The Quarterly Review

1. Journals of the House of Commons. Printed by order
of the House of Commons. London : n.d. [1744 (?)].
2. Journals of the House of Lords. London: n.d. [1771 (?)].
3. Rotuli Parliamentorum ut et Petitiones et Placita in
Parliamento. Six vols. London: n.d. [1767–77].

4. A Disquisition on Government.

New York: Appleton, 1863.

By J. C. Calhoun.

5. Histoire des Conciles d'après les documents originaux. Par Mgr Chas Jos. Héfélé, Evêque de Rottenbourg: traduite de l'allemand par l'Abbé Delarc. Twelve vols. Paris: Le Clerc, 1869-78.

6. The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development. By W. Stubbs. Three vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880.

7. The History of English Law before the time of Edward I. By Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland. Two vols. Cambridge University Press, 1895.

8. Das Recht der Minoritäten.

Vienna: Hölder, 1898.

Von Georg Jellinek.

9. The Procedure of the House of Commons. By Josef
Redlich. Translated by A. E. Steinthal, with an
Introduction by Sir Courtenay Ilbert. Three vols.
London: Constable, 1908.

'THE completeness,' says Redlich (ii, 261), with which
the majority principle has been for centuries accepted is
no greater than the obscurity of the origin of this basis
of modern representative government, adopted, along
with constitutionalism itself, in Europe, America, and
Australia, as the foundation of all parliamentary systems.'
The question of the origin of the principle of majority

Vol. 216.-No. 430.

rule has indeed been little considered. So voluminous and detailed a writer as Bentham dismisses it with the remark that, if the opinion of the majority is unlike that of the whole body, the opinion of the minority is still more so; which is like saying that the average income of Brown and Smith is over 5000l. a year, when Brown has 10,000l. and Smith 501.

And yet it is a very obvious question. It is easy enough to admit that, when lack of time compels a tourist party, all of whom would like to visit both Athens and Naples, to make a choice between those cities, the choice might fairly be determined by the fact that, while nineteen are for the one town, only eighteen are for the other. But that, when nineteen people want to commit the whole party to a course to which eighteen are violently opposed, they should have it all their own way, is so clearly farcical that the majority principle is seen to have its limitations. Except within narrow limits, it corresponds with nothing in nature. Nature-physical nature-gives to opposing forces the accurate effect of their resultant. It is the depth of political imbecility to ascribe an omnipotence to the odd man which does not belong to the odd ounce. Yet the maxim of deferring to majorities, true and useful within narrow limits, is carelessly accepted as the last word of obvious political wisdom. This has a purely historical explanation. Let it be premised that it is the origin of majority rule that we are investigating. The origin of majority decisions is another matter, and must be concealed in the mists of dawning history. It is the acceptance of majority decisions as universally valid in matters of government that we propose now to consider.

We shall see that in early England there existed no notion that a mere majority could control a considerable minority. The equation of the will of the majority to the will of the whole was simply unknown. The voice which could speak in the name of an assembly was that voice which could fairly be taken as representative of the whole. If the individual units of the assembly were equal in consideration, this was the concurrent voice of the great bulk of them. If they were not equal. it might be the voice of ene er mere selected persons Thus the abbor spoke in the name of the abbey; the dean spoke

for the chapter; and the archbishop came near to speaking in the name of the province of Canterbury. It may even be said that the abbot, dean, or archbishop, in such cases, was the majority '-the major pars of the whole, though not the most numerous part.

It is instructive to remark that, where the doctrine of equality has been most completely accepted among English-speaking people, i.e. in the United States of America, the word 'majority' has disappeared and has been replaced by the term 'plurality,' which is clearly indicative of mathematical numeration. In the United States, however, the consequences of maintaining the principle of equality, and at the same time discarding the principle of unanimity, are masked and countervailed by the system according to which it is next to impossible for the people as a whole to vote on a single question. The division into forty-seven States, many of which contain a comparatively homogeneous population, is one factor in the system. It is impossible for Massachusetts to vote down South Carolina, because Massachusetts has nothing to do with South Carolina's affairs. A more often recognised countervailing factor is found in the difficulties with which legislation on important subjects is hedged round. It may be true that a universal assembly of the 'plurality' of the residents in any State might, on the principles on which the Constitution is based, be legally entitled to adopt any measure they pleased, within the competence of the State. Needless to say, no such gathering could ever be convoked. And, to effect an alteration in the State constitution, a very formidable procedure has usually to be faced.

Shall we say, then, that the majority do not rule in the United States? Certainly, a bare majority of a few thousands or tens of thousands thoughout the Union would find enormous difficulty in carrying any important measure, excepting the election of a president. But if we listen to a Mississippi statesman who was also a political thinker of commanding intellect, we shall find him reproducing in terms the old theory of common consent, and asserting that the majority does rule in the Union, and that it is precisely to secure that the majority shall rule, that plurality legislation is hedged about with such restrictions. We refer to J. C. Calhoun.

Calhoun was born in 1782, and died in 1850, ten years before the Civil War. He left a volume called 'A Disquisition on Government, and a Discourse on the Constitution of the United States,' in which he discusses the politics and constitution of the American Union with direct reference to the problems which culminated in that armed conflict, and found in it a Gordian solution. Broadly speaking, it was in the tendency of the United States to a unitary form of government that Calhoun saw the principal danger. He recognised that the practical guarantee of liberty is the splitting-up of power. Once Once let power become concentrated in

theory, and it will become uncontrolled in fact. The sole depositaries of power, with their hands on the power-machine, will soon get rid of the restrictions which theory imposes upon them. Therefore in the splitting-up of political power Calhoun saw the true security that the will of the people should prevail, and not the will of factions speaking in their name.

Calhoun found evidence of that danger in the threatened overwhelming of the constitution by unitary government concentrated in the hands of a few influential politicians at Washington, backed by a party dependent upon them for success and its rewards. He know he would be met by the cant phrase, 'But the majority must rule'; the concentration of power in the hands of the representatives of the majority is inevitable. He denies the inference. He denies that a plurality is a majority. A plurality, which he terms a numerical majority, has, he says, no right whatever to rule. The majority which has the right to rule is the 'concurrent majority that is, the bulk, the great concurrent mass of the nation; and that just so far as it is concurrent. Neglecting the eccentricities of individuals, he recognises the general legislative right of the vast mass of the nation. How is that will to be ascertained? It is inarticulate, in the nature of things inarticulable, deep, silent, obscure to advertising politicians, surprising in its pationen of arbitrary dictation. It is impossible to inonauro it by votos or plebiscites. The only thing to be done, concludos Calhoun, is to split up the arbitrary forces which may work against it, and so to neutralise their pow or for ovil. Organise every separate interest. Let the

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The Quarterly Review, Volume 216