Fleming - "Essays on Rectification of Parliament". Part 3 - Catherine Helen Spence

From Essays Received in Response to an Appeal by the Canadian Institute on the Rectification of Parliament (1893)

Fleming Essays Part 3 No. 10 Essay Chapter I to Chapter IV.

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The "Essay No. 10" in Sandford Fleming's 1893 book Essays on the Rectification of Parliament was submitted under the pseudonym "Southern Cross."

There is little doubt that it was written by Catherine Helen Spence. She was a key-person in the drive to proportional representation in Australia and Tasmania in the 1890s and early 1900s. On page 95 the writer identified herself as a daughter of an early town clerk of Adelaide, which Spence was.

It is known that Spence happened to be travelling through Canada at the time Fleming was collecting essays on electoral reform, and it seems she presented him with a written copy of her usual - but convincing - Pro-rep promotion speech.

The essay is published in three blogs.

Fleming Essays Part 3 contains the first two chapters of Spence's essay.

Fleming Essays Part 4 contains chapters III and IV of Spence's essay.

Fleming Essays Part 5 contains the last four chapters of Spence's essay and appendices.

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Essay 10. Southern Cross [Catherine Helen Spence]

Contents

Chapter I. Importance of the Subject page 90

Chapter II. Method of Voting and Formation of the Quota page 96

Chapter III. Objections Answered page 100

Chapter IV. Effective Voting page 106

Chapter V. Palliatives - The Initiative and the Referendum - the Imperative Mandate -

Direct Legislation page 111

Chapter VI. The Gove System

Chapter VII. The Danish electoral law

Chapter VI. Conclusion page 113

Chapter VII. DRAFT BILL FOR THE PROVINCE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA page 117

Appendix I. [STV elections in Australia] page 120

Appendix II. [filling up a vacancy] page 121

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Chapters I and II

CHAPTER I. IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT

After centuries of parliamentary government, carried on with, on the whole, fair success in the United Kingdom and imitated in its main features in its offshoots all over the world, whether these have separated like the U.S. or remain still an integral part of the Empire, it is noteworthy that in the oldest and most populous of the British colonies, a demand has arisen for the rectification of Parliament. This premises that in the opinion of thinking people, under present conditions, Parliament is not rightly organized or equitably worked; that it does not give efficient representation to the people, or provide an efficient spur or check to the executive. Many writers and thinkers have pointed out the injustice and the dangers of the system of majority representation under which parliaments are chosen. Grave physicians and pretentious quacks have diagnosed the disease and prescribed remedies, and the latter generally with the larger following.

Party politics, local politics and personal politics obscure the great national issues,. They account for most of the blunders, administrative and financial, into which the self-governing colonies have fallen. Indeed these have been hurtful to the mother-country also. It is only by resolutely casting these aside and considering what is best for the community as a whole, by calling on men to co-operate rather than to fight for mastery and spoils, that we can hope to rectify parliament and to purify politics.

Under party politics when thoroughly organized, there is a conspiracy of half the cleverest men in the country to keep the other half out of public affairs. Whereas the right function of the opposition is to see that the ministry does the nation's work properly, the usual practice of the opposition is to try to prevent the ministry from doing it at all.

Local politics lead to the varying policy of submission and of obstruction, in order to force local demands on the public treasury for the constituency that the members represent. These are as narrowing to genuine public spirit as they are costly to the community. Personal politics, which are powerful in Canada and in Australia, allow a strong leader to exploit the country for his own aggrandizement, and for the reward of the followers who follow him blindly and turn as he turns.

We must therefore enquire how we may change or modify our representation so as to make it more truly represent the people, and to make parliament more amenable to the best public opinion, and helpful rather than hampering to any honest executive.

And in these directions, we shall do no good by harking back to old limitations of the suffrage, and allowing property and intelligence, besides their enormous material and mental advantages, additional weight at the polls. Conservatives are apt to say that the demoralizing of politics is due to manhood suffrage, and to paid representatives. But look back a century or more in England and ask if pocket boroughs and exclusive patronage in Church and State, lavished on political supporters — bribery and treating unblushingly practised even by such a man as Wilberforce – were not more demoralizing and costly than what we see in England nowadays. We could not,if we wanted to, resume the government of caste and privilege. We should gain nothing and lose much by the change.

No despotism, however benevolent and intelligent — no oligarchy, however vigorous and high-minded — no bureaucracy, however vigilant and efficient, can do for the people what they are competent to do for themselves. It is from Democracy itself that the purification of our democratic institutions must come. Every community contains within itself the saving salt that is needed. All that is wanted is the machinery that will give the better elements adequate expression, and full liberty of speech and action.

"Democracy, according to its definition," says John Stuart Mill, "means the government of the whole people by the whole people equally represented, and not by a mere majority of the people exclusively represented." This spurious democracy brings discredit on the grandest and the most progressive political truth in the world.

[page 91]

It may indeed seem to many well meaning and theoretical people that it would be advisable for rich, talented, educated and virtuous men to have more weight in the State than the poor and the stupid, the ignorant and the vicious. Property, they say, needs protection. Talent, education and virtue should be encouraged. The world, they say, would be better governed if the rich had the larger share in the political representation.

But the State, in a pure democracy, draws no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man. She disclaims the right of favouring either property or education, talent or virtue. She considers that all alike have an interest in the protection of good government, and that all who form the community of full age and untainted by crime, have a right to a share in the representation. She allows education to exert its legitimate power through the press, talent in every department of business, property in its material and social advantages, and virtue to influence the public conscience and to moralize public opinion. But she regards all men as politically equal, and rightly so, if the equality is as real in operation as it is in theory.

