced a parliamentary system of government on the pattern of that in operation in Great Britain, the new king, being unwilling to withdraw from America, made over the Portuguese throne to his seven-year-old daughter, Dona Maria da Gloria, with the stipulation that when she should come of age she should be married to her uncle, Dom Miguel, in whom meanwhile the regency was to be vested. Amid enthusiasm the _Carta Constitucional_ was proclaimed at Lisbon, July 31, 1826, and in August there was established a responsible Liberal ministry under Saldanha. When, however, in 1828, the regent at length arrived in Portugal, a clerical and absolutist counter-revolution was found to be under way, and by the reactionary elements he was received, not as regent, but as king. By a Cortes of the ancient type, summoned in the stead of the parliament provided for in the Charter, Dom Miguel was tendered the crown, which, in violation of all the pledges he had given, he made haste to accept. That he might vindicate the claims of his daughter, the Emperor Pedro, in April, 1831, abdicated his Brazilian throne and, repairing to Portugal, devoted himself unsparingly to the task of deposing the usurper. The outcome of the wars which ensued was that in 1834 Dom Miguel was overthrown and banished perpetually from the kingdom. Until his death, in September of the same year, Pedro acted as regent for his daughter, and under his comparatively enlightened rule the Charter of 1826 was restored and the state was set once more upon the path of reform. Upon his death the Princess Maria assumed the throne as Maria II.[870] [Footnote 870: Cambridge Modern History, X., Chap. 10; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, X., Chap. 6; H. M. Stephens, Portugal (New York, 1903), Chap. 18. A general treatise covering the period is W. Bollaert, The Wars of Succession of Portugal and Spain from 1821 to 1840 (London, 1870).] *697. Nominal Constitutionalism, 1834-1853.*--The reign of Queen Maria (1834-1853) was a period of factional turbulence. There were now three political groups of principal importance: the Miguelists, representing the interests of the repudiated absolutist régime; the Chartists, who advocated the principles of the moderate constitution (that of 1826) at the time in operation; and the Septembrists,[871] who were (p. 631) attached rather to the principles of the radical instrument of 1821-1822. By all, save perhaps the Miguelists, the maintenance of a constitution of some type was regarded as no longer an open question. In 1836 the Septembrists stimulated a popular rising in consequence of which the constitution of 1822 was declared again in effect until a new one should have been devised, and, April 4, 1838, there was brought forward under Septembrist auspices an instrument in which it was provided that an elected senate should take the place of the aristocratic House of Peers for which the Charter provided, and that elections to the House of Deputies should thenceforth be direct. In 1839, however, a moderate ministry was constituted with Antonio Bermudo da Costa Cabral as its real, though not its nominal, head, and by a pronunciamento of February 10, 1842, the Charter was restored to operation. Costa Cabral (Count of Thomar after 1845) ruled despotically until May, 1846, when by a combination of Miguelists, Septembrists, and Chartists he was driven into exile.[872] The Chartist ministry of Saldanha succeeded. In 1849 it was replaced by a ministry under the returned Thomar, but by a rising of April 7, 1851, Thomar was again exiled. At the head of a moderate coalition Saldanha governed peacefully through the next five years (1851-1856). The period was marked by two important developments. July 5, 1852, a so-called "Additional Act" revised the Charter by providing for the direct election of deputies, the decentralization of the executive, the creation of representative municipal councils, and the abolition of capital punishment for political offenses. A second fact of importance was the amalgamation, in 1852, of the Septembrists and the Chartists to form the party of Regeneradores, or Regenerators, in support of the Charter in its new and liberalized form. [Footnote 871: So called from the _coup d'état_ of September, 1836, mentioned shortly.] [Footnote 872: E. Bavoux, Costa Cabral; notes historiques sur sa carrière et son ministère (Paris, 1846).] *698. Party Rivalries: the Rotativos.*--In the constitutional history of the kingdom the reign of Pedro V. (1853-1861) possesses slight importance. There was less civil strife than during the preceding generation, but ministries took office in rapid succession and little improvement was realized in practical political conditions. The period covered by the more extended reign of Luiz I. (1861-1889) was of the same character, save that its later years were given some distinction by certain developments in the party situation. The death of the old Chartist leader Saldanha in 1876 was followed, indeed, by the appearance of a political alignment that was essentially new. Already the Regeneradores, representing the Chartist-Septembrist coalition (p. 632) of 1852, had disintegrated, and in 1877 the more radical elements of the defunct party, known at first as the Historic Left, were reorganized under the name of the Progressistas, or Progressives. The new conservative elements, on the other hand, carried on the traditions and preserved the name of the original Regeneradores. In the Cortes the Progressistas assumed the position of a Constitutional Left and the surviving Regeneradores that of a Conservative Right. Both were monarchical and both were attached to the existing constitution, differing only in respect to the amendments which they would have preferred to introduce in that instrument. Of remaining parties two were of importance, i.e., the Miguelists, representing still the interests of absolutism, and the Republicans, who first acquired definite party organization in 1881. Between 1877 and 1910 the Regeneradores and the Progressistas shared in rotation the spoils of office with such regularity that the two acquired popularly the nickname of the _rotativos_. Both were dominated by professional politicians whose skill in manipulating popular elections was equalled only by their greed for the spoils of victory. Successful operation of a parliamentary system presupposes at least a fairly healthy public opinion. But in Portugal, upwards of four-fifths of whose inhabitants are illiterate,[873] there has been no such favoring condition, and the opportunity for the demagogue and the cacique has been correspondingly tempting. Parties have been regularly mere cliques and party politics only factional strife. Throughout the period corruption was abundant and such public feeling as existed was stifled systematically. Elections were supervised in every detail by the provincial governors; agents of the Government were employed to instruct the people in their choice of representatives; and the voters did habitually precisely what they were told to do. No one ever expected an election to show results adverse to the Government. Especially unscrupulous was the manner in which the preponderating parties obstructed systematically the election of Republican and Independent deputies. As late as 1906 but one Republican was returned to the Cortes, although it was a matter of common knowledge that in many constituencies the party commanded a clear majority. [Footnote 873: By official calculation, 78.6 per cent in 1900.] *699. The Dictatorship of Franco, 1906-1908.*--From June, 1900, to October, 1904, the Regeneradores were in power, with Ribeiro as premier. During this period two national elections, in 1900 and in 1904, yielded the controlling party substantial majorities. From October, 1904, the Progressive ministry of Luciano de Castro occupied the field, but in the spring of 1906 there took place a series of ministerial crises in the course of which Ribeiro returned for a (p. 633) brief interval to power. The election of April 26, 1906, gave the Regeneradores 113 seats, the Progressistas 30, and the Republicans 1. The ministerial changes by which this election was accompanied prepared the way for the establishment of the régime known in recent Portuguese history as the _dictadura_, or dictatorship. The new premier, João Franco, was one of the abler and more conscientious men in public life. Originally a Regenerator, as early as 1901 he had led a secession from the party, and in 1903 he had organized definitely a third party, the Liberal Regenerators, whose avowed end was the establishment in Portugal of true parliamentarism. In 1906 a "Liberal Concentration" was effected between Franco's followers and the Progressistas, led by Castro, and the outcome was the calling, May 19, 1906, of Franco to the premiership. That office he assumed with the determination to introduce and to carry through an elaborate programme of sorely needed fiscal and administrative reforms. If possible, his methods were to be entirely constitutional; if not, as nearly so as might prove practicable. The Cortes elected April 26 met June 6 and, being found unpromising, was dissolved. During the campaign which followed the Regenerador party, to which Franco nominally belonged, split, the Franquistas, or supporters of the premier, taking the name of New Regenerators. The returns yielded by the election of August 12 were: New Regenerators, 73 seats; Progressives, 43; Old Regenerators, 23; Republicans, 4; with scattering seats distributed among other groups. The sitting of the Cortes which began September 29, 1906, was one of the stormiest on record. In May, 1907, when the Government seemed on the point of collapse and it was supposed that Franco would resign, the indomitable premier effected a _coup d'état_ whereby the ministry was reconstituted, the Cortes was dissolved, and several important bills which were pending were proclaimed to have acquired the force of law. During the ensuing twelvemonth the government was that of a benevolent but uncompromising dictatorship. Supported by the king, the army, and a considerable body of partisans, Franco succeeded in carrying through the major portion of his reform programme. But he was opposed by the Republicans, by the professional politicians of the older parties, and by the entire hierarchy of administrative and judicial officials who shrank from impending investigation. His task was enhanced tremendously by the growing unpopularity of King Carlos, and in defense of the sovereign it was found necessary to deprive the House of Peers of its judicial functions, to replace the district and municipal councils by commissions named by the crown, and, in short, to suspend virtually all remaining vestiges of popular government, (p. 634) as well as the various guarantees of individual liberty. *700. Restoration of Normal Conditions.*--February 1, 1908, when the situation bordered on revolution, King Carlos and the crown prince Louis Philippe were assassinated and the dictatorship of Franco was brought abruptly to an end. The king's second son, who succeeded under the title of Manoel II., called together an extraordinary junta of ministers and party leaders, at whose instigation the imperious premier resigned and withdrew from the country; whereupon, under the premiership of Admiral Ferreira do Amaral, there was formed a coalition ministry, representative of all of the monarchist parties. The administrative commissions created by Franco were dissolved; the civil list, concerning which there had been grave controversy, was reduced; the House of Peers was reconstituted; the election of a new Cortes was ordered; and parliamentary institutions, suspended for a year, were revived. The various reforms, on the other hand, for which the dictator had been responsible were brought likewise to an end. The election of April 5, attended by grave disorders, yielded the Government a decisive majority and, April 29, the new sovereign formally opened the first Cortes of his reign and took oath to support the constitution. In the Chamber the old balance between the Regeneradores and the Progressistas reappeared. Of the former there were 61; of the latter, 59. The Republicans had 7 seats; a group of "Nationalists," 3; the Independents, 1; and the "Amaralists," detached supporters of the ministry, 17. Before the end of the year the Government lost its majority, and December 24 a new coalition cabinet was made up by Campos Henriques, a former minister of justice.[874] [Footnote 874: On the political history of Portugal since the establishment of constitutionalism see Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 20, XII., Chap. 10; and Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, XI., Chap. 9, XII., Chap, 9. A serviceable general work is J. P. Oliveira Martins, Historia de Portugal (4th ed., Lisbon, 1901). An older and more detailed treatise is H. Schaefer, Geschichte von Portugal (2d ed., Hamburg, 1874), and a useful survey is R. de Vezeley, Le Portugal politique (Paris, 1890). For a good brief survey of Portuguese party politics see A. Marvaud, La crise en Portugal et les élections d'avril 1908, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, July, 1908.] II. THE GOVERNMENT OF THE KINGDOM *701. The Constitution.