UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF CAPT. AND MRS. 
 PAUL MCBRIDE PERIGORD
 
 ONIVERSITY of CJALIFOKWj 
 AT 
 LOS ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
 
 PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY CHANCE & BLAND LTD., GLOUCESTER
 
 THE VOICE OF 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 An Essay on Representative Democracy 
 
 BY 
 
 J. L. STOCKS 
 
 LONDON : 
 WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., LTD. 
 
 3 & 4 Paternoster Buildings E.C. 4 
 AND 44 Victoria St. S.W. i 
 
 i44o' ' ' 
 
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 ^^ ? U V 
 
 Contents 
 
 Chapt. Page 
 
 I. The Idea of Democracy.. .. ii 
 
 II. The Election of Representatives 24 
 (i) Representation 
 (ii) Constituencies 
 
 (iii) Proportional Representation or 
 Single-Member Constituencies 
 
 «. J"* 
 
 III. 
 
 Parliament and People . . 
 
 .. 44 
 
 
 IV. 
 
 Ministry and Parliament . . 
 
 67 
 
 
 V. 
 
 The Second Chamber 
 
 .. 91 
 
 
 VI. 
 
 Democratic Policy . . 
 
 .. 118 
 
 * (i) Internal Affairs 
 
 3 (ii) Imperial Affairs 
 
 ^ (iii) Foreign Affairs
 
 Preface 
 
 This essay was planned and partly written during 
 the last year of the war in the intervals of miUtary 
 service in England. At that time the strain of 
 the war, the complete suppression of democratic 
 forms of government, and the strange incapacity 
 of political leaders in all countries except America 
 to formulate a programme worth fighting for, had 
 produced much bitterness of feeling both within 
 and without the British army. The mind turned 
 with some relief to the consideration of parlia- 
 mentary institutions as they existed in this country 
 before the war and as they might exist again after 
 it, perhaps with some inclination to magnify their 
 possibilities and their superiority over the existing 
 order. The precise question here proposed for 
 investigation was no doubt influenced by the 
 situation. I asked myself what this democracy, 
 now so plainly absent, really was, and how far it 
 was or might have been realized in the forms of 
 government established in this countr}' before the 
 war. Later, after my release from military service, 
 I had the advantage of submitting my attempt 
 at an answer to these questions, in the form of 
 lectures, to a Summer School of the Workers' 
 Educational Association at Oxford. To its 
 criticism and encouragement the essa}- owes much.
 
 8 Preface 
 
 It seemed that a discussion which flourished so 
 vigorously there might be not without interest to 
 a wider pubHc. 
 
 It is not yet at all clear in what direction our 
 political institutions are likely to develop. Since 
 this essay was completed, Mr. Lloyd George 
 appears to have attempted to recreate the Cabinet ; 
 but it is not certain how far the attempt has been 
 either genuine or successful. Meanwhile many 
 voices celebrate the approaching downfall of 
 representative government and of the nation- 
 state. To those whose sympathies are with such 
 speculations it may seem that I have opened an 
 unprofitable enquiry, into the possibihties of a 
 system already condemned and now fortunately 
 beyond revival. To me it seems certain, on the 
 other hand, that the possibilities of representative 
 government, so far from being exhausted, have 
 hardly been tapped. Education is hardly yet fully 
 within the reach of the ordinary voter, and adult 
 suffrage is not yet realized. It does not of course 
 follow that a different system, like Mr. Cole's 
 " functional democracy," will not be tried or is not 
 worth trying. But the power of human invention 
 in these matters is very limited, not merely because 
 of the limits of imagination, but still more because 
 of the necessity of finding for the new creation a 
 solid basis in custom and belief. In any case 
 theory has to start from a criticism of existing 
 institutions ; and to such criticism this essay is 
 a modest contribution. No attempt is made to
 
 Preface 9 
 
 prove that democracy is the best form or principle 
 of government. The question is not even raised 
 whether a better system of government could not 
 be devised than the parhamentary s^^stem with 
 which we are familiar. All that is asked is how, 
 given those institutions or something very like 
 them, the ideal of democracy might be brought 
 somewhere near reahzation. 
 
 J L- S.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Idea of Democracy. 
 
 ABSOLUTE liberty, just and true liberty, equal 
 and impartial liberty, is the thing that we stand 
 in need of. 
 
 John Locke. [Printed in capital letters at the 
 end of his Preface to the English translation of 
 the first letter on Toleration — i68g]. 
 Ce qui importe avant tout, c'est la continuite de 
 Taction, c'est le perpetuel 6vei\ de la pens^e et de la 
 conscience ouvri^res. Lh est la vraie sauvegarde. L^ 
 est la garantie de I'avenir. (What matters above all, 
 is the continuity of action, the unbroken wakefulness 
 of thought and conscience of the workers. That is the 
 true safeguard. That is the guarantee of the future.) 
 Jean Jaures. [His last written words ; the 
 conclusion of an article pubhshed in L' Humanile 
 over his initials on the day of his death, July 31st, 
 1914]. 
 There may have been a time, long ago, when a 
 king felt that his kingdom, with everything in it, 
 land and houses and trees, men and all living 
 things, was absolutely his own, to employ as he 
 liked on whatever purpose might suit him. A 
 large private landowner, even to-day, seems to 
 have some such sense of absolute ownership. But 
 through the largest estate run the king's high- 
 ways, and its owner knows by many tokens that 
 he is subject to the law of the land. The king's
 
 12 The Voice of the People 
 
 ownership, therefore, of his realm may well have 
 ' seemed to the king even more absolute. There 
 was no outside check or hmiting authority. 
 Internal difficulties, setting limits to practicability, 
 he must alwaj^'s have had ; but his rights within 
 his own realm — what was there to set a bound to 
 them ? If such a king pi-omised this or that to his 
 brother of France or Spain, it would be understood 
 that he pledged himself to use whatever of his own 
 resources should prove necessary for the fulfilment 
 of the pledge. His realm and its citizens were 
 his to employ as he thought fit, and his brother of 
 France would count on them without question. 
 If the Enghsh Rothschild promises to the French 
 Rothschild help in a financial transaction, it is 
 understood that the hundreds or thousands of 
 clerks, agents, and assistants employed by the 
 Enghsh firm will be used to whatever extent may 
 prove necessary that the promise may be made 
 good. It is Rothschild's office, and these men 
 accept his pay and execute his orders. So this 
 King of England, mythical or historical, would 
 have reasoned if any question had been asked as 
 to his resources. He was king, owner of a royal 
 estate, and in promising he pledged the resources 
 of a kingdom. 
 
 The loyal subject of such a king would know 
 that he was the king's servant, and that only by 
 giving up his birthright could he transfer into 
 another's service. All that he held or owned he 
 must hold ultimately from the king, who allowed
 
 The Idea of Democracy 13 
 
 in certain cases sale or bequest to others, in other 
 cases not. If he thought he was wronged, he 
 would appeal to the king. The highest position 
 to which a subject could aspire would be that he 
 should be called to advise the king in the conduct 
 of affairs or be entrusted with the execution of 
 the king's orders or intentions in some portion of 
 his realm or in some department of his household. 
 A king's estate is large, and the owner cannot 
 direct and supervise everything himself. Never- 
 theless there could be nothing done or suffered 
 within the king's dominions for which the king 
 could refuse responsibiUty. Crime, violence, love, 
 friendship, marriage, childbirth — all happened by 
 the King's " grace " or permission. 
 
 There may be a time, long after we are all dead, 
 when a nation succeeds in ruling itself. Such a 
 state of things is much more difficult to grasp in 
 imagination than that of absolute kingship. But 
 the main point is plain. Such a nation would be 
 capable of a national act. If England and France 
 were under absolute kings, as imagined above, the 
 statement " England went to war with France " 
 would only mean that England's King had 
 quarrelled with the King of France and that the 
 two kings were leading such of their retainers as 
 they had been able to collect to do battle with one 
 another. In the second case the war would be on 
 each side a national act. Discontented minorities 
 of each nation, greater or smaller, are still con- 
 ceivable and even probable (just as a man will go
 
 14 The Voice of the People 
 
 into a fight with some scruple at the back of his 
 mind that he should have kept out of it) : never- 
 theless the determination to fight would be that 
 of the nations, the decision would be incontestibly 
 theirs, and the conflict would be ended by a 
 decision to discontinue fighting no less incontestibly 
 national. Now there are persons and organiza- 
 tions authorized or accustomed to speak on behalf 
 cff nations. Von Biilow or Beaconsfield signs, and 
 England or Germany has pledged her word. 
 There are thus actions which purport to be the 
 actions of nations. It the condition above 
 imagined is realized, what will be achieved will be 
 this — that which is in name a national act will be 
 such in fact. This ideal is called democracy ; 
 and it must be understood that democracy is an 
 ideal, not yet within reach of complete reahzation. 
 It is a principle of government, and the chief test 
 of its progress in any country is the degree to 
 which an affirmative answer can be given to the 
 question, " is this, which purports to be the 
 national act, really the act of the nation ? " 
 
 It is directly contrary to the idea of democracy 
 that any man, or group of men, should have inde- 
 pendent power and authority over the community, 
 what we call the nation, since all power and 
 authorit}', all place, position, and possessions, are 
 conferred by, or by permission of, the nation. 
 Hence a king as defined above is an impossibility; 
 but how much further one can go is doubtful. 
 Authorities and powers within the nation there
 
 The Idea of Democracy 15 
 
 must be for the execution of the national will and 
 for the coercion, when necessary, of unruly 
 elements. The nature and limits of such 
 authorities is a matter for subsequent enquiry : 
 only one thing is immediately plain, namely, that 
 all will be derivative and secondary. Hence, if 
 in such a democracy there is a king, i.e., a here- 
 ditary, not elective president, his power, position, 
 and authority will be known and limited. He will 
 be a first citizen and will belong to the nation, not 
 the nation to him. His function will be to express in 
 his sphere, as any other citizen should in his, the 
 national will. 
 
 The loyalty of the private citizen in a demo- 
 cratic state will be shown in the punctiUous per- 
 formance of all pubUc duties, in which certainly 
 all mature persons of both sexes will have a share. 
 Decisions inevitably will go by majorities in some 
 form or other, and the citizen's loyalty is most 
 severely tested when he finds himself in the 
 minority on a fundamental question. While 
 kings with their courts produce a vertical gradua- 
 tion in society, so that the nearer a subject is to 
 the king's person, as adviser, secretary-of-state, 
 or court official, the higher is his social position, 
 democracy gives no ready gauge of higher and 
 lower. To some citizens a position of great 
 poUtical responsibility might be the highest 
 ambition ; to others other careers might seem to 
 offer greater marks of distinction. In whatever 
 sphere, however, the citizen worked, he could not
 
 i6 The Voice of the People 
 
 fail to be conscious that he was a citizen, working 
 for the nation, and himself responsible in his degree 
 for everything done or suffered within its terri- 
 tories. A national act would be in some degree 
 his act. By mere opposition he could not rid 
 himself of his responsibility for it ; but only in the 
 last resort by renouncing his citizenship and 
 migrating to another country. 
 
 The phrase " national act," used more than once 
 above, requires explanation. To some it may 
 appear a misty and metaphysical notion, devoid of 
 meaning or value except to the professional 
 philosopher, and doubtfully to him. But, though 
 not free from difficulty, it is a simple notion when 
 approached in the right way. Countries, in- 
 dubitabl3% make treaties with one another, which 
 when analysed are found to be undertakings or 
 promises to act towards one another in certain 
 specified ways : they make war and peace with 
 one another ; again, actions and promises to act. 
 Who are the agents in all this ? Not, certainly, 
 simply the individuals who discuss, sign, or fight. 
 Nor, perhaps, actually, in existing circumstances, 
 fully at least, the nations concerned. Yet, ideally, 
 without doubt, the nations. It is England that 
 negociates, promises, acts. The quaUfication, 
 " ideally," means this. It is England that is meant 
 and intended ; it is England that is actually in- 
 volved ; but if England's " heart " is in it, that, 
 as things now stand, is, for assignable reasons, in 
 some degree an accident, whereas if the idea of
 
 The Idea of Democracy 17 
 
 democracy were realized it would be a necessary 
 element in the fact. 
 
 Countries, then, act in some measure ; and 
 where they act they will : for will has no other 
 expression but action, and action is the embodi- 
 ment of nothing but will. 
 
 Only the decision of a capital issue can be con- 
 ceived as being a national act in the full sense. 
 In considering the record of a personal ruler, 
 possessed of absolute power, we should have to 
 distinguish among the acts for which he was 
 responsible at least three main classes, each in- 
 volving a different fashion and degree of responsi- 
 bihty, things done by himself, things done 
 according to his orders or instructions, and things 
 which he suffered men to do. The same wide 
 distinctions are quite as necessary in considering 
 the activities of the nation ; but they are there 
 more difficult to apply ; for who can say when 
 the nation, a vast and impalpable creature, is itself 
 acting ; when others are acting according to its 
 orders and instructions ; when they are merely 
 doing what is tacitly allowed ? The chief difficulty 
 probably lies for most people in determining the 
 first class of cases : if that were clear, the other 
 two would not present so much difficulty. Some 
 immediate help, therefore, may usefully be here given 
 towards the answer to the question, "by what signs 
 shall one know that the nation is itself acting ? " 
 
 It is tempting to answer that one may know 
 from the fact that practically all the citizens will be
 
 1 8 The Voice of the People 
 
 doing something, relative to a national situation, 
 which promises to have some influence upon the 
 transformation of that situation, e.g., casting a 
 vote for a representative, or, in a referendum, for 
 or against a particular proposal. But such an 
 answer woula limit the number of national 
 acts ver}^ narrowly. It is difficult to imagine a 
 constitution which would not exclude all declara- 
 tions of war and conclusions of peace, as well as 
 most treaties between nations, from the category 
 of national acts, if the answer is allowed to stand. 
 A safer and more constructive answer can be given 
 on the following lines. There is one, and only one, 
 condition, which can certainly be laid down as 
 necessary. Practically all citizens must be taking 
 note of the situation in which the country finds 
 itself, and must have within reach full, timely, 
 and accurate information as to any action taken, 
 or proposed to be taken, in the country's name. 
 This condition satisfied, and given a workable 
 constitution, there is no reason why any decision 
 taken on behalf of the nation by its properly 
 accredited representatives should not be truly 
 describable as a national act and truly eanbody 
 the national will. If this condition is not satisfied, 
 then the action, however accurately it may embody 
 the wishes of the great majority or even the whole 
 number of the citizens, cannot embody a national 
 will (because no such will at the time it was per- 
 formed can have existed) and cannot be truly 
 described as a national act. It can only be the
 
 The Idea of Democracy 19 
 
 action of an individual or individuals, which the 
 country may, or may not, afterwards adopt as its 
 own. 
 
 It might be objected to the view above advanced 
 that in making the achievement of a national act 
 depend, not on the power of the individual citizen 
 to influence the decision of a matter in which 
 national interests are involved, but on his attention 
 to the situation in which his country finds itself, 
 we have laid our foundation too wide. The con- 
 dition, it might be said, is capable of reahzation 
 as easil}^ b}^ a despotism or a bureaucracy as by 
 what is ordinarily called a democratic government. 
 The answer is that in practice men will not be 
 persuaded to attend to affairs for which they are 
 in no way responsible. It is only by making the 
 ordinary citizen in some degree responsible for 
 national affairs that you will induce him to attend 
 to them. The country' which most often calls on 
 its citizens for a decisive vote is not necessarily 
 the most democratic, or, what comes to the same 
 thing, the most prohfic in national acts ; but the 
 country which never calls on its citizens for such 
 decisions is shown by this test, as by any other, to 
 lack the democratic principle altogether. 
 
 The condition laid down is clearly, in the most 
 favourable circumstances, very difficult of realiza- 
 tion. Only in a highly-educated community, very 
 responsive to political influences and with a con- 
 stitution exactly suited to it, is it capable of 
 realization at all : and, even there, only on rare
 
 20 The Voice of the People 
 
 occasions will it be reahzed. But then, it is only 
 rarely that a national act of the first degree will be 
 required. Most changes, especially legislative acts 
 of Parliament, will be national acts in the second 
 degree, the execution of a policy previously 
 approved in general outline, with the detail of 
 which only a small minority will be familiar. 
 
 Democracy is a principle of government at 
 present only partially reahzed, and struggling 
 everywhere for fuller realization. Its aim and 
 effort is to make acts which are national in name 
 national in reality. It attempts to secure this 
 end by arranging for the widest possible co- 
 operation of citizens in national affairs, thus 
 demanding and encouraging their attention to 
 pubHc policy. In the final analysis it will probably 
 be found that the democratic is the only real 
 alternative to the kingly principle as outlined at 
 the beginning of this chapter : certainly, it is its 
 sworn enemy. In the one system ruler and subject 
 is a natural division, embedded in the structure of 
 society ; in the other the functions of the ruler 
 are so spread over the body politic that no citizen 
 can disclaim either name. The one idea throws 
 on a single head a responsibility to which no man 
 is equal ; while the other may seem to divide his 
 power into parcels so small that any man will 
 despise them. Does it not seem plain that these 
 are two extremes, each as absurd and disastrous 
 as the other, and that salvation is to be found, if 
 anywhere, in some middle course ?
 
 The Idea of Democracy 21 
 
 But the signs of the times point inexorably to 
 democracy, complete and unadulterated, as the 
 future to which all civiUzed communities are 
 moving. Not without opposition, it is true. 
 Democracy has had to fight every yard of the way 
 and is still openly assailed and flouted by those 
 who are in a position to voice their dislike or 
 distrust. The advocate of a " nation in arms " 
 detests the idea of a nation in action. A nation of 
 soldiers is all very well, but a nation of pohticians 
 is a hideous nightmare. Others foresee with 
 disgust the inevitably levelling effect on society 
 which a thoroughgoing pohtical democracy is 
 bound in the end to exert. Again, ground can 
 easily be discovered in experience for the assertions 
 that democratic methods of government are 
 expensive, dilatory, inexpert, that democracies 
 cannot conduct wars or maintain a steady external 
 policy. Well, the faults observed in the half- 
 democracies of the past and present may be 
 variously explained. Want of education in the 
 citizens and in their chosen advisers, want of 
 balance or elasticity in the constitution, will 
 account for much and enable us to shift some of 
 the blame from the principle to its practice. And 
 it can probably be shown that some of the most 
 characteristic weaknesses imputed to existing 
 democratic practice spring from the very fact that 
 the principle is not completely reahzed. They are 
 maladies of infancy, which, given a normal develop- 
 ment, may be expected to disappear with maturity.
 
 22 The Voice of the People 
 
 But when all is said and done, something will 
 remain to the account of the principle itself. It 
 has, no doubt, its own characteristic disorders. 
 When the worst, however, has been admitted, the 
 account against democracy will be a small and 
 insignificant affair beside those of its more romantic 
 and magnificent predecessors in power. It can 
 never hope to compete with them in the fury of its 
 frenzies or the malevolence of its malpractices. 
 
 It must be admitted that there is no guarantee 
 that the democratic principle, if given full rein, 
 will necessarily bring increased efficiency in govern- 
 ment, or, in any obvious sense of the word, in- 
 creased profit to a nation. A more natural life, an 
 improved national health, friendher deahngs with 
 fellow nations, these things perhaps we might 
 promise ; but even as it stands the promise is 
 vague and the grounds of confidence are hard to 
 define. Yet, after all, which is the greater or 
 more feasible task ? As a trusted leader to under- 
 take the execution of a nation's will, or, as a 
 benevolent despot, to labour to forestall its wishes ? 
 To be a king's loyal servant is accounted a fine 
 thing. The words have a romantic appeal not 
 easily associated with work on a borough council 
 or the expression of preferences on a voting paper. 
 But romance of word does not easily cling to what 
 is new and actual : it decorates the lost causes, 
 the dying and the dead. It is not the romance of 
 words but the romance of things that counts in 
 our day. And that may spread even to the
 
 The Idea of Democracy 23 
 
 borough council arid the ballot box in a nation 
 which finds the strength to cast off the last chains 
 which bind it and stand forth free to go its own 
 way. The will of a nation, could it but exist, 
 would surely be something more stable, more 
 calculable, and infinitely more powerful than the 
 preferences of kings, the nervous coups of passing 
 politicians, even than the secret and imperious 
 behests of the magnates of trade, commerce, and 
 international finance. 
 
 " Fine words ! " it will be said, " but can you 
 make them good ? " The substance of these 
 promises must be sought in what follows. It is 
 only by developing carefully and in some detail the 
 imphcations of the democratic idea that we can 
 hope to gain any degree of clearness as to its power 
 or value. Those who use the word, whether in 
 praise or blame, too often show that they have no 
 clear vision of the thing.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Election of Representatives. 
 
 There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best 
 form of government is that in which sovereignty, or 
 the supreme controlling power in the last resort, is 
 vested in the entire aggregate of the community ; 
 every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of 
 that ultimate sovereignty, but being, at least occa- 
 sionally, called on to take an actual part in the 
 government, by the personal discharge of some public 
 function, local or general. 
 
 Mill : Representative Government. Ch. III. 
 [1861.] 
 
 Property inevitably confers power on its possessors, 
 and far from adding to that national power bj' political 
 privileges, it should be the object of all men who love 
 liberty to balance it by raising the poorer classes to 
 political importance ; the influence and insolence of 
 riches ought to be tamed and subdued instead of 
 being inflated and excited by political institutions. 
 
 Napier : History of the Peninsular War. Bk. 
 XXIII., Ch. IV. [About 1835]. 
 
 The pure idea of democracy, according to its defini- 
 tion, is the government of the whole people by the 
 whole people, equally represented. Democracy as 
 commonly conceived and hitherto practised is the 
 government of the whole people by a mere majority of 
 the people, exclusively represented. The former is
 
 The Election of Representatives 25 
 
 synonymous with the equality of all citizens ; the latter, 
 strangely confounded with it, is a government of 
 privilege, in favour of the numerical majority, who 
 alone possess practically any voice in the State. This 
 is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which 
 the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchise- 
 ment of minorities. 
 
 Mill: Represenlalive Government. Ch. VII. 
 
 [From the argument in favour of Proportional 
 
 Representation]. 
 
 I. Representation. 
 
 Since the whole body of citizens, in which all 
 power resides, cannot itself deliberate and negociate 
 and execute its own decisions, it will be compelled 
 to have recourse to representatives, empowered to 
 exercise certain of these functions in its behalf. 
 We can safely assume that a nation which is 
 attempting to organize itself according to the 
 democratic idea will have a central representative 
 body, or parliament, supreme over all local or 
 provincial representative councils, and that its 
 members will be directly elected by the votes of 
 the individual citizens. So the Parliament of the 
 United Kingdom is supreme over all County and 
 Borough Councils, and the members of one of its 
 two Houses are directly elected by the votes of the 
 qualified citizens of the Kingdom. The existence 
 of an Upper House, composed of peers not depen- 
 dent in any way for their position on the votes of 
 the citizens, is clearly in direct conflict with the 
 idea of democracy. For the ordinary citizen has
 
 26 The Voice of the People. 
 
 not, under the constitution, an}^ means of in- 
 fluencing the decisions of the House of Lords ; and 
 without the concurrence of the Upper House no 
 scheme approved by the Lower House can become 
 law. 
 
 Putting on one side for a time the question of a 
 Second Chamber, let us assume in the democratic 
 state a central elected body, something like our 
 House of Commons and entrusted with similar 
 powers and duties. The question then imme- 
 diately arises. How should this representative body 
 be selected ? 
 
 First, obviously, by all the citizens. But since 
 citizen can hardl}^ be defined otherwise than as one 
 who has the right of taking part in the selection of 
 representatives, the question remains, in a demo- 
 cratic state who will possess this right ? It is clear 
 that out of the human residents within a given 
 district many must be disquahfied from taking 
 part. Some are too young : a certain age, there- 
 fore, will be one qualification. The earhest age 
 at which persons may reasonabl}^ take on them- 
 selves the responsibilities of a family, say 21, seems 
 to be the natural time for assuming the duties of 
 citizenship. Others, again, will be disquaUfied as 
 of unsound mind. There may further be certain 
 penal disqualifications. To what offences these 
 should attach and how long they should continue, 
 is a doubtful matter which need not be pursued 
 far in this place. Clearly it is just and appropriate 
 that a serious offence against the voting laws
 
 The Election of Representatives 27 
 
 should be punished by the loss of a vote ; and 
 equally clearly it is unjust and illogical that the 
 holding of certain opinions (as in the case of 
 " Conscientious Objectors " recently disquahficd 
 by Act of Parhament) should even appear to be a 
 ground for the withholding of the vote. On the 
 other hand, there would be nothing obviously un- 
 democratic in attaching to certain classes of crime, 
 as part of the penalty, temporary or even permanent 
 exclusion from the right of voting. The only 
 general rule that can be laid down as to qualifica- 
 tion is this, that as far as possible all adult sound- 
 minded persons of both sexes should be entitled to 
 take part in the selection of representatives. All 
 exclusions should be jealously watched. 
 
 Provisions actually exist in many countries by 
 which certain classes of citizens possess more than 
 one vote. The qualification by which the extra 
 vote or votes are obtained falls as a rule under one 
 of three heads, wealth, business interests, or 
 superior education. The effect of such provisions 
 is clearly to depress the value of the single vote 
 possessed by the majority of the citizens. From a 
 democratic point of view this is a mistake. The 
 power of riches is already too great. Even if the 
 payers of supertax were disfranchised they would 
 still continue to exercise an influence wholly dis- 
 proportionate to their numbers on pubhc opinion 
 as expressed at the polls. The gift of additional 
 voting power to the rich, as such, is neither justified 
 by the democratic principle nor advisable as a
 
 28 The Voice of the People 
 
 matter of expediency. Again, recent history in all 
 countries has amply demonstrated the fact that 
 business interests can look after themselves. The 
 power of the educated is not so immediately obvious 
 as that of the rich, but it is equally beyond question. 
 It is concealed by the fact that the most highly 
 educated classes (commonly the well-to-do) are in 
 any contented and well-governed state apt to be 
 found voting in the minority. Only in badly 
 governed states like Tsarist Russia are the Universi- 
 ties found in the van of reform. But even the most 
 superficial study of contemporary opinion in any 
 recent period is sufficient to show that the birth of 
 political reform does actuahy follow the lines 
 which a priori seem most probable. Educated 
 opinion lays down, often wrongly, the limits of the 
 possible and the impossible, the desirable and the 
 undesirable, and within those limits the bolder 
 spirits work. Sheer economic necessity may at 
 times drive a community into changes unanimously 
 condemned or distrusted by the thought of the 
 time, and may prove feasible and salutary what was 
 considered impracticable and disastrous ; but as 
 a general rule the uneducated echo, without serious 
 distortion, the opinion of those who are reputed 
 to be better instructed than themselves. In 
 expediency, therefore, there is no ground for dis- 
 crimination in favour of superior education. 
 
 Thus the old phrase " one man one vote " seems 
 to express accurately the democratic demand in 
 regard to the franchise. Make men equal as voters.
 
 The Election of Representatives 29 
 
 In so doing you do not abolish natural or acquired 
 inequalities ; you leave them free to exert their 
 proper influence upon the result. You onl}' refuse 
 to emphasize certain selected inequahties at the 
 expense of others. For if you give an extra vote 
 to the rich or the well-educated you emphasize 
 the natural pull of riches or education, while 
 refusing such recognition to other obvious superiori- 
 ties, such as good character and service or the 
 possession of a large and healthy family. The 
 selection must be more or less arbitrary, removing 
 no real grievances and creating many. It is not 
 surprising that pohtical development is everywhere 
 moving towards adult suffrage on the basis " one 
 man one vote." 
 