If the equality is actual in the representation of the citizens, truth and virtue being stronger than error and vice, and wisdom being greater than folly, where a fair field is offered, the higher qualities subdue the lower, and penetrate all through society, making themselves felt in every department of the state, and especially in the political. But if the representation, from defective machinery or other cause, is not really equal, but partial and unjust, the whole balance is overthrown. Then neither education nor talent, nor virtue, can work through public opinion to have their beneficial influence on public matters, while wealth is too often a demoralizing agent.

We know that in despotisms and oligarchies, where the majority are unrepresented and the few extinguish the many, independence of thought is crushed down. Talent is bribed to do service to the tyranny. Education is confined to a privileged class and denied to the people. Property is sometimes pillaged and sometimes pampered. Even virtue is degraded by lowering its field, and calling slavish subservience to the ruling powers by the sacred names of patience and loyalty. While religion is too often made the handmaid of oppression, taxes fall heavily on the poor for the benefit of the rich and powerful, and the only check proceeds from the fear of rebellion.

When on the contrary, the majority extinguishes the minority, the evil effects are not so apparent. The body oppressed is smaller, generally wealthier, with many social advantages to draw off public attention from the political injustice from which they suffer. But there is the same want of sympathy between class and class. Moral courage is rare, talent takes to low ground, genius is overlooked, education is general but superficial, the press and the pulpit are timid in denouncing popular crimes, or existing popular errors.

An average standard of virtue is all that is aimed at. When no higher standard is set up, there is great fear of falling below it. The most sweet voices of these poor average men are solicited by political adventurers and noisy demagogues, in order that they may win place and power.

The minority can exercise no physical force out of doors to compel attention to their grievances. But wealth, in such a one-sided democracy as grows up under mere majority [or plurality] representation in separated districts, can do as much mischief in underhand ways as it did in the old high-handed days of pocket boroughs in England. Therefore, it is incumbent on all democracies to look well that their representative systems really secure the political equality they profess to give, for until this is done, democracy has had no fair trial.

I call Canada and Australia democracies, because though still attached to England, and loyal subjects of Queen Victoria, for all practical purposes, our weal and our woe are in our own hands. The Home Government allowed us to frame our own constitutions. We did so on the broadest democratic principles, intending to give equality to all citizens. But as the system of representing minorities in equal proportion with majorities was then unknown, we did not embody that principle in our electoral law.

"One man, one vote" is not democratic enough. "One vote, one value" is the real key-stone of democracy. Political equality is a very different thing from the popular acceptation of the term. It does not mean that if a man holds opinions that are popular in the district in which he lives, they will be of use to him in obtaining a representative, while another man who has different opinions, living next door, shall never be able to have his views represented.

Equality means that every man's vote shall have its weight, whatever majority or minority he may belong to, and wherever he may happen to live. It is by the enfranchisement of minorities that we can arrive at the real state of public opinion, and this is of quite as much value to the majority itself as to the segments greater or smaller, into which the dissentients are divided.

Equal or proportional representation – what I call "Effective voting" – secures to a real majority its ascendancy. ["Effective Voting" was the title of a pamphlet Spence published this same year in Tasmania.] (Newman, Hare-Clark in Tasmania, p. 16)

Whereas by the great waste of votes at every election, the so-called majority representative has only what the Americans call a "plurality" or more than any other candidate, but not a majority of the votes polled. This is not a majority, which is the ostensible principle on which the system is based.

[page 92]

Equal representation would prevent this anomaly. It would give power to the real majority, control to the minority, and a just representation to all. And indirectly it would do more than this – it would educate the voter, raise the tone of canvass, call out better men for public work, would cut off bribery and corrupt influence at its root, and would substitute for party, local and personal politics, real national issues.

Hitherto, whatever may have been the growth and development of representative institutions, however the constituency may be formed, for one member, for two, or for many members, whatever the electoral franchise may be — whether restricted or widened as far as manhood suffrage, the old idea of majority representation prevents any true presentment of the opinions of all sections of the people. That the majority must rule and the minority submit was the law that military conquerors imposed upon the vanquished; the bitter necessity of yielding to the strongest battalions, the most fortunate position and the most skillful tactics. It is an inheritance from the old militant spirit that had been introduced into politics. That spirit acting in this arena drills its recruits, chooses its ground and outwits its opponents by all means in its power – for victory for one side; defeat or discouragement for the other.

The awakened spirit of man, however, which is protesting against the cruel and costly arbitrament of war in national disputes and differences, and which protests against the cut-throat competition of trade, as not only crushing out the weaker but also calling out the evil passions of jealousy and hatred all round, is also beginning to see in the old methods of obtaining political representation the same fatal flaw. It is in the substitution of the co-operative for the competitive spirit in politics that not only would Parliament be rectified, but politics would be moralised, and the war-spirit would be weakened in all other directions.

Under proportional representation, every man's vote counts for one man of whom he approves. But it does not neutralize the vote of any other man as much entitled to representation as himself. This would foster a spirit of friendly co-operation for the great end of securing an equitable representation, and good government founded thereupon, instead of the present neck-and-neck scramble for recognition or extinction between two parties, where one vote for Smith is lost to Brown, and a few wavering or corruptible votes may turn the scale in a hundred separated districts.

Under local majority representation, the evil is intensified in closer and closer organization of two main parties — call them Liberals and Conservatives in England — Republicans and Democrats in America — Catholics and Radicals in France, or Capital and Labour in Australia. Sleepless organization continues the campaign both outside and inside the walls of parliament. Instead of the true democratic ideal of making all votes effective, time, talent and money are expended in order to make all votes ineffective except those polled by our own party candidate.