*--Before speaking of the revolution of 1910, in consequence of which the monarchy was overthrown and the present republic was established, it is desirable that brief allusion be made to the governmental system of the earlier régime. The fundamental law in operation in 1910 was the _Carta Constitucional_ of 1826, (p. 635) remodelled and liberalized by numerous amendments. The revision accomplished by the Additional Act of 1852 has been mentioned. An amendment of July 24, 1885, provided for the gradual extinction of the right of hereditary peers to sit in the upper house and for the representation, in the Deputies, of minorities; while three amendments of importance during the reign of Carlos I. (1889-1908) were: (1) that of March 28, 1895, whereby the number of deputies was reduced from 180 to 120 and the qualifications requisite for the exercise of the suffrage were overhauled; (2) that of September 25 of the same year whereby the elective portion of the House of Peers was abolished; and (3) that of August 8, 1901, by which the conditions of election to the House of Deputies were revised. In its final form the constitution was an instrument of unusual length, comprising eight "titles" and 145 articles, some of which were very comprehensive.[875] [Footnote 875: The text of the constitution was published by the state under the title of Carta Constitucional da Monarchia Portugueza ... e Diplomas Correlativos (Lisbon, 1890). An annotated translation is in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 145-179. An excellent treatise is J. J. Tavares de Medeiros, Das Staatsrecht des Königsreichs Portugal (Freiburg, 1892), in Marquardsen's Handbuch. Important Portuguese works include L. P. Coimbre, Estudios sobre a Carta Constitucional de 1814 e Acto Addicional de 1852 (Lisbon, 1878-1880), and Coelho da Rocha, Ensaio sobre a Historia do Governo e da Legislaçao de Portugal.] *702. The Crown and the Ministry.*--Provision was made for the exercise of four distinct categories of powers, i.e., executive, moderative, legislative, and judicial. Of these the first two were lodged in the sovereign, the third in the sovereign and Cortes conjointly, and the fourth in tribunals established under provision of the constitution. The crown was vested permanently in the descendants of Dona Maria II., of the House of Braganza, and, in default thereof, in the nearest collateral line. The succession was regulated on the principle of primogeniture, with preference to the male line, and during a sovereign's minority the regency devolved upon the nearest relative, according to the order of succession, who had attained the age of twenty-five. Associated with the sovereign was a ministry and a council of state. The ministry consisted of a premier, usually without portfolio, and a variable number of heads of departments (in 1910, seven),[876] and it was a principle of the constitution that, the crown being legally irresponsible, no executive act might be adjudged valid unless signed by one or more of the members of the ministerial group. For all of their acts the ministers were responsible nominally to the Cortes, although in point of fact the turbulent state of (p. 636) politics rendered such responsibility nearly impossible to enforce. The council of state was a body composed of the crown prince (when of the age of eighteen) and of twelve men appointed by the king for life, usually from present or past ministers. It was required that the council be consulted in all affairs of weight and in general measures of public administration, especially those relating to the declaration of war, the conclusion of peace, and the conduct of diplomatic negotiations.[877] [Footnote 876: Foreign Affairs, Interior, Finance, Justice and Worship, War, Marine and Colonies, and Public Works.] [Footnote 877: Arts. 107-112. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 168-169.] Aside from participation in legislation, the powers of the crown (exercised at least nominally through the intermediary of the ministers and councillors) were, as has been said, of two categories, executive and moderative. The powers of an executive character were of the usual sort, i.e., the appointment of civil, military, and ecclesiastical officials; the conduct of foreign relations; the promulgation of the laws, and of decrees, instructions, and regulations requisite to the proper execution of the laws; the ordering, not less frequently than quadrennially, of an election of a new Cortes; and the supervision, in conformity with the constitution, of "all things which bear upon the internal and external security of the state."[878] Among modern constitutions those of Portugal and Brazil are unique in the distinction drawn between powers that are executive and powers that are "moderative." Under the head of moderative powers the Portuguese constitution vested in the crown the nomination of peers, the convening of the Cortes in extraordinary session, approval of the measures of the Cortes to the end that they might acquire the force of law, the proroguing and adjourning of the Cortes and the dissolving of the House of Deputies, the appointing and dismissing of ministers, the granting of amnesties, and the remitting or reducing of penalties imposed upon offenders by judicial sentence. The theory was that these were powers which the sovereign exercised in the capacity of mediator between the several organs of the governmental system, and by the constitution it was declared that this moderative power was the keystone of the entire political organization. The distinction, however, while from a certain point of view logical enough, does not appear to have possessed much practical importance. [Footnote 878: Arts. 75-77. Ibid., II., 162-164.] *703. The Cortes.*--Powers of a legislative character were vested in the sovereign conjointly with a parliament of two chambers, the _Camara dos Pares_, or House of Peers, and the _Camara dos Deputados_, or House of Deputies. Collectively, the two houses were known as the _Cortes Feraes_, or, more briefly, the Cortes. Until 1885 the House of Peers consisted of members of two classes, those who sat by (p. 637) hereditary right and those who were nominated by the crown for life. By the constitutional amendment of July 24, 1885, hereditary peerages were put in the way of gradual abolition and it was stipulated that when they should have been extinguished the chamber should be composed of princes of the royal blood, the archbishops and bishops of Portugal proper, 100 members appointed by the king for life, and 50 members elected every new parliament by the lower chamber. By amendment of September 25, 1895, however, the 50 elective peerages were abolished and the number of royal appointees was reduced to 90. In 1910, therefore, the chamber was made up of (1) princes of the royal blood who had attained the age of twenty-five; (2) surviving peers whose hereditary right antedated 1885, together with their immediate successors; (3) the Patriarch of Lisbon and the archbishops and bishops of the continental territory of the kingdom; and (4) the 90 life peers nominated by the crown. In the nomination of peers the crown was restricted only by the requirement that members must have attained the age of forty and must be able to meet a considerable property qualification. The House of Deputies, as regulated by the law of August 8, 1901, was composed of 155 members, of whom 148 represented the 26 electoral circles of Portugal, the Azores, and Madeira,[879] and 7 represented the colonies. By amendment of 1885 provision was made for the representation of minorities, and of the 155 members in 1910, 35 sat as minority representatives. This result was attained through an arrangement whereby in circles which elected more than one deputy each elector voted for one or two fewer than the number of seats to be filled. Deputies were chosen by direct election, and in the choice all male citizens twenty-one years of age were entitled to participate, provided they paid taxes aggregating 500 _reis_ (about 56 cents) annually or were able to read and write. Convicts, beggars, bankrupts, domestic servants, workingmen permanently employed by the state, and soldiers and sailors below the rank of commissioned officer were disqualified. In point of fact, the prevalence of poverty and of illiteracy operated to confine the franchise within very narrow limits. Peers, naturalized aliens, persons not qualified to vote, and certain employees of the state were ineligible for election, and deputies were required to possess an income of not less than 400 milreis ($425) annually, or to be graduates of a professional, secondary, or higher school. After 1892 no deputies, save those representing the colonies, were paid salaries. [Footnote 879: The Azores and Madeira are regarded as integral parts of the nation.] Sessions of the Cortes were required to be opened by the crown on (p. 638) the second day of January of each year. According to the amendment of July 24, 1885, a regular session lasted three months and each Cortes, unless sooner dissolved, lasted three years. The president and vice-president of the House of Peers were appointed by the crown; likewise the corresponding officials of the House of Deputies, from a list of five nominees presented by that body. Each chamber was authorized to choose its own secretaries, to pass upon the qualifications of its members, and to frame its rules of procedure. Except at times when the welfare of the state demanded secrecy, sessions were required to be public. To the lower chamber was committed the initiative in all matters pertaining to taxation, the recruiting of troops, the investigation of the administrative offices, and the consideration of propositions submitted by the executive. Upon it, likewise, was conferred exclusive power to impeach ministers and councillors of state. The right to initiate measures in general was vested in each of the two houses, as well as in the Government. Ministers were privileged to attend legislative sessions and to participate in debate. It was required that the sovereign should give or refuse his approval of every measure within a month after it should have been presented to him.[880] [Footnote 880: Arts. 45-62. Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II., 156-159.] *704. The Judiciary and Local Government.*--The judicial hierarchy consisted of 193 courts of first instance, one in each of an equal number of _comarcas_, or districts; three courts of appeal, sitting at Lisbon, Oporto, and Ponta Delgada (in the Azores); and a Supreme Court at Lisbon. Judges were appointed by the crown, and were irremovable save in consequence of judicial sentence. In the trial of criminal cases the English jury system was in vogue, although it operated but indifferently. The functions of the Supreme Court were those of hearing appeals from the inferior tribunals, trying cases involving judges of the appellate courts and members of the diplomatic corps, and deciding conflicts of jurisdiction.[881] [Footnote 881: Arts. 118-131. Ibid., II., 169-171.] Early in the nineteenth century continental Portugal was divided for administrative purposes into six provinces, delimited in a large measure in accordance with the physical configuration of the country. In 1836 the province ceased to be an administrative unit and, after a period of readjustment, there was established by law of March 18, 1842, an administrative hierarchy which in its more important aspects has survived to the present day. Under that measure the realm was divided into 21 districts (17 continental and 4 insular), 292 _concelhos_, or communes (263 continental and 29 insular), and 3,690 _freguezias_, or parishes (3,788 continental and 172 insular). (p. 639) Until 1910 the government of the district was vested in a commission consisting of two members appointed by the central authorities and three elected triennially by delegates from the communal councils. Of the two centrally appointed members, one, the governor, presided over the commission; the other was an administrative auditor. Among the functions of the commission was that of sitting as an administrative court. The commune was governed by a mayor, appointed by the central authorities on nomination of the governor of the district, and a council of five to fifteen members elected on a single ticket by the communal voters. The council was presided over, not by the mayor, but by one of its own members. The governing agencies of the parish were an elected council (_junta de parochia_), presided over by the parish priest, and the _regidor_, named by the district governor to represent the interests of the central government. Throughout the entire system the preponderating fact was the thoroughgoing centralization which, through the governors, mayors, and _regadores_, the authorities at Lisbon were able to maintain. III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1910 *705. Political Unsettlement, 1908-1910.*--The period of two and a half years which elapsed between the accession of Manoel II., in February, 1908, and his deposition, in October, 1910, was one of continued political stress. The sovereign was youthful, inexperienced, and lacking in political training. His advisers were divided in their counsels and impelled largely by selfish motives, and in the teeth of rapidly spreading republican and socialist propaganda the old dynastic parties kept up unremittingly their unseemly recriminations. In February, 1909, the king called into consultation the leaders of the various monarchist groups and sought to impress upon them the necessity of co-operation, and when the Cortes was convened, March 1, the Speech from the Throne announced optimistically a programme of constructive legislation, embracing, among other things, the enactment of more liberal press laws, a reform of primary education, and a readjustment of taxation. Within the Cortes, however, it was found impossible to carry any one of the measures proposed and, March 29, the Henriquez ministry, after only three months in office, resigned. During the remainder of the year three successive ministries were set up: that of General Sebastiano Telles, which lasted only from April 11 until May 4; that of Wencelao de Lima, extending from May 4 to December 21; and that of Beirao, which continued from December 21 to early June of the following year. The De Lima cabinet was formed from elements which stood largely outside the swirl of party politics, (p. 640) but the Republican and Regenerador opposition was so intense that nothing could be accomplished by it. The Beirao government by which it was succeeded was composed entirely of Progressives. The Speech from the Throne at the convening of the Cortes, January 2, 1910, ignored completely the grim realities of the political situation. Ostensibly to afford the Beirao ministry an opportunity to formulate a programme, the session was adjourned until March 3, at which time the members reassembled, only to be sent back again to their homes until June 1. At the second reassembling the ministry was opposed with such virulence that it at once retired and, after some delay, the Regeneradors came into power under Teixeira de Sousa. The Cortes was dissolved and a national election, accompanied by grave disorders, was held, August 28. At the election the Regeneradors obtained 80 seats, the Progressives 43, the Republicans 14 (twice as many as they had ever obtained before), and the Independents 2.