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Rh “in a visible shape,” by which he explained that he did not mean “indirect taxes,” a “mode of defraying a share of the public expenses which is hardly felt.” He advocated for this purpose “a direct tax, in the simple form of a capitation” on every grown person. But even more than this, he was in favour of a form of plural voting, so that the intellectual classes of the community should have more proportionate weight than the numerically larger working-classes: “though every one ought to have a voice, that every one should have an equal voice is a totally different proposition.” The well-informed and capable man’s opinion being more valuable than that of the barely qualified elector, it should be given more effect by a system of plural voting, which should give him more votes than one. As to the test of value of opinion, Mill was careful to say he did not mean property—though the principle was so important that he would not abolish such a test where it existed—but individual mental superiority, which he would gauge by the rough indication afforded by occupation in the higher forms of business or profession, or by such a criterion as a university degree or the passing of an examination of a fairly high standard.

Modern democracy may ignore Mill’s emphatic plea for plural voting, as it ignores his equally strong arguments against the ballot —his contention being that secret voting violated the spirit of the suffrage, according to which the voter was a trustee for the public, whose acts should be publicly known—but Mill’s discussion of the whole subject proceeds on high grounds which are still worth careful consideration. Where a representative system, as such, is extolled as the ideal polity, the reservations made by Mill, a liberal thinker who cannot be dismissed as a prejudiced reactionary, should be remembered. Mill postulated, in any event, a state of society which was worthy of such a system, no less than the necessary checks and balances which should make it correspond to the real conditions of rational government. “Representative institutions,” he pointed out, “are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrage’s on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election, as thus practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its machinery.” When, in modern days, advocates of representative institutions seem ready to extend them to all countries, they become doctrinaires who depart widely from the standpoint of Mill, and forget that democracy is itself only a “form of government,” as Sir Henry Maine insisted, for which all communities may not be ripe or fitted. The ideal form of government must be relative to a certain state of civilization and certain conditions of national life, and its advantages can only be tested by results and practical working.

(2) As regards the important question of the selection of candidates (which depends partly on their willingness to stand, and partly on the means available for discovering suitable persons), modern practice is entirely dominated by the organization of political parties and the requirements of party allegiance. Though much has been said as to

the desirability or not of paying members for their services (see ), this is certainly overshadowed by the question of the availability of really capable men at all to the number required, for all candidates become “professional” politicians, whether paid or not. The ideal of having a “representative man” in the broader sense as a “representative” in the narrower is only very roughly attained where the conditions of public life make a capacity for electioneering a necessity. To a large extent the political candidate depends purely upon the support of a party organization. His choice rests with party wire-pullers, and the average individual elector is confronted with the task of voting for some one of whom he may personally know very little, except that, if returned, the candidate will in parliament vote for measures embodying certain general principles as indicated in some vague party programme. Since the elector as a rule himself supports a party, he votes accordingly, but there are always a good many electors who under such a system fail to get a chance of voting for a candidate who fully represents their views. The supremacy of party interests, resulting from the difficulty of having any other form of electoral organization, is apt to bring many evils in its train, including the corruption of the electorate, and the practice of “lobbying,” i.e. the pressure upon members in parliament of important “interests” whose electoral assistance is indispensable.

(3) The more important point to be considered here is the third. When a representative assembly is to be elected by a direct popular vote, it is obviously necessary (a) that either there should be some system by which the whole as a unit should elect all the members en bloc, or, as this usually appears impracticable, that the mass of electors should be

divided within defined areas, or “constituencies”; and (b) that in the latter case voting shall take place for the purpose of electing one or more representatives of each such area according to some method by which due effect shall be given to the preferences of the electors. In theory there can be no perfectly fair arrangement as between constituency and constituency, where a single representative is to be returned, except on the terms that they are exactly equal in the number of electors; each elector’s voice would then count equally with that of any other in the nation (or mutatis mutandis in the municipality, &c.). But in practice it is difficult to the point of impossibility to attempt more than an arbitrary distribution of electoral areas, more or less approximating to equality; and recourse is had to the formation of constituencies out of geographical districts taken as units for historical or practical reasons, and necessarily fluctuating from time to time in population or influence. It may become necessary periodically to revise these areas by what in England are called Redistribution Acts, but it has to be admitted that any perfect system of representation is always stultified by the necessary inequalities involved; and what is known as “gerrymandering” is sometimes the result, when a party in power so recasts the electoral districts as to give more opportunity for its own candidates to be returned than for those of its opponents. This flaw is particularly noticeable when the arrangement for the method of voting is that which allots only one member or representative to each district (scrutin d’arrondissement). The essential vice of this single-member system, which prevails in the United Kingdom and the United States, is the lack of correspondence between the proportions in which the elected members of each party stand to one another and the proportions in which the numbers of the electors who returned them similarly stand; and it may well be that the minority party in the country obtains a majority of representatives in the assembly, or at any rate that a substantial minority obtains an absurdly small representation. “As a result of the district system,” writes Professor J. R. Commons of Wisconsin (Proportional Representation, 1907), “the national House of Representatives (in America) is scarcely a representative body. In the Fifty-first Congress, a majority of representatives were elected by a minority of the voters”; the figures being 5,348,379 Republican votes with 164 elected, and 5,502,581 Democratic votes with 161 elected. In