In the U.S., where the electors are more numerous than elsewhere, politics have become a great business, needing capital to run them, and professionals to expend the money. Party caucuses and conventions prepare the ticket, draw out the programme calculated to win most support. Perhaps the programme would be extreme on the party lines, but trimming and hedging on many important subjects, lest by sincerity or originality, votes might be lost, or even risked. So the party does not even bring out its own best man. While there is nothing it dreads so much as a good man on the other side. The ticket-preparers try to win votes from outsiders by promise or compromise, or better still, encourage them to run hopeless candidates so as to divide the forces against them, while they strictly limit the choice of their own party to the safe man fixed on by the caucus.

And this is not a mere accident or excrescence on a system otherwise just. It inheres in party government, and in majority representation essentially. Thus, the more equally electorates are divided into uni-nominal [single-member] districts, the more men have the right to vote, the more come to the poll, the more certain it is that all minorities will be extinguished in detail, and the more successful are the party tactics that I have described.

The more equal, too, are the conditions of a country, the less likelihood there is that minorities will find expression. In England, which has long had a restricted suffrage, and irregularly constituted electorates, and where there are agricultural, manufacturing interests paramount in various parts of the country, there has been in the past such a representation of different classes and opinions, that the idea found favour that the general average gives a fair representation of the whole people. We see however, that with the extension of the suffrage, labour, which was inarticulate in the past, is finding a voice for itself, and no longer depends on the utterances of kindly men of a different class. This voice will become stronger in the United Kingdom as time rolls on.

[page 93]

In such communities as we have in Canada and Australia, which are practically democracies, with no hereditary aristocracy, few merchant princes or financial millionaires, where the preponderating mass of voters are workingmen and small farmers, with much the same instincts and traditions, much the same education, and reading the same newspapers, it is quite possible that opinions commanding two-fifths of the voters might not obtain a majority in any constituency.

The uninominal [single-member] districts, marked out and gerrymandered in the interests of party in the U.S., are the most successful fields for the extinction of all originality and independence, and for the destruction of true public spirit that could be devised by man. The law preventing a man from offering himself for any district in which he does not reside, is most mischievous, because if he is thrown out in his own electorate, he cannot try another. There is no such restriction in England or in Australia. There a man may offer himself for any locality. There is no positive restriction in Canada, but custom is nearly as strong as law, and the parochial spirit is encouraged thereby.

As a specimen of how this restriction works, Mr. Charles A. Sumner after having served a term in Congress with credit for his residential district of California, on seeking re-election, was opposed by his party convention — the Democratic — because he had advocated a genuine postal telegraph, and also the reduction of freights and fares on the subsidized railroads. This offended the telegraph and railroad monopolists, who are in point of fact the same people, the wealthy corporations that are a standing menace to liberty. Their power is enormous, and it rendered Mr. Sumner not "a safe man" for the Democratic ticket. There were thousands in San Francisco, and tens of thousands in California who would have voted for Mr. Sumner expressly on account of these views, but not a safe majority in any district. And he could not go elsewhere. The residential clause sits lightly on carpet-baggers who have nothing to leave, and on millionaires, who may have a house in several states, but it keeps out the best men for the service of the community. The railroad and telegraph men spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to oppose Sumner's bill and $50,000 to oppose his nomination for a second term.

It requires not only capital, but astuteness and unscrupulousness to fight the political campaign. The capital is furnished by the corporations and the protected industries whose interests may be affected by legislation. it is also furnished by blackmail from people who are in offices that they want to keep, or who are out of offices that they desire to get; and probably also from the rank and tile of the party. These last furnish the blind followers, whose loyalty makes the astuteness and unscrupulousness of the wire-pullers so successful.

Why should we say that there are only two parties worthy of consideration in a free country? Majority [plurality] representation takes no account of any others. There must indeed be always two main parties, the party of order and the party of progress. Woe to the land where crystallized order obstructs progress; and woe to the country where progress tramples over order! But allied to each of these, are various sections who see differently how progress is to be made, and how order is to be maintained.

Sir John Lubbock says indeed that while there are innumerable ways of moving on, there is only one mode of standing still. The injustice of majority representation presses far harder on the Liberal than on the Conservative. But there is loss to both parties of the finest elements they contain in our clumsy electoral machinery.

While life becomes daily more complex, and political, moral and social questions are felt to be inextricably interwoven together; while philosophy takes wider and deeper views, while history is being rewritten in every succeeding generation, and while neither courts nor camps nor parliaments are held as including the whole life and development of a people, why should the representative machinery be constructed on a merely dual basis? Why should the most civilized and most enlightened nations in the world parcel out their territory into convenient lists for a duel a l'outrance?

England followed the bad example of America, and cut up her historic counties and her great cities into uni-nominal districts. It must have saddened the last years of the life of Thomas Hare, whose grand idea of equitable representation had been given to the world for thirty years, to see districts returning several members thus sub-divided, instead of being grouped together and obtaining, by means of the single transferable vote, the real clear voice of Liverpool and Manchester, of Glasgow and Birmingham. A catch or a snatch majority in nine separated districts is a very different thing from the collective voice of Liverpool. If each elector of Liverpool voted for one man, giving contingent votes in case his first choice could not use his vote, or did not need it, according to Mr. Hare's plan, we might not only see the Liberals and the Conservatives represented according to their strength, but might have independent representatives of some side issues from which often a nation draws its most valuable elements.

[page 94]

All the loopholes are now closed through which young men with little money but with brains and enterprise, used to enter parliament in old days. Though such loopholes were not always justifiable on principle, we ought not to make it impossible for such men to get into parliament now.

England is only in the honeymoon of uni-nominal electorates and many voters. Already we see one bad thing copied from America, the raising of an election fund of £100,000, for the protection of the interests of the brewers and publicans. This worked with such success that in almost every instance where the trade and temperance came to a close contest, the drink carried the day.