 II. Constituencies. 
 It would be quite possible, though rather 
 difficult, to treat the nation as a single constituency. 
 A Parliament of four hundred or six hundred might 
 be elected by giving every citizen a list of the 
 candidates — it would be a very long one — to mark 
 in a certain way ; and by various devices it might 
 be ensured that the number required could be found 
 by a scrutin}^ of the papers without further reference 
 to the electorate. But it is an obvious convenience 
 to break the large number into sections, each 
 section to be elected by a different group of electors; 
 and it is usual to group the electors by districts. 
 And, since it is advisable that the electors should 
 have the opportunity of getting some personal
 
 30 The Voice of the People 
 
 knowledge of the candidates, the groups must not 
 be too big. Electors might of course be grouped 
 by occupation instead of by districts, though the 
 experiment has never been tried in the case of 
 a national parHament. The disadvantages of such 
 an arrangement are manifest. First, the electors 
 in any group would be scattered all over the 
 country. This would-make it more difficult for the 
 candidate to get and keep touch with them and on 
 the side of the electors would obstruct the for- 
 mation of an}'' corporate opinion. Secondh^ a 
 particular district is apt to have problems and 
 pecuharities of its own, which would be denied 
 expression if the district had no representatives of 
 its own. On the other hand it might be urged 
 that occupations have problems and interests of 
 their own, which very frequently are the subject 
 of legislative proposals, and that it is a weakness 
 of the geographical S37stem that it precludes these 
 interests from any direct expression. This is quite 
 true ; but there are Trade Unions and federations 
 of employers, which exist for the purpose of watch- 
 ing the interests of their trades. These organisa- 
 tions have grown rapidly in power in recent times, 
 and the legislature is not hkely in the future to take 
 any serious action affecting a Trade without 
 previous consultation with them. Lastly, an 
 occupational basis of division would be very diffi- 
 cult to carry out completelv, so as to include everj' 
 citizen ; and if carried out would probabl}' tend to 
 emphasize class distinctions and oppositions, since
 
 The Election of Representatives 31 
 
 some occupations would be found to consist almost 
 entirely of poor people while others would be 
 practically confined to the well-to-do. 
 
 In any country which has a fairly homogeneous 
 population, all speaking one language, it is pretty 
 certain that the best results will be obtained by 
 dividing the electors into constituencies according 
 to the districts in which they hve or do business. 
 But there are countries, such as those composing 
 the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, which not only 
 include a diversity of peoples speaking different 
 languages but also in many districts find these 
 diverse races inextricably mixed together. Now 
 even if a candidate can make speeches fluenth^ in 
 several languages — which requirement would of 
 itself seriously diminish the number of possible 
 candidates — he cannot speak them all at once. 
 In such a case, therefore, it may be advis- 
 able to depart in some measure from the 
 geographical basis of division. Arrange- 
 ments may be made which will as far as 
 possible allow all men of one speech to vote to- 
 gether for a candidate speaking their own language. 
 A similar situation ma}' arise, not through diversity 
 of language, but through diversity of religion, 
 tradition, or diametrical opposition of desires and 
 interests, as in the case of the Unionist minority 
 in the greater part of Ireland. In such a case it 
 might be advisable to enlarge the district and allow 
 a distinction of constituencies, on a religious or 
 other basis, within it.
 
 32 The Voice of the People 
 
 The special cases mentioned suggest a problem 
 which is often in practice very troublesome. 
 Difference of language is easy enough to ascertain, 
 and may be a fair ground for difference of repre- 
 sentation. But the other differences, of religion, 
 tradition, desire, sentiment — these, it will be said, 
 are the very stuff of which communities are made, 
 diversities which democracy exists to reconcile 
 without destroying. True ; and our democratic 
 institutions, even as they are, do succeed in 
 enabling men of widely diverse religions, traditions, 
 and sentiments to work amicably together, some- 
 times voting side by side, sometimes on opposite 
 sides, but never so diametrically and utterly 
 opposed that each cannot feel that the resultant 
 national poHcy is to some extent his. Bitternesses 
 of course arise from time to time : nearly always 
 some, and sometimes a large minority of the 
 citizens, feel themselves to be totally estranged 
 from the national policy. This condition, how- 
 ever, is seldom permanent in any one individual, 
 and the minority does not remain the same but 
 constantly changes its composition. The last is 
 the saving fact. It is a permanent minority which 
 makes democracy impossible. Thus if the question 
 is asked — by what criterion shall we know whether 
 these sentimental differences are or are not suffi- 
 cient I37 serious to warrant special arrangements 
 for separate representation ? the answer is — when 
 you see signs of the formation of permanent 
 minorities in the existing constituencies. Such
 
 The Election of Representatives 33 
 
 minorities do not occur casually or without solid 
 ground : their origin can always be traced in the 
 history of the country. To ignore the difference 
 is, commonly, to emphasize and embitter it ; and 
 the best chance of removing it is to recognize it. 
 Two men working together may do more work than 
 two working separately ; but if they are always 
 quarrelling they will do very much less ; and 
 perhaps if they work apart, they will ask after a 
 time to be allowed to work together. 
 
 III. Proportional Representation or Single- 
 Member CONSTITLTENCIES. 
 
 If the electors are grouped in districts, the 
 alternative methods which present themselves 
 may be divided for our purposes into two. The 
 districts may be comparatively large, each electing 
 a number of members, in which case some form of 
 proportional representation will almost certainly 
 be necessar}', or they may be comparatively small, 
 each electing a single member. It is not necessary 
 here to examine the various forms of proportional 
 representation which have been practised or 
 suggested in various countries. We are here 
 concerned only with the main differences of 
 principle between the two methods. The object 
 aimed at in all schemes of Proportional Representa- 
 tion is one and the same, to secure that the ratio 
 between the strength of the various parties in the 
 elected body shall correspond as exactly as possible 
 with the ratio between the numbers of their
 
 34 The Voice of the People 
 
 adherents in the electing body. On the system of 
 single-member constituencies it is quite possible 
 that one party should have a narrow majority in 
 every single seat, thus monopolising all seats in 
 Parhament on the strength of the support of httle 
 more than half the voters in the country. Or, if 
 there are three main parties, the support of less 
 than half the voters might give a similar result. 
 The advocates of Proportional Representation lay 
 their main emphasis on the desirabihty of remedy- 
 ing the condition of the unrepresented minorities. 
 In order to effect ihis they have to enlarge the 
 electoral districts sufficiently to entitle them to 
 several members ; and it is important to note 
 that the larger they make the electoral district the 
 more perfectly will minorities be represented. A 
 small minority scattered all over the country will 
 have a greater chance of getting one or two members 
 into Parliament if the electoral district comprises 
 the whole country than if it is any smaller area. 
 Proportional Representation, then, seeks to make 
 the elected house in its party divisions a mirror of 
 the nation ; and, as a means to that end, wishes to 
 make the groups of electors as large as possible. 
 Difficulties of communication and the desirability 
 of giving the elector some opportunity of personal 
 contact with the candidates between whom he is 
 to choose set limits to the extension of the electoral 
 area. A compromise therefore has to be accepted. 
 The area must be small enough to allow of the 
 requisite personal contact and yet large enough to
 
 The Election of Representatives 35 
 
 ensure that all important minorities have a fair 
 chance of securing representation. 
 
 The effect of Proportional Representation first 
 and most obviously, will be to produce smaller 
 majorities in Parhament than any we are accus- 
 tomed to in this country. Secondly, it tends to 
 the multiphcation of parties. Any vigorous 
 minority, such as the anti-vaccinationists, the 
 anti-vivisectionistS) the Roman Catholics, the Irish 
 workmen in many of our large towns, is practically 
 invited to put a candidate on the district list and 
 so secure representation. Clearly a Parliament 
 composed of or containing a large number of small 
 parties would organize government very differently 
 from recent British Parhaments which have con- 
 sisted of two main parties, with only two small blocks 
 of members (Labour and Irish Nationalists) uncer- 
 tain in their allegiance. It is plain, therefore, that the 
 question between Proportional Representation and 
 Single Member Constituencies is one of fundamental 
 importance. The adoption of Proportional Repre- 
 sentation in this country would mean little short of 
 a revolution in the principles and practice of 
 Parhamentary government. However these effects 
 are viewed, it is not surprising that the Proportional 
 method has exercised and still exercises a powerful 
 attraction on many ardent advocates of democracy. 
 As democrats their aim is to give opinion its proper 
 expression, and at first sight it seems plain that a 
 proportional scheme must effect this more surely 
 than one which decides by bare majorities like our
 
 36 The Voice of the People 
 
 own predominantly single-member organization. 
 If opinion in the country is divided in the ratio 
 5:4a machinery by which the resulting Parlia- 
 ment embodies a ratio of 2 : i seems obviously- 
 unsound and unjust. 
 
 Now reasons of expediency may be urged on 
 both sides. For instance there are strong reasons 
 in expediency against a sudden and fundamental 
 change in the political organization of any countr3^ 
 But expediencies are manifold, incalculable, in- 
 exhaustible ; and our main concern is with 
 principle. The question we have to answer, in the 
 light of the idea of democracy already outlined, is 
 this, whether, in principle, there is any ground for 
 deciding between the proportional system and the 
 single-member constituency. 
 
 As a preliminary, it is to be observed that the 
 advocates of proportion maintain a very narrow 
 and Uteral interpretation of the word representa- 
 tion. The voter is considered to be represented 
 only so far as a member of his own party is present 
 in Parhament to speak for him. It is presumed 
 that a member of Parliament speaks for his party 
 and no one outside it. The conclusion follows 
 that under the system of single-member con- 
 stituencies the minority who voted against the 
 member is unrepresented. This is not true even 
 as things now stand. The member, once elected, 
 represents his constituency and often speaks 
 explicitly in its behalf in cases where its local 
 interests are involved. Even apart from that, it
 
 The Election of Representatives 37 
 
 is quite possible for a voter to feel that he is fairly 
 represented by a member whose candidature he 
 did not himself support. Many a Liberal of 
 Birmingham refrained from voting against Joseph 
 Chamberlain ; and many others, who took every 
 opportunity of opposing him, were yet proud to 
 be represented by him in the national Parliament. 
 If it will be an effect of Proportional Representa- 
 tion that members of Parliament will cease to 
 represent constituencies and become merely the 
 spokesmen and representatives of a party, that is 
 in itself good ground for hesitating to adopt any 
 proportional scheme. If, on the other hand, as 
 seems probable, the single-member system pro- 
 ceeds upon and encourages a broader view of repre- 
 sentation, and tends to make the member less the 
 party politician and more the spokesman of a 
 district, that is in itself a solid reason for pre- 
 ferring the single-member constituency. 
 
 Secondly, the apparent injustice of an electoral 
 system which is apt to exaggerate majorities — 
 and it is probable that a single-member system 
 would always tend to do this, however carefully 
 framed and guarded, in a somewhat irregular 
 fashion — is mitigated not only by certain com- 
 pensating gains but also, on a closer examination 
 of the proportional alternative, by clear defects in 
 that alternative itself. In the first place, the 
 exaggeration of majorities may be advisable in the 
 interests of effective government. Narrow 
 majorities, alternating this way and that, make. 
 
 1443'U'
 
 38 The Voice of the People 
 
 it may be suspected, for half-hearted measures and 
 wavering poHcies. But in any case the alternative 
 offered by a proportional system is not correctly 
 stated as for instance a 5 : 4 ratio in place of one 
 of 2 : I. The important point is that the pro- 
 portional scheme would fail to force the electorate 
 to group themselves in the 5 : 4 ratio at all. It 
 would lead them to sort themselves out in some such 
 ratio as 3 : 2 : 2 : I : I, in five groups where two 
 sufficed previously. This is the significant fact 
 on which attention should be concentrated. The 
 reduction of the manifold differences and diver- 
 gencies within the electorate to a simple ratio 
 between two main policies or tendencies means a 
 great deal. It means that a number of competing 
 claims have been previously compromised, with- 
 drawn, or conciliated which under a proportional 
 system survive to comphcate proceedings within 
 the walls of Parhament itself. In other words 
 some of the preliminary work towards the formation 
 of a national decision, which under the one system 
 is thrown upon the electors, falls under the other 
 on the elected representative. Thus the immediate 
 responsibilities of the electors are diminished 
 while those of their representatives are increased. 
 Further, the work thrown on the politicians takes 
 the form of the formation of " blocs " by bargains 
 between parties, a process full of possibilities of 
 ignoble intrigue and subtle corruption. From a 
 democratic standpoint the throwing on to the 
 elected house of work which could be done by the
 
 The Election of Representative? 39 
 
 electors is very strongly to be deprecated. In 
 fact, if this analysis holds good, we may say that 
 Proportional Representation is in this respect 
 definitely less democratic than the single-member 
 constituency. 
 
 The argument just stated rests upon the admitted 
 fact that a proportional system tends to encourage 
 the multiplication of parties, between which com- 
 binations and alHances have to be arranged for the 
 better despatch of the business of Parliament. It 
 is claimed as an advantage for the alternative 
 system that it discourages the multiphcation of 
 parties, and forces the electors to group themselves 
 normally in two main camps. It is worth while to 
 look rather more closely at this feature of the 
 single-member constituency, since a grasp of it is 
 fundamental to the understanding of the machinery 
 of democratic government. 
 
 For this purpose perhaps we may be allowed to 
 take the British organization, in spite of its ine- 
 qualities and inconsistencies, as indicative of the 
 nature and effects of a single-member system. In 
 England, as matters stand, the tendency is very 
 obstinate to force all pohtical thinking into the 
 two-party mould. Diversities within the large 
 parties are accepted, recognized, and even named. 
 "Tory" shades by degrees into "Conservative- 
 Democrat," "Liberal" into "Radical." These 
 differences fall in each case within the party 
 organization. A stronger case is that of " Labour," 
 whose candidates, though they have a separate
 
 40 The Voice of the People 
 
 party organization and often stand in opposition 
 to Liberals, are j^et obstinately considered by the 
 electors to express only a further extreme of 
 Radicalism, prolonging the left wing of the Liberal 
 forces. And any " freak " candidate, of local or 
 temporary interest, is forced to range himself more 
 or less definitely on one side or the other. A 
 "prohibition" or "woman-suffrage" candidate 
 is not allowed to discourse solely on the merits of 
 these questions, but has to express himself at large 
 on all matters of public policy. The more eclectic 
 he is, the more he allows himself to borrow im- 
 partially from both parties instead of definitely 
 adopting the programme of one, the less chance he 
 has of securing solid support. Each section of the 
 electorate insists on knowing how it stands in regard 
 to each candidate : every candidate attempts in 
 some measure to concihate every section of the 
 electorate. With the multiplication of candidates 
 and the enlargement of the electoral area that 
 would follow on Proportional Representation, it is 
 plain that this feature of our elections would at 
 least become very much less prominent. Meetings 
 would be to a greater extent mere party meetings ; 
 party programmes would become harder, more 
 detailed, more doctrinaire, less wide, general, and 
 elastic; and the "freak" candidate, so far as he 
 survived, would be more freakish than before. 
 Strong minorities, instead of getting their aims 
 expressed with more or less adequacy in both of 
 two rival programmes, would merely find expression
 
 The Election of Representatives 41 
 
 in strong minorities, narrowly partisan, in the 
 elected house. 
 
 The main concern of the believer in democracy 
 is not to secure that every type of opinion shall be 
 duly represented by a separate group in the 
 National ParHament, as though Parliament were a 
 home of strayed causes or a museum of varieties 
 of poHtical doctrine. His master aim is to make 
 possible the continuous attention of the citizens to 
 the main currents of national affairs. In the light 
 of this aim he cannot long hesitate between the two 
 alternatives of Proportional Representation and 
 the single-member constituency. The former leads 
 to the dissipation of political thought into a number 
 of channels whose mutual relations are compara- 
 tively obscure, while the latter forces it to con- 
 centrate on the direct opposition of two main 
 parties, one of which is actually' at the time 
 responsible for the conduct of national affairs. 
 Under the rule of proportion any plank will serve 
 as a platform, if a sufficient number will gather 
 round it, while under the single-member sj^stem 
 the platform must be as wide as the affairs of the 
 nation, and every party which comes before the 
 electors must be prepared to undertake the com- 
 plete direction of the national government. Thus 
 the single-member system forces both the electors 
 and their candidates to keep their attention on the 
 main issues of the time, forcing sectional interests 
 and allegiances into a due subordination. To 
 Plato, writing at a time when states were small
 
 42 The Voice of the People 
 
 and party organization unknown, the pecuHarity 
 of democracy as a form of government appeared to 
 lie in the multifarious variety which it encouraged 
 and developed within the community. The charge 
 IS not often echoed in these times. But if the rule 
 of proportion were ever established in this country 
 we might see realized in our Parliament that 
 " bazaar of constitutions " which Plato thought at 
 once so prett}^ and so ineffective. Embodying a 
 pleasing variety of opinion, Parhament might well 
 fail nevertheless to evolve a single coherent policy, 
 and, while expressing with perfect accuracy the 
 division of views among the voters on several 
 important questions, it might find itself doomed to 
 impotence and sterility for lack of any coherent 
 impulse from the electorate relevant to the general 
 hues of policy. It may be granted that the attempt 
 to force the differences into the two-party mould 
 means that the question brought to the electors 
 for decision is often confused, obscure, and per- 
 plexing : but not more so than the facts. Pro- 
 portion may succeed in an artificial simplification : 
 but only for the electors, not for the elected Parlia- 
 ment. Proportion does not unravel the confusion ; 
 it only shifts the burden, and postpones the time, 
 of unravelment. If the problem is obscure, let 
 the voters have it in its obscurity and do their 
 share in clearing it up. The kind of obscurity 
 involved is more congenial to the average elector 
 than the comphcated affinities and alhances of the 
 multitude of parties which collect in a proportional 
 chamber.
 
 The Election of Representatives 43 
 
 What we, as democrats, seek to bring about is 
 that the national act shall express a national will. 
 This aim can only be attained by a system which 
 induces in the citizens practical reflection upon 
 national emergencies as they arise. All the in- 
 genuities of Proportional Representation are wasted 
 if they do not bring us nearer to this goal : actually, 
 they seem likely to leave us further from it than 
 they found us. In spite, therefore, of all the care 
 which has been lavished upon their elaboration, 
 they must be dismissed. And, if so, the only 
 possible alternative which remains is something 
 very closely resembling, in principle, the current 
 British system, often so ignorantly derided, of two 
 main parties, " ins " and " outs " and single- 
 member constituencies. 
 
 Note. — The foregoing discussion of Proportional Representa- 
 tion is meant to apply to the election of members of Parliament 
 in England, Scotland and Wales. It does not apply to the 
 proposal that local representative bodies, Borough andCounty 
 Councils, for instance, should be elected on a proportional 
 sj'stem. That proposal deserves to be discussed on its merits 
 and cannot be dealt with here. The case of Ireland is peculiar, 
 in that for the present at least the divisions among the population 
 of the co\mtry seem to be irreconcilable. There is therefore the 
 danger of permanent minorities. Since in Ireland the language 
 difficulty does not arise, the best way of assuring these minorities 
 some representation is by a proportional sj-stem. Finally, one 
 is entitled to oppose proportional representation everywhere, 
 and yet approve of the use of the Alternative Vote in a single- 
 member constituency where there are more than two candidates, 
 and in the few two-member constituencies which still exist.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Parliament and People 
 
 The people of England regards itself as free ; but it is 
 grossly mistaken ; it is free only during the election of 
 members of Parliament. As soon as they are elected, 
 slavery overtakes it and it is nothing. The use it 
 makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys 
 shows indeed that it deserves to lose them. 
 
 Rousseau. The Social Contract. Ch. XV. 
 1762. 
 
 The people are a set of masters whom it is not in a 
 man's power in every instance fully to please, and at 
 the same time faithfully to serve. He that is resolved 
 to persevere without deviation in the line of truth and 
 utility, must have learnt to prefer the still whisper of 
 enduring approbation to the short-hved bustle of 
 tumultuous applause. 
 
 Bentham. Preface to Fragment on Govern- 
 ment, 177^. 
 
 To deliver an opinion is the right of all men ; that of 
 constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, 
 which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear ; 
 and which he ought always most seriousty to consider. 
 But authoritative' instructions, mandates issued, which 
 the member ought blindl}^ and implicitl}' to obey, to 
 vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest 
 conviction of his judgment and conscience, — these are 
 things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and 
 which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole 
 order and tenor of our constitution.
 
 Parliament and People 45 
 
 Burke. Speech to the Electors of Bristol, on 
 his being declared by the Sheriff, duly elected one 
 of the Representatives in Parliament for that City, 
 on Thursday, the yd of November, lyy^. 
 My only object in Parliament would be to promote 
 my opinions ; and what these are, on nearly all the 
 political questions in which the pubhc feel any interest, 
 is before the world ; and until I am convinced that 
 they are wrong, these, and no others, are the opinions 
 that I must act gn. I am ready to give any further 
 explanation of them that might be wished for, and 
 should I be elected I would freely state to my constitu- 
 ents, whenever desired, the votes I intend to give, and 
 my reasons for them. But I could give no other 
 pledge. If the electors are sufficiently satisfied with 
 my opinions as they are, to be willing to give me a trial 
 I would do my best to serve those opinions, and would 
 in no case disguise my intentions or my motives from 
 those to whom I should be indebted for the opportunity. 
 Mill. Letter to James Beal, dated 7th March, 
 1865, in reply to a letter inviting him to accept 
 nomination as Parliamentary candidate for 
 Westminster. Letters. Vol. II., p. 19. 
 When John Stuart Mill came forward as candi- 
 date for the representation of the Borough of 
 Westminster in Parliament he drew up a long 
 statement of his opinions and circulated it to the 
 electors. They were, so to speak, his final terms, 
 the clearly thought-out expression of a mind 
 made up. There was to be no question of bargain- 
 ing or compromise. If the voters took him they 
 would take him on precisel}' those terms, under- 
 standing that he as their member would work for 
 just those causes in just the fashion detailed in the 
 memorandum. Nor was the memorandum the
 
 46 The Voice of the People 
 
 product of negociation between Mill and the con- 
 stituency : complete and final it sprang from 
 Mill's ;ole brain. John Stuart Mill, however, it 
 must be remembered, was an exceptional man, 
 and he was conscious of occupying an exceptional 
 position. He already enjoyed a reputation 
 second to none in England as a political thinker ; 
 and his thinking was the inspiration of a poHtical 
 group for many years before he himself took his 
 seat in the House of Commons. He was already 
 58 when he was invited to stand for Parhament. 
 The ordinary candidate for Parliament does not 
 consider himself either required or entitled to take 
 so heroic a course. It is true that, like Mill, he 
 puts out a statement of his views. But not only 
 is it a much more modest document ; it is also, 
 in its general outUne, frankly unoriginal. His 
 programme is in the main the party programme, 
 and his originalities are mostly concessions, un- 
 important in the party view, to local sentiment 
 or interest. And the party programme which the 
 candidate adopts is not, as a rule, to any great 
 extent the product of pohtical theory, but rather 
 of pohtical interest. The party programme, as 
 we are often reminded, is a vote-catching instru- 
 ment. It represents not so much what the leaders 
 of the party think to be required in the nation's 
 interests as what they think likely to be stimulat- 
 ing to the national appetite. Legislative pro- 
 posals are enumerated, legislative acts are 
 criticized ; but the attempt is seldom made to show
 
 Parliament and People 47 
 
 that these proposals and criticisms are consistent 
 and coherent with one another or collectively 
 express a definite general pohc}-. Individual 
 members are free to theorize, but the party confines 
 itself to the needs of the moment. What holds 
 the programme together is not a theory or an 
 idea, but the continuous hfe of the party and the 
 known personality of its leaders. 
 
 If elected to represent Westminster, Mill would 
 probably have claimed that he was empowered to 
 support any measure which was in substantial 
 agreement with the hnes laid down in his memor- 
 andum to the electors. He would not have con- 
 sidered himself free to vote for a measure which 
 contradicted the memorandum. In short he 
 would have construed his electoral programme as 
 a promise by which he was bound till the next 
 general election. On any matter not dealt with 
 in the memorandum, or in speeches and dis- 
 cussions during the election, he would presumably 
 have claimed freedom to act at his discretion, so 
 long as his decision could be shown to be con- 
 sistent with his known pohtical principles. The 
 programme of the ordinary candidate is, as we 
 have seen, less ambitious ; but his attitude to it 
 during the ensuing ParUament, if he should chance 
 to be successful, is very much the same. He 
 regards it as a series of promises by which he is 
 bound, for departures from which an apology is 
 legitimately demanded ; and he claims the same 
 freedom in regard to issues which did not come up
 
 48 The Voice of the People 
 
 for discussion during the election. The attitude 
 of the leaders of the party which is successful at a 
 general election, and on which the responsibiUty 
 of government falls, is essentially the same. They 
 claim that they have received an authority, often 
 called a mandate, from the electors to execute 
 any item which was included in the party pro- 
 gramme and advocated in their own speeches ; 
 and they recognize, on the other hand, as legiti- 
 mate the doubt whether they are entitled to 
 legislate on any capital issue if no pronouncement 
 on the subject was made at the time of the election. 
 An obvious difficulty arises from the fact that the 
 electors have to " plump " for a complete pro- 
 gramme, and cannot make any reservations. There 
 is therefore no guarantee that any particular item 
 has general approval. This is the opening for 
 many of the most famiUar ingenuities of political 
 rhetoric. The programme may have included 
 Free Trade, Home Rule for Ireland, Abolition of 
 the House of Lords, and Temperance Reform, with 
 a number of less important proposals. To which 
 item was the victory of the party at the polls due ? 
 For which has the Government a mandate ? The 
 generally accepted answer seems to be — for each 
 and all, provided that each can be shown to have 
 been brought sufficiently prominently before the 
 electors. The prominence of an item is gauged 
 by the speeches of leaders and candidates, by 
 discussion in the Press, and by the scrutin}^ of 
 electoral programmes.
 
 Parliament and People 49 
 
 The Mandate Theory may be taken as the 
 generally accepted theory of the relation of Parha- 
 ment to the constituencies. It has no obvious 
 rival. It is, however, frequently criticised, and, 
 one criticism, since it raises a question of principle 
 should be here noted. It is sometimes argued 
 that it is a mistake to interpret a general election 
 as a vote of confidence in a certain Hne of future 
 poHcy or as an authority for the execution of certain 
 measures. The judgment of the electors, it is 
 said, is rather retrospective than prospective, and 
 has reference to what has been done rather than 
 to anything proposed or contemplated If at a 
 general election the governing party receives the 
 same or an increased majority, the true interpre- 
 tation of the popular decision may be put simply 
 in the words " carry on," its emphasis to be 
 inferred from the size of the majority. If, on the 
 other hand, the party loses its majority altogether, 
 the vote should be taken to express disapproval of 
 the methods and actions of that party rather than 
 approval of the proposals of its successful rival. 
 In either case the primary reference of the vote is 
 to the recent past, and the secondary reference to 
 the future, which cannot be entirely excluded, 
 is quite vague and general. The practical effect 
 of the criticism is to discredit the mandate theory 
 in this sense, that the promises and programmes of 
 a party coming fresh to office lose some of their 
 importance, and the claim that any particular 
 proposal received the approval of the electorate,
 
 50 The Voice of the People 
 
 ahead}', as we have seen, somewhat doubtful, 
 becomes more unsubstantial still. The cons- 
 cientious democrat, if this criticism is sound, will 
 employ himself more profitably in exploring the 
 causes of the unpopularity of the defeated party 
 than in studjdng the grounds of the popularity of 
 the victors. 
 