[882] The new Cortes assembled September 23; but two days later it was adjourned until December 12, and, in point of fact, it never sat again. [Footnote 882: Ten of the fourteen Republican deputies were elected in Lisbon. The popular vote in that city was: Republicans, 15,104; Monarchists of all parties, 9,108. In 1908 the numbers were 13,074 and 10,982 respectively.] *706. Overthrow of the Monarchy.*--During many months a plot had been ripening in Republican circles looking toward the deposition of the king, the overthrow of the monarchy, and the proclamation of a republic. By reason of the confusion and repression which prevailed perennially in Portuguese politics, the actual strength, numerically and otherwise, of republicanism in the kingdom in 1910 cannot be known. But it is sufficiently clear that the propaganda of the past thirty years had borne much fruit and that among the artisan, trader, and small burgher classes, and especially in the ranks of the army and the navy, the enemies of the monarchy had come to be numerous and influential. The leaders of the republican movement represented, on the whole, the best educated and most progressive elements of the country--largely lawyers, physicians, journalists and other men of the professions and of business. In the later summer of 1910 various intimations of a far-reaching revolutionary plot were received by the Government and the date (September 14) which was at one time fixed for the insurrection proved an impracticable one because the authorities became aware of the project and subverted the republican plans by ordering the warships on that day to quit the Tagus. Within official circles it was generally assumed that the revolutionists, balked once, would return to the project. The crash came, however, at a moment (p. 641) when the Government was entirely off its guard, and its effects were unexpectedly summary. The immediate incident by which it was precipitated was the assassination in Lisbon, October 3, of a distinguished Republican member of the Cortes, Dr. Miguel Bombarda. Whether justly or not, the assassination was interpreted by the populace as a political crime, and to the disaffected elements of the army and navy the occasion seemed ripe for the execution of the contemplated _coup_. October 4 open revolt broke out among the national troops, and during the ensuing forty-eight hours a handful of soldiers and sailors, aided by armed civilians, acquired the mastery of the capital, put the king to flight, won over the country to their cause, and proclaimed the establishment of a republican form of government. The revolutionists were organized, the royalists were not, and the defeat of the latter was complete. It was also substantially bloodless. King Manoel, and the queen-mother Amelia, contriving an escape from the royal palace, made their way to Eraceira, and thence to Gibraltar. Subsequently they were conveyed to England. *707. Measures of the Provisional Government.*--Meanwhile, October 5, there was established at Lisbon a provisional government composed of nine ministers and presided over by the scholar and litterateur, Theophile Braga. The members of this government were drawn principally from the group of Republican deputies representing the Lisbon constituencies. A few had held high office under the monarchy, but most of them, including Braga, were men of little or no experience in administrative work. The flight of the king and the collapse of the monarchist cause cleared the way for a speedy establishment of the new order, and without awaiting a formal remodelling of the constitution, the Braga government proceeded to carry into execution a number of features of the Republican programme. October 7 it promised amnesty to political and press exiles, the revocation of various illiberal press and judicial laws, the suppression of summary magisterial powers, and a long list of other administrative and judicial reforms. October 18 it abolished the monarchy and proscribed forever the royal house of Braganza. On the same day it abolished likewise the Council of State and the House of Peers, together with all hereditary titles and privileges. In the course of further measures of reform relating to public finance, agriculture, education, religion, and social welfare, it issued a new electoral law and effected arrangements for the convening of a national assembly to which should be committed the task of framing a republican constitution. The electoral decree of March 15, 1911, conferred the franchise upon all Portuguese citizens of the age of twenty-one who under the monarchy were entitled to its exercise, and upon all, in addition, who were able to read and (p. 642) write, barring soldiers, bankrupts, and ex-convicts. The two cities, Lisbon, and Oporto, were created electoral districts in each of which eight members were to be chosen by _scrutin de liste_ after the Belgian, or d'Hondt, plan of proportional representation, and the remainder of the country (including the colonies) was divided into districts in each of which four members were to be chosen, also with provision for the representation of minorities. *708. The Constitution Framed and the Government Organized.*--The elections to the Constituent Assembly took place May 28, 1911. There were no monarchist candidates and, there having been neither time nor occasion for the appearance of serious differences among the Republicans, the event was attended by little excitement and by no disorder. In many districts the candidates approved by the Provisional Government were unopposed. The Assembly was convened June 19. By unanimous vote of its 192 members the decree by which the monarchy had been abolished and the Braganza dynasty banished was enacted into law, whereupon the body addressed itself to the framing of a budget and the adoption of organic laws relating to the nature and manner of exercise of the political powers of the republic. A draft of the constitution, framed by the Republican leaders, was read to the delegates July 3, and August 18 it was voted, amid general acclamations, almost without modification. The presidential election was fixed for August 23. Of the two principal candidates, Dr. Manoel Arriaga represented the more moderate wing of the Republican element, Dr. Machado Santos (the provisional president) the more radical. Dr. Arriaga was elected by a vote of 121 to 86. August 24 the Assembly terminated its proceedings and the new constitution was put in operation. The first cabinet, presided over by João Chagas, was announced at the beginning of September. It was at this point that France, Spain, and a number of other European powers for the first time recognized officially the republic's existence. The difficulties encountered by the new régime--royalist invasions, outbreaks of disaffection, strikes, lack of funds--were numerous. Not the least serious was the inevitable rise of differences among the Republicans themselves. During the autumn of 1911 the Moderates split into two rival groups, and the more important of them, led by Dr. Almeida, definitely withdrew its support from the Government. The result was a ministerial crisis, and November 7 the Chagas cabinet resigned. The new "ministry of concentration" formed by the radical Vasconcellos was composed of eight members divided almost equally between the Moderates and the Democrats. In more recent days the lines of party cleavage have tended to be accentuated and the (p. 643) stability, if not the existence, of the republic to be increasingly menaced. In June, 1912, a new ministry was constituted under Leite, in which all of the groups in the lower chamber were represented. There is reason to apprehend that, in the event of the survival of the republic, the outcome will be at best but the resuscitation, under other names and forms, of the long-endured rotativist régime. IV. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1911 *709. Constitutional Guarantees: Amendment.*--Aside from five articles of a temporary nature, the constitution of 1911 is arranged in eighty-two articles, grouped in seven "titles" or divisions. The two divisions of principal length are those which relate to the rights and liberties of the individual and the organs and exercise of sovereign power. The guarantees extended the individual comprise a bill of rights hardly paralleled in comprehensiveness among the constitutions of European nations. To Portuguese citizens and to aliens resident in the country are pledged full liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, liberty of association, inviolability of domicile and of property, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, privacy of correspondence, and freedom of employment and of trade save only when restriction is required for the public good. Law is declared to be uniform for all and no public privilege may be enjoyed by reason of birth or title. No one may be required to pay a tax which has not been levied by the legislative chambers or by an administrative authority specifically qualified by law, and, save in case of enumerated offenses of serious import, no one may be imprisoned except upon accusation according to the forms of law. No one may be compelled to perform an act, or to refrain from the performance of an act, except by warrant of law. The constitution is subject to amendment under regulations of a somewhat curious character. Revision of the fundamental law may be undertaken normally by Congress at the end of every decennial period, the Congress whose mandate coincides with the period of revision being endowed automatically with constituent powers and the process of revision differing in no respect from that of ordinary legislation. At the end of a five-year period from the date of promulgation, however, amendment may be undertaken, providing two-thirds of the members of the chambers sitting jointly vote favorably. Under all circumstances amendments must be specific rather than general, and in no case may an amendment be received or debated which has for its object the abolition of the republican form of government. *710. The President and the Ministry.*--Sovereignty is lodged in (p. 644) the nation, and the organs of the sovereign will are the independent but supposedly harmonious executive, legislative, and judicial authorities. The powers of the executive are exercised by the President and the ministers. The President is chosen by the two houses of Congress assembled in joint session sixty days prior to the expiration of the presidential term. Voting is by secret ballot and a two-thirds majority is required for election, although in default of such a majority choice is made on the third ballot by simple plurality between the two candidates receiving the largest number of votes. If the office falls vacant unexpectedly the chambers choose in the same manner a president to complete the unexpired term. The term is four years, and after retiring from office an ex-president may not be re-elected for a full term prior to the lapse of four more years. Only native Portuguese citizens at least thirty-five years of age are eligible. Without the permission of Congress the President may not absent himself from the national territory, and he may be removed from office by the vote of two-thirds of the members of the chambers sitting jointly. The duties of the President are, among other things, to negotiate treaties and to represent the nation in its external relations generally, to appoint and dismiss the ministers and public officials, to summon the Congress in extraordinary session, to promulgate the laws of Congress, together with the instructions and regulations necessary for their enforcement, and to remit and commute penalties. If two-thirds of the members of the chambers so request, projected treaties of alliance must be laid before Congress, and the appointment and suspension of public officials may be effected only on proposal of the ministers. Every act of the President must be countersigned by at least one minister, and every minister is responsible politically and legally for all acts which he countersigns or executes. One member of the ministerial group, designated by the President, exercises the functions of premier. Ministers may be members of Congress, and in any case they are privileged to appear in the chambers to defend their acts. Among offenses for which ministers may be held to account in the ordinary tribunals the constitution specifies all acts which tend to subvert the independence of the nation, the inviolability of the constitution and of the republican form of government, the political and legal rights of the individual, the internal peace of the country, or the probity of administrative procedure. The penalty imposed for guilt in respect to any of these offenses is removal from office and disqualification to hold office thereafter.