In the U.S., where the business has been elaborated for generations, election funds are raised as sine qua non. General Weaver, the defeated Populist candidate for the Presidency, asserts that it costs a million dollars to place a presidential candidate in the field, and a hundred thousand to launch and elect a man to the U.S. Senate. All the unsuccessful parties simply waste their money, while the funds of the successful are used, if not in bribery and corruption, to narrow the platform of the candidate, and thus rather to obfuscate than to enlighten the intelligence of the voters.

What greater check to patriotism and public spirit could be devised than a machinery that not incidentally but necessarily, makes the best efforts of large intelligent and conscientious minorities vanity, and worse than vanity — vexation of spirit through the absolute reversal of their wishes and aims?

There are Conservatives in Scotland and Republicans in Mississippi who have voted at every election for 40 years, with no more chance of getting in a representative than if they lived in Greenland.

The only thing that can be said for the present system is that it represents localities. But in point of fact, all those who did not vote for the successful man are unrepresented. Often these are the more numerous. Plurality is not majority, while those who voted because he was the only man brought forward by the party, while neither liking nor trusting him, are misrepresented.

By a simple alteration in the method of taking votes, and by the enlargement of constituencies so as to allow of quota representation for six, seven, or better still, for ten-seat districts, dividing the number of votes polled by the number of representatives required, and making that number sufficient for the election of a candidate, each elector in the country may aid in the return of one man of whom he approves.

Such a result is made absolutely secure by means of the single transferable vote.

The state would gain by the raised character of the legislature and of the executive; the candidates would gain by their emancipation from party trammels and parish politics; and above all the elector would gain his full rights as a citizen of a free country.

In a free country, what we call the government is at once the master and the servant of the people. As our master, it must be obeyed. All the laws of the land, while they are its laws, must be respected, even if we do not think them just or wise, and though we may do our utmost to get them changed. But as our servant, the executive chosen by the representatives whom we have sent to Parliament, government ought to be watched and checked.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The unchecked power of any majority or plurality, making laws in its own interests, and filling public posts with its adherents, is as destructive to true liberty in our spurious democracies as unchecked power on the hands of an autocrat. In politics, in sociology, in finance, a numerous following is no guarantee for wise or equitable legislation or administration.

Jeremy Bentham made a great stride in politics and morals, when he advocated the greatest happiness of the greatest number, for, before his time the few were considered and the many ignored. But we have gone beyond that. The modern spirit feels that the greatest happiness even of the greatest number ought not to be sought at the cost of the happiness of the smallest number. Each individual has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and at our peril is it disregarded or denied.

It is more than a century since Condorcet, who believed in human perfectibility, and who kept that faith under the very shadow of the guillotine, showed the clumsiness and injustice of our present methods of representation. He said it was in the power of science to devise a method of taking and valuing votes mathematically accurate. But much that was excellent and practicable in the discoveries and suggestions of the early leaders of the great French Revolution was discounted by their disastrous defeat, and by the blunders and crimes of those who rose on their ruins. Utopian, Quixotic, theoretical, illusory, and absurd, are the terms bestowed on much that, if carried out at the time, might have saved France. But safe and lasting reforms are seldom effected in the throes of revolution.

[page 95]

It is from evolution in a sound social organism rather than the fever of disease that we may expect progress, and

"Freedom slowly broadening down

From precedent to precedent."

Evolution may even go beyond precedent to first principles with safety and success; reverencing the past, and careful not to uproot anything that is good, but yet not satisfied to stand still.

It has long seemed to me that on some British colony inheriting the elastic traditions of England, and not bound by a written constitution like America, the radical reform of enfranchising the whole people might be inaugurated. The Australian colonies had early bestowal of democratic institutions;—parties have held together very loosely, and nothing like the strong political organization of older communities exists there.

[Spence's memories of the start of pro-rep in South Australia]

And the early history of South Australia, the province in which I grew up, gives the first example of QUOTA REPRESENTATION that has come to my knowledge.

In the first Municipal Bill for the city of Adelaide, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Rowland Hill, the post-office reformer, who was then secretary to the Colonization Commissioners, inserted a clause by which any twentieth part of the ratepayers, by combining to give all their votes to one man, might bring him in. Of the 18 members of the first town council, two were elected in this way. My father was town-clerk at the time, and explained this unique provision to me.

Thus I had my first glimpse into the correct theory of representation in the year 1840. In the crisis, however, through which the province of South Australia, like all new settlements, had to pass, the municipality was abolished, and after an interval of many years, another was established under a new bill that did not contain the quota clause.

Mr. Thomas Hare, a sound Chancery lawyer, with a strong turn for arithmetic, first proposed his plan in 1857. I did not see anything of it till 1860, and I saw in it at once the most Conservative and the most Democratic reform ever given to the world.

A scheme for an ideally perfect representation of the United Kingdom was proposed, by which supporters of a candidate might combine without the necessity of meeting, and in which by the use of contingent voting, the single vote could be made effective, whatever majority or minority the elector belonged to, was magnificent. This was what would make the democracy I loved real and safe and progressive. I hoped South Australia, the land of my adoption, might show the first example of a community where equality was not a fiction, but a fact; where government was really in the hands of the wisest and the best; where the people had provided for the education and elevation of their whole body by calling out everything that was original and special, by such machinery of representation as was equable and self-adjusting, far-sighted and reparatory, by putting a premium on truth and honour instead of lavishing its favour on flattery and dissimulation.