 It may at once b^ granted that this criticism 
 asserts a necessary truth. The judgment of 
 electors is undoubtedly retrospective as well as 
 prospective, or, to put it otherwise, negative as 
 well as positive. It is a vote against something 
 or someone quite as often as a vote for something 
 or someone. Indeed it sometimes looks as if the 
 more educated a man is the more his vote tends to 
 be negatively rather than positively motived. It 
 is easier to tempt an uneducated audience than a 
 highly critical and well-informed assembly with 
 grandiose promises of an approaching millennium. 
 The proportion between the two factors — the 
 negative and the positive — is always hard to 
 determine, and certainly varies at different times. 
 The decisive general election of 1906 was certainW 
 in the main a vote against the prolonged futihties 
 of the Balfour government, and the decisive 
 majority of 1918 was as certainly a vote for Mr. 
 Lloyd George. But no intervening election is easy 
 to interpret ; and it will be noticed that in the 
 case in which a positive or prospective verdict is 
 claimed, nothing that deserves the name of a pro- 
 gramme was put out by the victor, and there was
 
 Parliament and People 51 
 
 no change of ministr}'. All the Prime Minister 
 asked for was permission to " carry on " and by- 
 general consent the permission was generously 
 granted. The election of 1918 is therefore not a 
 very good case for the Mandate theory, since the 
 most fertile imagination could hardly claim that 
 it gave that positive and decisive direction to 
 future policy whiph that theory appears to require. 
 Let us look at the matter rather more widely. 
 By the Mandate theory the people is said to give 
 a certain group of men positive directions to do 
 what they have offered to do ; by the critics of that 
 theory the people is said to give the group, on the 
 one hand, leave to " carry on," if they were 
 alread}- in possession, and on the other, if they 
 were not previously in possession, only negative 
 directions, to do otherwise than as certain others, 
 recently in possession, did. The two views, there- 
 fore, may be described as the theory of the positive 
 Mandate and the theory of the negative Mandate 
 respectively. Both views assume that the electors 
 are sovereign and give to pohcy its general 
 direction, though, no doubt, with more of detail 
 and definition in the one case than in the other. 
 Both views assume that this opportunity of giving 
 polic}' its direction occurs onl}' at a general 
 election, and that in the period between elections 
 the representative body is supreme. When the 
 election is over, the sovereign is dead. Those who 
 represent him ma}' wrangle as to what the living 
 man's wishes reallv were, as to the correct inter-
 
 52 The Voice of the People 
 
 pretation of his last will and testament ; and in 
 case of grave doubt and prolonged inability to 
 agree they may venture to bring the dead sovereign 
 to life again and risk another election. But such 
 emergencies are comparatively rare. As a rule 
 they prefer to continue to exercise the sovereignty 
 entrusted to them at the last election until the 
 limit of time set to ibby law is nearly exhausted, 
 and until they have forced the last ounce of legis- 
 lation out of the battered and dog's-eared mandate 
 which the election bequeathed them. Both 
 theories assume that Parliament enjoys an effec- 
 tive sovereignty under certain limits of time, which 
 are fixed by law, and on certain terms, which are 
 detailed in the election pledges of the governing 
 party. Neither theory can meet Rousseau's 
 taunt, that representative institutions in England 
 mean that the Enghsh people is free only at a 
 general election. 
 
 Behevers in democracy who are also believers 
 in our existing representative government are apt 
 to maintain in practice two main propositions : 
 (i) That a general election is the onh^ authentic 
 expression of the people's will ; (2) that a mandate 
 given at a general election is the only unquestion- 
 able authority for the legislative and other acts 
 of government. It is these two propositions, taken 
 together, that constitute what we have called the 
 mandate theory, whether that theory takes the 
 positive or the negative form. The results of the 
 theory on political practice are obvious and in-
 
 Parliament and People 53 
 
 evitable. First, there will be frequent quarrels as 
 to what the people did actually say at the last 
 election — a question admitting of infinite argument 
 in every direction and of no certain and irrefutable 
 answer. Secondly, as the time of the election 
 recedes, the mandate inevitably becomes weaker 
 and weaker : the main items on the programme 
 are used up, and the theory, strictly interpreted, 
 forbids the raising of capital issues not dealt with 
 in the programme. Therefore, if a government 
 continues to the end of the legal period, the latter 
 part of its tenure of office is likely to be character- 
 ized by weakness and timidity. The expiring 
 mandate chills the enterprise of the mandatory, 
 until the approach of another election stimulates 
 invention afresh. Thirdly, the theory leaves a 
 government powerless in new and unforeseen 
 emergencies, in regard to which no mandate can 
 be said to have been received. European compHca- 
 tions (as in August, 1914), or a revolt in Ireland, 
 may demand immediate action. There is no time 
 to "go to the country" and secure a mandate. 
 If the only authority for government action is 
 derived from a general election, the act of the 
 government will necessarily be unauthorised. But 
 it is plain that such emergencies are the occasion 
 for many of the most crucial and decisive acts of 
 the national life ; and that a democrat cannot be 
 satisfied with a theory or with a practice which 
 hands them over for solution to the unfettered 
 discretion of Prime Minister and Cabinet, assisted
 
 54 The Voice of the People 
 
 or unassisted by Padiament. Fourthly, if it is 
 true that the people is free and sovereign only at a 
 general election, then every good democrat will ask 
 for more frequent elections and shorter intervals 
 between them. The old demand for annual 
 parUaments is a logical consequence of the mandate 
 theory to one who beheves in democracy. By that 
 theory the sovereignty-of the people is necessarily 
 intermittent : the least the democrat can ask is 
 that it shall recur at intervals short enough to 
 guarantee that it will count for something. 
 
 Whatever may be the theory of legislators as to 
 their relation to the electorate, it is qtiite certain 
 that in practice legislation is actually shaped by 
 many other influences besides the pledges given 
 at the last general election. The decision of 
 Parliament and Cabinet on any particular matter 
 is much affected by the activities of outside bodies, 
 some specially formed for the purpose of influenc- 
 ing it, others not. Cabinet and Parliament receive 
 frequent appeals from every sort of interest, 
 temporarily or permanentlj" organized, with regard 
 to the principles and details of legislation and 
 administration. Churches, Trade Unions and 
 Emplo^^ers' Federations, Professional organiza- 
 tions [e.g., of doctors or teachers), philanthropic or 
 semi-philanthropic societies [e.g., the Anti-Slavery 
 and Aborigines Protection Society) — countless or- 
 ganizations of every kind and size are always on 
 the watch, ready to step in with a timely request or 
 warning where their interests are likel}^ to be
 
 Parliament and People 55 
 
 affected. There is also the flood of dail}/ papers 
 and other publications, recording and criticising 
 the actions of government from day to day, always 
 eager to voice a complaint or proclaim a grievance. 
 These are all contemporary influences, and their 
 importance naturally grows as the memories of the 
 last election fade and fail. At first perhaps they are 
 able to affect only the details of legislation — 
 though the line " between detail and principle is 
 often hard to draw — but as the influence of the 
 mandate weakens their power increases, and a 
 government which has little policy or programme, 
 or which has exhausted its programme, often 
 seems to be doing nothing but laboriously attempt- 
 ing to conciliate by small concessions the urgent 
 importunities of conflicting interests. What this 
 shows is that the mandate theory does not cover 
 the ground. Politicians have other ways of finding 
 out what people want than by a general election, 
 and where their mandate fails them they are not as 
 impotent or as independent as they sometimes 
 pretend to be. Since Parliament does not go off to 
 a desert island to meditate on its mandate, it cannot 
 remain untouched by contemporary movements of 
 public opinion or out of the reach of powerful 
 sectional organizations. The general election 
 represents only a part of the influence exerted by 
 the voters upon the government of the day. 
 
 The root of the matter clearly is to be found in 
 the attitude of the individual member of Parlia- 
 ment to his constituency. The question we have to
 
 56 The Voice of the People 
 
 answer is, what, in the interests of democracy, 
 should that attitude be ? The question of the 
 proper relation of the Ministers to Parliament is a 
 further question which must be dealt with 
 separately. But the individual member — what 
 is he ? Is he chosen simply because he is a good 
 and trustworthy man ? Is he therefore free, so 
 long as he keeps his promises, to do as seems best 
 to him., employing his own unfettered discretion 
 on each problem of policy as it arises ? If so, the 
 constituency would seem to have little influence 
 on policy, and the chances of a truly democratic 
 government seem slight. Further, the con- 
 stituency may reasonably complain that it had so 
 small a field from which to select. If it is required 
 to choose simply a good man, it ought surely to be 
 offered a wider range of alternatives and to enjoy 
 further opportunities of studying the character and 
 attainments of candidates. Again, if the main 
 question is the national policy, and if it is desirable, 
 as a democrat naturally supposes, that public 
 attention should be concentrated as far as possible 
 upon that, it would seem to follow that it is un- 
 desirable that the personal character of the can- 
 didates should count for much, if anj^thing, in the 
 decision. A candidate should be chosen because 
 he belongs to a party, which represents a certain 
 policy. Loyalty to party therefore becomes the 
 chief desideratum in a member of parliament, and 
 character and attainments sink into the back- 
 ground. Yet we hear frequently regrets at the
 
 Parliament and People 57 
 
 disappearance of the independent member, the man 
 who faithfully obeys no party whip, but follows 
 his own free judgment. But if all members were 
 independent, it is difficult to see how the voters 
 would exercise any direct effect upon policy. 
 There is yet another view of the relation of the 
 representative to his constituency, one often 
 treated as so absurd that to mention is to refute 
 it. Some maintain that the representative ought 
 to be the delegate of his constituents, that he is 
 sent to Parliament to express their views, not his 
 own, and that only so far as he does this can he be 
 truly said to represent them. If this view Vv^ere 
 accepted, we are told that the House of Commons, 
 degraded to an assemblage of mere delegates, would 
 lose all prestige and authorit3' and would be reduced 
 to impotence. 
 
 We hsw^e stated three different views of the repre- 
 sentative function. According to the first the 
 representative is not bound by anything except 
 his own promises ; according to the second he is 
 bound mainly by ties of party ; according to the 
 third he is, or ought to be, pledged to express the 
 views of his constituency. The upholder of the 
 second view will admit the necessity of an electoral 
 programme and the obligation to make good the 
 promises made at an election ; and the advocate 
 of the third will admit not only this but also the 
 necessity of parties and party loyalty ; where the 
 three views differ is as to what constitutes the 
 essential and overriding obligation. What we
 
 58 The Voice of the People 
 
 have to ask is, which view best expresses the 
 democratic idea. And as soon as the question is 
 asked, it is seen to admit of only one answer. The 
 third view is what democracy requires. No other 
 single change would bring us so near to genuine 
 democratic government as the general adoption of 
 this view of representation by candidates and by 
 constituencies. For democracy requires that what 
 the people can decide it shall itself decide, and not 
 leave the decision to others ; and therefore that the 
 representative of a constituency shall become, so 
 far as he can, a delegate, the chosen bearer to a 
 representative assembly of a decision not his own. 
 For many reasons it is only to a limited extent 
 that he can become a delegate in the strict and 
 narrow sense of the word. The issues which he 
 will have to judge in Parliament are not fully 
 defined when the election takes place, and this fact 
 necessitates a certain freedom of action in the 
 delegate. Only a general decision can be given in 
 advance, even if the majority of electors had the 
 knowledge to give any other. Pure delegation is 
 only possible on a simple and definite issue, a 
 question which requires a mere yes or no, and then 
 only when all factors relevant to the decision are 
 known in advance. The greater part of the 
 business of Parliament is far too technical and 
 complicated to admit of settlement by mere dele- 
 gation. The bogey, then, of the mere delegate 
 may be put on one side. What the democrat 
 claims is that a representative who is in earnest
 
 Parliament and People 59 
 
 with democracy will try so far as he can to be the 
 delegate of his constituency, that he will throughout 
 consider himself to be employing his judgment and 
 his abilities in the service of those he represents, 
 and, when he votes, to be giving not so much his 
 vote as theirs. This, he urges, is representation, 
 this is democracy, and nothing else is. 
 
 To this view it may be objected, first, that it 
 leaves no room for^party. If the member is trying 
 always to express the views of the majority of his 
 constituents, there is no guarantee that he will con- 
 sistently follow any leader. Further, it may be 
 argued that, if this view were generally accepted 
 by candidates, it would not matter what private 
 views the representative held. A Conservative 
 might represent a Liberal seat better than a Liberal, 
 if he were better at divining and expressing tlie 
 constituency's views. There is the obvious reply 
 that it is exceedingly difficult, though by no means 
 impossible, to express fairly views with which you 
 are in fundamental disagreement, and that for this 
 reason the representative's views should be of the 
 same general colour as those of the majority of his 
 constituency. But, further, the criticism ignores 
 the essential and necessary function which party 
 plays in the presentation to the constituency of the 
 political issues of the moment. Just because of the 
 great complexity of Parliamentary business, some 
 antecedent simplification of the issues is necessary 
 before the constituencies are able to give a judg- 
 ment or decision at all. Our method of achieving
 
 6o The Voice of the People 
 
 this necessary simplification is to induce the can- 
 didates to group themselves into two or three 
 parties, each representing a different programme, 
 and each prepared, if called upon, to undertake 
 the government of the country. Unless the choice 
 of a representative is the choice of an adherent 
 (with however many qualifications) of one of these 
 main policies, it is difficult to see how the vote of 
 the constituency can have any direct or readily 
 intelligible significance. But if the choice of a 
 representative is also the acceptance of a line of 
 policy, the service of party becomes a necessary 
 element in the conduct of a member and finds a 
 place among the fundamental terms on which he 
 is accepted as delegate. It is not as a mere indi- 
 vidual but as a member of a party that he is elected, 
 and a vote against the party will require apology 
 and justification as much as a vote opposed to the 
 wishes of the constituency. The member is thus 
 pledged to a double loyalty, to his party on the 
 one hand and to his constituency on the other, 
 but the obligation arising from the two claims are 
 not normally conflicting but coincident : loyalty 
 to party is a necessary element in the service of the 
 constituency. It is not true, therefore, that the 
 view under discussion leaves no room for party ; 
 and if it involves the consequence that a vote 
 against the party policy is justified when such a 
 vote is clearly desired by the constituency, it is a 
 consequence which seems to be necessitated by the 
 claims of democracy and which is not likely to
 
 Parliament and People 6i 
 
 render difficult or impossible party government 
 as we know it. 
 
 It will be objected, secondly, that this view 
 deprives the representative of all independence 
 and originality. It depresses his status and 
 degrades his function until he becomes the mere 
 creature of his party and his constituency. Is he 
 never to assert his freedom, and record a vote 
 which is neither that of his party nor that of his 
 constituency, but his own ? The main answer to 
 this criticism is, of course, that if the country is to 
 be governed by the opinions of some six hundred 
 individuals, however well qualified and however 
 carefully selected they may be, it may be governed 
 well but it will not be a democracy. A representa- 
 tive is not sent to Parliament to express his private 
 opinions, and, when he is expressing them, he is 
 not acting as a representative. Further, the 
 representative has had his chance, at the election, 
 of making terms with his constituency. He was 
 free to tell them that on certain main points his 
 mind was made up, and that he would not consent 
 to surrender his convictions to those of his con- 
 stituents. Even though he may feel a scruple in 
 claiming a " mandate " for every item of such a 
 statement, there is no doubt that he is morally 
 entitled to act as he there said he would, and to 
 consider that in so acting he is true to his character 
 of representative. And, in the last resort, it must 
 be granted that he is free, upon certain conditions, 
 to back his own opinion against that of both his
 
 62 The Voice of the People 
 
 party and his constituency. If he thinks he sees 
 a better way of getting what the country and his 
 constituency really want, a surer method of 
 securing what his party is really aiming at, than 
 the measures proposed by his party and accepted 
 by his constituenc5^ he is morally entitled to do 
 what he can to bring that alternative about. For 
 he is opposing the party and the constituenc}' in 
 their own interest and at his own risk. He is 
 always free to oppose a passing wave of opinion, 
 either in Parliament or outside, on the ground that 
 it is onl}^ a passing phase, trusting that in the long 
 run his view will be seen to be the truer to the 
 principles on which he and his opponents are agreed 
 and to the permanent interests which all profess 
 to serve. For this reason it is undesirable that the 
 member should be too closely controlled either by 
 his part}^ or by his constituenc}^ The suggestion, 
 for instance, is sometimes made that a member of 
 Parliament should under certain conditions be 
 liable to recall by his constituents. Such a change 
 might have good results, but its danger is obvious. 
 It might deprive the representative of a valuable 
 and necessary kind of freedom — the freedom to 
 ignore or oppose passing gusts of opinion. Finall}-, 
 the assertion that delegation, in the sense liere 
 intended, involves a depression or degradation of 
 the status of the representative ma\' be met with 
 a flat denial. To express the wishes of a con- 
 stituency is a more difficult, dignified, and im- 
 portant function than to expound the idiosyncrasies
 
 ■Parliament and People 63 
 
 of a necessaril}^ biassed and limited individualit3^ 
 The representatives of Manchester, if they really- 
 represented Manchester, would speak with far 
 more authority and would be heard with far more 
 respect than they could ever claim as mere indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 Democrac}', then, requires that a representative 
 should be the delegate of his constituency, that he 
 should speak in its name and vote on its behalf. 
 But how can this relation be maintained ? It is 
 established, of course, in the first instance, at the 
 election : but, as we have seen, election pledges 
 and mandates soon lose their freshness and their 
 relevance, and a general election cannot be 
 expected much more often than once in four years. 
 Some way must be found of bridging the gap 
 between elections, if the representative is to remain 
 during those four years in an}^ true sense the 
 delegate of his constituency. But it is plain that in 
 this case where there is a will there is a way. A 
 member who really wishes to express the views of 
 his constituents will soon devise means of dis- 
 covering what their views are, and those who have 
 no experience of constituencies will not be able 
 to give him much help. Clearly he must remain 
 always in the closest possible touch with his con- 
 stituents, continually reporting to them on the 
 state of affairs in the House of Commons, explaining 
 difficult points, justifying doubtful votes, persuad- 
 ing them of the wisdom and honesty of his own 
 conduct as representative. He is their expert 1
 
 64 The Voice of the People 
 
 adviser, as well as their delegate, and he will always 
 be ready to put his expert knowledge at their 
 service on matters of parliamentary tactics and 
 procedure and on details of legislation and ad- 
 ministration, as well as on general principles of 
 policy. On all questions they are entitled to 
 expect a lead from him, and on the other hand 
 they may well ask that sometimes, when there is 
 no question of sacrifice of principle or conscience, 
 their representative will undertake to record a 
 vote with which he personally disagrees, just 
 because such is the wish of his constituents. 
 Throughout the representative should remember 
 that he is responsible to the constituency as a 
 whole ; not to any one section within it, and 
 should take care to ensure that every type of 
 opinion has free access to him. 
 
 If a connection of this kind could be established 
 with the constituency, the chief ground of 
 Rousseau's complaint that the sovereignty of the 
 people under representative institutions is inter- 
 mittent would be removed. The general election, 
 with its pledges and programmes, would not indeed 
 lose its importance, but it would be deprived of its 
 overpowering and unique significance. The 
 continuous sovereignty of the people, at which 
 democrac}' aims, would be immeasurably nearer 
 realization. The paralysis of government in its 
 later years of office, which is a consequence, as we 
 have seen, of the theory of the mandate, would no 
 longer be excusable. Lastly, the electoral pro-
 
 Parliament and People 65 
 
 grammes themselves could be purged and simplified, 
 since the embargo on the production of capital 
 measures without such previous warning could be 
 removed. This last result would surely be most 
 desirable. " Promises," says William Godwin, 
 " are, absolutely considered, an evil, and stand in 
 opposition to the genuine and wholesome exercise 
 of an intellectual nature." He means that respect 
 for a promise given in the past will deprive a man 
 of his freedom to meet present emergencies with 
 the best measures that his wits can devise. The 
 criticism has surely some point against a party 
 programme which is in effect a promise as to the 
 direction of the major activities of the party for the 
 next four years. Such a promise must contain an 
 element of prophecy which events may falsify. 
 If the recipient of the promise is dead or dormant, 
 as the mandate theory in effect assumes, the giver 
 is faced with three alternatives, dissolution, 
 dictatorship, or fidelity to a plan which events 
 have made unworkable. But if the recipient of 
 such promises can be induced to remain always 
 alive and active, as we now see he might be, then, 
 in the first place, promises are less necessar}', and, 
 in the second place, they are less binding. It is 
 always possible, without a dissolution, to go back 
 to him and lay the case before him ; if a promise 
 was given, to ask for a modification of its terms, 
 or, if a new departure is required, to ask for 
 authority to make it. Many embarrassments of 
 government will therefore be removed if members
 
 66 The Voice of the People 
 
 of Parliament can succeed in keeping their con- 
 stituencies alive between elections and can con- 
 stitute themselves genuine representatives of their 
 opinions. 
 
 Note. — In the new German Constitution, Section II (The 
 Reichstag), Article zi, occurs the following interesting statement 
 of principle : " The deputies are representatives of the whole 
 people. They are subject to their conscience only, and not 
 bound by any mandates." But how shall a man represent a 
 whole people ? It would be interesting to know with what 
 arguments this principle was recommended, and by whom.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Ministry and Parliament. 
 
 The Government is not a three-quarter back trying to 
 get its policy past the public goal-keeper. 
 
 The Times. [Leading Article : July 31st , 
 1919]. 
 The Cabinet, in a word, is a board of control chosen 
 by the legislature, out of persons whom it trusts and 
 knows, to rule the nation. 
 
 Bagehot. The English Constitution. Ch 1. 
 [1867]. 
 In spite of the Privy Council, in spite of Orders in 
 Council, of Royal Warrants and ceremonial observances, 
 in spite of the Norman le roy le veult, Ministers are no 
 longer advisers of the Crown, but delegates of Parlia- 
 ment, whose authority lasts only so long as they 
 retain the confidence or at least the support of a 
 majority of the House of Commons. English Govern- 
 ment to-day is carried on by standing executive 
 committee, responsible to Parliament for all that it 
 says or does, and Uable to be displaced if it offends the 
 sovereign body. The Ministry indeed leads Parlia- 
 ment, but only so long and in such directions as Parlia- 
 ment is wilhng to be led. 
 
 Redlich and Hurst. Local Government in 
 
 England. Vol. II., p. 353. [1903.] 
 
 The third of the above quotations may be said 
 
 to embody the accepted view of the relation of the 
 
 Ministry or Cabinet to Parliament, as established 
 
 in the practice of the constitution before tlie war of
 
 68 The Voice of the People 
 
 1914. The ministry or cabinet is regarded as a 
 committee of Parliament, with executive powers, 
 and is even said to be its delegate. The question 
 we have to ask, following the line we have hitherto 
 pursued, is whether the existing practice, or any 
 obvious modification of it, will serve as a satis- 
 factory vehicle for the democratic idea. By 
 following the hint contained in the use of the term 
 delegate above, and by giving a natural extension 
 to the conclusions reached in the last chapter, we 
 are at once led to attempt a simple solution. Let 
 us suppose, at least for the sake of argument, that 
 the relation already supposed to exist between the 
 representative and his constituency is repeated, 
 first, in the relation of Cabinet and Parliament 
 and, secondly, in the relation of Prime Minister 
 and Cabinet ; that the Cabinet is in some sense 
 and as far as practicable the delegate of Parlia- 
 ment, and the Prime Minister of the Cabinet. We 
 have to consider whether such a relation corre- 
 sponds or might correspond to the facts, and 
 whether, if it does or did, the principle of democracy 
 is likely to be helped thereby to realization. 
 
 We have seen that in democratic theory the 
 representative expresses in Parliament opinions 
 not his own, or not merely his own, and speaks 
 with weight just for that reason. But these 
 opinions, which he expresses, he himself, as an 
 expert adviser, helped to form, and further he holds 
 himself free in certain circumstances, at his own 
 risk and with full publicity, without divesting
 
 Ministry and Parliament 69 
 
 himself of his representative character, to act and 
 speak contrary to the existing opinions of those 
 he represents. He is in close and continuous 
 contact with his constituency, and as a result his 
 conduct in Parliament is bound to show traces of 
 compromise and opportunism as he adjusts it from 
 time to time to meet the legitimate claims of con- 
 flicting interests and ideas among his constituents. 
 Of the analogous statements which might be made 
 of the Cabinet in relation to Parliament many are 
 unquestionably true and apposite. The Cabinet 
 also is expected to express opinions not merely its 
 own, and in proportion as the opinions expressed 
 are known or suspected to be confined to the 
 cabinet and not effectively supported outside they 
 lose weight and authority. And in the formation 
 of Parliamentary opinion the Cabinet gives the 
 lead, and plays the part of an expert adviser, 
 putting its special inside knowledge at the disposal 
 of the assembly as a whole. But the Cabinet, like 
 the representative, holds itself free in some 
 measure, at its own proper risk, to act counter to 
 the views of its own supporters and of the House 
 as a whole. For though the government is de- 
 pendent on its majority, methods are easily devised 
 of securing a majority for measures of which the 
 majority of members wholly or partly disapprove. 
 The support of members for such measures is the 
 more easily secured because of the generally 
 accepted rule — one of the most potent agents in 
 creating party discipline — that an adverse vote
 
 70 The Voice of the People 
 
 in the House of Commons means the fall of the 
 ministry. Lastly, it is plain that the Cabinet is 
 obliged by its position and duties to be in con- 
 tinuous contact with the House ; and it is inevit- 
 able that its dependence on a majority in the 
 House should be a frequent cause of compromise 
 and opportunist improvisation. 
 
 But though these "Analogies are interesting and 
 may turn out to be important, it is evident that 
 the relation of Cabinet to Parliament can never 
 be the same as that of a member of Parliament to 
 his constituency. The constituency appoints its 
 representative, but the Cabinet is not elected by 
 Parliament. The Cabinet on the other hand may 
 be destroyed at any moment by the action of 
 Parliament ; but no action of the constituents will 
 avail to unseat a member, once elected, until some 
 cause beyond their control brings about another 
 election. The Cabinet, again, is selected by the 
 Prime Minister from those groups of members only 
 on whom he considers himself entitled to rely for 
 support ; from the rest of the House a hostile 
 attitude is expected : it may therefore be argued 
 that the Cabinet represents, not the whole House, 
 but only a section, though always a majority, of it. 
 It is as if the representative (considered now as 
 analogous to the Prime Minister) were appointed 
 by the central party organization, and undertook 
 the representation of the constituents with the aid 
 of certain individuals selected by him from among 
 those of his constituents who were in agreement
 
 Ministry and Parliament 71 
 
 with him, retaining his office so long as he could 
 show that a bare majority continued to support 
 him. The main difference between the two cases 
 follows, clearly from the continuous existence of 
 Parliament on the one hand and the intermittent 
 existence of the electorate on the other. The 
 representative is chosen by a body on which after- 
 wards he is in no sense dependent : the Cabinet is 
 continuously dependent on the support of a body 
 by which it is not chosen. 
 
 The Prime Minister is, at first sight, even more 
 closely tied by his Cabinet than the Cabinet as a 
 whole by Parliament. If they have to maintain 
 their majority in the House, he has to keep his 
 Cabinet as far as possible unanimous. On the 
 other hand all appointments are in his hand, and as 
 a rule his personal prestige is greater than that of 
 any other minister. A Prime Minister has also 
 the resource that he can appeal — though this is 
 usually done more or less covertly — either to 
 Parliament or to the public at large against his 
 Cabinet. And the resignation of a Minister or 
 Ministers does not involve the fall of the govern- 
 ment. The Prime Minister is not, therefore, 
 so dependent on his Cabinet as he may at 
 first sight appear to be and it may be sus- 
 pected that there is more danger of our 
 methods of government (even as practised prior 
 to August, 1914) leading to too great a con- 
 centration of power in the head of the government, 
 than of the Prime Minister becoming a " mere
 
 72 The Voice of the People 
 
 delegate." But when Cabinet government is a 
 reality we do find that the relation of Prime 
 Minister to Cabinet is in principle the same as the 
 relation indicated as actual or desirable between 
 Cabinet and Parliament and between the member 
 and his constituency. He is its delegate in the 
 sense that he expresses its decisions ; views, there- 
 fore, or resolves not merely his own. At the same 
 time he preserves a certain independence to refuse 
 or modify such decisions, without ceasing to speak 
 and act as head of the Cabinet. And in the forma- 
 tion of such decisions nis own voice has the greatest 
 weight, as that of the appointed leader and expert 
 adviser. Unless he is singularly overbearing or 
 exceptionally successful in meeting opposition, his 
 resulting action will show the familiar traits of 
 compromise, concession, and opportunism. 
 