[883] [Footnote 883: Provisions relating to the executive are contained in Arts. 36-55.] *711. Congress.*--The exercise of legislative power is vested (p. 645) exclusively in Congress. There are two houses, the Council of Municipalities, or senate, and the National Council, or chamber of deputies. The members of both are chosen by direct vote of the people. Senators are elected for six years, one-half of the body retiring triennially. Each district returns three members, but to assure the representation of minorities electors are permitted to vote for but two. Members of the Chamber of Deputies are chosen for three years. Senators must be at least thirty-five years of age and deputies twenty-five. Congress is required to meet in regular session each year on the second day of December. The period of a session is four months, and a prorogation or an adjournment may be ordered only by the chambers themselves. Extraordinary sessions may be convoked by one-fourth of the members or by the President. Each chamber is authorized to judge the qualifications of its members, to choose its president and other officers, and to fix its rules of procedure. The presiding official at joint sessions is the elder of the two presidents. Members are accorded the usual privileges of speech and immunities from judicial process, and they are guaranteed compensation at rates to be regulated by law. The functions and powers of the chambers are enumerated in much detail. Most important among them is the enactment, interpretation, suspension, and abrogation of all laws of the republic. Still more comprehensive is the power to supervise the operation of the constitution and of the laws and "to promote the general welfare of the nation." More specifically, the chambers are authorized to levy taxes, vote expenditures, contract loans, provide for the national defense, create public offices, fix salaries, regulate tariffs, coin money, establish standards of weights and measures, emit bills of credit, organize the judiciary, control the administration of national property, approve regulations devised for the enforcement of the laws, and elect the President of the republic. To the Chamber of Deputies is accorded the right to initiate all measures relating to taxes, the organization of the forces on land and on sea, the revision of the constitution, the prorogation or adjournment of legislative sessions, the discussion of proposals made by the President, and the bringing of actions against members of the executive department. Initiative in respect to all other matters may be taken by any member of either branch of Congress or by the President of the republic. A measure which is adopted by a majority vote in each of the two houses is transmitted to the President to be promulgated as law. The President possesses not a shred of veto power. He is required to promulgate within fifteen days any measure duly enacted; if he fails to do so, the measure takes effect none the less. When the chambers fall into disagreement regarding proposed changes in a bill, or when one (p. 646) chamber rejects a bill outright, the subject is debated and a decision is reached in joint session. *712. The Judiciary and Local Government.*--The organs of judicial administration comprise courts of first instance, courts of appeal, and a supreme tribunal sitting at the capital. Judges are appointed for life, but may be removed from office in accordance with procedure to be established by law. The employment of the jury is optional with the parties in civil cases but obligatory in all criminal cases of serious import. With respect to local government the constitution goes no further than to lay down certain general principles and to enjoin that the actual working arrangements be regulated by subsequent legislation. Among the principles enumerated are the immunity of the local authorities from intervention on the part of the central executive power, the revision of the acts of the public officials in administrative tribunals, the fiscal independence of the local governmental units, and, finally, the employment for local purposes of both proportional representation and the referendum.[884] [Footnote 884: A French translation of the Portuguese constitution of 1911 will be found in _Revue du Droit Public_, Oct.-Dec, 1911. Various aspects of the revolution of 1910 and of subsequent developments are discussed in E. J. Dillon, Republican Portugal, in _Contemporary Review_, Nov., 1910; R. Recouly, La république en Portugal, in _Revue Politique et Parlementaire_, Nov. 10, 1910; W. Archer, The Portuguese Republic, in _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., 1911; and A. Marvaud, Les débuts de la république portugaise, in _Annales des Sciences Politiques_, March-April and May-June, 1911. The subject is covered briefly in V. de B. Cunha, Eight Centuries of Portuguese Monarchy (London, 1911), and A. Marvaud, Le Portugal et ses colonies; étude politique et économique (Paris, 1912).] INDEX (p. 647) _Abgeordnetenhaus._ See Prussia and Austria. Administration, development in Great Britain, 176-179; present system, 180-191; development of Prussian system, 265-273; in France under Old Régime, 341-342; during Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, 342-343; present system, 345-351; in Italy, 383-385; in Austria, 485-488; in Hungary, 506-507; in Holland, 532-533; in Belgium, 550-551; in Denmark, 569; in Norway, 588; in Sweden, 601; in Spain, 627-628; in Portugal, 638-639, 646. Alsace-Lorraine, original organization, 282; the Landesausschuss, 283; movement for autonomy, 284; bill of 1910, 285; present governmental system, 286-287. _Ausgleich_. See Austria-Hungary. Austria:-- --_Abgeordnetenhaus_, composition, 466; electoral system to 1873, 466-467; Taaffe bill of 1893, 467-468; electoral law of 1896, 468; electoral law of 1907, 469-471; electoral qualifications and procedure, 471-472; sessions and procedure, 472-473; powers, 473-474. --Administration, of province, 485-487; of commune, 487-488. --Amendment, of constitution, 461. --_Ausgleich_, established, 458-459; and political parties, 475-476; nature, 509. --Babenbergs, 442. --Badeni, electoral bill, 468; ministry, 479. --Beck, carries electoral reform, 469-470. --Bienerth, ministry, 482. --Bohemia, language question in, 480. --Charles V., 443. --Christian Socialist Party, 483. --Citizens, rights of, 462. --Civil list, 464. --Commune, organization, 487-488. --Constitution, promulgated in 1848, 454; abrogated, 455; experiments of 1860-1861, 456-457; texts, 460; style of government, 460-461; amendment, 461. --Courts, ordinary, 483-484; administrative, 484-485. --Crown. See Emperor. --Diet, provision for in constitution of 1848, 454. --Diploma of 1860, 456. --Elections, original system, 466; law of 1873, 467; Taaffe bill of 1893, 467-468; law of 1896, 468; law of 1907, 469-471; qualifications and procedure, 471-472; of 1901, 481; of 1907, 481-482; of 1911, 482-483. --Emperor, status, 463; powers, 464; relation with ministries, 464. --Franchise, law of 1873, 467; Taaffe bill of 1893, 467-468; law of 1896, 468; law of 1907, 469-471; present system, 471-472. --Francis I., proclaimed emperor of Austria, 445. --Francis Joseph I., accession, 455; constitutional projects, 456-457; and Compromise of 1867, 459; encourages electoral reform, 469. --Gautsch, promises electoral reform, 469; ministries, 480-481. --German Liberal Party, rise, 476; rule, 476-477; in the opposition, 477-478; return to power, 478-479. --Germans, in Empire, 475. --Hapsburgs, 442. --_Herrenhaus_, composition, 465; organization and powers, 466; sessions and procedure, 472-473. --House of Lords. See _Herrenhaus_. --House of Representatives. See _Abgeordnetenhaus_. --Hungary, establishment of power in, 443; encroachment in, 449-450; suppression of revolution in, 455-456; constitutional experiments with, 457-458; _Ausgleich_ established, 458-459. --Italians, in Empire, 475. --Joseph II., reforms, 444. --Judiciary. See Courts. --Karlowitz, Peace of, 443, 448. --Körber, ministry, 480-481. --_Landesausschuss_, 485. --_Landtag_, of province, 485-487. --Maria Theresa, development of autocracy under, 444. --Metternich, policies, 450-451; combats liberalism, 452; fall, 453. --Ministry, composition, 464; responsibility, 464-465. --Parliament, composition, 465-466; electoral system, 466-472; sessions and procedure, 472-473; powers, 473-474. --Parliamentarism, nature of, 464-465; nadir of, 480-481. --Parties, centralism and federalism, 475-476; rule of German Liberals, 476-477; during Taaffe ministry, 477-478; return of German Liberals to power, 478-479; and parliamentary deadlock, 480-481; and elections of 1907 and 1911, 481-483. --Patent of 1861, 457. --Plural Vote, under law of 1896, 468. --Pragmatic Sanction, promulgated, 499. --Province, executive officials, 485; _Landtag_, 485-487. --Race, political significance of, 470, 474-475, 479-480. --_Reichsgericht_, 484. --_Reichsrath_. See _Herrenhaus_ and _Abgeordnetenhaus_. --Revolution of 1848, constitutionalism established, 454; reaction, 455-456. --Russia, intervenes in Austria, 455. --Slavs, in Empire, 475. --Social Democratic Party, demands for electoral reform, 469-470; victory in 1911, 483. --Succession, rules of, 449, 463. --Taaffe, electoral bill of 1893, 467-468; ministry, 477-478. --Universal Suffrage Law, adoption, 469-470; racial and geographical distribution of seats, 470; electoral qualifications and procedure, 471-472. --Vienna, Congress of, rôle of Austria in, 450. --_Vorsteher_, 487. Austria-Hungary (see also Austria and Hungary):-- --_Ausgleich_ established, 458-459; nature, 509. --Bosnia, annexation, 514; constitution, 515; governmental system, 515-516; electoral arrangements, 516. --Contributions. See Finances. --Delegations, composition and sessions, 513; powers, 513-514. --Emperor, status, 510. --Finance, ministry of, 511; arrangements concerning, 512. --Foreign Affairs, ministry of, 510. --Herzegovina, annexation, 514; constitution, 515; government and electoral system, 515-516. --King. See Emperor. --Ministry, of foreign affairs, 510; of war, 511; of finance, 511. --War, ministry of, 511. Baden, granted a constitution, 197; special privileges, 208; governmental system, 279. Bavaria, made a kingdom, 194; granted a constitution, 197; special privileges, 208; governmental system, 275-276. Belgium:-- --Administration, organization of province, 550-551; organization of commune, 551. --Amendment, process, 535. --_Arrondissement_, electoral unit, 543-545; judicial unit, 549. --Austrian Netherlands, annexed to France, 517-518; incorporated in United Netherlands, 519. --Catholic Party, and electoral reform, 540-541; and proportional representation, 542-543; and elections of 1906-1910, 545-546; triumph in 1912, 546-547. --Commune, organization, 551. --Conservative Party, and electoral reform, 540-541. --Constitution, of 1815, 519-520; of 1831 promulgated, 534; democratic character, 534-535; amendment, 535. --Council, of province, 550. --Court of Cassation, 549. --Courts, organization and functions, 549-550. --Crown, status and privileges, 536; relation with ministry, 536-537; powers, 537-538. --Elections, earlier arrangements, 539-540; law of 1893, 540-541; franchise to-day, 541-542; adoption of proportional representation, 543-545; of 1906-1910, 545-546; of 1912, 546-547. --Franchise, prior to 1893, 539-540; law of 1893, 540-541; system to-day, 541-542; demand for further reform, 547-548. --Holland, separation from, 520-521. --House of Representatives, composition, 539; earlier electoral arrangements, 539-540; electoral law of 1893, 540-541; franchise to-day, 541-542; organization and procedure, 548-549. --Independence, declared, 520; recognized, 521. --Jury, use of, 550. --Leopold I., crowned king, 521. --Liberal Party, and electoral reform, 540-541; favors proportional representation, 543; opposition to plural vote, 547. --Ministry, composition, 536; responsibility, 536-537. --Parliament, composition and election of senators, 538-539; composition of House of Representatives, 539; electoral system, 539-542; proportional representation, 543-545; organization and procedure of chambers, 548-549. --Parliamentarism, 536-537. --Plural Vote, 541-542; opposition of Liberals and Socialists, 547-548; in province, 551. --Proportional Representation, adopted, 543; operation, 543-545. --Province, organization, 550-551. --Revolution of 1830, 520-521. --Senate, composition and election, 538; qualifications, 539; organization, and procedure, 548-549. --Socialists, lead movement for electoral reform, 540-541; favor proportional representation, 543; opposition to plural vote, 547-548. Bismark, Otto von, and establishment of German Empire, 199-201; attitude toward socialism, 231; reform of Prussian local government, 266-267. Bosnia. See Austria-Hungary. _Bundesrath_. See Germany and Switzerland. Cabinet. See England. Canton, of France, 343, 348; of Switzerland, 409-422. Chamber of Deputies. See France, Italy, Hungary. Civil List, in Great Britain, 51-52; of king of Prussia, 253; of king of Italy, 368. Committees, in English Parliament, 123-137; in Bundesrath, 220; in Reichstag, 226; in Prussian Landtag, 264; in French Parliament, 325-327. Commune, in Prussia, 272-273; antiquity in France, 348; organization, 344-351; in Italy, 385; in Switzerland, 422; in Austria, 487-488; in Holland, 533; in Belgium, 551; in Norway, 588; in Spain, 627; in Portugal, 638-639. Congress. See Portugal. Congress of Deputies. See