South Australia in 1860 returned 18 members for the Upper House, the whole Province voting as one district, and voting if they pleased for the whole 18. The 18 who had the largest number of votes were returned. This is called in France Scrutin de Liste, and in America, Voting at Large, [Block Voting]. It gives such power for a party with a slight preponderance to return all the members, that it has discredited large electorates all over the world, as this has been hitherto the only mode of dealing with them.

I naturally thought that though the electoral roll, or list of candidates for the United Kingdom, might be somewhat bewildering to the average voter, our Legislative Council list would be the same as before. [it would have the same number of candidates whether voting under STV or Block Voting.]

Under STV, the trouble to the voter would be less. Instead of picking out 18, many of whom were unknown to him, if he marked with figures in the order of his preference six or seven whom he liked, he might be sure that his vote was used for the first man on his list who needed his vote and could use it. If the principle were once adopted for the Council and found to work well, it would be introduced for the Assembly also. There was absolutely nothing to be said against it, but that it was new and untried. But that was sufficient [to halt its adoption]. The golden opportunity was lost. South Australia has since been divided into four Council electorates, each returning six members, but there are never more than two to be elected at one time as they retire by rotation.

For the Assembly, the Province is divided into 27 electoral districts, each returning two. Each voter can vote for two men, but cannot give two votes to one. Plumping, therefore, is a waste of half of his voting power, in order that he may direct the other half as he wishes. When, as sometimes, a dozen or more candidates offer for the two seats, they may be returned by a third of the votes polled – by plurality, not by majority.

There is a common confusion of ideas between the function of the majority in the election of representatives, and the function of the majority in the Parliament itself. In a deliberating body of representatives, the majority must rule and ought to rule. There would be no stability in the administration if it did not rest on the votes of the majority.

[page 96]

But the word representation means a re-presentment, as in a mirror, of the opinions, the principles, and the aspirations of the whole people and not of a mere section of the people, as is the case under plurality elections. When the majority of that plurality make the laws and appoint the ministries, and conduct public affairs inside and outside of Parliament, it is really minority rule. If Parliament is the true mirror of the people, debates will be more interesting than they are at present, personalities and recriminations will be discouraged, and governments will be more stable for administrative work, and more open to reform than they are now.

In order that the governing majority in Parliament, which appoints and dismisses cabinets and deals with the finances and public business, may be entitled to such power, we need effective representation of the whole people. A slight wave of opinion — nay even less — a slight preponderance in activity in the electioneering agents of one party over the other, in watching the rolls and striking off adverse votes and putting on partisans, may reverse the majority in separated districts, change the policy of the country and give history a new direction. Far more stability would be obtained by equal representation, than by the most scientific mode of ascertaining the absolute majority in uni-nominal districts, which short-sighted people fancy is democratic.

And what is still more important, politics cannot be moralized by any system of majority representation, because where any material or social advantages are to be gained, there is a strong temptation to capture votes enough to turn the election, by all means, by insincerity, and by bribery direct and indirect. Politics can only be purified by making the representation equitable. "Seek righteousness." said the Great Teacher, "and all other things shall be added to you." Justice to each, justice to all, is the vital principle on which society should be built. Our political methods have long obscured this truth from our eyes.

If any intelligent inhabitant — say of the planet Mars — were asked how he thought the people of the city of Brussels should be represented by 18 deputies, and that there were 36,000 qualified voters who came to the poll, he would probably reply that if any 2,000 of them could agree as to a man, he should represent them. Not that half, plus one, should have it in their power to return all 18, leaving the half, minus one, without any. This is what happens. The government falls into the hands of the Catholic or of the Liberal party according as a narrow fringe of votes turns. In the same way, it depends on a doubtful and often a corrupt fringe of votes in New York State whether the 36 presidential electors [the electoral college] vote Republican or Democrat. This difference of 72 votes generally decides who has power for four years over the people of the United States, far exceeding that of any European monarch.

CHAPTER II. METHOD OF VOTING AND FORMATION OF THE QUOTA.

In writing on this subject, I do not treat it merely as a student. I have put it to a series of tests among people of all sorts of classes and opinions. I have given public lectures all over the settled districts of South Australia and have illustrated the simplicity and certainty of the method by means of voting papers. I call on the audience to vote according to their convictions, and then ask 12 men from among them to act as scrutineers of the votes given for 12 candidates – six being to be returned – by the Single Transferable Vote.

I did not not need to explain the method of voting, I simply asked them to do it. I did not need to explain the method of scrutiny. It was all done within their sight and hearing.

What seems complicated when described is simplicity itself when reduced to practice.

The voting-papers that I used contained the names of four candidates of each of our two main parties, these parties being Capitalist and Labour, and one candidate for each of four outside parties with considerable following. The Instructions to Voters were printed with the voting-paper, which was perforated, so that these could be torn off and kept.

The quota needed for return was found by dividing the votes taken by six. Whether the number was 42 or 154, the principle was the same. By carefully reading over the voting paper and instructions which I annex here, any person of ordinary intelligence can grasp the principle.

[page 97]

INSTRUCTIONS TO VOTERS.

Outside Parties. Main Parties.

Angas, Capital

Baker, Capital

Single Tax. Birks.

Buttery, Labour

Charleston, Labour

Fowler, Capital

Irish Catholic. Glynn.

Guthrie, Labour

Harrold, Capital

Temperance. Magarey.

Robinson, Labour

Woman's Suffrage. Stirling.

1. There are here twelve candidates. Six are required to be elected.

2. Vote by numbering the Candidates in the order of your choice, that is to say:

Place 1 against the name of the man you like best.

Place 2 against the name of the man you like second best.

Place 3 against the name of the man you like next best, and so on.

3. Vote for six names, or for fewer.

4. The same number must not be put against more than one name.

5. The numbers must be placed in the squares opposite the names.

MEMO.