 If the principle of democracy is to be realized it 
 is necessary that the impetus to every act of 
 government shall originate in the country or in the 
 constituencies, at the circumference, as it were, 
 and not at the centre. It is therefore necessary 
 that the principle of delegation shall persist through 
 each stage in the representative hierarchy to the 
 very top. If the representative is not a delegate, 
 democracy is stifled at birth ; and in proportion 
 as the Cabinet or the Prime Minister refuse to 
 consider themselves delegates. Cabinet government 
 becomes a hindrance instead of a help to the 
 realization of the democratic idea. And in spite of 
 the officially recognized opposition, and of the
 
 Ministry and Parliament 73 
 
 fact that the Cabinet is selected from only a part of 
 the House of Commons, the Government and its 
 policy do really represent in a real sense the whole 
 House. An active minority can at the very least 
 always secure concessions, and a big measure when 
 it emerges from the House in its final form is, in 
 detail at least, the product of the collective wisdom 
 of the assembly as a whole. If it is true of any 
 country, it is still more true of any Parliament, 
 that it gets the government which it deserves. 
 The Cabinet may therefore be considered, without 
 any undue straining of words, as at least capable 
 of serving as the true delegate or representative of 
 a democratic assembly. The Cabinet, with the 
 Prime Minister at its head, is the culminating 
 point in that process of delegation by which alone, 
 so far as one can see, democratic government is 
 possible in a political unit of the size of the modern 
 nation. Concentrating in its hands, as historians 
 have often observed, practically all the historic 
 powers of the monarchy, it is yet an anomalous 
 and almost accidental development whose per- 
 manence has often been doubted. At the present 
 time (1919) politicians do not seem to be entirely 
 agreed as to its function or its utility. It is not at 
 all certain how far " reconstruction," under the 
 present Prime Minister, will allow the restoration 
 of pre-war practice. The question of its place, 
 therefore, modified or unmodified, in the demo- 
 cratic scheme is of some immediate interest : it is 
 also essential to our present purpose.
 
 74 The Voice of the People 
 
 ParUament is a committee of the nation, whose 
 sole legitimate function, on the democratic theory, 
 is to make the will of the nation effective, or, to 
 return to a phrase used more than once above, to 
 make a national act possible. Cabinet and Prime 
 Minister are essentially creatures of Parliament, 
 existing at its pleasure and in the form determined 
 from time to time by "it. They are devices which 
 it has found necessary to the performance of its 
 task. Though Parliament does not legislate con- 
 cerning the office of Prime Minister and its duties, 
 though it has never formally intervened in the 
 creation and development of the Cabinet Council, 
 the only justification of these offices and institu- 
 tions is as serving its will, their whole authority 
 and prestige are drawn from it ; and a Parliament 
 which was determined to modify or abolish them 
 could not remain long at a loss for means to procure 
 the execution of its wishes. Though a Prime 
 Minister will sometimes appear to be the ruler, 
 even the arbitrary and irresponsible ruler, of 
 Parliament, rather than its servant, assisted by 
 ministers who are mere extensions of his personality, 
 yet this can occur only by the sufferance of Parlia- 
 ment, which, for the time being, is presumably 
 content to see itself deprived of all active or 
 originative force in the determination of acts of 
 government. This is only a further illustration ot 
 a proposition otherwise amply established, that 
 institutions alone cannot create democracy ; at 
 the best they can only make it possible, and at the
 
 Ministry and Parliament 75 
 
 worst the obstacles they interpose are seldom 
 sufficient to make it impossible. But, however 
 Prime Ministers and Cabinets may in fact behave, 
 there can be no doubt as to the purpose which 
 democracy requires them to serve. Their sole 
 legitimate function is to make effective the wishes 
 of the popularly elected assembly, which is itself 
 striving solel}- to express and carry out the wishes 
 of the nation. Their first responsibility, therefore, 
 is to Parliament and through the Parliament to the 
 nation ; for it is only as delegates of Parliament 
 that they serve the nation as a whole : as indi- 
 viduals, they represent a single constituency. So 
 far as they ignore or belittle the authority of the 
 representative assembl}', they divest themselves 
 of their proper function and their action loses its 
 special authority. 
 
 It may be suggested that the essential depen- 
 dence of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on 
 Parliament would be more effectively established 
 than it is at present, if one or both were actually 
 appointed by the votes of the newh^-elected House 
 of Commons, fresh appointments being made in 
 the same way in the case of casual vacancies in the 
 Cabinet or of a change of ministry without a fresh 
 general election. The present practice is, of course, 
 that the Prime Minister is nominated by the Crown, 
 and himself, with the consent of the Crown, selects 
 his Ministers and Cabinet. The nomination or 
 approval of the Crown introduces an element which 
 is patently undemocratic, since the opinions of
 
 76 The Voice of the People 
 
 the Sovereign are not directly amenable to any 
 kind of external control. And in this one case 
 the Crown cannot act on the advice of the 
 Ministers, since there are no Ministers to advise 
 it. So far as the selection of a Prime Minister is 
 concerned, in four cases out of five there is no 
 difficulty : the alternative leader is obvious to all, 
 and the King's nomination is a mere form. But 
 in the fifth case the sovereign is certainly placed 
 in an awkward situation : he is forced, however 
 reluctantly, to decide a political issue of the first 
 importance by his own judgment. If the Crown 
 is to remain outside politics — the only condition 
 on which a hereditary monarchy is compatible 
 with democracy — this is undesirable. As to the 
 selection of Ministers, the exceptions to the 
 customary reticence of our leaders are sufficiently 
 numerous to enable us to see that the approval of 
 the Crown is by no means always a mere form. 
 In the nineteenth century, at least one political 
 career was cut short by the refusal of Queen 
 Victoria to accept a particular politician on any 
 terms as a Minister : in many other cases, no 
 doubt, there have been difficulties. The irre- 
 sponsible interference of the Crown is itself un- 
 democratic ; but it is made even more dangerous 
 to democracy by the secrecy with which it is carried 
 out. Democracy becomes at once impossible if 
 the nation is to be deprived of the opportunity of 
 knowing what is being done in its name. If the 
 King gives advice to the Prime Minister which the
 
 Ministry and Parliament 77 
 
 Prime Minister accepts, clearly the responsibility 
 is with the Minister, and there is no need that the 
 King's name should be mentioned. But a veto on 
 appointments is an act of authority, and, like any 
 other act of authority, should be publicly exercised, 
 so that it may be capable of being questioned 
 before its effects are irremediable. It may be 
 replied that the Prime Minister designate has the 
 obvious resource that he may refuse to serve. But 
 it is much to ask of a man who is offered perhaps 
 the chance of a lifetime, that he shall refuse it 
 merely because he cannot get his way in regard to 
 some small detail. It is at best a clumsy way of 
 securing what can be simply and honestly effected 
 at once by establishing the principle that the 
 consent of the Crown to the appointment of 
 Ministers is unnecessary, or (if that characteris- 
 tically English device is preferred) is a mere form. 
 It should be no more than a form, if it is true that 
 " ministers are no longer advisers of the Crown." 
 
 They are substantially, as we have seen, the 
 delegates of Parliament, and on this ground it is 
 urged that they should owe their appointment to 
 it. For various reasons it may be doubted 
 whether such a change would advance the interests 
 of democracy. Experience of assemblies lends 
 strong support to the view that a large body is ill- 
 suited to the task of making appointments, even 
 when the range of alternatives is previously 
 narrowed for it by a committee of selection. The 
 collective wisdom is no bad judge of the common
 
 78 The Voice of the People 
 
 interest, but a poor judge of persons. Further, 
 appointment b}' the House as a whole would give 
 great power to small groups or fractions within 
 the Government majority to dictate to the Prime 
 Minister, since the transfer of, say, 30 votes from 
 one side to the other would frequently be decisive. 
 And the opposition would have a considerable 
 influence on the selection of ministers, unless the 
 majority supporting the new government settled 
 its list in advance and voted solid for it. Finally, 
 if the function of a minister is considered quite 
 generally, it does not seem unreasonable that his 
 selection should rest with the Prime Minister. A 
 minister has two separate but connected duties, that 
 of assisting, as required, in the formulation of the 
 general policy of the government and in its appli- 
 cation to particular problems as they arise, and that 
 of controlling on behalf of Parliament the adminis- 
 tration of some particular department of govern- 
 ment. Ministers excluded from the Cabinet 
 exercise, presumably, only the second of these 
 functions, i.e., they have no voice in the determina- 
 tion of policy except perhaps so far as their own 
 departments are concerned. In selecting Ministers 
 the Prime Minister will naturally choose, first, 
 men who are in substantial agreement with him, 
 with whom, therefore, co-operation is likely to be 
 profitable, and, secondly, the men best fitted for 
 the several departments of government. There 
 are, of course, other considerations which obstruct 
 his freedom of choice. There are services to the
 
 Ministry and Parliament 79 
 
 party to be rewarded ; there are personal likings 
 and dislikings which will not be altogether 
 suppressed ; there are importunate groups within 
 the party which insist on what they consider their 
 due representation. The memoirs of Cabinet 
 Ministers often give the impression that these 
 personal and sectional interests are the most im- 
 portant factors in the process of cabinet making, 
 almost to the exclusion of the more legitimate 
 considerations of capacity as adviser and ability as 
 administrator. But personal and sectional ques- 
 tions would not be deprived of their influence, 
 though its form M-ould certainl)- be changed, if the 
 selection were entrusted to the House of Commons : 
 so that that issue is at least indecisive. The main 
 point appears to be this, that a minister exists 
 not to represent a certain section of members of 
 Parliament on all questions, but to execute in 
 detail the policy approved by the Prime Minister 
 and Cabinet and by the majority in Parliament in 
 that particular department in which he has been 
 chosen to serve. Since the Ministry or Cabinet 
 is not a collection of representatives but an execu- 
 tive committee, there is no necessity for it to be 
 elected, so long as it is controlled, by the assembly 
 for which it acts. ^~~~" 
 
 So much of the subordinate ministers. The 
 case of the Prime Minister is different. He at least 
 stands unquestionably for a general policy and not 
 for a department. This fact seems to strengthen 
 the case for election by the House of Commons.
 
 8o The Voice of the People 
 
 But there are obvious difficulties. Sometimes it is 
 necessary to appoint a Prime Minister before a 
 General Election, who forthwith announces his 
 Ministry and appeals to the Country to give him a 
 majority. In such a case who would select the 
 Prime Minister ? Not, surely, the House of 
 Commons, containing probably a majority of 
 supporters of the Ministry just discredited. The 
 practice of the Crown appears to be, roughly, to 
 nominate the leader of the largest party in the 
 House of Commons, or, if the largest party is now 
 discredited, of the second largest party in the 
 House. In case of doubt, as perhaps in 1893, 
 when Lord Rosebery's nomination was something 
 of a surprise, the judgment of the Sovereign may 
 have to decide, but as a general rule, since the 
 party selects its own leader, the party may be said 
 indirectly to designate the Prime Minister. It 
 may therefore be suggested that the outgoing 
 Prime Minister, should, as his last act of govern- 
 ment, indicate the party which is to succeed his 
 own, and that this party {i.e., the existing Members 
 of Parliament professing to belong to it) should be 
 recognized as having the right to nominate its own 
 Prime Minister. The nomination of Prime 
 Minister M^ould remain, as now, the act of the 
 Sovereign, but he would act as in other matters 
 on the advice of his Ministers, first inviting a 
 certain party to make an election, and then 
 announcing the result of that election as his 
 appointment. The suggestion, however, is open
 
 Ministry and Parliament 8i 
 
 to an obvious and perhaps fatal objection. Party 
 hitherto has been in British practice a purely 
 voluntary organization, not formally recognized in 
 the Law or Custom of the Constitution. Unless 
 therefore some very plain and certain advantage 
 were in prospect, the proposed innovation would 
 be gravely suspect. We have seen reason to 
 believe that the existence of political parties is a 
 help and even a necessity to an electorate seeking 
 to give a comprehensive and influential judgment 
 on national policy ; and, if parties are to exist for 
 the electorate, they must also exist in the House of 
 Commons. But inside the House of Commons it 
 is essential that parties should retain their fluidity, 
 their freedom to re-group and re-combine in face 
 of immediate necessities of action, and an}^ device 
 which would tend to stereotype or permanently 
 establish existing party divisions is to be depre- 
 cated. It is to be expected that the formal 
 recognition of party organizations in the sense 
 suggested above would have that effect. 
 
 But if the nomination of the Prime Minister by 
 the King, not under the advice of Ministers, is 
 undesirable, and his election by a party designated 
 by the King upon the advice of Ministers is for 
 different reasons equally undesirable, what alterna- 
 tive remains ? Only, it would seem, election by 
 the House of Commons as a whole. Such election 
 would of course in fact amount to appointment by 
 the preponderant party or combination of parties : 
 for the parties would no doubt meet separately
 
 82 The Voice of the People 
 
 beforehand and vote solid for their selected candi- 
 dates. But the innovation of giving official recog- 
 nition to the party organization would be avoided, 
 and the outgoing Prime Minister would be freed 
 from the rather invidious duty of playing a decisive 
 part in the selection of his successor. It is true 
 that a moribund House of Commons, which by 
 some split in a party h'ad just succeeded in defeating 
 a povernment and causing its resignation, might 
 have some difficulty in selecting its successor and 
 might make an appointment which the electorate 
 refused to endorse. But no great harm would be 
 done. On the assembly of the newly-elected 
 House, the Prime Minister, finding himself without 
 a majority, would be obliged to resign, and the 
 House would proceed to a new election. And the 
 principle of democracy would be to this extent 
 advanced, that, in possessing the right of appoint- 
 ing the Prime Minister, the elected House would 
 play the decisive part in determining the general 
 policy of government. The general control being 
 thus established, the care of the departments, at 
 least so far as the appointment of their Parlia- 
 mentary spokesmen is concerned, could reasonably 
 be left to the Prime Minister's discretion. 
 
 Of Athens, at the most famous period in its 
 history, it is recorded by an anti-democratic 
 historian with some satisfaction that its govern- 
 ment was " in form a democracy, but in fact the 
 rule of its first citizen." Of our own constitution 
 it is often said that it is in form a monarch3^ but in
 
 Ministry and Parliament 83 
 
 fact a democracy. But some may think that we 
 are not far from the Athenian climax, that the 
 more fully democracy is realized, the more nearly 
 our Prime Minister approximates to the type of 
 democratic dictator. They speak of the decreasing 
 prestige and importance of the House of Commons, 
 of the rapid atrophy and degeneration of the 
 Cabinet ; they point to the largely increased num- 
 ber of " placemen," secretaries and under- 
 secretaries of departments and sub-departments, 
 a consequence of the rapid extension in recent 
 times of the functions of government — all nominees 
 of the Prime Minister and retaining office at his 
 pleasure. There are now, they say, few members 
 of Parliament so insignificant that they may not 
 hope to find themselves rewarded one day for 
 tactful obedience or disobedience by some small 
 salaried post ; and, if that is so, how can it be 
 hoped that Parliament will preserve a proper 
 independence and not relapse into subservience ? 
 The Prime Minister himself, they further observe, 
 shows openly his sense of the futility of Parliament 
 by ceasing to lead the House and only rarely 
 attending its debates. His action is increasingly 
 independent of Parliament ; he negociates directly 
 with " organized labour " or with the country at 
 large, and even when he speaks in Parliament, he 
 is not speaking to it but to the public outside. It 
 was said above that his responsibility, and that of 
 the Ministers, is to Parliament, and through Parlia- 
 ment to the nation. That may be very well in
 
 84 The Voice of the People 
 
 theory, but in fact the relation is reversed. Parlia- 
 ment has been taught recently, and has learnt the 
 lesson only too well, that it is responsible for its 
 actions to its master, the Prime Minister, who is 
 himself the nation incarnate. And, since the 
 functions of government are not likely to be 
 narrowed in the near future, the number of place- 
 men ^^■ill not be diminished, and the subservience 
 of Parliament will continue. 
 
 If the truth of the above description were con- 
 ceded, and if it were further granted that the 
 tendencies criticized were solid and irreversible, 
 not due to any extent to exceptional conditions 
 already passing, it would be necessar\^ to recon- 
 struct our theory of representative democracy from 
 the beginning. But it is fortunately not necessary 
 to concede so absolutely either the truth of the 
 description, or, in regard to such truth as it 
 possesses, the solidit^^ of the tendencies described. 
 In the first place, it may be suggested that the 
 peculiar position of the Prime Minister at the 
 present time, his exceptional independence of his 
 colleagues and of Parliament, is itself the direct 
 consequence of a popular decision, since the con- 
 stituencies at the last election showed a strong 
 disposition to accept any candidate, whatever his 
 part}^ ties, who was willing to pledge himself to 
 support Mr. Lloyd George. The rule of one man, 
 then, if it exists, may be said to be evidence of the 
 genuinely representative character of our institu- 
 tions. But the exceptional result might be taken
 
 Ministry and Parliament 85 
 
 as typical of the future, the democratic dictator 
 might be hailed as the first of a new dynasty, if it 
 could not be shown that the situation was itself 
 exceptional and contained abnormalities which are 
 already on their way to removal. That the national 
 situation was peculiar needs no proof. It is not 
 hkely to recur frequently, and it would be beside 
 our purpose to investigate its peculiarities. What 
 is to the point is the resulting abnormality of 
 politics. The electorate could have chosen, it is 
 true, between party labels — candidates still called 
 themselves Liberal, Conservative and Labour — 
 but it could not choose between parties in the 
 fashion to which it is accustomed at General 
 Elections, i.e., between rival pohcies, because there 
 were not in any effective sense rival policies between 
 which to choose. All three parties were more or 
 less implicated in the existing government, and 
 therefore no vote on grounds of party could be 
 quite definitely construed as a vote for or against 
 the Government. Thus party was in abeyance 
 and failed to perform its customary function of 
 simplifying the issue to the electorate. There 
 was perhaps an approach to an intelligible opposi- 
 tion between the followers of Mr. Asquith and 
 those of Mr. Lloyd George, with the Labour Party 
 — an untried organization — rather obscurely offered 
 as an alternative to both. Of the two main 
 personalities Mr. Asquith seemed half-hearted, and 
 his followers were in a minority even among the 
 candidates, while Mr. Lloyd George had the
 
 86 The Voice of the People 
 
 prestige — not shared with any party — of recent 
 and decisive victory. Who can wonder that the 
 decision was, with scarcely any effort on his part, 
 in Mr. Lloyd George's favour ? In the practical 
 abeyance of parties it is not surprising that the 
 election was in the main a victory for an out- 
 standing personality. 
 
 How far the abeyance of parties was a necessity 
 in the situation in which the country found itself 
 need not be asked. It is sufficient for our present 
 purpose to observe that it is a condition which is 
 abnormal and removable, and indeed already well 
 on its way to removal. It is also worth observing 
 that the same cause could not fail to produce an 
 effect upon the atmosphere of the House of 
 Commons and its relation to the Prime Minister. 
 Ordinarily the Prime Minister is the Head of a 
 Party, dependent for his position on the continued 
 support of those members of the Party who con- 
 stitute for the time being the majority of the House 
 of Commons. The policy for which he stands is 
 theirs as well as his, and claims to be, not a free 
 improvisation, but a loyal development of party 
 principle and tradition. Thus the party, both as a 
 fact in the House of Commons and as a venerable 
 political tradition, limits the Prime Minister's 
 freedom to jdeld to personal caprice or to the 
 momentary pressure of circumstance, makes him, 
 in short, less of a mere person because more of a 
 representative. The removal of the party factor 
 may, therefore, well have the effect of conferring
 
 Ministry and Parliament 87 
 
 on the rule of a Prime Minister a certain personal 
 and absolute character : seeing himself identically 
 related to all elements in the House of Commons 
 and specially dependent upon none, he may well 
 feel that he holds his post by the divine right of 
 personal pre-eminence, as the nominee of the 
 nation, and that his function is not so much to 
 execute the wishes of Parliament, as to see that 
 Parliament duly aids the execution of the task 
 which the nation has entrusted to him. Mean- 
 while the House of Commons, so far as party 
 visions have become irrelevant or indistinct, is 
 either lazily acquiescent, since party oppositions no 
 longer spur members to criticism and debate, or, 
 when at length surprised into discussion, shows 
 itself a curious museum of opinions instead of a 
 battleground of rival policies. The absolute free- 
 dom of the individual member has its natural 
 result in the complete impotence of the assembly 
 as a whole. 
 
 The process may be followed yet further. The 
 Prime Minister, being no longer the head of a 
 party, finds a Cabinet an encumbrance. It is 
 mere waste of time that he should have to explain 
 and justify his policy to a number of critical 
 colleagues, to meet their objections and concihate 
 their opposition. So far as the work of govern- 
 ment is greater than one man could discharge 
 unaided, he must have a small committee of able 
 and eminent persons prepared to undertake such 
 duties as he may delegate to them and therefore
 
 88 The Voice of the People 
 
 freed, as far as possible, from all departmental 
 responsibilities (" ministers without portfoUo ") : 
 it is thus made clear to the heads of departments 
 that their task is to execute orders, not to assist 
 in the formulation of policy. The logic, it seems, 
 of the development is this. If the policy of the 
 government is that of a party, it is intolerable that 
 it should be left to on€ man, however eminent, to 
 express it, at his sole judgment and discretion : 
 it is essential that it should be pronounced with 
 the authority of a reasonably large and representa- 
 tive committee of the leaders of the party. This 
 was not the sole function, but it was one of the 
 main functions of the Cabinet Council, and the 
 abolition of party government rendered it for the 
 time unnecessary. The Cabinet has, of course, 
 another function, which many will regard as more 
 important, that of co-ordinating the action of the 
 various departments, of ensuring, in short, that they 
 do execute a common policy for which the Cabinet 
 as a whole accepts responsibility. No satisfactory 
 substitute for the Cabinet on this side of its work 
 has yet been devised, though various experiments 
 have been tried. In the result, during the last few 
 years, ministers have sometimes appeared as inde- 
 pendent in their action and as ignorant of the policy 
 of the government as the private member ; and 
 quite recently (August, 1919) the surprising 
 spectacle has been revealed of a Prime Minister 
 giving instructions to his subordinates by means 
 of a letter to the Daily Mail. It would be dif3ficult
 
 Ministrj' and Parliament 89 
 
 to find clearer evidence of the difficulty of govern- 
 ing without a Cabinet. But, whether a Cabinet is 
 necessary or not, it seems plain that the Prime 
 Minister's exceptional independence of party ties 
 was a contributory cause of its abolition, and 
 it is plain, further, that the effect of its abohtion is 
 to increase the personal pow er of the Prime Minister. 
 Government may, in a sense, be weakened, but it 
 becomes more personal. 
 
 If, therefore, it is feared that democracy may 
 result in tlie rule of one man, and if it is claimed that 
 a study of recent developments corroborates this 
 fear, the answer is plain. The exceptional position 
 of the Prime Minister and the impotence of Parlia- 
 ment at the present time are admitted ; but it is 
 argued that they are due in the main to exceptional 
 conditions which are likely very soon to disappear. 
 If party government is restored, and if the Cabinet 
 Council is recreated, the Prime Minister will become 
 once more what he has been said to be, and what 
 representative democracy requires him to be, the 
 leader of a body of ministers who are (in words 
 already quoted) the " delegates of Parliament," 
 responsible through Parliament to the nation and 
 seeking to give effect to the wishes of Parliament 
 as the authorized interpreter of the wishes of the 
 nation. If party government is restored, the 
 increased patronage which a Prime Minister now 
 has at his disposal, while it might increase his 
 power to enforce his wishes on his own party, could 
 no longer demoralize the House as a whole. Before
 
 go The Voice of the People 
 
 19 14 the weaknesses and absurdities of party 
 government were a favourite subject of pohtical 
 diatribe ; but the last few years have shown 
 beyond dispute how difficult it is to devise an 
 alternative which will not deprive both Parliament 
 and People of all effective control over policy 
 and as a result make of the Prime Minister a tem- 
 porary dictator. In~ the absence of a practicable 
 alternative, the interests of effective government 
 and of democracy alike imperatively demand that 
 party government and cabinet responsibility 
 should be immediately and simultaneously restored.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Second Chamber. 
 
 Of all the forms of government that are possible 
 among mankind, I do not know any which is hkely to 
 be worse than the government of a single, omnipotent, 
 democratic Chamber. 
 
 Lecky. Democracy and Liberty. Ch. IV. 
 [1896]. 
 To construct a body which, without claiming co- 
 ordinate authority, shall act as a court of legislative 
 revision, and as the sober second-thought of the 
 community, is practically beyond the power of the 
 poUtical architect. 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith. 
 With a perfect Lower House it is certain that an 
 Upper House would be of scarcely any value. . . . 
 But though beside an ideal House of Commons the 
 Lords would be unnecessary, and therefore pernicious, 
 beside the actual House a revising and leisured legisla- 
 ture is extremely useful, if not quite necessary. 
 
 Bagehot. The English Constitution. Ch. IV, 
 [Second Edn., 1872]. 
 We have spoken hitherto as if all that democracy 
 required were a single representative assembly, to 
 which the Prime Minister and the Cabinet are 
 responsible. But, notoriously, in all countries in 
 which representative government is at all fully 
 developed, there are in fact two assemblies, both as
 
 92 The Voice of the People 
 
 a rule directly elected by the citizens, and together 
 constituting the sovereign parliament. In England 
 we have in addition to the House of Commons a 
 House of Lords, entry to which is secured by the 
 inheritance of a certain grade of nobility or by the 
 gift of nobihty in that degree — a gift conferred by 
 the Crown on the advice of its ministers. Since 
 peers by inheritance"^ largely outnumber peers b}^ 
 creation, the House of Lords cannot claim even 
 indirectly to possess any representative character. 
 The question with regard to second chambers 
 which is relevant to our present enquiry is the 
 question whether they are necessary to, and how 
 they can best serve, the realization of the 
 democratic idea, which is, as we have seen, a 
 demand or ideal that the actions performed in the 
 name of the nation shall be in a true sense the 
 expression of the national will. We must first 
 ask, what is a second chamber for ? Until we 
 have some idea of its function, it is impossible to 
 pronounce as to its size and composition, as to its 
 constitutional powers or method of appointment. 
 
 What, then, is a second chamber for ? What 
 function is it intended to perform ? There is, of 
 course, the check and balance theory, which regards 
 a constitution as a balance of contending rights or 
 powers, fatally destroyed by the recognition of any 
 one element as supreme. By this theory the 
 Second Chamber is required to limit the power of 
 the First, to prevent and hinder the unrestricted 
 supremacy of its will. But if that will is the ex~
 
 The Second Chamber 93 
 
 pression of the nation's, a Second Chamber which 
 overrides it will be acting as a check upon democracy 
 itself. Or, if the Second Chamber is itself also 
 representative, the national will appears to be 
 reduced to impotence and futility by self-con- 
 tradiction. So far as this theory may be held to 
 assert the advisability of providing a check or set- 
 off to democracy itself, it may be ignored, since our 
 professed aim is to discover how democracy may 
 be reaUzed. But there is of course a danger that 
 the popular assembly may, through stupidity or 
 carelessness on the one hand or in malice and self- 
 interest on the other, fail to fulfil its representative 
 function ; and if a Second Chamber can assist in 
 removing or mitigating this danger it will have a 
 genuinely democratic function to perform. Even 
 though its action may be mainly negative or 
 repressive, it will be positively furthering the 
 democratic idea. 
 