Spain. Constitution, development of English, 2-41; nature of English, 41-47; of German Confederation of 1815, 194-196; of German Empire, 202-204; of Prussia, 250-252; succession in France from 1791, 290-300; of Third Republic, 304-306; succession in Italy, 354-361; of Italy to-day, 360-367; of Switzerland, 410-416, 431-432; of Austria, 456-461; of Hungary, 446-448, 489-490; of Holland, 519-523; of Belgium, 534-535; of Denmark, 557-559; of Norway, 574, 578-579; of Sweden, 589; succession in Spain, 604-608; of Spain to-day, 611-612; of Portuguese republic, 642-643. Cortes. See Spain and Portugal. County, English, 171-184. Courts, in England, 171-175; in Germany, 243-244; in France, 337-341; in Italy, 381-383; in Austria, 483-485; in Holland, 531-532; in Belgium, 549-550; in Denmark, 568-569; in Norway, 587-588; in Spain, 626-627; in Portugal, 638, 646. Croatia, government, 507-508. Crown, in Great Britain, 48-59; in German Empire, 210-214; in Prussia, 252; in Italy, 368-370; in Austria, 463-464; in Hungary, 491; in Holland, 523-525; in Denmark, 554-561; in Norway, 578-585; in Sweden, 570-571, 590-591; in Spain, 613-615; in Portugal, 635-636. Delegations. See Austria-Hungary. Denmark:-- --Administration, 569. --Christensen, ministry, 566-567. --Christian VIII., and reform, 556-567. --Christian IX., yields to parliamentary principle, 562. --Conservative Party, resists parliamentary principle, 560-562; dominance, 565-566. --Constitution, of 1848, 557; of 1849 promulgated, 557; revised in 1866, 558-559; process of amendment, 559. --Courts, general principles, 568; organization, 568-569; act of 1908, 569. --Crown, development, 554-555; opposition to reform, 556; status, 559; powers, 560; relations with ministry, 560-561. --Diet, of provinces, 556. --Elections, present system, 563; projected reform, 564; of 1906, 567; of 1910, 567-568. --Estrup, ministry, 561-562, 565-566. --Franchise, present system, 563; movement for reform, 564. --Frederick VI., creates diets, 556. --_Folkething_, composition, 563; elections, 563-564; sessions and powers, 564-565. --_Höjesteret_, 568. --Holstein, 558. --Judiciary. See Courts. --Kalmar, union of, 553. --Kiel, treaty of, 554. --King. See Crown. --_Kongelov_, 555, 557. --_Landsthing_, composition, 562; qualifications, 563; sessions and powers, 564-565. --Lauenburg, 558. --Liberal Party, pressure for parliamentary system, 560-562; advent to power, 566. --Malmö, treaty of, 553. --Ministry, composition, 560-561; responsibility, 561-562; of Estrup, 561-562, 565-566; recent instability, 567-568. --Norway, united with, 553; separated from, 554. --Parliament. See _Rigsdag_. --Parliamentarism, 560-562. --Parties, rise, 565; during Estrup's ministry, 565-566; advent of Liberals to power, 566; since 1903, 566-568. --Proportional Representation, in election of senators, 563. --Radical Party, 567-568. --Revolution of 1660, 554-555. --_Rigsdag_, composition, 562-563; electoral system, 563-564; sessions and power, 564-565. --_Rigsrad_, 554. --Schleswig, 558. --Social Democratic Party, 567-568. Elections, of British House of Commons, 92-96; of _Reichstag_, 224-225; of Prussian _Abgeordnetenhaus_, 258-263; under Revolutionary and Napoleonic constitutions, 293-294; present system in France, 318-322; in Italy, 376-378, 400-402; in Switzerland, 423, 426-428, 435-437; in Austria, 466-483; in Holland, 526-530; in Belgium, 539-547; in Denmark, 563-568; in Norway, 581-582, 587; in Sweden, 592-596, 600; in Spain, 617-618, 624-625; in Portugal, 633-642. England:-- --Act of Settlement (1701), 49. --Administration. See Local Government. --Admiralty Board, 62. --Asquith, H., resolutions for reform of Lords, 108. --Attainder, 130. --Bill of Rights, 32. --Borough, in fifteenth century, 23; franchise before 1832, 79; franchise extended in 1832 and 1867, 82-84; redistribution of parliamentary seats, 85; organization before 1832, 177-178; reform by Municipal Corporations Act, 178; kinds, 187; authorities, 188; council and its functions, 189. --Budget, preparation, 136. --Cabinet, origins, 37-38; relations with Privy Council, 60; relations with ministry, 61; composition, 64; size, 65; selection of premier, 66; selection of other members, 67-68; political solidarity, 69; responsibility, 70; proceedings, 71-73; central position, 74. --Campbell-Bannerman, Liberal leader, 154; premier, 157. --Chamberlain, Joseph, and the Liberal Unionists, 151; tariff reform programme, 155. --Chancery, Court of, 17, 174. --Charles I., parliaments of, 28. --Charles II., restoration, 31; rise of cabinet, 37. --Chartists, 82-83. --Civil List, 51-52. --Committees, kinds, 123; of whole, 123; select and sessional, 124; standing, 124-125; procedure on public bills, 133-134; on money bills, 135-136; on private bills, 137. --Common Law, 167-168. --Common Pleas, Court of, 17, 174. --Commonwealth, 29. --_Commune Concilium_, 7. --Conservative Party, origin of name, 147; mid-century ministries, 148-150; Salisbury ministries, 151-153; defeat in 1906, 157; signification of nomenclature, 162; present-day issues, 163; composition, 164. --Constitution, Anglo-Saxon foundations, 2-5; influenced by Norman Conquest, 6-8; in the Tudor period, 18-26; in the Stuart period, 26-33; elements of stability and change, 34; development since seventeenth century, 34-41; elusiveness, 41; law and conventions, 42-43; flexibility and amendment, 44-47. --Conventions, in English constitution, 43. --Corn Laws, repeal, 147. --Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act, 95-96. --County, franchise before 1832, 79; franchise broadened in 1832, 82; franchise liberalized in 1867 and 1884, 84; court of, 171; organization before 1832, 176-177; reform by Local Government Act of 1888, 180; present administrative organization, 183; council and its functions, 183-184. --Court of Appeals, 174. --Courts, beginnings of great tribunals, 17; county, 171; justices of the peace, 171-172; High Court, 173; Court of Appeals, 174; House of Lords, 130; Judicial Committee of Privy Council, 175. --Cromwell, Oliver, 29-30. --Crown, in Anglo-Saxon times, 3; effects of Norman Conquest on, 6; independence under the Tudors, 21; character under early Stuarts, 26; abolished in 1640, 30; restoration, 30; regulated by Bill of Rights, 32-33; decreased powers since seventeenth century, 35; theoretical position, 48; rules of succession, 49; regencies, 50; privileges, 50-52; the prerogative, 52; executive powers, 53-55; legislative powers, 55; veto, 56; relations with ministry, 56-57; actual service, 58; reasons for survival, 59. --Disraeli, Benjamin, prime minister, 150. --District, rural, 184; urban, 186. --District and Parish Councils Act of 1894, 180. --Edward I., and rise of Parliament, 12-13. --Edward II., statute concerning Parliament, 15. --Elections, writs, 92; time regulations, 92-93; polling, 93; the campaign, 94; expenditures, 95-96. --Elizabeth, strong government, 21; development of Parliament under, 24-25. --Equity, rules of, 169. --Exchequer, Court of, 17, 62, 174. --Franchise, in fifteenth century, 23; in early nineteenth century, 79; extended by Reform Act of 1832, 82; demands of the Chartists, 82-83; modified in 1867, 83-84; liberalized in 1884, 84-85; the system to-day, 86-88; question of the plural vote, 89-90; Franchise Bill of 1912, 90; woman's suffrage, 91. --Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, 118. --George III., attempted revival of royal power, 35. --Gladstone, William E., leadership of Liberals, 148; first ministry, 149; second and third ministries, 151; fourth ministry, 152. --Great Council, 7. --Henry I., charter, 7. --Henry II., judicial measures, 8. --Henry III., and beginnings of Parliament, 12. --Henry VIII., strong government, 19. --High Court of Justice, 173-174. --House of Commons, origins, 13; composition in 1485, 23; changes in Tudor period, 24; Apology of 1604, 27; ascendancy over House of Lords, 36; present composition, 77; undemocratic character at opening of nineteenth century, 77-79; electoral corruption, 80; early demands for reform, 80; Reform Act of 1832, 81-82; Chartist agitation, 82-83; Representation of the People Act of 1867, 83-84; Representation of the People Act of 1884, 84-85; Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, 85; franchise and franchise questions to-day, 86-92; electoral procedure and regulations, 92-96; sessions, 117; opening ceremonies, 117-118; meeting place described, 118-120; hours of sittings, 120; officers, 121; Speaker, 121-123; quorum, 123; committees, 123-125; privileges, 126; payment of members, 127; procedure on public bills, 133-134; on money bills, 135-136; on private bills, 137-138; provisional orders, 138; rules, 139-141; closure, 139; the guillotine, 140; votes and divisions, 140-141. --House of Lords, origins, 13, 47; composition in 1485, 22-23; changes in Tudor period, 24; abolished in 1640, 29; restored in 1660, 31; loss of priority to House of Commons, 36, 102; composition, 97-101; qualifications of members, 101; number of members, 101; question of reform, 102-103; early reform proposals, 103-104; conflicts with the Liberals, 104; powers relating to money bills, 106; rejection of Finance Bill of 1909, 107; Liberal project of reform, 108; Unionist proposals, 109; adoption of Parliament Act of 1911, 110-111; effects of the Act, 112-114; sessions, 117; opening ceremonies, 117-118; sittings and attendance, 125; officers, 125-126; privileges, 127; judicial functions, 130-132; procedure, 141-142. --Humble Petition and Advice, 30. --Hundred, 4. --Impeachment, 130. --Independent Labor Party, 165. --Instrument of Government, 29. --Ireland, union of 1801, 40-41; allotment of parliamentary seats, 85; over-representation, 89; representative peers, 98-99; question of Home Rule, 150-152. --James I., conception of monarchy, 26; parliaments of, 28. --James II., overthrown, 32. --John, signs Magna Carta, 9; holds council at Oxford, 12. --Jury, use of, 171, 172. --Justice of the Peace, functions, 171-172. --King. See Crown. --King's Bench, Court of, 17, 174. --Labor Party, 165-167. --Lansdowne Reconstruction Bill, 100. --Law, origins, 167; form, 168-169. --Legislation, powers acquired by Parliament, 14-15. --Liberal Party, conflict with House of Lords, 104; and reform, 147; regeneration under Gladstone, 148-149; and Home Rule, 150; secession of Unionists, 151; rehabilitation, 156; electoral triumph in 1906, 157; mandate and performance, 158-159; conflict with House of Lords, 159; triumph in elections of 1910, 160; carry Parliament Act of 1911, 110, 160; signification of nomenclature, 162; present-day issues, 163; composition, 164. --Liberal Unionists, origins, 151. --Local Government Act of 1888, 180. --Local Government Board, 180, 182. --Local Government, periods in history, 176; before 1835, 176-178; mid-century confusion of areas, 179; relations with central government, 181-182; organization of administrative county, 183-184; the rural district, 184; rural and urban parish, 185; urban district, 186; boroughs and cities, 187-189; London, 190-191. --London, government, 190-191. --Lord High Chancellor, 63. --Lord Lieutenant, 172. --Lords of Appeal, 99. --Magna Carta, character and importance, 9. --Ministry, appointment, 57, 66-69; relation with Privy Council and Cabinet, 60-61; Treasury, 62; Admiralty Board, 62; Lord High Chancellorship, 63; the secretaries of state, 63-64; the administrative boards, 64; responsibility, 70, 128-130; proceedings, 71-73. --Money Bills, the Lords and, 106; Liberal proposals concerning, 108; disposition under Parliament Act of 1911, 112; procedure upon, 135-136. --Montfort, Simon de, parliaments of 1264 and 1265, 12. --Municipal Corporation Act, 178. --Newcastle Programme, 152. --Parish, rural and urban, 185. --Parliament, origins, 11; Simon de Montfort's leadership, 12; Model Parliament, 12-13; bicameral principle established, 13; fiscal and legislative powers, 14; development of legislative process, 15; composition in 1485, 23; growth under Tudors, 24; in Stuart period, 28-29; experiments during Commonwealth and Protectorate, 29-30; restoration in 1660, 31; constituent powers, 45; relations with crown, 55; undemocratic character in early nineteenth century, 77-80; Reform Act of 1832, 81-82; Representation of the People Act of 1867, 83-84; Representation of the People Act of 1884, 84-85; Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, 85; franchise and franchise questions to-day, 86-92; electoral procedure and regulations, 92-96; composition of Lords, 97-101; question of Lords reform, 102-109; the Parliament Act of 1911, 110-114; sessions, 117; how opened, 117-118; meeting place and sittings, 118-120; officers and committees of Commons, 121-125; organization of Lords, 125-126; privileges of members, 126-127; function of criticism, 128-130; judicial functions, 130-132; procedure on public bills, 133-134; on money bills, 135-136; on private bills, 137-138; rules of Commons, 139-141; procedure in Lords, 141-142. --Parliament Act, origins, 106-110; adoption, 110-111; provisions, 112-113; significance, 113-115. --Parliamentarism, and parties, 143. --Parties, beginnings, 38-39; relation to parliamentary government, 143; Tory ascendancy from 1783 to 1830, 145-146; Liberals and reform, 147; mid-century regeneration, 148-150; rise of Liberal Unionists, 151; Conservative ascendancy, 154-155; Liberal revival, 156-157; present significance of party names, 162; current issues, 163-165; labor and politics, 165-166. --Plural Vote, 89-90. --Poor Law, 178. --Premier, selection, 66; choice of colleagues, 67; leadership, 72-73. --Prince of Wales, 49. --Private Legislation, 137-138. --Privy Council, origins, 17; under the Tudors, 19; under Charles II., 37; relations with ministry and cabinet, 60; Judicial Committee as a court, 175. --Protectorate, 29-30. --Provisional Orders, 138. --Poyning's