THE EVIL OF IGNORING MINORITIES

ONE of the last subjects exciting public attention before the resignation of the Ministry of Mr. Balfour was the redistribution of seats in Parliament. Indeed the doubt if he still had a majority that could be relied on to carry through such a Bill was one of the reasons for his retiring from office and the consequent dissolution when the Parliament of 1900 had, according to the more usual practice, another session to run.

The first session of the new Parliament saw the introduction of the Bill for abolishing plural voting. It was to carry out the maxim, one man, one vote,' not only extinguishing what are known as 'faggot votes,' but putting an end to the right of those who had a real connection with more than one electoral division, county, or borough to vote as hitherto in each of them. It might have been argued that these voters by the very fact of their interest in different parts of the Kingdom might have a larger experience and broader views of national wants than those who chiefly looked at them from the point of view of one locality. But in any case it touched but one corner of a large question. Beyond the principle of 'one man, one vote,' lay that of 'one vote, one value.' This, it has been suggested, is to be carried out by the equalisation of constituencies. But there is a far larger one underlying both these proposals. One vote one value remains an unreality so long as a majority of one or two is treated as equal to a majority of 2,000, as long as anything exceeding one-half of a constituency is put on the same footing as a unanimous whole.

The Bill, therefore, I should contend, was rightly rejected by the House of Lords on the ground of its fragmentary character. To correct one of a number of inequalities and anomalies without dealing with the subject as a whole is very often to create a fresh one; or to aggravate those that exist unaltered by removing something that might be a counterpoise.

It is strange that this view did not commend itself to Lord Courtney, who more than anyone has dwelt on the evil of any representative system in which large minorities are altogether ignored. And the evil would be greatly augmented by any measure extinguishing these

smaller constituencies, which often represent large minorities outside their limits.

At one time the now disfranchised borough of Portarlington gave almost their only representative to all the Conservatives scattered through the southern part of Ireland. The small groups of boroughs in Wales did much the same for the Welsh Unionists, now without any representation whatever.

And some may remember Lord Beaconsfield's reference to the borough of Arundel which everyone pointed to as an abuse from its small number of voters, and supposed dependence on one powerful influence, as giving the only representative to the whole body of Roman Catholics in Great Britain and so having a constituency equalling the then undivided Tower Hamlets.

In the earlier days of our electoral system, and indeed till almost within living memory, that system hardly aimed at equal representation of voters. Its basis, as was justly said, was not the individual elector, but the corporation or community. The voice of the county or the borough was taken for that of all its inhabitants, and that of the counties and boroughs, without any special reference to their comparative populousness, as a general expression of that of the nation. While the franchise was everywhere comparatively limited, in some cases extremely so, an exact proportional representation of those who exercised it would not necessarily have expressed the national voice more accurately. At the same time these very irregularities tended to give a share, though by no means an equal share, of representation to all. Hardly any class was altogether excluded, while in a certain number of boroughs the franchise was as popular as at present. Even the close boroughs, it must be remembered, were not in the hands of men of one way of thinking in politics. Though the nominee members as a whole represented views prevalent in the landowning classes, occasionally borough patrons of advanced views sent to the House of Commons Members who would only have found favour with the most popular of the open constituencies.

The reform of 1832, while putting an end to the small boroughs below a certain population and enfranchising the large unrepresented towns, made no pretence of numerical equality among constituencies. Leeds had one Member, so had Midhurst and Woodstock. Manchester had two Members, like Guildford, Lewes, and Bodmin. Three additional metropolitan boroughs were called into existence, but no one proposed seriously to give London a representation proportional to its size.

On the one hand, by the uniform borough franchise, all under the ten-pound limit were for the first time altogether excluded as a class. On the other hand, in the metropolitan boroughs and many other large towns a Conservative minority equal in numbers to an

average-sized constituency was often entirely without electoral power. But on the theory then often held on both sides that the working class would be necessarily Radical, it would perhaps have been held that the representation of these town constituencies was thus kept more in harmony with the feeling of the people as a whole, if the unenfranchised as well as the enfranchised were considered.

The Bills of 1867 and 1884, especially the latter, altogether altered the character of our electoral system. The first established household ratepaying suffrage in boroughs, transferred the second members of a large number of country towns either to counties or large centres of population, and eventually, as a means of providing some additional members for Scotland, disfranchised altogether a few of the smallest boroughs spared in 1832. It provided, however, under the amendment carried by Lord Cairns in the House of Lords, a partial representation of minorities. The principle was only applied to the constituencies having three Members, a few counties which had that number already, and several large towns, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and others, which had a Member added to their previously existing representation. This scheme was bitterly denounced by Mr. Bright as an unfair attempt to deprive the majority in great towns of its natural power. It provided that, of the three seats to be filled, each elector should only vote as to two-for the names, that is, of only two candidates. The only apparent unfairness was in its necessarily limited application giving minorities in these constituencies rights which they enjoyed nowhere else, and putting exceptional limitations on the majority in these instances alone. It could but be defended as an experiment which might eventually be of wider application.

