Proportional Representation | Page 8

thus

depend upon its capacity to interpret the will of the country, and the
support which the House of Commons can give is of value only to the
extent to which that House reflects national opinion. The Commons, if
it is to maintain unimpaired its predominant position in the constitution,
must make good its claim to be the representative expression of the
national will. The measures for which it makes itself responsible must
have behind them that irresistible authority, the approval of the
electorate. If then our electoral methods fail to yield a fully
representative House, and if, in consequence, the House cannot
satisfactorily fulfil its double function of affording an adequate basis of
support to the Government which springs from it, and of legislating in
accordance with the nation's wishes, the resultant dissatisfaction and
instability must give rise to a demand for their improvement. The
House of Commons must re-establish itself upon surer foundations.
_Strengthening the foundations of the House of Commons._
Each change in the constitution of the House of Commons--and its
foundations have been strengthened on more than one occasion--has
been preceded by a recognition of its failure to meet in full the
requirements of a representative chamber. Large changes have again
and again been made in consequence of such recognition since the day
when Burke alleged that its virtue lay in its being "the express image of
the nation." At the close of the eighteenth century, when these words
were spoken, it could be alleged with apparent truth that 306 members
were virtually returned by the influence of 160 persons.[7] The
consciousness that such a House could not be the express image of the
nation produced the Reform Bill of 1832, and a further recognition that
a still larger number of the governed must be associated with the
Government, produced the further changes of 1867 and of 1884,
embodied in measures significantly called Acts for the Representation
of the People. These changes, by conferring the franchise upon an
ever-widening circle of citizens, have, from one point of view, rendered
the House of Commons more fully representative of the nation at large.
But even whilst the process of extending the franchise was still in
operation, it was recognized that such extensions were not in
themselves sufficient to create a House of Commons that could claim

to be a true expression of the national will. The test of a true system of
representation, laid down by Mill in Representative Government, has
never been successfully challenged. It still remains the last word upon
the subject, and, until the House of Commons satisfies that test with
reasonable approximation, it will always be open to the charge that it is
not fully representative, and that in consequence its decisions lack the
necessary authority. "In a really equal democracy," runs the oft-quoted
phrase, "any and every section would be represented, not
disproportionately, but proportionately. A majority of the electors
would always have a majority of the representatives; but a minority of
electors would always have a minority of the representatives. Man for
man, they would be as fully represented as the majority." [8]
Mill's philosophy finds but little favour in many quarters of political
activity to-day, and the rejection of his philosophy has induced many to
regard his views on representative government as of little value. Even
so staunch an admirer as Lord Morley of Blackburn has underestimated
the importance of Mill's declaration, for, in a recent appreciation of the
philosopher[9] he declared that Mill "was less successful in dealing
with parliamentary machinery than in the infinitely more important task
of moulding and elevating popular character, motives, ideals, and
steady respect for truth, equity and common sense--things that matter a
vast deal more than machinery." Yet Lord Morley, in his attempt to
make a beginning with representative institutions in India, found that
questions of electoral machinery were of the first importance; that they,
indeed, constituted his chief difficulty; and he was compelled in
adjusting the respective claims of Hindus and Muhammadans to have
recourse to Mill's famous principle--the due representation of
minorities. Mill, as subsequent chapters will show, understood what
Lord Morley seems to have insufficiently recognized, that the
development or repression of growth in popular character, motives and
ideals, nay, the successful working of representative institutions
themselves, depends in a very considerable degree upon electoral
machinery. Its importance increases with every fresh assertion of
democratic principles, and the constitutional issues raised during the
Parliaments of 1906, 1910, and 1911 must involve a revision of our
electoral methods before a complete solution is attained. The demand

on the part of the House of Commons for complete sovereignty must
evoke a counter demand that that House shall make itself fully
representative.
_The rise of a new party._
But the relations which should subsist between the two