Law, 40. --Redistribution of Seats Act of 1885, 85-86. --Referendum, Unionist proposal of, 109. --Reform Act of 1832, 81-82. --Regency, 50. --Representation, beginnings of, 11. --Representation of the People Act, of 1867, 83-84; of 1884, 84-85. --Rosebery, Lord, proposals for reform of Lords, 105, 108. --Salisbury, Marquis of, first ministry, 157; second ministry, 152; third and fourth ministries, 153. --Scotland, union of 1707, 39-40; allotment of parliamentary seats, 85; representative peers, 98-99. --Shire, 5. --Shire-moot, 5. --Society for Constitutional Information, 81. --Speaker, of House of Commons, history and functions, 121-123; powers, 139. --Star Chamber, Court of, 20. --Stuarts, absolutism, 26; overthrow, 29; restored, 30; finally expelled, 32. --Supreme Court of Judicature, 173-175. --Tariff Reform, rise and effects of issue, 155-156. --Taxation, powers acquired by Parliament, 14, 22. --Toleration Act, 33. --Tory Party, rise, 39; ascendancy from 1783 to 1830, 145-146. --Township, 4. --Treasury, 62. --Tudors, popularity, 18; relations with Parliament, 21. --Unionists, position in Lords, 102-106. --Westminster Palace, 116. --Whig Party, rise, 39. --William I., governmental policies, 6-7. --William III., accession, 32. --Witenagemot, 4. --Woman's Suffrage, 91-92. _Folkething_. See Denmark. France:-- --_Adjoint_, 350. --Administration, under Old Régime, 341-342; overhauled in 1789-1791, 342; revival of centralization, 343; under Second Empire, 344; changes under Third Republic, 345; the department, 346-347; the arrondissement, 347; the canton, 348; the commune, 348-351. --Amendment, of constitution, 307, 327-328. --Appeal, courts of, 338. --_Arrondissement_, electoral unit, 318; created, 343; organization, 347. --Assize, courts of, 338. --Associations, law of, 331. --_Ballottage_, 319. --_Bloc_, rise, 331; present condition, 332. --Bonaparte, Napoleon, and constitution of the Year VIII., 293-295; organization of local administration, 343. --Bonapartists, policies in 1871-1875, 303-304. --Bordeaux, National Assembly meets at, 302. --Briand, A., programme of electoral reform, 322; ministry, 332. --Bureaus, in Parliament, 325-327. --Canton, created, 342; made a judicial unit, 343; present character, 348. --Cassation, Court of, 338-339. --Catholic Party, rise, 338. --Chamber of Deputies, composition, 317; term and qualifications, 318; electoral process, 319; proposed electoral reform, 319-320; the Briand programme, 322; reform bill of 1912, 323-324; sessions, 325; officers, 325; bureaus and committees, 326; procedure, 326; powers and functions, 327-329; party strength in, 332. --Church, legislation concerning, 331. --Clemenceau, ministry, 331-332. --_Code Civil_, 335-336. --_Code Napoléon_, 335-336. --Code of Civil Procedure, 336. --Code of Commerce, 336. --Code of Criminal Instruction, 336. --Combes, ministry, 331. --_Commission du Suffrage Universel_, 321, 323. --Committees, in Parliament, 325-327. --Commune, suppressed, 303; continuity of, 342; place in Napoleonic system, 343; council made elective, 344; under Second Empire, 344-345; legislation concerning in 1884, 345; present character, 348; number and size, 348; council, 348-349; mayor and assistants, 349-350; importance, 350-351. --Concentration, policy of, 330. --_Concordat_, abrogated, 331. --_Conseil de préfecture_, 346. --Conservative Party, after 1848, 329; in control of Senate after 1876, 330; changed character, 333. --Constitution, of 1791, 290-291; of the Year I., 291-292; of the Year III., 292-293; of the Year VIII., 293-295; Constitutional Charter of 1814, 295-297; of Second Republic, 297-298; of Second Empire, 299-300; of Third Republic, 304-306; process of amendment, 305, 327-328. --Constitutional Charter, 295-297. --Convention, 292. --_Corps législatif_, under constitution of 1791, 291; under constitution of the Year VIII., 294. --Council, of department, made elective, 344; present character, 346-347. --Council, of _arrondissement_, 347. --Council, of commune, made elective, 344; organization and functions, 348-349. --Council of Elders, in constitution of the Year III., 292-293. --Council of Five Hundred, in constitution of the Year III., 292-293. --Council of State, composition and functions, 340. --Courts, of justice of the peace, 337; of first instance, 337; of appeal and of assize, 338; of Cassation, 338-339; appointment and tenure of judges, 339; administrative, 339-340; Council of State, 340; of Conflicts, 341. --Department, created, 342; organized by Napoleon, 343; council made elective, 344; under Second Empire, 344-345; the office of prefect, 346; the council, 346-347. --Elections, under constitution of the Year VIII., 293-294; under Constitutional Charter of 1814, 296; _arrondissement_ as unit, 318; conduct, 319; ballottage, 319; question of reform, 319-322; the Briand programme, 322; of 1906, 331; of 1910, 332; reform bill of 1912, 323-324. --Electoral Reform. See Elections. --Empire, Napoleonic, 295; Second French, 299-300. --Extreme Left, in Chamber of Deputies, 332. --First Instance, courts of, 337. --Franchise, under Napoleonic system, 294; under Constitutional Charter of 1814, 296-297; present regulations, 317. --Frankfort, Peace of, 302. --_Généralité_, 342. --Great Western Line, purchase of, 332. --Impeachment, 309. --_Intendant_, 342. --Interpellation, 314. --Jaurès, socialist leader, 334. --_Journal Officiel_, 326. --Judges, appointment and tenure, 339. --Judiciary. See Court. --_Juge de paix_, 337. --Law, codification, 335-336; character, 336-337; administrative, 339. --Left, in Chamber of Deputies, 332. --Legislation, President's part in, 309-310; processes, 326-327; powers, 328-329. --Legitimists, policies in 1871-1875, 303-305. --MacMahon, Marshall, president, 304. --Mayor, functions, 347-350. --Millerand, Étienne, socialist member of ministry, 334. --Ministry, place in governmental system, 311; composition, 312; responsibility, 312-313; frequency of changes, 313; interpellation, 314. --Multiple Candidature Act, 318. --Napoleon III., proclaimed emperor, 299. --National Assembly, of 1871-1875, 302-303; of Third Republic, election of President, 309, 328; amendment of constitution, 327-328. --Orleanists, policies in 1871-1875, 303-304. --Pacification, policy of, 330. --Parliament, establishment of bicameral system, 315; original form of Senate, 315-316; composition and election to-day, 316-317; composition of Chamber of Deputies, 317-318; question of electoral reform, 319-324; sessions, 325; officers, 325; committees, 326; procedure, 326; powers and functions, 327-329. --Parliamentarism, 313. --Parties, multiplicity, 312-313; development after 1848, 329; situation after 1876, 330; rise of Radicals, 330; the _bloc_, 331; rise of Socialists, 330-331, 333-334; elections of 1906, 331; elections of 1910, 332; changes since 1871, 333. --Penal Code, 336. --Prefect, creation in 1800, 343; appointment and functions, 346. --Premier, position and powers, 312. --President, title created, 303; occupants of the office, 308; election, 308, 328; term, 309; qualifications, 309; salary and privileges, 309; powers, 309-311; relation with ministers, 311-312. --Procedure, in Senate and Chamber of Deputies, 326-327. --_Procureur_, 327. --Progressive Party, rise, 331. --Proportional Representation, movement for establishment of, 320-324. --Province, abolished, 342. --Prussia, war with, 301. --Radical Party, rise, 330; ascendancy, 331. --_Ralliés_, 330. --Republic, Second, 297-298; Third established, 302-304. --Republican Party, in 1848, 329; control of Chamber of Deputies after 1876, 330. --Right, in Chamber of Deputies, 332; present character, 333. --Rivet Law, 302. --Rouvier, ministry, 331. --Sarrien, ministry, 331 --_Scrutin d'arrondissement_, established in 1820, 296; re-established in 1889, 318; proposed change from, 319-320. --_Scrutin de liste_, established in 1817, 296; election of senators by, 316; advantages of, 319-320; proposals to re-establish, 320-324. --Senate, original form, 315-316; composition and election to-day, 316-317; sessions, 325; officers, 325; bureaus and committees, 325-326; procedure, 326; powers and functions, 327-329. --Sieyès, electoral project, 294. --Socialist Party, rise, 330; gains, 331; in Chamber of Deputies, 332; growth and present character, 333-334. --Thiers, Louis Adolph, made Chief of the Executive Power, 302; made President of the French Republic, 303; retirement, 303. --Trade-unions, and socialism, 333-334. --_Tribunal des Conflits_, 341. --Veto, 310. --Waldeck-Rousseau, ministry, 331; Franchise, in Great Britain, in early nineteenth century, 79-81; extension, 81-85; present system, 85-88; questions concerning, 88-91; in German Empire, 224-225; in Prussia, 258-260; development in France, 294-297; in France to-day, 317; in Italy, 376-378; in Switzerland, 426; in Austria, 467-472; in Holland, 526-528; in Belgium, 539-548; in Denmark, 563-564; in Norway, 581-582; in Sweden, 592-597; in Spain, 617-618; in Portugal, 637, 641. Germany (see also Prussia and Austria): --_Abgeordnetenhaus_, of Württemberg, 278. --_Abtheilungen_, in German Reichstag, 226; in Prussian Landtag, 264. --Agrarian Party, 234. --Alsace-Lorraine, original organization, 282; the Landesausschuss, 283; movement for autonomy, 284; bill of 1910, 285; present governmental system, 286-287. --Amendment, of Imperial constitution, 209. --_Amtsgericht_, 243. --Antisemitic Party, 232. --Army, 208. --Austria, war with Prussia, 200. --Baden, granted a constitution, 197; special privileges, 208; governmental system, 279. --Bavaria, made a kingdom, 194; granted a constitution, 197; special privileges, 208; governmental system, 275-276. --Bebel, August, president of German Social Democratic party, 240. --Bernstein, Edward, and the "revisionist" socialists, 239. --Bismarck, Otto von, minister-president of Prussia, 199; plan for reorganization of German Confederation, 200; establishment of North German _Bund_, 200; creation of the German Empire, 201; and socialism, 231; dismissed, 233; and Prussian local government, 266-267. --_Bloc_, 234. --Bremen, governmental system, 281. --Bülow, Count von, chancellor, 234; and political parties, 236; on electoral reform in Prussia, 261. --_Bund_. See Confederation of 1815 and North German Confederation. --_Bundeskanzleramt_, 216. --_Bundesrath_, composition, 217; legal character, 218; sessions and procedure, 219; committees, 220; powers and functions, 221-222. --Caprivi, General von, chancellor, 233. --Carlsbad Decrees, 248. --Centre Party, rise, 230; pivotal position, 235; present position, 236-240. --Chancellor, appointment, 213; legal position, 214; functions and powers, 215-217. --Civil List, of king of Prussia, 253. --Confederation of 1815, formation, 195; character, 195-197; terminated, 200. --Committees, in German Bundesrath, 220; in Reichstag, 226; in Prussian Landtag, 264. --Conservative Party, rise, 229; varying fortunes, 233-234; present position, 236-240. --Constitution, of Confederation of 1815, 194-196; grants in various states, 197; grant in Prussia, 199; of the Empire, 202-204; process of amendment, 209; of Prussia, 250-252. --Courts, regulated by Law of Judicial. Organization, 243; inferior tribunals, 243; _Reichsgericht_, 244. --Crown. See Emperor. --Elections, of members of Reichstag, 224-225. --Emperor, title, 210; legal position and privileges, 211; powers, 211-213; relations with Chancellor, 214. --Empire, established, 201; constitution, 202-203; nature, 203-207. --Erfurt Programme, 239. --Frankfort, seat of Diet, 195; parliament of 1848, 198; the _Fürstentag_, 199. --Gneist, Rudolph von, writings on government, 266. --Gotha, congress at, 231. --Guelf Party, 232. --Hamburg, governmental system, 280-281. --Hanoverian Party, 232. --Hardenberg, Count von, establishes a ministry of state, 255. --Holy Roman Empire, terminated, 193. --_Kulturkampf_, 230. --_Landgericht_, 243. --_Landtag_, of Bavaria, 275-276. --Law, character, 241-242. --Legislation, powers, 221, 227-228; methods, 219-220, 226-227. --Lübeck, governmental system, 281. --Metternich, Count, at Congress of Vienna, 195. --Ministry, organization, 213-215. --Napoleon I., changes wrought in Germany, 193-194. --National Liberal Party, rise, 229; preponderance, 230; break-up, 233. --North German Confederation, formation, 200; converted into Empire, 201. --_Oberlandesgericht_, 243. --Parliamentarism, absence in German Empire, 213; absence in Prussia, 254. --Parties, rise, 229; older alignments, 229-230; more recent alignments, 230-232; minor parties, 232-233; rise of the _bloc_, 234; recent developments, 236-240. --Polish Party, 232. --Privileges, of members of Reichstag, 225. --Proportional Representation, in Württemberg, 278. --Prussia, in Confederation of 1815, 194-195; voting power in the Diet, 195-196; Bismarck's ministry, 199; war with Austria, 200; leadership of North German _Bund_, 200; creation of German Empire, 201; pre-eminence and special privileges, 207-217; position in _Bundesrath_, 218-219; regeneration in Napoleonic period, 246-248; repression of liberalism, 248; diet of 1847, 249; revolution of 1848, 249-250; formation of constitution, 250. --_Reichsgericht_, 244. --_Reichsgesetzblatt_, 215. --_Reichsland_. See Alsace-Lorraine. --_Reichstag_, composition, 223; electoral system, 224; franchise, 225; privileges of members, 225; sessions and officers, 226; committees, 226; conduct of business, 227; powers and franchise, 227-228. --Revolution of 1848, in Germany, 198-199; in Prussia, 249-250. --Saxony, made a kingdom, 194; granted a constitution, 197; governmental system, 276-278. --Social Democratic Party, rise, 231; growth, 232; triumph in 1912, 236-238; present programme and character, 239-240; strength in Prussia, 260-261. --_Sonderrechte_, 208. --_Standeversammlung_, of Saxony, 277. --_Statthalter_, of