 Now if it is for some such service as this that a 
 Second Chamber is required, it seems plain that the 
 First Chamber should remain first in authority and 
 importance, and that the other might operate in 
 one or all of the following four ways, as (i) supple- 
 menting, (2) revising, (3) delaying, and (4) refusing 
 or vetoing the measures affirmed by the primary 
 assembly. It is assumed that in the ordinary 
 course measures will be originated in the First 
 Chamber and thoroughly discussed and decided 
 there before they come before the Second Chamber 
 at all. It will be necessary to examine in turn
 
 94 The Voice of the People 
 
 each of these suggested modes of operation, and 
 consider shortly the nature of each, before con- 
 sidering the whole matter more generally. 
 
 (i) The Second Chamber as supplementary to the 
 First. In this capacity the Second Chamber will 
 initiate legislation in matters ignored or over- 
 looked by the Lower House, besides supplementing 
 its criticism by its f)wn. Among the legislative 
 acts of parliament there will thus be some which 
 were initiated in the Upper House and approved 
 by the Lower, besides the large majority which 
 the Lower House originated and the Upper House 
 merely approved. But it is unUkely that these will 
 be measures of the first importance. The primacy 
 usually allowed to the Lower House involves that 
 all such measures should be initiated there. As a 
 supplementary critic of the Government, therefore, 
 the Second Chamber is Hkely to be of more use 
 than as a supplementary legislator. In proportion 
 as it spends less time and effort on legislation, it 
 has more to spare for criticism, and it is usual to 
 arrange that it shall be composed of men whose 
 average of age and experience is higher than that of 
 the Lower House, and whose criticisms therefore 
 are hkely to be specially weighty and well-informed. 
 On this side, then, the Second Chamber is required 
 mainly as a critic. 
 
 (2) The Second Chamber as revisory. For this 
 purpose the Second Chamber must possess the 
 power of amending measures passed by the first. 
 Such power of amendment may be either restricted
 
 The Second Chamber 95 
 
 or unrestricted : for instance, the Upper House 
 may be debarred from amending certain classes 
 of bill at all, or from amending any kind of 
 bill in certain directions, e.g., in regard to 
 finance. Usually any amendments made require 
 the assent of the Lower House, and there are 
 various ways of circumventing the difficulty which 
 arises when the two houses are unable to come to 
 an agreement. With these devices and with 
 possible limitations of the right of amendment we 
 need not here deal. Of the revisory capacity in 
 general we can say that it will be democratically 
 exercised if the motive of any amendment is to 
 ensure a better expression of the people's wishes, if 
 the bill is amended only where it misrepresents 
 them or by bad draughtsmanship fails to carry 
 out its own intention. Such amendments the 
 Lower House, if it is honest and enlightened, will 
 accept. Here again the office of the Upper House 
 is that of a critic. To carry out this particular 
 kind of criticism well, it should be in substantial 
 agreement with the Lower House ; its criticism 
 should be that of a friend and ally, not that of a 
 rival or opponent. 
 
 (3) The Second Chamber as suspensory. A 
 considerable extension is given to the power of the 
 Second Chamber if it is given the right of suspend- 
 ing or delaying the operation of bills passed by the 
 Lower House. The right might be conferred 
 direct in some simple form, but it arises in the 
 case of the English House of Lords from the limita-
 
 96 The Voice of the People 
 
 tion of the right of veto by the Parhament Act. 
 It is there provided that, if the Lower House per- 
 sists in any measure over a certain period of time, 
 the bill shall become law notwithstanding the 
 continued refusal of the Upper House to accept 
 it. Suspension or delay of measures approved by 
 the Lower House may clearly be consistent with 
 democratic principles, if the ground taken by the 
 Upper House is that the measure is wrongly 
 supposed to be in accord with the popular wish, 
 or that, though truly expressing the momentary 
 wish of the nation, it represents only a passing 
 phase of opinion or emotion, of which the nation 
 will soon repent. In this capacity the Second 
 Chamber may claim to perform a useful and 
 reasonable, though rather invidious, task, that of 
 preventing hasty and ill-considered action, with 
 its inevitable consequence, sharp reversals of 
 policy. It may be argued that if no Second 
 Chamber existed to interpose the necessary delay, 
 where opinion is evenW and bitterly divided, the 
 first act of a new ministr}^ would often be the repeal 
 of the chief legislative act of its predecessor. In 
 order to perform this dut}^ satisfactorih^ and with 
 authorit3% the Second Chamber should have some 
 ground for claiming a greater degree of permanence 
 and stability than the Lower House, a less com- 
 plete and immediate sensibility to changes of 
 popular opinion ; but if, like our House of Lords, 
 it is completely unrepresentative and not directl}^ 
 amenable to public opinion at all, its authority is
 
 The Second Chamber 97 
 
 fatally weakened. The Second Chamber is now 
 more than a mere critic : it is already something of 
 a censor. 
 
 (4) Finally, the Second Chamber may exercise 
 an absolute veto upon the legislative proposals of 
 the Lower House. It may have the right of 
 refusing assent, and refusal may mean that the 
 proposal is finally quashed, so that further legis- 
 lation on that subject, if undertaken, will have to 
 be started afresh from the beginning. Plainly the 
 legitimate grounds for the exercise of the veto are 
 the same as for the exercise of the suspensory 
 power. Since measures may be revived after due 
 interval, the veto as applied to any proposal for the 
 permanent alteration of the Law does not neces- 
 sarily involve more than a maximum degree of 
 delay. On the other hand the Second Chamber 
 will probably be rather more sparing in the use of 
 an absolute veto than of one which has only a 
 suspensory effect. Hence it may be, and has been, 
 argued that to turn an absolute into a suspensory 
 veto {e.g., as effected by our own Parhament Act) 
 is actually to increase the power of the Second 
 Chamber. The power of enforcing delay will be 
 used in many cases in which the bare alternatives 
 of acceptance and rejection would make acceptance 
 certain. Although, therefore, the absolute veto is 
 at first sight a more formidable weapon than the 
 suspensory veto, it may turn out in practice to be 
 less formidable, and some would prefer, in the 
 interest of the First Chamber, that the veto of the
 
 gS The Voice of the People 
 
 Second Chamber should remain absolute. This 
 argument, however, has reference in the main to 
 Second Chambers whose representative character 
 is doubtful or negligible. Their credit is so slight, 
 and their place in a democratic government is so 
 questionable, that their continued existence de- 
 pends more and more, as time goes on, on their 
 inactivity. Consequently, to limit their powers is 
 to make them more likely to be used. But a 
 Second Chamber which could claim to be as 
 representative as the First would have no reason 
 to be afraid of using its powers : and in the hands 
 of such a Chamber the two forms of the veto would 
 have their natural values. In general, if it is 
 desired to preserve and emphasize the critical 
 function of the Upper House, it seems undesirable 
 to give it more than a suspensory veto. For the 
 prevention of hasty and ill-considered legislation 
 no wider powers are required. 
 
 The four functions above enumerated provide, so 
 far as they are valuable or necessary, a reason for 
 the existence of a Second Chamber. It has often 
 been pointed out by the critics of Constitutions 
 that an additional reason is provided when the 
 State is formed by federation or contains a federal 
 element. The United States of America, the 
 German Empire, the Swiss Confederation, and, 
 within the British Empire, Canada, Australia, and 
 South Africa are instances in point. In all of these 
 cases, in greater or less degree, while the First 
 Chamber represents the State as a single whole or
 
 The Second Chamber 99 
 
 group of constituencies, the Second Chamber 
 represents it as a group of groups or confederation 
 of States. In the Upper House the constituent 
 States, or their peoples, are, as such, recognized 
 and represented. The Second Chamber is thus 
 inteUigibly differentiated from the first in that, 
 though it may be elected by the same individuals 
 as the First, it is elected by them in a different 
 capacity and required to perform a special task, 
 that of expressing the federal element in the Con- 
 stitution. If the reorganization of the United 
 Kingdom, or of the British Empire, on a federal 
 basis is ever undertaken, the proper representation 
 of the various federating units will be a matter of 
 practical importance. But for our present purpose 
 the federal characteristic of Second Chambers may 
 be ignored. For, in any case, it operates mainly 
 as an influence upon the composition of the House, 
 and does not very seriously affect the question of 
 its other functions. And since any State of a 
 certain size, however unitary, can be conceived as 
 federal, the federal principle could be used in con- 
 structing a reformed House of Lords for our own 
 country, with its present centralized government. 
 The federal idea would present us with a convenient 
 method of differentiating — perhaps rather arbi- 
 trarily, in the particular case — between two elected 
 Chambers, but it would not in any way help to the 
 solution of the problem of their respective powers 
 and functions. 
 
 Let us return then to the four functions previously
 
 100 The Voice of the People 
 
 analysed. Of these the most essential seems to 
 be that of criticism. The Second Chamber is to 
 be the sympathetic but expert and independent 
 critic of the acts of the First Chamber. It may also 
 in certain respects supplement it by using its right 
 of independent criticism of the executive as well as 
 by initiating legislation on its own account. 
 Further, it may possess and exercise the right of 
 rejecting — though probably the rejection should 
 only be temporary in effect — measures approved 
 by the Lower House. But these attributes are 
 clearly of inferior importance : the last, indeed, is 
 something of an emergency power and should be 
 sparingly used. If the Second Chamber is to be 
 of continuous service to the realization of 
 democracy, it will not be by specializing in a certain 
 department of State, such as foreign affairs, nor 
 by obstinate obstruction to all important projects 
 of change — an attitude which is apt to produce a 
 corresponding recklessness in the Lower House — 
 but by careful and well-informed criticism of the 
 details of every measure forwarded to it for 
 approval and of every development of adminis- 
 trative policy. It is for this reason that nearly 
 every modern Constitution tries to arrange that 
 the members of the Upper House shall be men of 
 political and administrative experience, older 
 probably on the average than the members of the 
 Lower House, in which many of them have pre- 
 viously served, and enjoying a longer tenure of 
 office. Where the appointments are not for life,
 
 The Second Chamber loi 
 
 it is common to provide that only a portion of the 
 House is renewed at each election : a degree of 
 permanency is thus secured which may be supposed 
 to be favourable to the growth of the kind of expert 
 judgment which is required. For the same reason 
 the Upper House is usually very much inferior in 
 size to the Lower : it is to be more of a Committee 
 and less of an Assembly. If this conception of a 
 Second Chamber is accepted, and the function of 
 criticism is taken as central, the danger of com- 
 petition and rivalry between the two Houses is 
 much diminished. The primacy of one House 
 seems to be a necessity of democracy, and in our 
 own political practice the primacy of the House of 
 Commons has long been established beyond dis- 
 pute. That being so, the only chance of securing 
 authority and efficiency in a Second Chamber is to 
 give it a definite and intelligible relation to the 
 Lower House, which, while sufficiently important 
 to attract and exercise poHtical talent, yet leaves 
 it plainly the second fiddle. The revisory function 
 seems to give such a relation, if the House to which 
 the duty of revision is entrusted has a respectable 
 title to speak for the nation and is seen to be in 
 general sympathy with the democracy. The 
 proviso is necessary : for it would be a foolish man 
 who would entrust the revision of anything of 
 importance to a full session of the present House 
 of Lords. It is certain that an authoritative and 
 efficient Second Chamber can only be secured in 
 this country by root and branch reform of the 
 Upper House.
 
 103 The Voice of the People 
 
 We have now reached a point at which we can 
 say with some confidence that there are functions 
 which a democracy can reasonably require a Second 
 Chamber to perform. But we are not yet perhaps 
 in a position to assert that any of these are 
 necessary functions, functions which would not be 
 performed at all, or would not be likely to be per- 
 formed so well, in the absence of a Upper House 
 on a Single Chamber system. The question we 
 have now to face, therefore, is the question whether 
 a Second Chamber is necessary. The commonest 
 answer is an attempt to make the question look 
 foolish by an appeal to history and to the almost 
 universal support which the dual sj^stem receives 
 from the constitutions of the present day. " It 
 is difficult to believe," writes Mr. J. A. R. Marriott, 
 " that those who advocate a uni-cameral [or one- 
 chamber] S3^stem can have calculated the weight 
 either of historical facts, or of contemporary ex- 
 perience, or of a priori speculation. It is of course 
 conceivable that the whole world may be wrong, 
 and that English uni-cameralists may be alone in 
 possession of the pearl which is beyond price ; that 
 philosophers have been groping blindly, and that 
 politicians have been guilty of crass stupidity 
 alike in the perpetuation and the resuscitation of 
 bi-cameral [or two-chamber] arrangements. . . . 
 But considerations of this kind would appear to 
 cause as Uttle misgiving to the present [1910] 
 leaders of the Labour party as to pohticians of the 
 type of Mr. Henry Labouchere, who during the
 
 
 The Second Chamber 103 
 
 decade 1884-94 was persistent in his efforts to 
 abohsh the ' veto ' of the Lords." In plain Enghsh 
 Mr. Marriott decHnes to discuss the single-chamber 
 proposal on its merits on the ground that experience 
 has already decided the question. It is true that 
 he mentions a priori speculation (which perhaps 
 means a discussion of the intrinsic merits of the 
 proposal), but he gives us no specimen of it, and 
 confesses to an inclination to describe the idea as 
 " unthinkable, but for the indisputable fact that 
 it is thought." It is the arguments, then, from 
 past and present political experience that have 
 first to be met. 
 
 The argument from the history of the past has 
 at the most only a negative value, for the reason 
 that single-chamber government has never been 
 given a trial. " Of the great States of the modern 
 world," says Mr. Marriott, " three of the greatest 
 have actually tried and abandoned the experiment 
 of a single legislative Chamber." His three 
 instances are, first, England under Cromwell, when 
 the government of Cromwell's Army was for a time 
 unsuccessfully contested, in the absence of a second 
 chamber, by the " Rump " of the Commons. But 
 Mr. Marriott himself points out that the conditions 
 were such that representative government was 
 impossible, and that the House of Commons itself 
 was never less representative than at this time. 
 His second instance is the French revolutionary 
 constitutions of 1791 and 1793, succeeded by two- 
 chamber government under the Directory in 1795.
 
 104 The Voice of the People 
 
 Again the experiment is an incident in a revolution, 
 tried under conditions which precluded effective 
 parliamentary government, and therefore un- 
 enlightening. The third case on which he relies is 
 that of Spain, which by the constitution of 1812, 
 imitated from the French constitution of 1791, 
 made its Cortes a single sovereign chamber. This 
 constitution was destroyed by the act of the alhes 
 in restoring Ferdinand in 18 14 ; it was recovered 
 by a popular revolt in 1820, maintained in the teeth 
 of the Holy Alliance for three years, and finally 
 extinguished by the armies of France in 1823. 
 This experiment again occurred in a time of tur- 
 bulence and disorder, and in a country in which 
 representative government had no deep roots ; 
 but in any case it is untrue to say either that it 
 failed or that it was abandoned by the Spanish 
 nation : it was violently suppressed by the Great 
 Powers of the Continent, whose ruHng motive 
 was fear and detestation of democracy. If, there- 
 fore, these are the only instances which it can 
 provide, history may not unfairly be said to be 
 silent as to the merits or demerits of Single- 
 Chamber government. But its evidence is 
 questionable on another ground. Historians, when 
 they trace the origins of representative institutions 
 far back into the distant past, are apt to forget 
 that democracy, which, as a demand at least, is 
 the cardinal pohtical fact of the present day, cannot 
 be truly said to have existed effectively in the 
 nation-state much before the middle of the nine-
 
 The Second Chamber 105 
 
 teenth century. No evidence from history, there- 
 fore, is Hkely to throw much Hght on the question 
 whether in the twentieth century a single legislative 
 chamber is or is not the most appropriate organ 
 of a developed democracy. Thus even the negative 
 value of the appeal to history may be discounted. 
 The argument from contemporary experience is 
 at first sight very strong. Practically every 
 modern parliament, including those of the British 
 self-governing colonies, consists of two chambers. 
 The exceptions are so slight and unimportant that 
 they are hardly worth enumerating. It is difficult 
 to resist the plea that this astonishing unanimity 
 must be based on some solid ground. And yet 
 on investigation it is difficult to find any ground 
 more solid than the admitted success, on the one 
 hand, of the British two-chambered Parliament 
 and reluctance, on the other, to experiment with a 
 form of government for which no precedents exist. 
 The argument from unanimity would be much 
 more impressive if whole-hearted attempts had 
 anywhere been made to govern under the single- 
 chamber form. In the absence of such attempts 
 it is surely straining words to speak of contemporary 
 experience : what we are really faced with is a 
 practical unanimity of the dominant opinion in 
 every modern country in favour of a two-chamber 
 parliament. And, since opinion is presumably 
 based on argument, we are thus brought back to a 
 discussion of the question on its merits. A further 
 point is worth noticing. Even modern politicians
 
 io6 The Voice of the People 
 
 are not alwaj's exempt from the suspicion of a bias 
 against democracy. They still speak of the 
 necessity of balancing the " democratic element " 
 by something else, which, on a careful examination, 
 usually turns out to be the interests of property, 
 more or less thinly disguised : most Second 
 Chambers give some special recognition to the 
 rights of property. T-hey still think of the problem 
 of an Upper House as that of an attempt (in Mr. 
 Marriott's words) " to erect a bulwark against 
 revolution without interposing a barrier to reform." 
 But no revolution has ever 3'et effected itself within 
 the hmits of a constitution ; and if it did, it would 
 prove the constitution's excellence, not the reverse. 
 The only way in which a constitution can " erect 
 a bulwark against revolution " is by making 
 democratic government possible. Revolution, 
 then, need not be considered ; and the democrat 
 cannot admit that the " democratic element " 
 requires to be balanced or set off by any actual or 
 possible power or interest in the community what- 
 ever. The problem for him is precisely to release 
 this element and make it all-powerful in national 
 affairs. If a Second Chamber is to be proved 
 necessar}^ it must be shown to be indispensable in 
 this task. But the slightest investigation of the 
 circumstances in which these modern constitutions 
 were framed shows that this was far from being the 
 preponderating consideration in the mind of their 
 makers. Rightly or wrongly they were afraid of 
 giving full rein to the democratic principle — nor
 
 The Second Chamber 107 
 
 can it be denied that their fear was in many cases 
 amply justified— and their behef in a Second 
 Chamber was closely connected with that fear ; 
 I or, if they felt no fear themselves, at least in de- 
 vising their Second Chambers they had in mind 
 others that felt it. The surprising unanimit}', in 
 short, is, more than any other one thing, a 
 unanimous distrust of democracy and determination 
 to set limits to it. The most certain lesson to be 
 drawn from experience is that a Second Chamber 
 is usually conceived, and normall}' operates, as a 
 check upon democracy exercised by or on behalf 
 of the great vested interests in the State. 
 
 As frankly committed to democracy, all the 
 history and experience of all the world will not 
 entitle us to accept a Second Chamber as a counter- 
 agent to democracy or as a sort of re-insurance 
 policy. But history and experience, so far as they 
 do not exclusively support this view of a Second 
 Chamber's functions, do not otherwise carry us 
 beyond those functions already investigated which 
 we decided to sum up in the one word criticism or 
 revision. We have to ask whether this function of 
 revision and criticism is one that can only, or can 
 best, be performed by a separate chamber. If it 
 is, we shall have to consider the best way of 
 devising a Second Chamber to perform this 
 revisory duty, which shall not also serve as a screen 
 behind which all the vested interests in the land 
 can shelter themselves. If not, it will be difficult 
 to maintain that a Second Chamber is needed at
 
 io8 The Voice of the People 
 
 all in the democratic state. Now it is clearly 
 quite practicable that any further criticism or 
 revision required by a measure which has run 
 the gauntlet of the House of Commons and has 
 secured a majority in its final form, should be 
 entrusted to a Committee of that House. The 
 Committee might either be a standing committee 
 or elected ad hoc. and it would either make no 
 suggestions, in which case the measure would 
 become law in the form in which it left the House, 
 or it would suggest amendments, which would 
 have to be accepted or rejected, with or without 
 modification, by the House of Commons before the 
 Bill could become law. Such an arrangement is 
 practicable, but it would probably not work well. 
 It is questionable whether the Committee would 
 be sufficiently independent either of the House or 
 of the executive to do the work properly. Some 
 degree of independence might be secured if the 
 Committee were a Standing Committee, elected at 
 infrequent intervals and perhaps only partially 
 renewed at each election. But the members of the 
 Committee, just because the^- were members of the 
 House, would be at a disadvantage in performing 
 the work of revision. H they had any special 
 knowledge of, or interest in, the subject of the 
 Bill, they would already have expressed their views 
 in the previous debates : if they had no special 
 knowledge or interest, their opinions would have 
 little authority. It therefore appears that even a 
 Standing Committee of the House, appointed
 
 The Second Chamber 109 
 
 under conditions which effectively prevented its 
 being packed with reference to a particular measure, 
 would not be a suitable revisory body. On the 
 other hand, a Second Chamber, mainly co-ordinate 
 in character mth the First, as most existing Second 
 Chambers are, seems to be independent of the 
 First Chamber and of the Executive in a degree 
 which is quite unnecessary and which really 
 disables it in the exercise of the revisory function. 
 If it has independent access to the electorate and 
 is wholly elective, as is commonly the case, it can 
 claim as representative a character, and therefore 
 as good a title to decide according to its own judg- 
 ment, as the First. The nation is presented with 
 two parallel embodiments of its will. Causes of 
 difference are bound to occur, and the conciliation 
 of such differences is not in the nation's power. 
 Two-Chamber government, therefore, besides 
 commonly creating a Second Chamber independent 
 in a degree unnecessary or even prejudicial to the 
 proper exercise of its functions — unless it is 
 intended as a check upon democracy — also seems 
 to be on general grounds an illogical and incon- 
 venient form for democratic self-expression. The 
 mere form, whatever the precise powers conferred 
 on the Upper House may be, seems designed to 
 encourage friction and delay. It is a quite 
 gratuitous assumption that on all good and 
 necessary reforms the two Houses will be agreed : 
 in practice the friction and rivalry of the two 
 houses is hkely to be an impediment to all 
 legislation, good and bad alike.
 
 no The Voice of the People 
 
 The necessity of a separate body, whether called 
 a Second Chamber or not, whose function is to 
 revise the acts of the main representative assembly, 
 is clearly open to question. Equally clearly, it is 
 not capable of conclusive proof or disproof. The 
 nearest approach to a conclusive argument that 
 could be provided would be the clear success or 
 failure of an attempt at Single Chamber govern- 
 ment carried out with good will and under favour- 
 able conditions. An examination of the actual 
 performances of existing Second Chambers in 
 modern times, in countries in which the democratic 
 principle is reasonably effective, might be of some 
 value ; but, even if the results of the enquiry were 
 favourable and proved their general wisdom and 
 efficiency, they could in no case be conclusive. 
 A House of Commons which knows that its handi- 
 work will be subjected to careful revision will 
 take fewer precautions against mistakes than 
 one which knows that its decision is final. It is 
 also not unknown for members of the Lower House 
 to conciliate the favour of a section of the electorate 
 by voting for measures which they count confi- 
 dently on the Upper House to mutilate or reject. 
 A Second Chamber thus often enables the First to 
 escape the odium of an unpopular but necessary 
 opposition to popular clamour. Single Chamber 
 government might therefore have the effect of 
 preventing the primary assembh' from shirking or 
 concealing its responsibilities and of causing in- 
 creased thoroughness and circumspection in its
 
 The Second Chamber lii 
 
 treatment of legislative proposals. The necessity 
 of the work of revision is not proved by the fact 
 that it is done well : for the better it is done, the 
 more certain it is to be necessary. 
 
 By a slight extension, as we have seen, the Second 
 Chamber's revisory power may be taken to include 
 the power to suspend, at least for a limited time, 
 the passage into law of Bills approved by the Lower 
 House. As an extension of power this right cannot 
 be expected to receive more favourable treatment 
 from the opponent of Second Chambers than the 
 right of revision. It is open to the same objections 
 in a higher degree. The possession of a veto, either 
 suspensory or absolute, by the Upper Chamber 
 encourages that hasty and ill-considered legislation 
 in the Lower House which it is designed to check. 
 It tempts a government into a dishonest gamble 
 for the support of interests with which they are 
 not really in sympathy by promoting bills which 
 they can trust the Upper House to suspend or 
 reject. The mere existence of the machinery for 
 slaughtering misbegotten legislative projects 
 encourages their punctual appearance. Again, 
 therefore, the fact that the veto finds work to do 
 is no proof of its necessity. It may, of course, be 
 rephed that suspension is not veto, and is far less 
 exposed than the veto to these objections. A 
 delay of a year or two, it may be said, is a small 
 matter in the life of a nation. But political events 
 move rapidly, and in a year much may happen. 
 Further it is astonishing how few measures there
 
 112 The Voice of the People 
 
 are to which time is not important. The reorgani- 
 zation of our Irish government might be supposed 
 to belong to this small class. The union with Ire- 
 land has lasted more than a hundred years, and a 
 year or two would not be expected to make much 
 difference in the proper terms of its revision. Yet 
 it is possible that any of the Home Rule Bills which 
 the Cabinets of the last forty years have devised, 
 would have settled the Irish question if only they 
 could have been passed in the year in which they 
 were promulgated. In every case a delay of two 
 years might have been as fatal as an absolute 
 veto. The truth is that democracy, with its many 
 advantages, suffers from one permanent dis- 
 advantage, as compared with other forms of 
 government, in the necessary slowness and de- 
 liberation of its action. Constitutional safe- 
 guards, therefore, which impose additional and 
 artificial delays should be avoided if possible. 
 
 If then neither the history of the past, nor con- 
 temporary experience, nor ' a priori speculation ' 
 convince us of the necessity of two Chambers ; if 
 we can find no proof that there are any functions 
 which can only, or which can best, be performed 
 by a Second Chamber, we can but conclude that it 
 is highly desirable that the experiment of Single- 
 Chamber government should be tried. And if it is 
 to be tried, our own country is far the best field 
 for the experiment. Not only is this country 
 famous beyond all others for the orderliness and 
 stabihty of its politics, as the classical home of
 
 The Second Chamber 113 
 
 representative democracy, with strong and living 
 pohtical traditions ; but, in addition to all this, 
 we have already the weakest Second Chamber in 
 the world — a hereditary plutocracy, which is 
 frankly an organ of class-government, and, as 
 such, is half afraid to use what powers it possesses. 
 Indeed it might be said that, with our present 
 Second Chamber, we already experience the dis- 
 advantages of each form of government without 
 its advantages. The House of Lords has not the 
 necessary sympathy or authority, even if it had 
 the knowledge, for tlie revision of radical legisla- 
 tion. It accepts under protest until its patience 
 is exhausted, and then applies its veto. When a 
 Conservative government is in power, the authority 
 of the House is perhaps increased, but the reasons 
 for activity are diminished, and the House is apt 
 to go to sleep. If it is a disadvantage of Single 
 Chamber government that no effective second 
 opinion is brought to bear on a measure, it is one 
 that our own Two-Chamber system shares with 
 it. At the same time, the Second Chamber, always 
 present and sometimes active, prevents the Lower 
 House from feeling full responsibility for what is 
 done and from carrying out itself that final revision 
 which a Second Chamber is supposed to effect. 
 The division of responsibility which is incidental 
 to the dual system remains, real enough to cripple 
 and demoralize the Lower House, yet not so real 
 as to call out the industry and efficiency of the 
 Upper House. So evident are the disadvantages
 
 114 The Voice of the People 
 
 of the situation, and so rapid is the progress of the 
 Upper House towards complete impotence, that it 
 is surprising that poUticians — most of whom 
 profess to be convinced Two-Chamber men — are 
 not more active with projects of amendment. Only 
 a few half-hearted and illogical proposals for reform 
 have been made public, and they have all been 
 received with marked coldness alike by politicians, 
 by the press, and by the public. But the Enghsh 
 seem to prefer that obsolete institutions should 
 die a natural death, and hate to hasten their end by 
 direct action. As they invented the form of 
 monarchy in which the king does not govern, so 
 perhaps they will painlessly evolve a parliament of 
 two chambers in which the Second Chamber is no 
 more than a name. 
 