Your vote will be used for one Candidate, according to your preference.

If a Candidate you like most, either

(a) Does not need your vote (has enough votes to elect him without your vote).

Or

(b) Cannot use your vote (has so few votes that he cannot possibly be elected).

Your vote will be transferred to the man you like next best (as shown by your numbers), and used, not wasted.

-----------------------------------------------------

[Spence's reflections on demo elections]

Whatever may be the number of candidates in the field, I think it is advisable to limit the votes, first and contingent, to the number of members needed. The elector may vote for fewer names. He ought not to vote for any men he would not like to see in Parliament.

In the list of candidates for a large constituency, he cannot but see several whom he prefers to the rest.

The benefits of the system cannot be secured with less than six to be returned. I should prefer a larger electorate still. But I was led to adopt six from the City of Adelaide returning six, two each for three separated districts, east, west, and north. I took Adelaide as my unit, and as there were no conflicting interests, it was accepted as a whole.

In suburban and country districts I presented the same well-known names for that electorate and two adjoining ones, so that if the local men did not please, the voter might find one standing for another part of the newly or imaginatively formed electorate who did.

There will always be some localism left, though the choice is extended.

The singleness of the vote was the chief novelty to be impressed on the voters. They were asked to choose six names out of 12, and they naturally thought they voted for all six.

[STV metaphor: Three brothers sending a messenger to lending library for book]

Here I used as an illustration a list sent to a circulating library by a messenger, by a subscriber who has only a right to one book. The first book on the list which the messenger can obtain, he takes to the subscriber. If he can get the first book he goes no further; if he fails, he goes down the list till he finds one obtainable. In the same way, if the man marked "1" on the electoral ballot needs the vote, and can use it, it counts for him, and aids his return, and the contingent votes have no weight whatever.

[page 98]

We might carry the parallel a step further. Tom, Dick, and Harry are three brothers, living in the same house, and each subscribing to the same library, at a little distance from where they live. If each of them sent a list of books by a messenger with the same book marked "1," there being only one copy in the library, only one could get it. The first list handed in would secure that book, but if the brothers are friendly, all three will get all they want with it; they will all read it. In the same way, a candidate whom we prefer, who is brought in by the votes of our friends, is as serviceable to us as if our own vote had not been taken after the quota was complete. Our own vote is not wasted, but transferred to the next man, as in the book-ballot, it was transferred to the next book.

If there were open voting, and the state of the poll were declared every half hour, people would cease to vote for men already in, or impossible to bring in, and would direct their weight towards men whom they could serve.

The ballot paper puts the voter in the position to transfer his vote in every contingency.

The Single Transferable Vote actually gives a certainty of effective representation to every citizen.

[Different methods in dealing with the quota]

The formation of the quota is the most important of the details, and I propose to consider in their order the different methods in which this factor in securing Proportional Representation has been dealt with by various writers and experimenters.

I. The first and, in my opinion, the best, is the simple natural quota of Mr. Hare, formed by dividing the number of valid votes polled by the number of representatives needed for the district. All votes above that quota should be allotted according to each elector's second choice - or third if the second did not need it or could not use it, following the series of preferences till some man was found to utilize it.

After the surplusage, if any, was worked off, the Returning Officer and scrutineers next dealt with the minus votes, beginning with the man who had fewest votes, and who had no chance of making up a quota, and distributing these according to contingent votes in the same way. Then come the votes of the next lowest, and so on working up the minus votes till only the number of representatives needed for the electorate are left standing, when these shall be declared elected, whether they have reached the full quota or not. Towards the end of the scrutiny there are always some votes that cannot be allocated, because they are given for men already in, or impossible to get in, and Mr. Hare allows of an approximate quota for the last man or men who get returned.

Thus in a public scrutiny of 3,824 votes taken by me at various meetings in South Australia, on the ballot paper already shown, the quota required was 637. Though the surplusage had often been large at the small meetings, it had been given so variously that when all were massed together, it had no appreciable influence on the result. The favourite labour candidate, being best known, polled 47 more than 637. Owing to the votes of women, the Temperance man had a surplus of 19. The tabulated result will be found in Appendix 1. It will be seen that the quotas of the other successful candidates were made up in far larger measure by the minus votes.

At the end, there were 144 votes that could not be allocated. Only two were utter failures, because the voters had picked out the six men who could not obtain sufficient for their return. This I think proves the efficiency of Hare's natural quota.

As a school-teacher said to me, it was founded on justice, common sense and arithmetic, a threefold basis absolutely perfect.

II. Sir John Lubbock seems to object to the natural quota, and proposes instead what he calls a mathematical quota. He divides the votes polled by one more than the representatives needed, and he adds one to the quotient, because if as in the case of these 3,824 votes, six men get 546, the mathematical quota, there will not be so many left for any seventh. By this means it is probable, though not quite certain, that all six successful men would have reached this lesser quota. [TM: instead of two being elected without quota under Hare] But using the mathematical quota leaves 542 ineffective [exhausted]. By Hare's plan there were only 144 [exhausted votes].

In neither case are the votes really wasted as they are under majority representation necessarily and in enormous numbers. Only two ballots were really ineffective [totally wasted] as they were the only ones that had been cast for six unsuccessful candidates.

After trying both ways, we found the simple quota the best.

III. The Liste or party ticket system, which is actually carried out in three Cantons of Switzerland – Ticino, Neufchatel, and Geneva, is an imperfect adaptation of proportional representation. Each party prepares a list and the votes are interchanged within the limits of the list. It certainly has made representation more just. Whereas in the past only Catholics and Liberals were represented, in the last election for Geneva, 33 Democrats, 38 Radical-Liberals, 6 Radical-Nationals, 8 Socialist-Labour and 15 Independent representatives made the 100 deputies. The ticket system lends itself to party organization beforehand, and limits the choice of the elector.