Alsace-Lorraine, 286. --Versailles, William I. proclaimed emperor at, 193. --Vienna, Congress of, arrangements in Germany, 194. --_Vorparlament_, of 1848, 198. --William I., proclaimed German Emperor, 193. --Württemberg, made a kingdom, 194; granted a constitution, 197; special privileges, 208; governmental system, 278-279. --Zollverein, rise, 197. Great Britain. See England. Hamburg, governmental system, 280-281. _Herrenhaus_. See Prussia and Austria. Herzegovina. See Austria-Hungary. Holland:-- --Administration, organization of province, 532-533; organization of commune, 533. --Amendment, process, 523. --Assembly, of province, 532. --Batavian Republic, established, 518. --Belgium, revolution in, 520; independence of, 521. --Commune, organization, 533. --Conservative Party, 529-530. --Constitution, granted by William I., 519; revision, 521-522; present character, 523; process of amendment, 523. --Council of commune, 533. --Council of State, 524. --Courts, 531-532. --Crown, status and privileges, 523-524; powers, 525. --Elections, movement for reform, 526; law of 1896, 527; pending questions, 527-528; of 1903, 529-530; of 1909, 530. --France, Holland annexed to, 518. --Franchise, movement for liberalizing, 526; law of 1896, 527; pending questions, 527-528. --High Court, 531. --Judiciary, principles, 531; courts, 531-532. --Liberal Party, 529-530. --Ministry, composition, 524; powers, 525. --Napoleon, relations with the Netherlands, 517-518. --Parliament. See States-General. --Parties, rise, 529; present alignment, 520; elections of 1909, 530. --Province, organization, 532-533. --States-General, composition of the houses, 526; electoral system, 527-528; organization and powers, 528-529; political complexion, 530. --Socialists, 529-530. --Vienna, Congress of, arrangements respecting the Netherlands, 518. --William I., king of the Netherlands, 518-519; grants constitution, 519-520; resists Belgian independence, 520-521; abdicates, 521. --Woman's suffrage, 527-528. Holy Roman Empire, terminated, 193. House of Commons. See England. House of Lords. See England. House of Representatives. See Belgium. Hungary:-- --Administration, 506-507. --Andrássy, introduces electoral reform bill, 495. --Andrew II., promulgates Golden Bull, 446-447, 489. --Árpáds, dynasty of, 447. --Ausgleich, established, 458-459; and Hungarian political parties, 500. --Austria, establishment of control, 443; encroachment by, 449-450; suppresses revolution of 1848, 455-456; constitutional experiments, 457-468; Ausgleich established, 458-459. --Bánffy, ministry, 502. --_Banus_, of Croatia-Slavonia, 508. --Chamber of Deputies, composition, 493; electoral system, 493-494; movement for electoral reform, 495-496; electoral procedure, 497-498; organization, 498; powers, 499-500. --Constitution, foundations, 446-447; development, 447-448; March Laws, 453-454, 489; character, 490. --County, origins, 506; organization, 507. --Courts, 505-506. --Croatia, government, 507-508. --Crown. See King. --Deák, Francis, builds up Liberal party, 452; voices demands of Hungary, 457; retirement, 501. --Elections, present franchise, 493-494; movement for reform, 495; reform bill of 1908, 495-497; procedure, 497-498; of 1905, 503. --Franchise, present system, 493-494; electoral reform bill of 1908, 495-497. --Golden Bull, promulgated, 446-447, 489. --Hedérváry, ministry, 504-505. --Independence, proclaimed in 1849, 455. --Judiciary. See Courts. --King, status, 491. --Law, 505. --Liberal Party, origins, 452, 501-502; demands in 1860-1861, 457; ascendancy, 501, 502. --Magyars, settlement in Europe, 445; policies in 1848, 454; number and domination of, 494. --March Laws, promulgated, 453. --Metternich, repressive policy, 452. --Ministry, composition and status, 491-492. --Mohács, battle of, 448. --Parliament, composition, 492-493; electoral system, 493-497; organization and procedure, 497-498; powers 499-500; obstructionism in, 502-505. --Parliamentarism, 498. --Parties, and question of _Ausgleich_, 500; rise of Liberals, 500-501; era of parliamentary obstructionism, 502-505. --Pragmatic Sanction, promulgated, 449. --Revolution of 1848, 453-455. --Settlement, 445. --Slavonia, government, 507-508. --Stephen I., receives crown from Pope, 446. --Table of Magnates, composition, 492-493; privileges, 493; organization and procedure, 498; powers, 499-500. --Tisza, István, ministry, 503. --Tisza, Kálman, ministry, 501-502. --Turks, invasions of, 448. --Wekerle, ministry, 504. Initiative, in Switzerland, 421, 432-434. Interpellation, in Prussian Landtag, 265; in French Chamber of Deputies, 314; in Italian Chamber of Deputies, 380. Ireland, union of 1801, 40-41; allotment of parliamentary seats, 85; over-representation, 89; representative peers, 98-99; question of Home Rule, 150-152. Italy:-- --Administration, patterned on French, 363; nature and organization of province, 384; nature and organization of commune, 385. --Austria, influence in Italy in eighteenth century, 353; position after 1815, 358; helps suppress revolution of 1848, 361; Piedmontese-French alliance against, 362; loss of Venetia, 364. --_Ballottaggio_, 378. --Bissolati, political influence, 397. --Bonaparte, Napoleon, and the Cisalpine Republic, 354; overthrows Genoese oligarchy, 354; wins at Marengo, 355; supervises revision of Italian constitutions, 355-356; crowned king of Italy, 356; annexes Rome to France, 357; prophecy of Italian unification, 359. --Campo Formio, treaty of, 354. --Cassation, courts of, 382. --Catholics, political activities, 400-402. --Cavour, Count, policies, 362. --Chamber of Deputies, composition, 375; franchise law of 1882, 376; franchise to-day, 376-377; electoral procedure, 378; qualifications and privileges of members, 378-379; organization, 379-380; procedure, 380-381. --Charles Albert I., becomes king of Piedmont, 360; grants constitution in 1848, 360-361; abdicates, 361. --_Circondaro_, 383. --Cisalpine Republic, 353-354. --_Code Napoléon_, established in Italy, 357. --Committees, of Parliament, 380. --Commune, nature and organization, 385. --Conservative Party, origins, 391; lack of normal development, 398. --Constitution, of Cispadane Republic, 354; of Transpadane Republic, 354; of Ligurian Republic, 355; of Roman Republic, 355; of Parthenopæan Republic, 355; revisions in 1802-1803, 355-356; of Napoleonic kingdom of Naples, 357; proclaimed in Naples in 1820, 359; proclaimed in Naples in 1848, 360-361; granted in Piedmont in 1848, 360-361; character of _Statuto_, 365-367. --Council, of province, 384; of commune, 385. --Courts, patterned upon the French, 381; ordinary tribunals, 381-382; courts of cassation, 382; administrative courts, 382-383. --Crispi, ministries, 393, 394-395. --Crown, status, 368; civil list, 368; powers and functions, 368-369; relation with ministers, 370. --Depretis, ministries, 392-393. --Elections, development of laws regarding, 376; franchise, 376-378; procedure, 378; Catholic participation in, 400-402; of 1909, 402-403. --Extreme Left, influence, 395; groups of, 398. --France, relations with Italy during Napoleonic period, 354-357; allied with Piedmont, 362; receives Savoy and Nice, 363; withdrawal of troops from Rome, 364. --Franchise, prior to 1882, 375; law of 1882, 376; present regulations, 376-377; electoral reform, 377. --Fortis, ministry, 396. --Garibaldi, conquest of Sicily, 363. --Genoa, government remodelled, 354. --Giolitti, ministries, 394, 396-398. --_Giunta_, of province, 384; of commune, 385. --Judiciary. See Courts. --Italian Republic, 356. --Interpellation, 380. --Left, origins, 391; dominance, 392-394; prospects of harmony, 398. --Liberal Party, in control, 395. --Ligurian Republic, established, 354; annexed to France, 356. --Lombardy, Austria's position in, 353, 358; annexed to Piedmont, 363. --Lunéville, treaty of, 355. --Luzzatti, ministry, 396. --_Mandamento_, 381. --Milan, Transpadane Republic inaugurated at, 354; Napoleon crowned at, 356. --Ministry, composition, 369; organization and functions, 370-371; ordinances, 371-372. --Naples, invaded by French, 355; Murat king of, 357; revolution of 1820, 359; revolution of 1848, 360-361; annexed to kingdom of Italy, 363. --Napoleon. See Bonaparte. --Nice, ceded to France, 363. --_Non Expedit_, purpose and effect, 400-401; partial relaxation, 401-402. --Novara, battle of, 361. --Ordinances, 371. --Papacy, and revolution of 1848, 360-361; losses of territory to Piedmont, 362-363; and of temporal dominion, 387; Law of Papal Guarantees promulgated, 388; prerogatives, 388-389; relations with state, 389; opposition to existing system, 390; the _Non Expedit_, 400-402. --Papal Guarantees, Law of, promulgated, 388; contents and character, 388-389; papal attitude toward, 390. --Parliament, of united kingdom of Italy, 364; composition, 372-373; legislative weakness of Senate, 373; proposed reform of Senate, 373-374; composition of Chamber of Deputies, 375; franchise, 376-377; electoral procedure, 378; qualifications and privileges of members, 378-379; organization, 379-380; procedure, 380-381. --Parties, rise of, 391; rule of Radicals, 392-394; era of composite ministries, 395-398; lack of real conservatives, 398-399; groups of Extreme Left, 398; rise of socialism, 399-400; effects of the _Non Expedit_, 401-402; elections of 1909, 402-403. --Parthenopæan Republic, 355. --Piedmont, incorporated with France, 355; recovery in 1815, 358; revolution of 1821, 360; revolution of 1848, 360; obtains constitution, 361; accession of Victor Emmanuel II., 361; ascendancy of, 362; annexations of 1859-1860, 362. --Pius IX., reforms, 360; and revolution of 1848, 360-361; loss of temporal dominion, 387; rejects Law of Guarantees, 390. --Plombières, agreement of, 362. --Prefect, 384. --Premier, appointment, 369-370. --Pressburg, treaty of, 356. --Province, nature and organization, 384. --Radical Party, origins, 391; dominance, 392-394. --Republican Party, weakness, 399. --Revolution of 1820-1821, 359; of 1848, 360. --Right, origins, 391; loss of power, 392; coalition with Left, 393. --_Risorgimento_, 353. --Roman Republic, 355. --Rome, republic established in 1798, 355; annexed to France, 357; annexed to kingdom of Italy, 364; becomes capital of kingdom, 364. --Rudini, ministries, 394-395. --Sardinia, kingdom of. See Piedmont. --Savoy, ceded to France, 363. --_Scrutinio di lista_, established in 1882, 376. --Senate, composition, 372-373; legislative weakness, 373; proposed reform, 373-374; privileges and powers, 375; organization, 379; procedure, 380-381. --_Sindaco_, of commune, 385. --Socialist Party, rise and character, 399-400. --Sonnino, ministries, 396-397. --_Statuto_, granted, 360; character, 365, 366-367; amendment, 365-366. --Transpadane Republic, 354. --Treaties, 369. --Turin, kingdom of Italy proclaimed at, 364. --_Uffici_, 380. --Venice, ceded to Austria, 354; annexed to kingdom of Italy, 364. --Vienna, Congress of, settlement of Italian affairs, 358. --Victor Emmanuel II., accession as king of Piedmont, 361; building of Italian unity, 362-364. --Zanardelli, ministry, 396. _Landsthing_. See Denmark. _Landtag_. See Prussia. Law, of England, 167-169; of Germany, 241-242; of France, 335-339; of Switzerland, 439; of Hungary, 505. London, government, 190-191. Magna Carta, importance and character, 9. Ministry, organization and status in Great Britain, 57-70; proceedings, 71-73; in German Empire, 213-215; in Prussia, 254-256; in France, 311-314; in Italy, 369-372; in Austria, 464-465; in Hungary, 491-492; in Holland, 524-525; in Belgium, 536-537; in Denmark, 560-568; in Norway, 580-581; in Sweden, 590-591; in Spain, 615-616; in Portugal, 635-636, 644. Netherlands. See Holland. _Non Expedit_, nature and effects, 400-402. Norway:-- --Administration, organization, 588. --_Amtsthing_, 588. --Bernadotte, and union with Sweden, 554, 573-574. --Commune, organization, 588. --Conservative Party, 585-586. --Constitution, of Eidsvold, 574; present form, 578; amendment, 579. --Consular Service, question of, 576-577. --County, organization, 588. --Courts, organization, 587-588. --Crown, restoration of independence, 578; status, 580; powers, 580-581; question of veto, 584-585. --Denmark, united with, 553, 572-573; separated from, 554. --Eidsvold, constitution of, 574. --Elections, method, 581; franchise, 581-582; of 1909 and 1912, 587. --_Formaend_, 588. --Franchise, development, 581-582; present system, 582. --Haakon VII., crowned king, 578. --_Höiesteret_, 587. --Independence, movement for in 1813-1814, 574; achieved, 577-578. --Judiciary. See Courts. --Kalmar, union of, 553. --Karlstad, convention of, 578. --Kiel, treaty of, 554, 573, 575. --Liberal Party, growth, 585-586. --_Lagthing_. See _Storthing_. --Michelsen, ministry, 577. --Ministry, composition, 580; functions, 580-581. --_Odelsthing_. See _Storthing_. --Parliament. See _Storthing_. --Parliamentarism, 581. --Parties, history to 1905, 585-586; status since 1905, 586-587. --_Riksakt_, of 1815, 574-575. --Social Democratic Party, 587. --Steen, carries electoral reform, 581. --_Storthing_, composition, 581; electoral system, 581-582; sessions and organization, 582; powers and procedure, 583-584. --Sverdrup, organizes first Liberal ministry, 585. --Sweden, union with established, 574; nature of union, 574-575; friction with, 575-576; question of consular service, 576-577; separation from, 577-578. --Union. See Sweden. --Veto, power of, 584-585. --Woman's Suffrage, status, 582. Papacy. See Italy. Parliament. See England, France, Italy, Austria, etc. Parliamentarism, in Great Britain, 143; in German Empire, 213; in Prussia, 254; in Austria, 464-465, 480-481; in Hungary, 498; in Belgium, 536-537; in Denmark, 560-562; in Norway, 581; in Sweden, 591. Parties, rise in England, 38-39; history in England, 143-166; in Germany, 229-240; in France, 329-333; in Italy, 