 But this consummation is unhkely. The days 
 of unconscious political evolution are already 
 numbered. Far more likely is a hasty and super- 
 ficial patching up of the Gilded Chamber which 
 leaves its powers unaltered and ingeniously com- 
 promises as to its composition. It will be neither 
 nominated, nor hereditary, nor elected, but all of 
 these things at once. It will not be an Imperial 
 Senate, nor a parliament of professions and occu- 
 pations, nor an assembly of representatives of 
 provinces and local areas, but will contain an 
 element of each. Such a reform would merely 
 postpone the solution of the problem, which at the 
 same time it would probably make more acute. 
 The real reason why the reform of our House of
 
 The Second Chamber 115 
 
 Lords is not undertaken with more enthusiasm is 
 because it is becoming increasingly evident that the 
 demands of democracy and the signs of the times 
 point definitely to the bankruptcy of the Second 
 Chamber as a constitutional device. For any 
 country which has develoved a capacity for 
 democracy there are now, or there will be soon, 
 only two practicable alternatives. Either a 
 separate revising body is necessary to supplement 
 the primary representative assembly-, or it is not. 
 If it is not necessary, government should be en- 
 trusted to a Single Chamber. If it is necessary, 
 the revisory body should not be a Second Chamber, 
 formally co-ordinate with the First. It should be 
 definitely dependent on the House of Commons as 
 the sole authorized exponent of the national will : 
 its appointment therefore should be in the hands of 
 that body. On the other hand it should be suffi- 
 ciently independent of the House of Commons to 
 be a good and trustworthy critic of its acts : its 
 recruitment therefore should not be entrusted to 
 the executive, and its members should be debarred 
 from sitting or speaking in the House of Commons. 
 Further the method of appointment should be such 
 that it is rather more permanent in composition 
 than the Commons and cannot be deliberately 
 packed with reference to a particular contentious 
 measure. The only existing constitution which 
 contains an arrangement approximately satisfying 
 these conditions is the Norwegian. In Norway the 
 Lower House at the first session after a general
 
 ii6 The Voice of the People 
 
 election selects one-fourth of its members to form 
 an Upper House : they are forthwith excluded from 
 the Lower House and sit separately from it. As 
 an Upper House, they have the right of amending 
 or rejecting, but not of initiating proposals of 
 legislation. If they twice reject a measure 
 approved by the Lower House, the two Houses 
 meet in joint session~^and a two-thirds majority is 
 sufficient to carry the proposal. Some of the 
 details of this provision are obviously open to 
 criticism. For instance, it might be questioned 
 whether the Upper House should be wholly 
 renewed after each general election, and whether 
 the right of rejection, even in this limited form, is 
 rightly conceded to it. But in principle the pro- 
 vision is sound and thoroughly conformable to the 
 principles of democracy. The Second Chamber is 
 not the rival and equal of the First, but plainly 
 dependent on it. Its members are elected repre- 
 sentatives, but the electorate is not distracted and 
 confused by a double election. The advantages 
 claimed for the dual system are secured without 
 the worst of its disadvantages. For those, there- 
 fore, who are afraid of the Single Chamber experi- 
 ment and hold that a separate revising body is 
 necessary, the Norwegian example offers a 
 practicable alternative. 
 
 With the presentation of these two alternatives 
 we may close our discussion of the problem of the 
 Second Chamber. We have seen that the problem 
 raises questions to which no certain answer is
 
 I 
 
 The Second Chamber 117 
 
 possible. But the democrat, who desires that the 
 national act shall be the expression of a national 
 will, cannot remain content that the people shall 
 be found to speak with two voices, however in- 
 genious the arrangements may be for securing their 
 eventual harmony. And one voice means in the 
 end one Chamber. In the one alternative this 
 conclusion is frankly accepted, in the other it is 
 only thinly disguised. The former is certainly the 
 more logical, and would probably be found in 
 practice the more satisfactory, alternative. It is 
 also superior as a plank for a political platform. 
 We can then demand not the reform but the 
 abolition of the House of Lords.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Democratic Policy. 
 
 Je me dis souvent qu'un individu qui aurait les defauts 
 tenus chez les nations pour des qualites, qui se 
 nourrirait de vaine gloire, qui serait a ce point jaloux, 
 egoiste, et querelleur, qu'il ne pent rien supporter sans 
 degainer, serait le plus insupportable des hommes. 
 (I often say to myself that an individual who showed 
 the defects held in nations for qualities, who fed 
 himself on vain-glory, who was jealous, selfish, and 
 quarrelsome to such an extent that he could endure 
 nothing without drawing the sword, would be the 
 most unendurable of men). 
 
 ReNx\n Qu'est-ce qn'ime Nation ? [1882]. 
 
 The most malicious democrat can have no idea what 
 nulhty and charlatanry are concealed in diplomacy. 
 
 Bismarck. (Cited by Morley, Politics and 
 History, p. no). 
 
 You are Citizens, you have a Country, in order that 
 in a given and limited sphere of action, the concourse 
 and assistance of a certain number of men already 
 related to you by language, tendencies, and customs, 
 may enable you to labour more effectually for the good 
 of all men, present, and to come ; a task in which 
 your solitary effort would be lost, falling powerless and 
 unheeded among the immense multitude of your 
 fellow beings. 
 
 Never deny your sister Nations. ... So long 
 as you are ready to die for Humanity, the life of your 
 Country will be immortal. 
 
 Mazzini. The Duties of Man. [About 1840.]
 
 Democratic Policy 119 
 
 Since Democracy is a form of government, not a 
 policy, it may be held that it will determine only 
 the methods by which the act of government is 
 arrived at, not its character. If the form of 
 government settles, not what is done, but only 
 how it is done, there seems to be no sense in speak- 
 ing of democratic policy at all. But no careful 
 thinker would be prepared to maintain that the 
 form of organization has no effect upon the general 
 lines of policy ; and in practice we find the 
 opposite commonly assumed. A change of 
 ministry, which is not a change of form, is expected 
 to involve a change of policy in directions which 
 have been more or less fully indicated in advance : 
 but such a change is taken as only temporary, a 
 swing of the pendulum, which will be followed in 
 due time by a return movement. From a change 
 of constitution effects upon policy far more pro- 
 found and far more permanent are anticipated. 
 Many of the hopes of the war just concluded turned 
 on the possibility of a radical change of government 
 in Germany and Austria-Hungary. The grant of 
 a constitution and the summoning of the Russian 
 Duma by the late Czar in 1906 were hailed at the 
 time as one of these rare and fundamental changes, 
 which gave ground for the hope that we should 
 deal in the future with a new and more sympa- 
 thetic Russia. The effects expected from such a 
 change are effects so profound as to be independent 
 of changes of ministry and the swing of the party 
 pendulum, effects which modify the political
 
 120 The Voice of the People 
 
 principles common to all parties, the general atti- 
 tude which all parties not frankly revolutionary 
 or purely reactionary instinctively adopt towards 
 the problems of government internal and external. 
 The pohcy of a nation has its fundamental laws — 
 laws for the most part, nowhere written or even 
 spoken, but tacitly assumed, not questioned in the 
 strife of parties, but underlying and pervading the 
 differences. It is in these laws or assumptions of 
 policy that the constitution finds expression, and 
 only through them in party programmes. Neces- 
 sarily they are somewhat vague and intangible, 
 however real their effects may be, and to attempt 
 to state them is to run the risk of falling into the 
 merest commonplace. Our study of democracy, 
 however, would be incomplete if we did not attempt 
 to discover what effect upon national policy, in this 
 very general sense, the reahzation of the democratic 
 idea may be expected to produce. 
 
 Our own national affairs may be conveniently 
 divided into tliree departments, internal, imperial 
 and foreign ; and it will be best to consider each 
 separately, remembering that it is often held that 
 while a democracy is competent to manage its own 
 affairs, if left alone to do it, it is not competent to 
 govern an empire or. to control effectively its 
 relations with other sovereign states. In time of 
 war the democratic forms of government are even 
 now commonly suspended altogether. 
 
 I. Internal Affairs. By far the greater part 
 of the time of our Parliament is occupied in the
 
 Democratic Policy I2i 
 
 discussion of internal affairs, i.e., of matters which 
 directly concern only the population of the United 
 Kingdom. The regulation of its own life is of 
 course the most necessary work of Parliament to 
 any nation ; but it does not follow that it is the 
 highest or most significant. Similarly an individual 
 spends most of his time on matters which directty 
 concern only himself and his family : but an 
 observer may nevertheless find those compara- 
 tively few acts which have a direct reference to 
 others more significant as expressions of his will 
 and more enlightening as to his principles and 
 character. But the first thing and the most 
 frequent preoccupation is to keep one's own house 
 in order, and therefore internal affairs may be 
 allowed to stand first and to continue to occupy 
 more of Parliament's time than any other depart- 
 ment of government. In this respect the triumph 
 of democracy is not likely to produce any notice- 
 able change. 
 
 What we have to find is a constant characteristic 
 of democratic legislation and administration which 
 can be taken as fundamental to genuinely demo- 
 cratic government and sets bounds to legitimate 
 differences of opinion within it. Such a character- 
 istic may perhaps be found in the attempt to 
 achieve and maintain equality of opportunity for 
 all citizens so far as it is in the power of govern- 
 ment to bring this about. This is the form which 
 the fight for freedom now in all countries seems 
 to have assumed. The battleground is becoming
 
 122 The Voice of the People 
 
 more and more evidently economic, as it is more 
 clearly reahzed that the main obstacle to the 
 achievement of this freedom and equality is the 
 unequal distribution of wealth and the concentra- 
 tion in the hands of a few of all the agents of 
 production except labour. The idea was prevalent 
 a few generations back that the solution of the 
 problems involved might be left to economic forces 
 without political " interference " ; but this idea is 
 now obsolete. We have already reached a stage in 
 England in which equality of opportunity, as an 
 ideal, is not openly denied or attacked ; and it is 
 generally admitted that political action of a drastic 
 character will be necessary for its reaUzation. The 
 complete democratization of our parliamentary 
 system should result in the final establishment of 
 this ideal as the governing principle of pohcy in 
 internal affairs. 
 
 The famihar phrase " equahty of opportunity " 
 needs perhaps some explanation. The demand is 
 that every boy and girl in the country shall go to 
 school with a completely open prospect, not with 
 a vision of the future barred on this side and on 
 that by the accident of birth and family circum- 
 stances ; that every boy and girl on leaving school 
 or university shall enter the profession or occupa- 
 tion which they have freely chosen within the 
 limits set by their own tastes and abilities. The 
 demand is thus a demand for the removal of certain 
 artificial or socially created inequalities ; and the 
 result of their removal will be that the natural and
 
 Democratic Policy 123 
 
 intrinsic inequalities of men in respect of character 
 and ability will have free play. There are of course 
 other inequalities to remove and other equalities 
 to create besides this ; but it is fair to take this 
 inequality in the choice of a career as fundamental. 
 For it meets every boy and girl who has any 
 ambition on the threshold of life, an imprisoning 
 force which few can resist, a chilling foretaste of 
 the power of the social order. Far as we are from 
 satisfying this demand for equality, the evidence 
 of history is consoling, since one can hardly fail to 
 make a steady drift in the right direction, much 
 accelerated in recent times. The most notable 
 contributions of the nineteenth century brought 
 increased freedom to the individual citizen by 
 bringing him nearer to this ideal. Even, for 
 instance, the improvement of roads, the con- 
 struction of railways, and other developments in 
 rapid transport, had indirectly this effect as 
 diminishing the importance of the accident of 
 locality ; and the establishment of a national 
 system of free elementary education was a con- 
 structive act of incalculable value. But the nine- 
 teenth century left us still with promise rather 
 than performance. Its greatest work was the 
 creation as a political force of the idea of democracy. 
 It is only when that idea dominates and controls 
 pohtics that the principle of equality of oppor- 
 tunity will find full expression in national life and 
 institutions. 
 
 Among possible apphcations of this principle,
 
 124 The Voice of the People 
 
 there is one that seems beyond dispute. The 
 existing organization of industry may be attacked 
 on economic grounds ; and it may be that until 
 its economic insufficiency is proved beyond dispute 
 it will remain unreformed. But its fundamental 
 vice lies elsewhere. If our industries had 
 succeeded, as they evidently have not, in assuring 
 to every reasonably "competent and industrious 
 man and woman whom they employ, a good liveli- 
 hood, with a sufficiency of comfort and leisure, 
 this fundamental vice would have been, not less, 
 but more manifest ; and the dissatisfaction of the 
 employed would have been even more urgent than 
 it now is. For our industrial organization is 
 frankly autocratic, as autocratic as that of an 
 army, to which it is sometimes likened, but without 
 an army's excuse and without its redeeming 
 features. No corporate spirit binds the " captain 
 of industry " to his men ; for essentially he is to 
 them only a taskmaster, and they are to him only a 
 source of profit. Whenever he can get the work 
 done more cheaply by machines, he will dismiss 
 them gladly, and instal the more reliable instru- 
 ment in their place. More human relations are no 
 doubt possible ; but they are difficult and they are 
 accidental. An employer will say that he did not 
 go into business " for his health " : the worker 
 might well say the same, and with more reason. 
 It is not healthy for a man to be mere " labour," 
 just so much brute force or aptitude, his only 
 ideal a routine regularity and an absolute recep-
 
 Democratic Policy 125 
 
 tivity that contradicts every human instinct. It 
 is not healthy for a man to be denied all property 
 in his work and all power of organizing it ; to be 
 forced to surrender his main energies to others for 
 them to use as they may think best. Of such a 
 condition one might say, as Aristotle once said of 
 that of the slave, that it cannot attain happiness 
 because it is not really life at all. Probably few of 
 those who are employed in any industry would 
 accept the description as fully applicable to them- 
 selves. But how do they escape it ? Many, no 
 doubt, find some relief in the greater or smaller 
 opening left to them for manual or organizing 
 skill : many in the friendships of the shop or union. 
 But in the end most would have to admit that the 
 saving fact was that their work did not either 
 demand or arouse their best energies— a fact, 
 which if it saves them condemns the system. In 
 industry, as in politics, the only friend which 
 absolute government possesses is indifference. 
 
 The end of the seventeenth century in England 
 saw the political principle firmly established that 
 absolute or arbitrary rule was no rule, since it 
 contradicted the very principles on which Society 
 was founded. It seems probable that the analogous 
 principle is now painfully seeking to establish 
 itself in the spliere of industry. For some time 
 the law of tlie land has been forced in various 
 directions to limit pretty severely the profit- 
 seeking activities of the monarch of industry. 
 The recruitment of labour, the conditions of work
 
 126 The Voice of the People 
 
 in factories, even the rates of wages have been 
 modified by statutory action. But hitherto, in 
 everything not touched by such enactments, the 
 industrial king has retained his absolute power : 
 he has remained owner of the enterprise, free to 
 turn it to what uses he may please, to sell it to 
 others, or to close it down altogether. His power 
 is now threatened from two sides. On the one 
 hand the public which provides the market for his 
 goods is no longer content to interfere from out- 
 side by means of factory acts, workmen's com- 
 pensation acts, and minimum wage acts — a form 
 of interference which at best only secures that 
 these goods are produced in ways not positively 
 harmful to the actual producers. The demand 
 grows for a continuous control of industrial polic3\ 
 A democratic society requires to be satisfied that 
 the things produced are worth producing, to be in 
 a position to control the nature, quality, and 
 quantity of production. This demand for the 
 control of production by the association of con- 
 sumers is the demand of State-Socialism. On the 
 other hand, the men and women employed in 
 these factories and workshops are asking by what 
 right they are excluded from all ownership in these 
 places and in the product of their labour : they 
 are claiming opportunity to direct their own efforts 
 and determine their own conditions of work. 
 This amounts in the end of a demand for the con- 
 tinuous control of the policy of each industry by 
 the workers actually engaged in it. It is the
 
 Democratic Policy 127 
 
 demand of Syndicalists and Guild-Socialists. 
 Again, it is one which a democratically organized 
 Society must endorse. So far as it can be satisfied, 
 the workman will regain his freedom and his 
 personaUty, and labour will recover that right of 
 property* of which capital has dispossessed it. 
 
 These two demands taken together, that of tha 
 whole body of consumers on the one hand, and that 
 of the several groups of producers on the other, 
 for control over all forms and processes of industry, 
 should be jointly called the demand for the 
 democratization of industry. Jointly, not 
 severally. For if the first alone were reahzed, 
 industry would still be an autocracy for the pro- 
 ducer : if the second alone, it would be autocracy 
 no less for the consumer. Recent thought in 
 these matters has given the greater weight to the 
 second demand ; and rightly : for the producer 
 has more at stake, and the less vital interests of 
 the consumer are his also. But both must be 
 satisfied, in one form or another, by any society 
 which is resolved to give full and adequate 
 expression to the democratic principle. Sooner 
 or later the capitalist organization of industry will 
 be forced to make way for a more human and 
 coherent system. In all probability the change 
 will only be effected by degrees and after bitter 
 struggles. There may be a period of transition 
 during which capital will enjoy a more and more 
 
 * ' Thus labour in tlie beginning gave a right of proiJcrty.' 
 Locke : Civil Government II. s 15.
 
 128 The Voice of the People 
 
 Umited monarchy, continually encroached upon 
 by the advancing claims of those whom it claims 
 to employ. But the end, in industry, as in 
 politics, is certain. Capital will become the 
 servant of labour, as kings have become the 
 servants of their peoples. The establishment of 
 democracy, in this sense, in industry is a necessary 
 precondition of its f-ull realization in the field of 
 politics. 
 
 IL Imperial Affairs. — The British Empire 
 includes the most diverse elements. First, there 
 are the large self-governing Dominions, inhabited 
 largely or mainly by white settlers of British 
 extraction, but including in Canada and South 
 Africa homogeneous groups of other European 
 stocks. In South Africa, further, but not in any 
 other self-governing Dominion, there is a very large 
 coloured native population, on whose labour the 
 community as at present organized is economically 
 dependent. Secondly, as in India, Ceylon, and 
 Egypt, there are large and ancient alien communi- 
 ties of coloured races, which had already evolved 
 an elaborate and advanced social organization 
 before white settlers came to their country, and 
 are ruled by the British invaders, an inferior 
 economic and military organisation by a superior. 
 Practically the whole of the labour and the greater 
 part of the small capital of the country (large 
 enterprises like railways and harbours being 
 excluded) are found by the native population ; 
 and the white element is a numerically insignificant
 
 Democratic Policy 129 
 
 ruling caste, controlling the economic as well as 
 the political development of the countr}/. Thirdly, 
 there is a large number of Crown Colonies and 
 Protectorates, inhabited for the most part by 
 coloured races whose political and economic 
 organization is very rudimentary, and governed 
 autocratically by British officials under the control 
 of the Colonial Office. European settlers, apart 
 from officials, are mostly occupied in extracting 
 from these possessions, with the aid of coloured 
 native labour, the raw materials of certain Euro- 
 pean industries ; and the government is largely 
 conducted in the interest of these settlers. 
 
 To the democrat, self-governing colonies of 
 white men present no problem ; but Empire in the 
 second and third senses is an anomaly which needs 
 some apology. As a democrat, he is a beUever in 
 self-government, and it is therefore contrary to 
 his principles that any community should be 
 forced to submit its will to that of another, unless 
 that other is a wider community of which it is 
 itself a free constituent member. The apology, 
 which is sufficient to satisfy most European 
 democrats, is, in short, that these communities 
 which are subject to our rule are incapable at 
 present of governing themselves, and will be 
 allowed by us to do so as soon as they show signs 
 of sufficient capacity for self-government. It may 
 be replied that, if we or some other European 
 power had not arrived to help them, they would 
 have got along somehow in their own fashion, and
 
 130 The Voice of the People 
 
 that such natural and self-conducted development, 
 however scarred by bloodshed and tyranny, would 
 have been healthier and more congenial to the 
 population than a development forcibly guided 
 and distorted to fit the interests and prejudices of 
 an alien civilization. To this the answer is that if 
 England evacuated Egypt or India or her posses- 
 sions in Tropical Africa to-morrow, the native 
 population would not be left to work out its own 
 salvation. The only result would be a change of 
 masters : another champion of European civiliza- 
 tion would step in and take our place. In fact, it 
 is urged, European tutelage is now necessary for 
 these comparatively backward races. It is true 
 that some of them might be capable of governing 
 themselves with fair success if they were alone in 
 the world. But they are not ; and the world 
 grows smaller and the nations closer together 
 every day. They could not hold their own in the 
 modern world-competition of races. Even the 
 most forward of the less advanced races, therefore, 
 even the Indians and the Egyptians, must remain 
 in leading-strings until they are certainly capable 
 of forming a self-governing community on the 
 European model. As to the barbarous tribes of 
 Tropical Africa and the equally uncivilized col- 
 oured races that inhabit most of our Crown 
 Colonies, in whom no clear signs of progress 
 towards self-government are to be seen, the reason 
 for European interference is that their countries 
 produce valuable raw material which our industries
 
 Democratic Policy 131 
 
 require and can get from nowhere else ; the black 
 communities are incapable of marketing, exporting, 
 and developing the production of these raw 
 materials. Our government, therefore, exists to 
 assist European capital in securing the necessities 
 of industry, and to see that the life of the coloured 
 inhabitants, who have to find the necessary labour, 
 is as little damaged as possible in the process. 
 Thus, empire, whether gloried in or regretted, is 
 a necessity ; and if the white man's burden turns 
 out to be more economic and less philanthropic 
 than we were once taught to think, it is not the 
 less necessary for that. 
 
 Even so baldl}^ and summarily stated as it 
 necessarily^ is here, it is plain that this apolog}- for 
 Empire has its strong as well as its weak places. 
 The economic importance to Europe of many of 
 these colonial settlements must be recognized as 
 supplying a respectable reason for their existence. 
 Apart from economic interests, imperialist senti- 
 ment, not always very closely controlled by 
 calculations of profit and loss, has been the chief 
 factor in recent extensions of colonial empires ; 
 and until this stupid and vulgar idealism, M'hich has 
 so long pervaded European thought and policj', 
 provokes the inevitable reaction, it will be difficult 
 to confine colonial enterprises within the limits 
 which prudence and understanding suggest. 
 Therefore Empire must for the present be taken as 
 a fact, with which, like any other fact, the democrat 
 is prepared to do the best he can. A national
 
 133 The Voice of the People 
 
 poHcy of refusal to undertake any imperial respon- 
 sibilities is out of the question. At the same time 
 it should be observed that the effective existence 
 of a properly constituted League of Nations, if it 
 should be realised, would make the evacuation of 
 any particular possession, under solid guarantees 
 against its relapse into the hands of another 
 power, a comparatively simple matter. If such a 
 League of Nations were prepared to guarantee the 
 integrity and independence of Egypt or India, one 
 of the most serious objections to the removal of 
 British control would at once disappear. Unless 
 our professions are hypocritical, we looked forward 
 already before the war to a time, not infinitely 
 distant, at which we should be able with a good 
 conscience to hand over the government of India 
 and Egypt to the people of those countries. The 
 four years of war have advanced us, to our surprise 
 and embarrassment, several stages on the road to 
 this consummation, not only by their effects on 
 opinion among the populations involved, but also 
 by the promise of the creation of a powerful super- 
 national authority of which imperial questions will 
 be one of the main concerns. It is obvious that a 
 democratic government, which will necessarily 
 view all projects of Empire with dislike and mis- 
 trust, will assist and accelerate this development 
 with every means in its power. Continuous proof 
 of the necessity of Empire will be a condition ot 
 the continued acceptance of its responsibilities. 
 Our democratic State will accept Empire only so
 
 Democratic Policy 133 
 
 far as it is proved necessary. The question we 
 have next to ask is this : Where it accepts Empire, 
 on what principles must it exercise government if 
 it is to remain true to its own idea ? The main 
 principle is to a democrat beyond question. 
 Empire will only be tolerable if every fraction of 
 the population contained in it, British or ahen, 
 enjoys self-government to the furthest extent of its 
 capacity. The disagreeable fact about Empire is 
 that it involves the imposition of the will of a 
 community upon persons who are not members 
 of the community. This fact is essential and must 
 be frankly recognised. It can, however, in practice 
 be made more or less obtrusive by the adoption of 
 a more or less sympathetic policy and method of 
 government. The aim of democracy must be to 
 reduce it to its barest necessary minimum. In a 
 sense this aim is more easily reaHzed in the case of 
 undeveloped races like those of Central Africa than 
 in the case of more advanced peoples like those of 
 India or Egypt. Where the population is Euro- 
 pean, it has been long seen to involve the practical 
 abdication of Imperial control. It is easier of 
 realization in Central Africa because the native 
 populations involved are almost unaware of the 
 larger problems of government. It is possible 
 therefore to super-impose upon their existing social 
 organization a wider co-ordinating authority with- 
 out any felt loss to them, as long as the external 
 authority does not derange or destroy native 
 custom and usage. As soon as a population is at
 
 134 The Voice of the People 
 
 all generally aware of the problems which are being 
 solved for it by its government, it is sure to demand 
 some control over government, and a believer in 
 democracy is not entitled to refuse the request. 
 In its practical application, the principle means 
 that the rulers \vi\\ work through native forms and 
 authorities, wherever possible, innovating only 
 with the greatest circumspection. In so acting 
 they have to guard against the danger that their 
 adoption of these forms will lead to one of two 
 alternative results, both equally disastrous. It 
 may on the one hand discredit the forms adopted, 
 and so disintegrate native life. Or, on the other 
 hand, it may so strengthen them that they become 
 stereotyped, so that the natural political evolution 
 of the population is altogether suspended. These 
 dangers can only be avoided by a sensitiveness in 
 the governors which is extremely rare and only to 
 be won as the fruit of the most patient study and 
 observation. The selection and training of gover- 
 nors and administrators is therefore of primary 
 importance. They must unlearn the prejudice 
 that self-government necessarily means parlia- 
 mentary institutions on the European model, with 
 the consequence that peoples obviously incapable 
 of any such development are mere clay to the 
 Imperial potter. The essentials of self-govern- 
 ment can be preserved wherever any spontaneous 
 social organization, even the most rudimentary, 
 exists. Even in Central Africa self-government 
 must be the guiding principle of colonial administra- 
 tion.
 