[page 99]

It is not advisable to limit the number of candidates either by caucus or by the forfeiture of a sum of money if he does not poll a certain percentage of the votes. This often checks the full discussion of new and important things in parliament and by the press, and under what I call effective voting, we need not prevent any man from coming forward.

The checks were needed to prevent waste of votes under majority representation, but under an equitable system we may give every candidate and every elector a perfectly free hand.

IV.—Advocates of proportional representation in Belgium and Switzerland, though welcoming the Liste system, confess it is imperfect and extol the method of D'Hondt as mathematically accurate. This gives each elector a power equal to one vote. But he may either give it all to one, or if he votes for two each counts for a half, if for three for a third, if for four for a fourth, and so on [thus votes are "spreadable", as in Cumulative Voting]. According to this plan, an earnest minority that cannot make up as large a sum of integers as the larger parties can make, from integers and fractions combined will completely lose their votes. Popular candidates would have too many votes, and the surplusage as well as the minuses would be wasted.

It would be majority representation with a difference. It would be not so educative to the voter as Tuckerman's method. Tuckerman's method is the best form of the cumulative vote, as it contains Hare's system of graduated preference.

According to D'Hondt. if a man votes for more than one candidate he ceases to prefer one to another. Now man naturally loves to compare and to decide. My experience at sixty public meetings with ballots was that people had preferences and expressed them by figures.

V. Tuckerman's plan [AKA Broda count] would count every first vote on my ballot paper as equal to six and decrease till the sixth only counts for one. It is much better than the Cumulative vote of Illinois, because it proposes a larger electorate than one to return three, but it is open to party manipulation beforehand, and it wastes many votes in surplus and minus.

I have tried my papers by it, and found it inferior. It demands the same enlargement of constituencies, and the same exercise of choice on the part of the voter, and it is not true proportional representation after all.

In my experience with my 3,824 voters, I came to the conclusion that a first vote was better than a second by more than a sixth part of the voter's power, and the same all down the line. The labour men voted fearlessly for Charleston to make him safe, and any surplus would pass according to each voter's wish with undiminished force to his next choice. By this means, large parties get the full advantage of their numbers, which they might not do if the vote diminished in value. Smaller parties either secure an independent representative of their own, which is a positive good, or they can modify, to the full extent of their vote numbers, the members returned by stronger parties.

VI. The Gove System.

In ordinary elections for a six or eight-member district, I believe there will be no surplusage at all. Mr. Hare's original scheme [taking UK as a single district], by which if a man did not like the candidate standing for his own district at Land's End, he might vote for one offering for Caithness or Cork, was open to great accumulations of votes for popular candidates. This has called out criticism as to allocation.

The minus votes are always the more numerous of the two. These can only be dealt with in one way, and that an absolutely just one. [TM: Transfers of votes from eliminated candidates are simple – just look at the next choice marked on each ballot.]

The second votes on surplusage may vary in the votes taken for quota, and those distributed as surplus, and people who see every day half the votes cast wasted, say that this uncertainty puts the ingenious scheme out of the pale of practical politics. [Canadian provincial STV systems did not change quota as votes became exhausted, so this complication was avoided.]

Mr. John Berry, of Worcester, Massachusetts who has long advocated electoral reform, says that "Mr. Hare distributed his surplus votes by a complicated and perplexing method." This is quite incorrect for the method is clear enough.

Berry suggests instead what he calls the Gove System for the election of the State Senate of Massachusetts. This requires every candidate to announce before the election takes place, to whom his unnecessary votes shall be transferred. Each voter therefore votes for a single man, but with the knowledge how the votes will go if they are not used by him. This gives to the candidate the power of choice that ought to be the voters'. He might like "A" himself, but he might not care about "B "or "C" to whom "A" consigns him.

[page 100]

In his proposed bill, there would be only allotment of surplusage. After that is dealt with, those who have a fortieth part of the whole votes cast are returned. The full number of 40 representatives is made up from those who come nearest to that number.

It is quite possible that the utilization of minus votes [eliminations of least-popular candidates] might change the personnel of these last. [The Gove system she described was different from the one described by Pacifico on page 83. Hers uses quota to determine winner after only surplus transfers are done. Pacifico's would have had transfers of both surpluses and eliminated candidates and then winner determined by their order of popularity. This suffers from lack of clarity – when do you stop eliminating the lowest ranking candidate?]

[Regarding ties:] The Gove system suggests the use of the lot, in case of a tie. Under Hare's plan, there is no such thing as a tie. Even in the improbable case of an equal number of votes, they are not of the same value. The votes of lower value are taken first for distribution. [TM: In Alberta's use of STV, transfers were random.]

VII. The Danish electoral law was the first to embody the proportional principle in actual working. M. Andrae and Mr. Hare made the discovery simultaneously. It has some notable defects and cannot be taken as a model. As working peacefully since 1855 for the Upper House, and surviving the change in the constitution of 1867 and actually used in the final election for the Landsthing or Senate, it deserves our acknowledgement.

For that Landsthing however, there are twelve members appointed by the King. In the second places, an electoral college is chosen in districts at large, or by Scrutin De Liste. It is only in the electoral college itself that proportional voting comes in. It is preferential voting, but only as far as surplus is concerned. After those who make up full quotients are declared elected, the remaining number needed to make up the 66 seats are taken from those who come nearest to the quota, but there must be half the quota reached. The Danish law has compulsory voting, at least [to the degree that] those who do not vote are fined.

