Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/663

Rh at present it is not. The world will have first thoroughly to learn by experience that the existing system is, or tends more and more to become, government by and for the wire-puller, not by or for the people. France is apparently about to make an experiment in the opposite direction, by the adoption at Gambetta's dictation of the scrutin de liste. But this is a warning to the rest of the world, the object of the measure evidently being not to improve the elections, but, by canceling all those local influences which on the whole are the healthiest, to render a particular politician more completely master of France.

Representation of minorities seems to have done but little good. The result is a torpid compromise which is likely to continue notwithstanding a change of sentiment in the constituency, because it is the object of all the three members, and especially of the holder of the minority seat, to avoid a contest, so that positive misrepresentation as well as political deadness may be the result. The minority member is nailed to his seat, and can neither take office nor retire, except at a general election. All complicated arrangements are apt to harbor wire-pulling, for the wire-puller, even if he is baffled at first, soon learns the trick. The only measure of this kind which appears to promise real improvement is the adoption of the second ballot when no candidate has polled an absolute majority at the first. This would give opinion, which is apt to split into sections, a fairer chance against a compact interest, and render it possible for an independent candidate to come forward with some prospect of success. At present the wire pullers invariably succeed in persuading the people that their votes, if given for an independent candidate, will be thrown away.

Experience seems distinctly to have shown that, to make an assembly deliberative, its numbers must be limited. In a Parliament of six hundred or a thousand members, volleys of argument or invective may be exchanged between the two sides of the House, but deliberation is impossible. More than two hundred can hardly take counsel together. There is the resource of grand committees, which, however, is not available with party government, unless the committees are so arranged that the dominant party shall have a majority in each of them. Unless this is done, the full House will be always redebating and reversing the decisions of the grand committee.

With such a mode of election to the central Legislature as has been suggested, it will be safe to combine a widely extended suffrage. It will be safe, and it will be politic. For the instructed and reflecting few, a demonstration of political utility may suffice: proved expediency secures their allegiance; but, to engage the loyalty of the many, it is necessary that government should be administered in the name of an authority to which their hearts as well as their understandings bow Such an authority in by-gone times was the king; such an authority now is the whole nation. No one who was in the United States at the time of the civil war could fail to see what immense strength that