 Democratic Policy 135 
 
 By a slight extension the primary principle just 
 stated will be found to govern the solution of the 
 economic, as well as of the more purely political, 
 problems involved in colonial administration. In 
 Europe our economic evolution has resulted in tlie 
 creation of huge landless proletariats, which in the 
 main can onl}^ support themselves by large-scale 
 industry, with the assistance of capital provided 
 by the well-to-do from their accumulated savings. 
 Consequently there is no difficulty in recruiting the 
 army of industry, and the terms of enlistment 
 have been very disadvantageous to the recruit. 
 But most of our colonial possessions are thinly 
 populated. There is plenty of land, which every 
 individual who is able and willing to work can 
 support himself by cultivating. There are vast 
 areas capable of cultivation, but not at present in 
 use, which would provide sustenance for any con- 
 ceivable expansion of the population for generations 
 to come. Therefore, there is not at present, and a 
 normal development is not likely to produce, a 
 reservoir of landless men, forced to accept employ- 
 ment from capitalist enterprises, such as those of 
 the white settlers, if they are to live. It is thus 
 difficult to find labour for these enterprises. 
 Various expedients have been used. First labour 
 was found b}^ slavery. Black men were kidnapped, 
 brought to the spot, and sold to the settler, who 
 forced them to work for him. Next, it was direct 
 coercion : chiefs were ordered to find the necessary 
 number of men, and the men were forced under
 
 136 The Voice of the People 
 
 heavy penalties to remain at work in the place to 
 which their rulers sent them. They would receive 
 some small wage for their services, and perhaps the 
 chief would be paid as well. Both of the methods 
 were fairly effective. If the quahty of the labour 
 was poor, it was at least plentiful ; and the rather 
 distasteful and demoralizing task of coercing un- 
 wilHng labourers could be delegated for the most 
 part to subordinates. But the European con- 
 science revolted at length, in succession, against 
 each of these two expedients, and other means had 
 to be found. The resulting policy, which is widely 
 prevalent at the present time, may be described 
 as one of indirect coercion. A certain amount of 
 pressure is still appUed to chiefs, though always 
 falling short of anything which could be construed 
 as an order ; and this " moral suasion " is often 
 effective. It is not, however, exclusively relied 
 upon. The root difficulty, as we have seen, lies in 
 the economic situation of the native population, 
 and its permanent solution is therefore only to be 
 found in that region. If the economic needs of the 
 native could be increased or his economic re- 
 sources diminished, or both, to a sufficient extent, 
 he would be obliged, as the ordinary European is 
 obliged, to volunteer for outside employment. On 
 the side of need, the administration may see that, 
 for instance, the practice of buying wives is en- 
 couraged, or that the desirability of wearing 
 clothes is inculcated ; further, it will tax the 
 native, and may even, as in Nyasaland, discriminate
 
 Democratic Policy 137 
 
 between " idle " and " employed " natives by" 
 demanding from those emplo3'ed by Europeans 
 only half the amount paid by tlie rest. In these 
 waj's the life of the native is made more expensive 
 to an extent which the archaic methods of pro- 
 duction customary in his village communities do 
 not enable him to face. As to resources, the 
 native's chief economic resource is unlimited land. 
 It is a simple expedient for the administration to 
 appropriate all unoccupied land, giving the natives 
 a title, more or less secure, only to such land as 
 the}'^ already occupy. The most fertile portions 
 of this land can then be sold or leased to European 
 settlers ; and in a shorter or longer period of time 
 the natural increase of the native population, less 
 thinned now than ever before by wars and 
 epidemics, must result in the creation of a large 
 and growing landless surplus. When that time 
 comes, a cheap and plentiful supply of labour will 
 be assured. Men will be driven out of the African, 
 as they have been out of the European, villages by 
 shortage of land. 
 
 By such methods of indirect coercion, more or 
 less openly applied, labour is usually made avail- 
 able for British enterprise. Sometimes, however, 
 when all has been done, it is not forthcoming ; 
 either quantity or quality, or both, are unsatis- 
 factory. In that case the usual expedient is to 
 import labour from India, China, or elsewhere. 
 The labourers are recruited on some approved form 
 of contract or indenture, and work under condi-
 
 138 The Voice of the People 
 
 tions authorized and enforced by the government 
 of the country in which the work is carried out. 
 So, after the South African war, Chinese were 
 imported into the new colony to work the mines, 
 during the shortage of native labour, and so at the 
 present day natives of Southern India are continu- 
 ally recruited for . work on the plantations of 
 Ceylon. The Chinese experiment was stigmatized 
 during the general election of 1905 in a famous 
 poster as slavery ; and the taunt was bitterly 
 resented. It is very difficult, however, to prove 
 that it was unjust. If a man is treated as merely 
 so much " labour," as an instrument of production 
 and no more, he is treated as a slave. The fact 
 that he enlisted " voluntarily " (which means only 
 that he was tricked instead of being forced into 
 the service), that his engagement was for a limited 
 period, and that he received pay for his work, is no 
 proof to the contrary. What makes him a slave is 
 the denial to him of all ordinary civil and social 
 rights in the society for which he works. The 
 Chinaman in Africa was a slave ; a slave indeed 
 without a master, a member of a gang, the tempo- 
 rary property not of an individual but of a corpora- 
 tion : but such slavery is historically the worst of 
 all. The Indian may, as a rule, secure better 
 terms than the Chinaman was given ; but he, too, 
 is a slave where he works, if he is denied the ele- 
 mentary civil and social rights. We will assume 
 for the sake of argument that some form of con- 
 tract is necessary, and that its terms and conditions
 
 Democratic Policy 139 
 
 are generally just and humane. He will still not 
 cease to be a slave until he is granted freedom of 
 movement and the right of trading in the com- 
 munity to which he comes, and, when he shall have 
 fulfilled his contract, the opportunity of perma- 
 nently settling in it. No community is justified in 
 using the labour of men to whom it denies member- 
 ship. A democratic State might decide to refuse 
 admission altogether to certain races or classes of 
 men : it would never risk its own safety and 
 contradict its own principles by importing such 
 men in large numbers and refusing them citizenship. 
 If therefore additional labour is required in any 
 colony for the development of its resources, the 
 labourers should be brought in frankly as colonists 
 and settlers. 
 
 As a rule, however, as we have said, the importa- 
 tion of labour from outside is not necessary. 
 Indirect coercion triumphs : but not without diffi- 
 culty and scandal, occasionally revealed to the 
 public in the European press, and certainly not 
 without disaster to native life. Not only are 
 colonial governments insufficiently alive to the 
 interests of the native employees and culpably in- 
 active in the matter of securing decent conditions of 
 employment, with the result that the labourers 
 suffer in health and moral ; not only are harsh and 
 oppressive penal regulations enforced, creating a 
 whole series of crimes which are punished with 
 great severity ; but the whole system is plainly 
 contrary to the natives' true interests and opposed
 
 140 The Voice of the People 
 
 to the democratic principle of self-government. 
 B}^ economic means the whole fabric of native 
 custom is undermined and enfeebled, and the 
 chances of a healthy natural development im- 
 perilled. " You were first slaves, then serfs," wrote 
 Mazzini to the working men of Italy : " now you 
 are hirelings." This system attempts to force, 
 suddenly and arbitrarily, on the African native the 
 status of hireling, in the interest of an alien civiliza- 
 tion which has already succeeded in reducing the 
 great mass of its citizens to that position. The 
 attempt, if successful, means the destruction of 
 the communal village life, based on the cultivation 
 of the land, which affords the only environment 
 in which these races at their present stage of 
 development can be expected to thrive and make 
 progress. We are now learning in our own country 
 that democracy has a mission in the economic as 
 well as in the political life, and that the status of a 
 mere hireling is not one with which the European 
 workman will long remain contented, great as are 
 his privileges and compensations compared with 
 the African. A similar extension of a political 
 principle into the sphere of economics is all that 
 is needed to give the hues of a true democratic 
 solution of the problem of capital and labour 
 in our Crown Colonies and Protectorates. 
 
 The democratic principle of self-government 
 has, as we have seen, an application even to the 
 most backward races, in that alien control and co- 
 ordination may be so super-imposed upon existing
 
 Democratic Policy 141 
 
 native forms of social organization as not to dis- 
 tort or pervert them but leave them free to develop 
 on natural lines. In this way, we suggested, even 
 under the autocratic rule of a conquering power, 
 the essentials of self-government may be pre- 
 served. The same principle may be applied, with 
 the like result, in regard to native forms of econo- 
 mic organization, however rudimentary they may 
 be. The economic activities are not the whole of 
 life, nor are they man's highest activities, but they 
 are the basis of all others ; and, unless they run on 
 natural and healthy lines, there is little chance that 
 the rest of life will be sound and vigorous. Econ- 
 omic life is the basis of all life, and economic 
 welfare is the basis of all welfare. The less 
 developed a race is, the less numerous and absorb- 
 ing are its non-economic interests ; the more 
 complete therefore is its dependence on the 
 economic basis. Thus the productive organiza- 
 tion of a barbarous tribe, crude as it may appear 
 to us, is nevertheless as an element in life precious 
 and irreplaceable to the individual member of the 
 tribe, as the endless ingenuities and complexities 
 of the modern business world can never be to the 
 member of a civihsed European community. So 
 far as economics are concerned, the European can 
 shed his civilization in a moment and live as a 
 savage ; but the savage cannot shed his savagery. 
 If the methods of production to which he is 
 accustomed are destroyed, the whole fabric of his 
 life is destroyed with it. It is even more necessary.
 
 142 The Voice of the People 
 
 therefore, to preserve native forms in economic 
 than in pohtical organization. 
 
 If native hfe is to be preserved, the first neces- 
 sity is that the native shall remain on the land and 
 in his villages. The land, therefore, must every- 
 where be regarded as the inalienable property of 
 the native communities, held, where not occupied, 
 in trust for them by the colonizing power, and 
 administered exclusively in their interest. The 
 administration will find it necessary to appropriate 
 portions of the land, on which to construct roads, 
 railways, and other works of public utility ; but, 
 even though this will often involve the ejection of 
 native villages from their holdings, no injustice is 
 inflicted on the natives, if these works themselves 
 make for their prosperity and are similarly 
 regarded as property held in trust for them. No 
 permanent alienation of land to European settlers 
 either by the natives or by the colonial government 
 should be allowed. All grants of land to Europeans 
 should take the form of short-time renewable 
 leases with revisable rents, and the maximum 
 holding should be strictly limited. In this way 
 the growth of large plantations, requiring gangs of 
 labourers collected from a distance, will be 
 effectively prevented. On the side of production 
 the first care of the administration will be the 
 stimulation and improvement of village industries. 
 Our own colonial experiments in West Africa liave 
 shown that, properly guided, the native village 
 communities are quite competent to organize the
 
 Democratic Policy 143 
 
 production and collection of several of the most / 
 valuable tropical products required by European 
 industr3^ The vastly superior productivity of the 
 colonies in which these methods are in force cannot 
 be supposed to be solely due to superior fertility 
 and more favourable conditions generally ; it 
 must be due, in part at least, to more willing and 
 effective labour, supplied in a form consistent with 
 native usage and habits of life. The native is 
 employed, not directly, as an individual, but 
 indirectly, as a member of a community. If all 
 the produce required from our colonies can be 
 procured in this way through the village communi- 
 ties, the problem is in principle solved. The 
 demands of industry are satisfied in a manner 
 which not only leaves native life undamaged, but 
 may even contribute to its healthy development. 
 Even if some forms of production must for the 
 present be entrusted directly to European settlers, 
 it is probable that no great harm will accrue if the 
 growth of large estates, which require for their 
 working what practically amounts to slave-labour, 
 is prevented. 
 
 We have now, perhaps, said sufficient to outUne 
 the general economic pohcy which results from the 
 application of the principles of self-government to 
 the problem of production in colonies inhabited by 
 undeveloped races. This particular imperial 
 question requires special emphasis, because these 
 races are for the most part unable to speak for 
 themselves, and our conduct towards them is
 
 144 The Voice of the People 
 
 therefore the best test of the genuineness of our 
 profession to govern in the interest of the governed. 
 The European settler and the capitalist interests 
 behind him are far more vocal ; and their needs 
 and wishes are far better understood, not only b}?' 
 home politicians, but also in most cases by the 
 colonial administrators. In addition to this, the 
 question is important because it reveals in its most 
 naked form a danger to which all Empire is liable, 
 wherever it exists and whatever the degree of 
 civihzation of the conquered population may be. 
 Imperial possessions are always regarded by the 
 governing people as a promising field for the invest- 
 ment of capital, and the provision of capital for 
 their development is reasonably represented as a 
 patriotic duty. England has occasionally en- 
 trusted the administration of vast areas of territory 
 to commercial undertakings under special charters. 
 An existing case is the British South Africa 
 Company, which is responsible to the Imperial 
 government for the administration of Rhodesia ; 
 and in the past there is the famous instance of the 
 East India Compan}', which created our Indian 
 Empire and only expired in 1858. Now, if one 
 thing is plainer than another, both from the 
 teaching of experience and from considerations 
 above adduced, it is this, that every application of 
 European capital to colonial possessions needs to be 
 most carefully watched and safeguarded if the 
 interests of the natives are not to be sacrificed at 
 every turn to the cupidity of the shareholders
 
 Democratic Policy 145 
 
 It is therefore an indefensible abuse of power to 
 put the administration of any inhabited area in 
 the hands of a company formed for profit, however 
 carefully its charter may be framed. To do so is 
 to confess openly that the colon}^ is regarded as a 
 source of profit and nothing more. The most that 
 can be expected from the company is that it will 
 try to avoid harming the natives ; it is not likely 
 to undertake unremunerative expenditure for their 
 direct benefit. The interest of the natives is 
 bound to come last instead of first with the admin- 
 istration, and at every critical point is bound to 
 suffer. When the Imperial government finally 
 decides itself to undertake the administration of 
 the country, not only will it be obliged to buy from 
 the Company at their full value railways and other 
 works of public utility, for which, in all proba- 
 bility, the natives have already paid many times 
 over, but also it will be compelled immediately to 
 disburse millions to repair the neglect and injustice 
 of the preceding administration. 
 
 But administration by a Chartered Company is, 
 as we have already suggested, only an undisguised 
 form of a world-wide tendency of Imperial rule. 
 It is the frank exploitation of a conquered popula- 
 tion by the capital of the conquering nation. The 
 subject people is recognized only as a source of 
 profit to the conqueror. Democracy requires at 
 the very least that the interests of the inhabitants 
 of any country shall come first with its government. 
 Empire is only tolerable if this requirement is
 
 146 The Voice of the People 
 
 everywhere satisfied within it. Therefore, in 
 addition to demanding that native forms of 
 government and industry shall be utilized and 
 developed wherever possible, democracy will be 
 bound to insist on the strictest control of all 
 capitalist ventures in its subject territories. 
 
 Finally, competition between nations for colonial 
 possessions will ne\'er cease to be a cause of inter- 
 national bickering until the principles of Free Trade 
 and the Open Door are honestly and whole- 
 heartedl}' adopted by all colonizing Powers as the 
 basis of their administration of all territories under 
 their rule which are not self-governing. Any nation 
 which attempts to make the economic exploitation 
 of territory in iVfrica or elsewhere the privilege of 
 its own European subjects, or which refuses to 
 allow to the industry of other nations the same 
 facilities for access to the raw materials produced 
 which it offers to its own, is making empire a 
 coveted monopoly, a share in which may reasonably 
 be considered important to any industrial nation, 
 and this re-creating to the best of its power one of 
 the main features of the situation which led to the 
 war of 1914 and the armed peace which preceded 
 it. Such an attempt would be a sad retrogression 
 on the part of the British, who are historically 
 identified with a policy of Free Trade, and would 
 be particularly impolitic as coming from them, 
 since so large a proportion of the undeveloped 
 wealth of the world is under their administration, 
 offering so large a target for the envy and ambition
 
 Democratic Policy 147 
 
 of less fortunate nations. It is, therefore, not 
 enough that these territories should be administered 
 politically and economically, for the benefit of 
 their inhabitants. It is essential, further, that 
 such economic profit as may arise from their 
 occupation shall be shared on equal terms with 
 the whole world. 
 
 III. Foreign Affairs. — The sphere of foreign 
 affairs is all dealings between nation and nation. 
 The task before us is therefore to discover the 
 distinctive marks or principles, if there are an3^ 
 which are likely to characterize a genuinely 
 democratic government in its conduct towards 
 other governments and peoples, legally its equals. 
 
 We are met at the outset by a sceptical doubt, 
 the solution of which is essential to the considera- 
 tion of the question. It is still' widely held that a 
 nation has no objects or obligations outside itself 
 at all ; that its efforts are and should be completely 
 self-centred, all alike directed solely to its own 
 aggrandisement and improvement. Other nations 
 exist no doubt, and it is impossible not to have 
 dealings with them ; but in the eye of a statesman 
 they exist only to minister to the greatness of the 
 country whose servant he is. He may at times 
 claim, with apparent truth, that he is doing another 
 nation a service ; but it is in reality only a com- 
 mercial deal, by which he hopes to make a profit 
 for his country. If a critic hints that he gave 
 away something for nothing, or that he lost on 
 the exchange, the hint will be indignantly repudi-
 
 148 The Voice of the People 
 
 ated as equivalent to a charge of treason. The 
 statesman is a patriot ; that is to say, he seeks the 
 welfare of his country. Either he has no duty to 
 humanity at large, or, to state the same truth in a 
 form which to some will seem less offensive, his sole 
 duty to humanity is to strive to make his own 
 country great. If this view is true, it follows that 
 foreign policy is what Mazzini called " collective 
 egoism," and that talk of national unselfishness is 
 humbug ; that all that part of morality which is 
 shown in generosity, friendl}^ aid, self-denial for 
 the sake of others, and the like, has no apphcation 
 to the life and actions of nations. It follows that 
 nations associate only on the plane of the economic 
 motive, each seeking to get what it can, and con- 
 trolled in the seeking at most by a certain rudi- 
 mentary honesty of fidelity to promises. There 
 is no real society of nations, held together by the 
 recognition of rights and the acceptance of duties, 
 since nations are always in rivalry and competition 
 with one another. War is very obviously what 
 Clausewitz called it, the continuance of policy, 
 since it is only the attempt to get by violence 
 advantages which diplomacy is all the time trying 
 to secure by the trickery of words. 
 
 This sceptical view of international relations has 
 a long history, and can claim the support, total or 
 partial, of many of the most distinguished writers 
 and thinkers of early modern times, though it is 
 not always clear whether they put it forward as 
 their account of what such relations must be or
 
 Democratic Policy 149 
 
 merely of what they are. Contemporary sceptic- 
 ism is less confident, and has more opposition to 
 face ; but even in the modern England of the 
 present day the view still has its champions in the 
 Press and elsewhere. The Morning Post and the 
 National Review are its most accomplished and 
 consistent exponents. It is a fact not without 
 significance to our argument that the view is 
 current mainly in circles avowedly opposed to 
 democracy. It is true that there is a certain 
 cynical type of Socialism, more common on the 
 Continent than in England, which leans strongly 
 towards it ; but then it is precisely this section of 
 socialist opinion whose loyalty to democracy is 
 most doubtful. Here, as often, there is a certain 
 sympathy between the extreme right and the 
 extreme left. The two unite in ridicule of the 
 pious professions of the practical statesman and the 
 working politician, who choose to cover national 
 self-seeking under a cloak of fine phrases, and cling 
 tenaciously in words to an ideal of co-operation 
 between nations in the cause of civihzation to 
 which every fact and their own actions daily give 
 the lie. Their verbal homage to this ideal is 
 represented as mere sentimentalism or hypocrisy ; 
 of a piece with their pretended trust in the voice 
 of the people. The people has no voice ; and, if 
 it had, why should a wise man follow it ? And a 
 nation has no rights, beyond what it can win and 
 keep by its own strength, and no duties, except to 
 prevail in the world-struggle.
 
 150 The Voice of the People 
 
 We have in the west a group of nations, differing 
 in size, wealth and imperial achievement, but 
 fairly uniform in their collective needs and habits 
 of life, and closely inter-connected by mutual 
 intercourse in trade, learning, hterature and the 
 arts. To say that this group of nations has no 
 common interests is wanton paradox, and to 
 maintain that its common interests are not better 
 served by co-operation than by competition 
 between the nations which compose it is to defend 
 an impossible thesis. In such a group community 
 of interest is an undeniable fact ; and, though no 
 common organization may exist, some degree of 
 co-operation is a bare necessity. If every member 
 of the group chooses to pursue a purely selfish line 
 of action, attending to the common good only so 
 far as it happens to coincide with its own immediate 
 good, the common welfare of the group will in the 
 main be neglected and will suffer in proportion. 
 If one member of the group chooses to stand aside 
 from a policy of common action and consultation 
 which is accepted by the rest, possibly the common 
 welfare will not greatly suffer ; but the recalci- 
 trant member will in effect be relying on and 
 profiting from the fact that its more public- 
 spirited fellows are willing to undertake the whole 
 of the work in which it ought to be bearing its fair 
 share. How far either of these hypotheses fitted 
 the community of nations before the world-war, or 
 will fit it during the era of Hquidation or recon- 
 struction on which we are now entering, it is very
 
 Democratic Policy 151 
 
 difficult to say. What is certain, however, is that 
 already before the war co-operation between nations 
 was already a fact and not a mere dream. Friendly 
 arrangements between governments as to shipping, 
 merchandize, copyright, international posts and 
 telegraphs, and a hundred and one other matters 
 of varying importance, had already supplemented 
 and facilitated the friendly intercourse of individu- 
 als. By many of these international agreements 
 the separate nations, as nations, had no private 
 end to serve at all, except so far as in making them 
 they were satisfying a popular demand. What 
 was really happening, under the eyes and with the 
 aid of statesmen who were unaware of the signifi- 
 cance of their own acts, was that the citizens of 
 the various countries were busily and fruitfully 
 occupied in building a community wider than the 
 nation. The life of the citizen overflowed the 
 limits of the nation-state, and international agree- 
 ments did but record and register the fact in the 
 most obvious and convenient fashion. Society is 
 not made by laws and agreements between its 
 members ; laws and agreements are a subsequent 
 and in many respects a defective statement of the 
 form which society has chosen to assume. Inter- 
 national agreements are thus a proof of the exist- 
 ence of a community of nations, and some evidence 
 as to its character. They show the theory that 
 nations associate only as rivals and competitors to 
 be a mere myth. Between competitors, as such, 
 there are no agreements. Even agreement, there-
 
 152 The Voice of the People 
 
 fore, as to the terms and hmits of competition 
 refutes the theory ; and co-operation between 
 nations for the advancement of art or science pre- 
 supposes an existing community of which each is 
 a member, and in whicli, at least in part, competi- 
 tion is definitely superseded by another relation. 
 
 If, then, there is competition between civilized 
 nations, there is also- co-operation. Even without 
 the League of Nations the society of nations was 
 not a mere dream, since all mutual relations 
 between them, other than mere enmity, involve the 
 tacit recognition of its existence. But if the fact 
 of international society is accepted, the fact of 
 international obligation, that is, of national 
 morality and immorality in foreign affairs, must 
 also be admitted. It was just because they 
 refused to recognise the existence of a society of 
 nations that earher thinkers denied the existence 
 of international morality. We have already given 
 reasons for the belief that such a society existed 
 before ; but it is now formally authorized, and its 
 terms and conditions exphcitly set out (whether 
 adequately or not) in the Covenant which consti- 
 tutes the League of Nations. The reason given 
 therefore is refuted, and, until another more cogent 
 is found, we are entitled to reverse the conclusion 
 and assume that common sense is justified in 
 supposing that the language of statesmen is not 
 mere affectation, and that nations may behave 
 well or ill in their deahngs with one another, and 
 may be called good and bad in respect of their
 
 Democratic Policy 153 
 
 actions. The social obligations of nations, we 
 may assume, are in principle the same as those of 
 individuals. It is wrong to treat others as merely 
 a means to your own private advantage. Society 
 requires that its members shall each recognize all 
 the others as equally entitled to exist in their own 
 place and function, each taking his proper share 
 in the common vvork, and giving and receiving 
 friendly help in more personal concerns. These 
 are the elementary requisites of association, the 
 rules of decent behaviour, and must be taken to 
 apply to nations, as to individuals, in society. A 
 man will be blamed so far as his conduct does not 
 accord with them ; but he cannot claim positive 
 merit for compliance. He has merely fulfilled the 
 law. Many go further : they do more than their 
 share of the common labour, or they go out of their 
 way to help their fellows at some sacrifice to them- 
 selves. As showing a degree of public spirit and 
 private generosity beyond what is ordinary and 
 obligatory, such actions are entitled to the praise 
 which they receive, and are rightly taken as 
 evidence of a positive goodness of character. The 
 action of a nation, it must be supposed, might be 
 entitled to similar commendation. If so, a nation 
 is capable, in its dealings with other nations, not 
 merely of respecting the ordinary moral restraints, 
 but also of showing generosity and some degree of 
 moral heroism. 
 
 It has been the view of believers in democracy, 
 practically without exception, that these conclu-
 
 154 The Voice of the People 
 
 sions are sound, that those moral distinctions 
 which are applied to the actions of individuals are 
 equally applicable to the actions of nations. The 
 implied refusal to accept the national boundary as 
 final and absolute, and the belief in the over-riding 
 obligation of a wider communit5% though not 
 confined to them, is yet peculiarly characteristic of 
 the democratic thinkers of the nineteenth century. 
 The reason for this must be found in a fundamental 
 divergence between democratic and anti-demo- 
 cratic theory. In the absence of conclusive proof 
 to the contrary, the democrat tends to interpret all 
 acts done in the name of a nation by its rulers or 
 representatives as expressions of the nation's will. 
 Now it is certain that moral distinctions are all 
 ultimately to be attached to will, and to will only. 
 In other words, nothing but a will is morally good, 
 or morally bad. It is therefore natural for a 
 democrat to hold that nations show goodness or 
 badness in their actions ; and their opponents, who 
 hold that the notion of national will or action is 
 nonsense, are entitled to draw the logical conclu- 
 sion that a nation cannot show itself good or bad. 
 To them a statesman is a kind of trustee for the 
 nation, entitled for the moment to employ re- 
 sources which are not his own, and expected to 
 employ them for the good of those in whose interest 
 the trust was created. It is not for him to be 
 generous with other people's money. His business 
 is to develop the estate to the best effect he can. 
 In dealing with other nations he is subject to no
 
 Democratic Policy 155 
 
 laws, and the interest of his country reigns para- 
 mount and unquestioned. He is not acting 
 selfishly or immorally ; he is doing his best for 
 others, whose trustee he is ; and the nation, being 
 ex, hypothesi incapable of judging or deciding, is 
 not acting at all. This position is partly destroyed 
 if it is admitted that a nation is a member of a 
 wider community, and, as such, amenable to laws 
 and restraints in its deahngs with other nations, 
 which are as real and binding as the laws of the 
 land, though less precise and comprehensive. But, 
 if the rest of the analysis is left standing, it would 
 follow that the moral judgment, which is now 
 admitted to be legitimate, applies to the states- 
 man, not to the nation which he represents, since 
 the act and will is his, not theirs. 
 
 The question is : Are we justified in holding a 
 people responsible for the actions of its rulers, done 
 in that capacity ? If we hold the people respon- 
 sible, we judge in effect that the action was its 
 action and expressed its will. It is evident that 
 there is only ground for doubt as to the answer so 
 far as nations are not democratically organized. 
 For the aim of democracy is, as we have seen, to 
 establish this very responsibility beyond question. 
 So far as democracy is not realized, a genuine 
 doubt remains. There is an extreme case, that of 
 a subject people autocratically governed by an 
 Imperial power, in which complete irresponsibility 
 must be admitted ; the subject, in this case, 
 cannot be considered to contribute at all to the act
 
 i56 The Voice of the People 
 
 of its ruler. But there is no other kind of govern- 
 ment in which the element of democracy is entirely 
 absent. It may be difficult or even impossible to 
 say with confidence in any given case in what 
 degree democracy is present. It is none the less 
 certain that only so far as it is present is a people 
 justly held responsible for the actions done in its 
 name. Quite apart from any question of forms of 
 government, it seems to be in fact generally 
 assumed that in the modern nation-state the 
 greatest single factor in any important political 
 decision is the opinion and wishes of the mass of 
 the people. We have been told repeatedly that 
 German^^'s choice of war in August, 1914, was the 
 act of a militarist autocracy. But those who say 
 this do not, as a rule, draw the conclusion that the 
 whole responsibility for its results lies with the 
 soldiers and officials, and that the people as a 
 whole deserves no punishment. Rightly or 
 wrongly, they consider that the German govern- 
 ment could not have acted on that scale and with 
 that efficiency without the active concurrence of 
 the governed, who were therefore guilty with it of 
 whatever wrong was done. They count, in short, 
 on the effective presence of a democratic element 
 in German politics. When President Wilson inter- 
 preted the war quite simply as a war of democracies 
 against autocracies, he was applauded. But when 
 he drew the obvious conclusion that the peoples of 
 enemy countries were not guilty and must not be 
 punished, he was ignored. In truth, not only was
 
 Democratic Policy 157 
 
 the conclusion inconvenient, but the main premise 
 was unsound. German}^ was not to that extent 
 autocratically governed. It is thus plain that, 
 while the final realization of democracy would make 
 the full appUcation of moral distinctions to inter- 
 national relations justifiable beyond dispute, the 
 absence of democratic forms of government is not 
 accepted as wholly exempting a people from respon- 
 sibility for the acts of its rulers. The moral judg- 
 ment is still applied, and with justice, in our view, 
 so far as democratic control is a fact. And in no 
 modern nation-state can it be supposed to be 
 entirely absent in any decision to the significance 
 of which the general public is awake. 
 