It was, however, destined to disappear in less than twenty years, among the great changes of the Act of 1884. This Act was primarily intended only to assimilate the borough and county franchise. It was felt, however, that so great an alteration, sweeping away an immemorial distinction, greatly increasing the size of the county constituencies, and in many cases likely to overpower the rural vote by that of electors engaged in what were really urban industries, ought to be accompanied with a large rearrangement of constituencies, and readjustment of the balance between borough and county representation. After a struggle between the two Houses, and negotiations between the leaders on each side, the measure took its final shape. A holocaust was made of the minor towns which had escaped the scythe of earlier reformers. All other boroughs of middle size retained but one member. The larger cities and the counties generally were cut up into divisions with a single member each. Lord Salisbury, in agreeing to the adoption of this principle on so large a scale, was not improbably influenced by the example of the scrutin d'arrondissement in France, which had there always been regarded as of a

more Conservative character than the scrutin de liste, by which the whole number of representatives for a department were chosen together by a whole body of its electors. But the single-member system leaves no opening for the representation of the minority of any electoral district, though it may prevent the majority of a whole city or county from carrying every seat.

And at this moment a scheme is being put forward in France for reviving the scrutin de liste which prevailed for some years, together with what did not previously accompany it, a plan of minority repre

sentation.

At this moment in England there is a special reason for calling attention to the question of the proportion between Parliamentary majorities and the real balance of parties among the electors throughout the country. At no time perhaps is a greater claim put forward for irresistible power for the House of Commons as expressing the will of the nation. At no time, on the other hand, has the size of the majority in that House been so abnormally disproportionate to the numbers of votes on each side taken as a whole. It has been frequently estimated that in England, Wales and Scotland taken as a unit, the proportion of votes was something like twenty-nine to twenty-three. The majority corresponding to this may roughly be put at less than eighty. The actual majority is about 300. It may be asked if this is representation or its caricature. It is less easy to make a similar estimate as to Ireland where so many constituencies were uncontested. Though in each of such cases it may be presumed that the minorities were too small to hope for success in a contest, yet in their aggregate they might amount to a fraction of the electorate entitled to at least some representation. Besides this, it is not denied that Ireland as a whole is over-represented in proportion to Great Britain. But even allowing for this, if we remember how the representatives of Ireland voted this last year on the Education Bill, it seems clear that on a proportional system either the majority in favour of its second reading would have disappeared or it would have been reduced to so small a figure that no one would have been much surprised if the House of Lords had altogether disregarded it.

It is not, however, as to its bearing at this moment in the position of parties and party controversies that attention is specially and mainly due to this question of a more proportional system of representation. It is perfectly true that the disproportionate majority of the present Ministry, though perhaps never so exaggerated, is not without some degree of precedent, that the Conservative majorities of former Parliaments have by no means rested on a corresponding preponderance in the whole number of voters. It is not in the interest of one party, but of the nation, and perhaps, in the long run, of even the parties who for the moment seem to profit by the disproportion, that it is desirable to seek for some remedy. For the temporary

triumph resting on so unsound a basis is often followed by an equally abnormal disaster to those who have enjoyed it.

At almost every election since 1868, when the wider franchise took effect, there has been a swing of the pendulum fatal to those previously in power, and for the moment giving complete ascendency to their opponents. The days are long past when a Government could carry on business with majorities not exceeding those which were sufficient for Lord Palmerston or Lord Russell. It is not unlikely that the very largeness of their majorities leads each Ministry in turn to go beyond what prudence would dictate if their apparent strength were less, and so contributes to the change of fortune which attends them. It is said that the swing of the pendulum only comes from special causes, that 1885 and 1900 show that it is not invariable. But of these two exceptions, the former is scarcely a real one. A new franchise had greatly changed the county constituencies. In the borough constituencies where there was no class of new voters the Ministerial party lost heavily. It was only the recently enfranchised who turned the balance in their favour, thereby to a large extent reversing the result in the same quarters at the previous election.

But what is worth notice is that these apparent reactions of the public mind may not, and often do not, represent the transfer of a vast proportion of votes. A change of under 20,000 votes in the whole electorate represents a very inconsiderable fraction of that whole. It is equal to about three ordinary constituencies. Yet it is quite conceivable that if scattered over a good many closely contested boroughs or county divisions it might transfer a decided majority from one side in the House of Commons to the other. And those who looked only to the list of seats lost or won might talk of the great wave of feeling that seemed to have swept over England.

Nor is the inequality less marked as regards smaller sections of opinion. It would be quite possible that a body of electors united, whether by sect, by class interests, or simply by a unanimity of feeling, on a particular issue, might form something approaching a third of the aggregate of voters, yet if pretty equally distributed through the country they might be everywhere a minority, and only by accident even obtain a single exponent in Parliament. If, on the other hand, they were entirely concentrated in one portion of it, they might, without having a very large majority in any electoral division, form more than half of the electors of a sufficient number to have a representation far beyond the proportion to which they were entitled. These perhaps are extreme possibilities, yet they are sufficient to show the entire uncertainty of anything like a real reproduction of the actual divisions of feeling in the whole nation.

Some, indeed, would contend that such a reproduction is not desirable; they would argue that a strong majority is the one necessity for efficient government. But such a contention suggests a parody