391-402; in Switzerland, 434-437; in Austria, 475-483; in Hungary, 500-505; in Holland, 529-530; in Denmark, 565-568; in Norway, 585-587; in Sweden, 592-600; in Spain, 620-625; in Portugal, 631-633, 639-642. Plural vote, in England, 88-90; in Austria, 468; in Belgium, 550-551. Portugal:-- --Administration, organization under monarchy, 638-639; under republic, 646. --Arriaga, Manoel, elected president, 642. --Bonaparte, Napoleon, subjugation by, 629. --Braga, Theophile, leader of provisional government, 641. --Braganza, house of, proscribed, 641-642. --Brazil, relation with, 629. --Chagas, João, ministry, 642. --Charter, of 1826, 630; revised, 631. --Chartist Party, 630-631. --Commune, organization, 638-639. --Congress, composition and powers, 645-646. --Constitution, of 1826, 630; revision of 1852, 631; character under monarchy, 634-635; of republic framed, 642-643; nature, 643; amendment, 643. --Cortes, extinct at opening of nineteenth century, 629; revival, 630-631; party strength under monarchy, 633-634; renewed in 1908, 634; composition under monarchy, 636-638. --Council of Municipalities, composition and powers, 645-646. --Courts, under monarchy, 638; under republic, 646. --Crown, status prior to 1910, 635-636. --_Dictadura_, of France, 633-634. --District, organization, 638-639. --Elections, of 1906, 633; system prior to 1910, 637; of 1910, 640; provision for in decree of 1911, 641-642. --Franchise, under monarchy, 637; under decree of 1911, 642. --Franco, dictatorship, 633-634. --House of Deputies, under monarchy, 636-637. --House of Peers, under monarchy, 636-637. --Judiciary. See Courts. --Liberal Concentration, of 1906, 633. --Manoel II., overthrow, 641. --Miguel, assumption of crown, 630. --Ministry, status prior to 1910, 635-636; under the republic, 644. --National Council, composition and powers, 645-646. --Parties, rivalries, 631-632; dictatorship of Franco, 633-634; elections of 1906, 633; and revolution of 1910, 639-642. --Pedro IV., contest with Miguelists, 630. --Pombal, reforms, 629. --President, status and powers, 644. --Progressive Party, 631-634. --Regenerador Party, 631-634. --Revolution of 1910, origins, 639; character and results, 640-641. --_Rotativos_, 632-633. --Septembrist Party, 631. --Thomar, Count of, ministry, 631. President, of France, 303-312; of Switzerland, 422-424; of Portugal, 644. Proportional Representation, in Würtemberg, 278; movement for in France, 320-324; in Switzerland, 419, 433; in Belgium, 543-545; in Denmark, 563. Province, in Prussia, 268-270; in Italy, 384; in Austria, 485-487; in Holland, 532-533; in Belgium, 550-551; in Spain, 627. Prussia (see also Germany and Austria):-- --_Abgeordnetenhaus_, composition, 258; electoral system 258-260; question of electoral reform, 260-263; session and powers, 263-264. --_Abtheilungen_, in Landtag, 264. --Administration, reform measures of Stein and Hardenberg, 265; reforms of Bismarck, 266; general principles, 267; the province and its government, 268-270; the government district, 270-271; the circle, 271-272; the commune, 272-273. --Amendment, of constitution, 252. --_Amtsgerichte_, 243. --Austria, war with, 200. --_Bezirksausschuss_, 270. --Charlottenburg, constitution promulgated at, 251. --Circle. See _Kreis_. --Civil List, 253. --Committees, in Landtag, 264. --Commune, organization, 272-273. --Constitution, obstacles to establishment, 248; promulgated, 250; nature, 251; amendment, 252. --Crown, status and power, 252. --Diet, of 1847, 249. --Elections, present system, 258-260; question of reform, 260-263. --Franchise, 258-260. --Frederick William III., and constitutionalism, 248-250. --Hardenberg, reform measures, 247-265. --_Herrenhaus_, original provisions of constitution concerning, 257; law of 1853, 257; composition to-day, 257-258. --Interpellation, in _Landtag_, 265. --Judiciary, 243-244. --_Kreis_, organization, 271. --_Kreisausschuss_, 271. --_Kreistag_, 271. --_Landeshauptmann_, 270. --_Landgerichte_, 243. --_Landrath_, 271. --_Landtag_, composition, 257-258; electoral system, 258-260; electoral reform, 260-263; sessions, 263; powers, 264. --Ministry, composition, 254; organization and workings, 255-256; subsidiary executive bodies, 256. --Napoleon, and Prussia, 246-247. --_Oberlandesgerichte_, 243. --_Oberpräsident_, 269. --_Oberrechnungskammer_, 256. --_Regierungsbezirk_, organization, 270-271. --_Regierungspräsident_, 270. --Revolution of 1848, 249-250. --_Schulze_, 272. --Social Democratic Party, 260-261. --_Stadtrath_, 273. --Stein, reform measures, 247, 265; and Prussian local government, 265. --Parliamentarism, absence of, 254. --Province, origins and number, 268-269; organs of central administration, 269; organs of self-government, 269-270. --_Provinziallandtag_, 270. --_Provinzialrath_, 269. --_Volkswirthschaftsrath_, 256. Referendum, Unionist proposal in Great Britain, 109; in Swiss cantons, 419-420; in Swiss federal government, 430-432. _Reichsrath_. See Austria. Republicanism, in France, 297-298, 302-304, 329-330; in Italy, 399. _Rigsdag_. See Denmark. _Riksdag_. See Sweden. Saxony, made a kingdom, 194; granted a constitution, 197; governmental system, 276-278. Scotland, union of 1707, 39-40; allotment of parliamentary seats, 85; representative peers, 98-99. Senate. See France, Italy, Belgium, Spain. Social Democrats, in German Empire, 231-240; in Prussia, 260-261; in France, 330-334; in Italy, 399-400; in Switzerland, 434-436; in Austria, 469-470, 483; in Holland, 529-530; in Belgium, 540-548; in Norway, 587; in Sweden, 593-595, 600; in Spain, 625. Spain:-- --Administration, organization, 627-628; principles, 628. --Alfonso XII., accession, 610. --Amendment, of constitution, 611. --_Ayuntamiento_, of commune, 628. --Bonaparte, Napoleon, conquest by, 603-604. --Cadiz, Cortes convoked at, 604. --Cánovas del Castillo, ministries, 621-622. --Carlists, 606, 609, 620. --Commune, organization, 627. --Congress of Deputies, composition and election, 617-618; sessions and organization, 618-619; powers, 619-620. --Conservative Party, character, 621, 625; governments of, 621-623. --Constitution, of 1812 drawn up, 604; rescinded by Frederick VII., 605; of 1834, 607; of 1837, 607; of 1845, 607-608; of 1869, 608; of 1876, 611; character and contents to-day, 611-612. --Cortes, convened in 1810, 604; drafts constitution of 1812, 604; under constitution of 1812, 604; under constitution of 1834, 607; under constitution of 1837, 607; under constitution of 1845, 608; under constitution of 1869, 608-609; establishes republic, 609; re-establishes monarchy, 610; adopts constitution of 1876, 611; composition to-day, 616-618; sessions and organization, 618-619; powers, 619-620; strength of parties, 624-625. --Council, of province, 627; of commune, 628. --Courts, organization, 626-627. --Crown, rules of succession, 613; regencies, 613-614; powers, 614-615. --Elections, of senators, 617; of deputies, 618; of 1907 and 1910, 624-625. --Espartero, regent, 607. --_Estatuto Real_, of 1834, 607. --Isabella II., accession, 606; declared of age, 608; abdicates, 608. --Ferdinand VII., reign, 605-607. --France, intervention, 605. --Franchise, present system, 618. --Governor, of province, 627. --Judiciary. See Courts. --King. See Crown. --Law, 626. --Liberal Party, character, 621, 625; governments of, 621-623. --Maria Christina, regency, 606-607; abdicates, 607. --Maura, ministries, 623-624. --Ministry, composition, 615; functions, 615-616. --Parliament. See Cortes. --Parties, beginnings, 620; character of Liberals and Conservatives, 621-622; since 1903, 623-624; elections of 1910, 624-625; republicans and socialists, 625. --Pragmatic Sanction, of 1830, 606. --Province, organization, 627. --Regency, 613-614. --Republic, established, 609; abolished, 610. --Republican Party, rise, 620; present character, 625. --Revolution of 1820, 605. --Sagasta, ministries, 621-623. --Salic Law, rescinded, 606. --_Scrutin de liste_, in election of deputies, 618. --Senate, composition, 616; appointment and election, 616-617; sessions and organization, 618-619. --Serrano, regent, 609. --Socialist Party, character of, 625. --Succession, rules of, 613. --Supreme Court, 626-627. States-General. See Holland. _Storthing_. See Norway. Sweden:-- --Administration, organization, 601. --Agricultural Party. See _Landtmannapartiet_. --Amendment, process, 589. --Bernadotte, and union with Norway, 554, 573-574. --Conservative Party, and electoral reform, 592-596; long tenure of power, 599-600. --Consular Service, question of, 576-577. --Constitution, character, 572, 589; amendment, 589. --Constitutional Committee, 598. --County, organization, 601. --Courts, organization, 600-601. --Crown, early status, 570-571; present basis, 590; relations with ministry, 590-591. --Elections, present system, 592; movement for reform, 592-596; of 1908 and 1911, 600. --Franchise, present regulations, 592; rise of movement for reform, 592-593; Conservative proposal of 1904, 593-594; Staaff project of 1906, 594-595; law of 1907-1909, 595-596; question of women's suffrage, 596; bill of 1912, 596-597. --Gustavus III., rehabilitation of monarchy, 571. --Gustavus IV., abdicates, 572. --_Högsta Domstolen_, organization and functions, 600-601. --Independence, established, 570. --Judiciary. See Courts. --Karlstad, convention of, 578. --Kiel, treaty of, 554, 573, 575. --_Landsthing_, of county, 601. --_Landtmannapartiet_, growth, 599. --Liberal Party, and electoral reform, 592-596; gains, 600. --Lindman, project for electoral reform, 595. --Ministry, composition, 590; powers, 590-591. --Norway, union with, 573-574; nature of union, 574-575; friction with, 575-576; question of consular service, 576-577; separation of, 577-578. --Parliament. See _Riksdag_. --Parliamentarism, 591. --Parties, and electoral reform, 592-596; military and tariff questions, 598-599; history since 1891, 599-600. --_Regerings-formen_, of 1809, promulgated, 572. --_Riksakt_, of 1815, 574-575. --_Riksdag_, original character, 591; reorganization in 1866, 591; composition of chambers, 591-595; electoral system, 582; movement for electoral reform, 592-596; organization and procedure, 597; powers, 597-598. --Social Democratic Party, and electoral reform, 593-595; gains, 600. --Staaff, project for electoral reform, 594. --_Statsrad_. See Ministry. --Supreme Court. See _Högsta Domstolen_. --Union. See Norway. --Women's Suffrage, movement for, 596-597. Switzerland:-- --Act of Mediation, 407. --_Bezirksammann_, 422. --_Bezirksrath_, 422. --Bonaparte, Napoleon, promulgates Act of Mediation, 407. --_Bundesgericht_, nature and functions, 437-438. --_Bundesrath_. See Federal Council. --Canton, constitutions liberalized, 409; sovereignty, 412; federal control, 412-413; powers exercised concurrently with Confederation, 414-415; variation of constitutions, 416; the _Landesgemeinde_, 417-418; the Greater Council, 418-419; use of referendum, 419-420; use of initiative, 421; the executive Council of State, 421; local administration, 422; the judiciary, 422. --Centralism, triumph in 1848, 410; as a political issue, 434. --Clerical Party, character, 434-435. --Commune, 422. --Confederation, origins, 405; composition in later eighteenth century, 406; erected into Helvetic Republic, 406; remodelled in 1803, 407; reorganized in 1815, 408; constitution of 1848 and 1874, 410; nature, 411-412; control of cantons by, 412; powers vested exclusively in, 413-414; powers denied, 414-415; general aspects, 415. --Constitution, of Helvetic Republic, 406-407; remodelled in 1803, 407; of 1815, 408; of cantons liberalized, 409; of 1848, 410; revision of 1874, 410; nature of government established by, 411-416; amendment, 431-432. --Council of State, executive agency in cantons, 421. --Council of the States, composition, 427; compared with Senate of United States, 427-428; powers, 428-429; procedure, 429-430. --Courts, of the cantons, 422; absence of administrative tribunals, 425-426; the _Bundesgericht_, 437-438; Civil Code, 439. --Diet, of Confederation in 1803-1815, 407; after 1815, 408. --Elections, of Federal Council, 423; of National Council, 426; of Council of the States, 428; party conditions, 435-437. --Federal Assembly, relations with Federal Council, 424-425; composition, 426; powers, 428-429; procedure, 429-430. --Federal Court. See _Bundesgericht_. --Federalism, triumph of in 1803, 407; in 1815, 408; survival in present constitutional system, 411; as a political issue, 434. --Federal Pact, 408. --Franchise, 426. --_Gemeindeversammlung_, 422. --Greater Council, of the canton, 418-419. --Helvetic Republic, creation and character, 406-407. --Initiative, employment in cantons, 421; in the federal government, 432-434. --Judiciary. See Courts. --_Landammann_, 421-422. --_Landesgemeinde_, 417-418. --Law, 439. --Left. See Radical Party. --Liberal Party, character, 435. --National Council, composition, 426; organization, 427; powers, 428-429; procedure, 429-430. --Parties, prolonged ascendancy of Radicals, 434; alignments to-day, 434-435; stability of groups, 435-436; inactivity, 436-437. --President, election and functions, 422-424. --Proportional Representation, 419, 433. --Radical Party, prolonged ascendancy, 434; present character, 434-436. --Referendum, origins, 419; operation in cantons, 419-420; optional form in federal government, 430-431; obligatory form, 431-432. --Right. See Clerical Party. --Socialist Party, rise, 434-436. --_Sonderbund_, 409. --Vienna, Congress of, disposition of Swiss affairs, 408. Table of Magnates. See Hungary. Woman's Suffrage, in Great Britain, 91-92; in Holland, 527-528; in Norway, 582; in Sweden, 596-597. Württemberg, made a kingdom, 194; granted a constitution, 197; special privileges, 208; governmental system, 278-279. Printed in the United States of America. 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