 The reason why anti-democratic theory goes 
 commonly hand in hand with a denial of inter- 
 national obligation is now obvious. It is hardly 
 too much to say that it is democracy which makes 
 international morality possible. The evidence of 
 history lends support to this view, inasmuch as the 
 rise of democracy has in fact coincided with a 
 perceptible improvement in standards of behaviour 
 as between nations. The same period, however, 
 has witnessed the growth of other ideals, in par- 
 ticular of certain forms of nationalism and im- 
 peralism, which seem to many to be false in them- 
 selves and pernicious in their results, and which 
 have been by no means wholly disavowed by 
 democratic movements. Nationalism has taken a 
 form in which it breathes new life into the old 
 heresy that a people has no dut}' more holy than
 
 158 The Voice of the People 
 
 its own aggrandisement, and imperiahsm turns 
 foreign policy into a scramble between nations for 
 markets and concessions, for monopolies of trade 
 and economic enterprise among the less civilised 
 peoples of the earth. Both alike appeal to patriot- 
 ism, which they exalt as the sovereign obligation of 
 the citizen and the supreme guiding principle of 
 national policy. With imperialism we need not 
 here concern ourselves. We have already tried to 
 show that empire, so far as it means the imposition 
 of one community's will upon another, is incon- 
 sistent with democratic principles ; and, in theory 
 at least, the opposition between democracy and 
 imperialism is well understood. With nationalism 
 the case is very different. It has seemed some- 
 times to be the natural consort of democracy, and 
 in Mazzini's glowing pages the two ideals were 
 preached with a fervour and coherence which is 
 still unsurpassed. Some criticism is therefore due 
 from us of the nationalist idea as an influence upon 
 the foreign policy of the democratic State. 
 
 Nationalism is the name given to the theor}'' that 
 civilized society falls naturally into certain large 
 homogeneous groups called nations. A nation is a 
 fact, a natural unit, to some extent independent of 
 and antecedent to political organization. Though 
 it may be difficult to say precisely on what national 
 unity depends, since differences in race, in language, 
 and in other vital factors are possible within the 
 national group, it is essential to the theory that 
 mere community of government is not of itself
 
 Democratic Policy 159 
 
 sufficient. A State fails to be a nation, where the 
 bond of unity is merely political ; and a nation 
 may exist which possesses no poUtical organs of 
 its own, and thus fails to be a State. So Mazzini 
 could speak of a Polish or Itahan nation, though 
 Europe in his day recognised no Pohsh or Italian 
 State ; and so the Austro-Hungarian monarchy 
 was alwa3^s denied by common consent the name 
 of nation. Switzerland offers an interesting 
 instance, in which a real unity seems to have 
 been created by political necessities and ex- 
 ternal pressure, in spite of the conspicuous 
 absence of unity of race, language, or re- 
 ligion. But to admit the existence of a Swiss 
 nationality is to assert that the population is now 
 held together by bonds which are not merely 
 political. The conception of the nation thus 
 provides a justification for poUtical divisions where 
 the boundaries between States are correctly drawn, 
 and a challenge to pohtical divisions where the 
 boundaries are drawn incorrectly. It gives 
 us an ideal of a world in which every state is 
 a nation and every nation a state, in which, 
 that is, the political divisions correspond to 
 the natural divisions of the population. While 
 it affords a pretext for secession and for the transfer 
 of districts, large or small, from one allegiance to 
 another, it suggests at the same time a possibility 
 of finality in such rearrangements. Finally, where 
 it accepts the national character of a State, it 
 reinforces patriotism, as teaching the citizen that
 
 i6o The Voice of the People 
 
 the State, which claims his service, has no merely 
 legal title to his devotion. 
 
 So far as the nationalist ideal demands that the 
 boundaries of governments shall be determined by 
 the permanent interests and affinities of the popu- 
 lation concerned, rather than by military force, 
 dynastic interests, and the fancies and prejudices 
 of rulers, it is logically complementary to demo- 
 cracy. It applies to the formation of political 
 societies the same principle which democracy 
 apphes to their organized life. So far, again, as it 
 insists that there are fruitful differences of custom 
 and tradition in the world, which are best expressed 
 for the general comfort and advantage of humanity, 
 in the organization of independent nation-states, 
 it is asserting a fact which in our present state of 
 political development is of primary importance ; 
 and again it is in fundamental sympathy with 
 democracy. That the recognition of these prin- 
 ciples may involve us in difficulties in Ireland or 
 India, or in international complications on the 
 continent of Europe is no good reason against 
 giving them their due weight in foreign and internal 
 policy. A nationalist foreign policy in this sense 
 would be a policy of active sympathy with other 
 nations, and would necessarily involve the notion 
 of a societ}' of nations based on equality. This was 
 the nationalism of Mazzini, who was able to claim 
 that nationalism involved internationalism and 
 found its logical consummation in some such 
 organization as we have recently attempted to
 
 Democratic Policy i6i 
 
 found in the League of Nations. He was therefore 
 consistent in advocating as the main principle of 
 foreign policy the maxim : " Never deny your 
 sister nations." The negative form of his maxim 
 gives it a certain air of modesty, which is not out 
 of place. For, however carefully it is interpreted, 
 the nationalist ideal will not solve many problems 
 of foreign policy. It is the plain fact that national 
 groups, of convenient size and geographical dis- 
 tribution, do not everywhere lie ready to hand on 
 the continent of Europe. Distinct stocks, bitterly 
 opposed and living in almost continuous warfare 
 with one another, are perplexingly intermixed in 
 the Balkan peninsula ; and nearer home, as in 
 Ireland and Alsace-Lorraine, there are cases of 
 divided allegiance not much less critical. In such 
 cases it may be necessary to try to create by 
 political means a unity which does not exist, or to 
 trust an existing State, which cannot claim the 
 sanction of nationality, to overcome in course of 
 time its own internal divisions. Nationalism, 
 therefore, may well be found to be of little assist- 
 ance in many of the most urgent practical problems 
 of foreign policy. Nevertheless, when all due 
 reservations have been made, Mazzini's ideal of 
 nationalist democracy has a permanent value. 
 Democracy would be untrue to itself if its foreign 
 policy were not nationalist in his sense. 
 
 The ideahsm of Mazzini, however, must not 
 blind us to the fact that nationalism has in practice 
 too often been the cover for much questionable
 
 i62 The Voice of the People 
 
 and demorahzing propaganda. Memories of Pal- 
 merston and Napoleon III, of Empire Days and 
 Sedanfeiers will be stirred up to confute our 
 optimism. We shall be told that, whatever 
 theorists may say, this is what nationalism really 
 means, a tendency productive of every mischief 
 and destructive of the moral sense of nations. 
 But though the facts- look awkward, and might be 
 made with a little trouble to look more awkward 
 still, the answer is simple. Palmerston and 
 Napoleon attitudinized. Empire Day and Sedan- 
 feier were organized, in the interest of a nationaUsm 
 which was intended for internal consumption. 
 Their nationalism is in the main a feature of 
 internal policy. The attempt is to raise national 
 feeling within one's own borders to fever-heat in 
 order to strengthen the hand of the government 
 and to terrify one's neighbours. It is true that 
 Mazzini preached nationaUsm to Italians ; but he 
 pleaded for Poland as weU as for Italy, and besides, 
 Italy was not then a political unit. As soon as a 
 nation has found the political unity Vv^hich it seeks, 
 its own nationaUty is powerless to provide a 
 principle of action. The only possible suggestion 
 is that the nation should continue to be itself, 
 which, if it had any practical effect, could only 
 result in a self-consciousness damaging to all 
 action ahke. It was similarly suggested to Peer 
 Gynt by the Button-moulder in Ibsen's play that 
 he might have found salvation by " being himself " ; 
 but he was none the wiser, nor are we. No man
 
 Democratic Policy 163 
 
 wants to be simply what he is ; and in order to be 
 anything at all he must have some object outside 
 himself. In the same way, a nation cannot Uve 
 on its own nationality, and has no need to trouble 
 about it at all when once it has found its proper 
 means of political expression. It is nationality as a 
 fact in the world outside which should inspire 
 action. This is aj)parent from what has already 
 been said. To prevent mistakes, however. 
 Democracy might well take the precaution of dis- 
 tinguishing its own nationalism as " for external 
 application only." 
 
 Men are held together by many ties, some of 
 which cross national frontiers ; and most of them 
 are to some extent voluntarily accepted or created 
 by the individual. There are the ties of the 
 family, into which they were born and which they 
 help to enlarge, personal ties of friendship and 
 affection, ties political and religious, common ties 
 binding them to their fellows of the craft or hobby, 
 study or profession, ties attaching them to the soil 
 on which they dwell and to the various com- 
 munities and institutions in which they have lived 
 and worked. Each of these ties presses its own 
 claim of service and loyalty upon the individual, 
 and it is for him to adjust their claims as he best 
 may. The national claim is but one among these 
 competing liabilities, not by any means the most 
 engrossing and persistent, but perhaps the least 
 voluntary in origin and the most difficult to escape 
 in its application. Its wiUing recognition is called
 
 164 The Voice of the People 
 
 patriotism ; but to a great extent national service 
 is compulsory. The individual is not left to decide 
 how much he shall pay towards his country's 
 expense, nor even whether he shall fight in its 
 armies against those of enemy nations. He is 
 required to obey. Change of nationality is allowed 
 under certain restrictions ; but it is a risky step, 
 involving the rupture of many other ties ; and 
 there is no escaping national obligations altogether. 
 The nation-state is a compelling fact in modern 
 society, all-pervading and almost all-powerful. 
 It may be suspected that this predominance of the 
 national unity over all others, or at least over all 
 other unities based on locality, is a transient phase 
 of human social development. The nation may be 
 destined, not exactly to be superseded, but at least 
 to lose its disproportionate eminence by attack 
 from two directions. On the one hand, it is 
 threatened, as the Greek City was threatened, by 
 a wider organization, which is already taking 
 concrete form in the League of Nations. On the 
 other hand, there are signs that the nation-state is 
 in many cases too large for the effective administra- 
 tion of all the manifold departments of modern 
 government. If the fear of a European War is 
 successfully removed, the most powerful motive to 
 centralization and to the enlargement of the area of 
 government will be destroyed ; and a reverse 
 movement of division and decentrahzation may be 
 expected to set in. Historians have good reason 
 to point to the solid achievements of the
 
 Democratic Policy 165 
 
 national organization in the nineteenth century, 
 and probably have the best of the argument with 
 pessimistic critics who see nothing but its follies 
 and failures. Nevertheless it seems evident that 
 recent times have witnessed an exaggeration of 
 the national tie at the expense of all others, which 
 is transitory, and incidental to a certain stage of 
 development. The inflammation is perhaps al- 
 ready dying down, and, in the West of Europe, at 
 least, where the process of development is most 
 advanced, will probably find no occasion for recur- 
 rence. The Nation is neither dead nor dying, but 
 it is losing its monopoly of patriotism, and ready to 
 make room for the lesser and the larger unity. 
 
 We have already seen that the spirit of Democ- 
 racy is hostile to the mutual exclusiveness of 
 nations and to the attempt to make the national 
 barrier absolute. The chief hope, indeed, of a 
 more real society of nations rests on the general 
 realization of a fuller democracy. We have seen 
 also that democracy is friendly to nationality as 
 the basis and inspiration of political organization. 
 The wider community is to be, certainly, a society 
 of nations, even though it is not merely that. So 
 far as nationality has been made to contribute to 
 jingoism and imperialist aggression, this has been 
 due to tendencies and activities either directly 
 hostile or at least unsympathetic to democracy. 
 The international tie has been denied or neglected ; 
 national feeling within the state has been artifi- 
 cially excited ; military strength has been sought
 
 i66 The Voice of the People 
 
 by accessions of territory and over-centralization 
 of government. The general realization of democ- 
 racy within a wider super-national organization, 
 such as we are now promised, will go far to restrict 
 and annull these perversions of national sentiment, 
 and will thus set nationahty free to play a valuable 
 and necessary, though perhaps less showy, part in 
 the evolution of hum'^an society. A foreign policy 
 of open deahng, based on the friendly co-operation 
 of nations for the common advantage, will at last 
 be possible. Co-operation is involved in the very 
 notion of society ; and democracy necessitates 
 openness of dealing, since an act cannot be national 
 of which the nation is ignorant. 
 
 We have now completed our account of democ- 
 racy by a survey of the three main departments of 
 government. It was observed at the outset fhat 
 in imperial and foreign affairs the competence to 
 democracy is rather generally mistrusted, while in 
 internal affairs it is admitted that it has its uses. 
 Competence, of course, cannot be proved except 
 by trial ; and no modern state has yet made the 
 experiment of democratic control in foreign and 
 imperial affairs. But if these departments have in 
 the past been less democratic than the others, for 
 that very reason the full realization of democracy, 
 if democracy remained true to itself, would have in 
 them the most revolutionary effect. And if 
 democracy could finally discredit empire as an 
 ideal and make it tolerable as a fact ; if it could end 
 the era of wars and alliances, of secret and dis-
 
 Democratic Policy 167 
 
 honourable bargains and internecine rivalries 
 between nations, and replace it by mutual con- 
 sideration and co-operation, it would have effected 
 a most happy and glorious revolution. But, how- 
 ever firmly one may believe that such are logically 
 the fruits of the democratic principle, it is impos- 
 sible to guarantee that democracies will in fact so 
 behave. A democratic country, like any other, 
 may and will do wrong. One can perhaps show 
 that democracy, so far as it is effective, makes 
 certain kinds of intrigue impossible and others 
 difficult or improbable ; but forms of government 
 alone will not ensure that it remains effective. A 
 democratic country will allow its representatives 
 within certain limits to forego democracy. And 
 that is perhaps the greatest practical obstacle to 
 democratic control of foreign and imperial affairs. 
 The people for the most part do not care and are 
 not interested : they will not attend. These 
 matters are therefore left to the unfettered judg- 
 ment of Ministers and Parliament ; and democracy 
 is confined once more to internal affairs. The 
 remedy is mainly with the members of Parliament 
 and with the political parties. If they allow any 
 department of government to be placed " outside 
 party," so that questions relevant to it have 
 practically no place in party programmes and 
 election speeches, they encourage inattention on the 
 part of the electorate, and deprive the people, in 
 effect, of any power to control policy in that 
 department. The authority of Parliament itself
 
 1 68 The Voice of the People 
 
 suffers in consequence. There are departments of 
 government with which members are not accus- 
 tomed, and therefore not competent, to deal. 
 Consequently the control of policy falls to experts 
 and interested parties, to the man on the spot, to 
 the Foreign and Colonial offices, to large financial 
 and commercial undertakings with axes to grind, 
 while the Prime Minister and the Cabinet find it 
 more and more difficult and inadvisable to inter- 
 fere. The final conclusion is the irresponsible rule 
 of officials, or bureaucracy. This process towards 
 bureaucracy in foreign and imperial matters, 
 which, owing to the pressure of domestic problems, 
 was much accentuated in the Liberal governments 
 of the years 1906-1914, could have been checked at 
 any time by the enterprise of a sufficient number of 
 private members of Parhament, and could be 
 undone now in a few months by an active party 
 which was determined to make democracy effective 
 over the whole range of national affairs. A foreign 
 or imperial pohcy which is above party is a pohcy 
 which is afraid of publicity, and therefore hostile 
 to democracy ; and in removing these matters, 
 through laziness, dishonesty, or a mistaken desire 
 for continuity, from the control of the electorate, 
 it effectively exempts them from the control of 
 Parliament. But no matter within the competence 
 of Parliament can be taken out of its hands except 
 by its negligence or with its consent. We are thus 
 brought back to the relation of the elected member 
 to his constituency, and to the part played by
 
 Democratic Policy 169 
 
 party in formulating the issues on which a decision 
 is required and so enabling the electorate to 
 exercise a decisive influence upon policy. Upon 
 the correct functioning of these two portions of the 
 machinery, above all others, under our representa-" 
 tive system, democracy depends for its existence. 
 It is not to be expected, and it may even be 
 doubted whether it is desirable, that foreign and 
 colonial problems should engage public opinion 
 so intensely as domestic issues. Only occasionally 
 would they provide the main issue of an election. 
 There is no reason, however, why they should not 
 receive continuous attention from the Parliament 
 and from the people ; and if that were so there 
 would be some ground for hope that foreign and 
 imperial policy would cease to contradict principles 
 accepted as axiomatic by all parties in home 
 affairs, and become by degrees fit expressions of 
 the democratic idea. The free co-operation of 
 citizens in the democratic State would then pro- 
 duce, as its natural complement, the friendly co- 
 operation of nations for the advancement of 
 civilization and for the protection of more backward 
 races from economic exploitation.
 
 Index 
 
 Absolute rule, iiff ; in industry, i2^fi. 
 
 Act, national, made possible by democracy, I3ff, 43, 74, 117, 
 
 154, 166 ; of first and second degree, 17, 20. 
 Africa, South, 128, 138 ; Central (Tropical), 130, I33ff. 
 Alternative vote, 43. 
 Aristotle, quoted, 125. 
 Asquith, H. H., 85. 
 Athens, 82. 
 Austria-Hungary, 31, 119, 159. 
 
 Bagehot, W., quoted, 67, 91. 
 Bfffour, A. J., 50. 
 Balkans, 161. 
 Bismarck, quoted, 118. 
 Bureaucracy, 168. 
 Burke, quoted, 44. 
 
 Cabinet, its relation to Parliament, 67ff ; its recKit position, 
 8, 87 ; functions of, 88. 
 
 Chamber, Second, 26, giff ; functions of, 92ff, 106 ; in a federal 
 State, 98f ; necessity of, disputed, io2ff ; constitution of, 
 in Norway, 115. 
 
 Chartered Companies, i44ff. 
 
 Chinese labour, 138. 
 
 Clausewitz, quoted, 148. 
 
 Cole. G. D. H., 8. 
 
 Commons, House of, see Parliament. 
 
 Conscientious objectors, 27. 
 
 Constituencies, basis of division into, 29ff ; single-member c. 
 or proportional representation, 33fi ; size of, 33f, 40 ; re- 
 lation of c. to representative, 45flf, 555. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 103. 
 
 Crown, function of, in regard to the appointment of Prime 
 Minister and of other ministers, 75ff, 80. 
 
 Delegate, member of parliament as, 58£f, 72 ; minister as d. 
 of Parliament, 67, 77 ; Prime Minister as d. of Cabinet, 
 68, 71 ; mere d., 57, 71.
 
 172 Index 
 
 Democracy, an unrealized ideal, 13 ; main condition of realiza- 
 tion, lyff., 41 ; its weaknesses, 21, 112, 120, 166; its de- 
 mands, of a kin.y;, 15 ; of a representative, 58fl. ; of ministers, 
 72, 75 ; not advanced by proportional representation, 38, 
 41, 43; restricted by the mandate theory, 5iff ; by the 
 House of Lords, 25. 92 ; by Second Chambers generally, 
 92fi, 107 ; by certain powers of the crown, 75 ; effects of 
 d. on policy, 119; in internal affairs, i2off ; in industry, 
 127 ; in imperial affairs, i28ff ; opposed to Empire as 
 such, 129 ; but accepts it on certain conditions, political 
 and economic, 132S ; in foreign affairs, r47ff ; asserts 
 international obligations, 147 ; accepts nat onalism as a 
 principle of foreign policy, 158 ; inconsistent with bureau- 
 cracy, 168 ; net wholly absent in any independent State, 
 156 ; not a matter of institutions alone, 74. 
 
 Education, as a qualification for extra voting power, 27 ; a pre- 
 condition of democracy, 19, 21, 122. 
 
 Empire, inconsistent with democracy, 129, 158, but accepted 
 on certain conditions, I32ff. ; elements of British E. 
 classified, 128 ; E. Day, 162. 
 
 Equality, as voters, 28 ; of opportunity, i2iff. 
 
 Foreign affairs, democratic conduct of, 1475 ; alleged incapacity 
 
 of democracy in, 21, 120, 166. 
 Franchise, parliamentary, qualifications for, 26ff ; grounds of 
 
 disqualification, 26 ; suggested occupational f., 30. 
 Free-trade, in the products of non-self-governing colonies, 146. 
 French Revolution, constitutions of 1791 and 1793, 103. 
 
 Germany, 119, 156; new constitution, quoted, 66. 
 Godwin, William, quoted, 65. 
 Goldwin Smith, quoted, 91. 
 
 Ibsen's Peer Gynt, 162. 
 
 Imperialism, 131, 158. 
 
 India, i28ff., 144, 160 ; coolie labour from, 137. 
 
 Industry, autocratically organized, 124 ; controlled by statute, 
 
 125 ; the demand for a democratic organization, 127 ; 
 
 native i. in Africa, 142. 
 Ireland, 31, 43, 1 12, 160. 
 
 Jaures, Jean, quoted, i r. 
 
 King, as absolute ruler, 11; in a democracy, 15; present 
 political powers, 75ff, 80.
 
 Index 
 
 173 
 
 Labour, and capital, i22ff, 135, 140 ; coloured 1. in colonies, 
 I35£f ; contract or indentured 1., 137 ; L. Party, 85. 
 
 Law does not make Society, 151. 
 
 League of Nations, 132, 152, 161, 164. 
 
 Lecky, \V. E. H., quoted, 91. 
 
 Lloyd George, D., 8, 50 ; his position after the 1918 election, 84flf. 
 
 Local government, 43, 164. 
 
 Locke, John, quoted, 11, 127. 
 
 Lords, House of, 26, 92, 95, 99, loi, 117; its weakness, 113 ; 
 proposals for its reform, 114. 
 
 Majorities, exaggerated under existing electoral system, 37 ; 
 
 diminished by proportional representation, 35. 
 Mandate, 44, 48, 61 ; the m. theory of representation, 49^ ; 
 
 negative and positive forms, 51. 
 Marriott, J. A. R., on the necessity of a Second Chamber, 102. 
 Mazzini, quoted, 118, 140, 148 ; on nationalism, i58fl:. 
 Member, of Parliament, see Representation ; independent m., 
 
 57. 61. 87. 
 Mill, J. S., quoted, 24, 25, 45 ; his candidature for Westminster, 
 
 45- 
 
 Ministers, delegates of Pariiament, 67, 77, 89 ; duties of, 78 ; 
 suggested appointment by Parliament, 77 ; relation to 
 Prime Minister, 68lf, 74, 78, 88 ; relation to the Cro-wn, 
 76 ; m. without portfolio, 88. 
 
 Minorities, permanent, a danger to democracy, 32 ; representa- 
 tion of, an object of proportional representation, 34 ; con- 
 ciliated by concessions in the constituencies, 40, and in 
 parliament, 73. 
 
 Moral distinctions, applicable to the actions of nations, i47ff. 
 
 Napier, W., quoted, 24. 
 Napoleon IIL, 162. 
 
 Nationalism, i57ff ; a democratic principle, with some quali- 
 fications, i6off. 
 Norwegian Parliament, 115. 
 Nyasaland, 136. 
 
 One man, one vote, 28. 
 
 Palmerston, 162. 
 
 Pariiament, necessity for, 26 ; electorate, 26 ; composition, 
 under proportional representation, 34, 41 ; candidates' 
 programmes, 46, 56 ; responds to pressure, 54 ; business of 
 p., 59 ; relation to Ministry, 67, 74, 77 ; minorities in p., 
 73 ; a committee of the nation, 74 ; should appoint Prime
 
 174 Index 
 
 Minister, but not other ministers, j^S. ; present impotence 
 of p., 83ff ; its two chambers, 93ff ; mainly occupied with 
 internal afiairs, 121 ; its authority, 167 ; p. under Crom- 
 well, 103 ; in Norway, 115 ; annual parliaments, 54. 
 [Note. — By ' Parliament' is meant the House of Commons, 
 except where the context shows that the House of Lords 
 is included.] 
 
 Parliament Act, 96, 97. 
 
 Parties, ]X)litical, tend to be multiplied under proportional 
 representation, 35 ; tend to be reduced to two under 
 existing system, 39 ; . electoral programmes, 40, 46, 57, 64 ; 
 function of, 59, 85, 167 ; objection to formal recognition of, 
 81 ; recent abeyance <si, 86. 
 
 Patriotism, 159, 163. 
 
 People, sovereignty of, intermittent and continuous, 54, 64. 
 
 Press, influence of, 55, 88. 
 
 Prime Minister : relation to Cabinet and ParUament, 7ifi ; 
 method of appointment, 75ff ; should be elected by House of 
 Commons, 81 ; his increased power, 82 ; relation to Party, 
 86. 
 
 Promises, ' an evil ' (Godwin), 65. 
 
 Proportional Representation : its object to secure representation 
 of mmorities, 33 ; involves large constituencies, 34 ; pro- 
 duces small majorities in parliament, 35 ; multiplies 
 parties, 35 interprets representation narrowly, 36 ; leads 
 to a ' Ijloc ' system, 38 ; effect on party programmes, 40 ; 
 p. r. in local government, 43. 
 
 Recall of representatives by constituencies, 52. 
 
 Redhch and Hurst, quoted, 67. 
 
 Renan, quoted, 118. 
 
 Representation, necessity of, 25 ; geographical and occupational 
 systems, 29 ; as interpreted by advocates of proportional 
 representation, 36 ; Mill's view, 45 ; the mandate theory, 
 49ff ; should be based on delegation, 58, 63, 68, 72, 77 ; 
 r. of constituent units in a federation, 99 ; ultimately 
 requires a single chamber, 117 ; criticised by Rousseau, 
 44, 52. 64. 
 
 Riches , as a quahfication for extra voting power, 27 ; W. Napier 
 on, 24. 
 
 Rousseau, quoted, 44 ; his criticism of Enghsh representation, 
 52. 64. 
 
 Russia, 28, 119. 
 
 Sedanfeier (annual German celebration of the victory of Sedan), 
 162.
 
 Index 175 
 
 Single-Chamber government : opiniona of I^ocky, Bagchot, 
 and C.oldwin Siiiilli, (iiiotcd, <)i ; view of J. A. R. Marriott, 
 loz ; no ri;id historical precedent, 103 ; reasons why it ha3 
 not Ihnmi tried, 105 ; Enghmd a suitable held for the 
 experiment, 112. 
 
 Slavery. 123, 138, 140. 
 
 Socialism, 140 ; State-S. and (iiiild-S., 126. 
 
 Spain's experiment in Hinglc-chand)er government, 104. 
 
 Switzerland, 159. 
 
 Syndicalism, 127. 
 
 Trade-Unions, 30, 125. 
 Wilson, President, I5^>.
 
 GUILD SOCIALISM 
 
 A Critical Examination 
 
 HY 
 
 G. C. FIELD, M.A., B.Sc. 
 
 Lecturer in Philosophy in the University of Liverpool. 
 
 CJoili 5/- net. 
 
 Among the many schemes oi re-construction Political, 
 Soci.'il and Indnstiiul which have boon put lorward, that 
 advocated undcn llu- namo ot Guild Socialism, or recently 
 the National Guild System, occupies perhaps the most 
 prominent place. There has, however, been little in the 
 way of ilctailod criticism ot this scheme by anyone who 
 does not aj^ree with it. and it is, therefore, .-dl the more 
 necessary thot those who are unable to accept the par- 
 ticular doctrines should think out, and state clearly, what 
 are thi defects they find in this alleged Social panacea. 
 
 Perhaps the first, and most important, point to consider 
 is the account given by \he advocatos of Guild Socialism 
 oi the evils which they toiiceivo to exist, and which the 
 Reforms they urge are to remedy. We have to ask our- 
 solvos is their account of actual present conditions 
 correct ? Have they jightly diagnosed the malady from 
 which we are suilenng ? 
 
 This is the subjoct of this volume, which should be read 
 by all those interested in the many industrial problems of 
 to-doy. 
 
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