VIII.—It is scarcely worth mentioning the Limited Vote, so fallacious a method of representing even a very large minority. Except to say that when it was first proposed by Mackworth Praed in 1882, it was to give the elector the right to vote for only two out of four candidates.

When it was made law for a few constituencies in England, it was reduced to two out of three, while he could not give two to one man. It would need a compact minority of two-fifths to bring in a member, if there was organization with the majority. The thirteen three-seat constituencies have been all cut up. England has only one-seat districts now.

[IX.] As for the Cumulative Vote of Illinois, it is fairly just to the two contending parties. As there are only three votes to dispose of, there is some certainty about them. but in electing large bodies like the London school board, the waste of voting power is very great.

The adoption of the single transferable vote would have saved all this waste, given a more accurate presentment of the wishes of the elector, and have been simpler for voters and scrutineers.

[Under FPTP] the voter works in the dark, he may give unnecessary votes to make his favourite candidate safe, or he may believe him safe when he is not so, and direct his voting power to an inferior. With the preferential vote, he signifies what is to be done with his vote, in every contingency.

CHAPTER III. OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. page 100

Every new and untried thing must encounter opposition, both from ignorant prejudice and from intelligent criticism. The first we can afford to despise, however huge and stolid he may be, and as Mrs. Stetson of San Francisco says,

" Just walk directly through him,

As if he was not there,"

but intelligent criticism is a thing to be courted, to be weighed, and to be answered.

I. The first objections were that the method was too difficult for the voters, and too complicated for the scrutineers. This in my own case was met by a series of test elections, and by a final scrutiny in public. The number of informal votes was no larger than in ordinary voting, and the time occupied in the final count with the tally kept by all 12 scrutineers, as shown in Appendix 1 was by no means long. After the separation into first votes, it took little more than two hours to allot surplus and minus votes, and at the same time tabulate the results as shown in Appendix 1. The 12 men were inexperienced in the work, with one exception, and he was the slowest because he was hampered by majority traditions.

[page 101]

II.- The most obstinate questioning that the reform has had to encounter has been with regard to the uncertainty in allocating surplus votes. This could not be satisfactorily answered till all the votes collected at various meetings had been massed together. [as shown in Appendix I]

At the small meetings there was often a surplus, and sometimes a large one, but it fell to different people. On the general average, there were only two inconsiderable surpluses, and these were accounted for by special reasons. In ordinary districts for six or eight members there will be no surplus at all. As Sir John Lubbock puts it, where the surplus is large it follows a uniform trend; where it is small it is of no effect on the large number of voters dealt with.

And all this protest about uncertainty is made in the interests of possible candidates, not voters. Every elector has his wishes carried out. If his first vote is effective, he obtains the thing he most desires. If his fellows have been beforehand and brought his favourite in, he falls back on his second choice. [As shown in Appendix 1.] the 47 spare votes for Charleston were distributed after cutting the pack of votes once, to prevent any chance of manipulation, and fell in the usual order. Magarey's surplus of 19 were mostly gained by Stirling, because Temperance and Woman Suffrage go very much together.

This objection was thus answered. In the clause of the draft bill appended to this essay the votes are all mixed together and then taken out one by one. When the quota is reached the remaining votes are counted as surplus.

III. Uncertainty of result. The difficulty of forecasting how the election will come out makes Effective Voting [STV] distasteful to election agents, party leaders, and party newspapers. And yet results are far from certain now. Every extension of the suffrage, and every step towards secrecy and purity of elections has been feared and opposed on account of the additional uncertainty it introduced into the contest. What a leap in the dark it was when the Conservative party with the noble ambition to "dish the Whigs" outbade them in giving electoral rights to a new and vast body of the people!

It was uncertainty for both of the parties when the secret ballot was given to the people of the United Kingdom. The voters who had been counted like so many sheep and so many goats were no longer marched to the poll. Open voting no longer [supplied] the security of the promised vote.

The collective conscience of America has forced the Australian Ballot upon most of the U.S. States. No doubt a good deal of uncertainty has resulted from it.

Parties can, however, accommodate themselves to everything. As effective voting would have this element of certainty that the people would be really represented, the people may feel their minds easy whatever the wire-pullers may say, and however gloomy the prognostications of those who stand behind them may be.

IV. That it will be impossible to form a strong government under proportional representation. It is quite possible for a government to be too strong. Mr. Bryce in his invaluable work, "The American Commonwealth," says that for the term of office, the U.S. President, who is his own prime minister, who exercises a real veto, and can go on ruling in the teeth of an enormous majority in the House of Representatives — the people's chamber. He is the actual commander of army and navy, unlike the Queen of England who is the nominal commander of the British army and navy. He has more power than any European sovereign. No Englishman since Oliver Cromwell exercised the power Lincoln did.

Even in times of peace, the president has enormous patronage. That is supposed to be power. But much of the time, effort and thought of able presidents has been occupied in apportioning rewards to supporters in esse or in posse, which instead ought to have been given to important and necessary work. "The Spoils System" seems falling to pieces by its own weight, as well as from the collective conscience of the country. Each successive president, beginning with Garfield, makes fewer displacements.

The Cabinet Ministers of the president do not sit in Congress, as they do in England and the colonies. They keep their places till the next shuffle of the cards at the presidential election decides on the complexion of politics for the next four years.

In England, in Canada, and in Australia, there is continuous antagonism carried on inside and outside the walls of parliament, against the ministry in office. A ministry may be dismissed in consequence of a single night's debate, and a fresh Cabinet formed from the ranks of its enemies. In England, the parties depend largely on class and caste. They have historic roots in the past. They throw out their branches and tendrils towards the future.

In spite of all the conservatism of the ancient nation, buttressed by hereditary titles and by the law of primogeniture, England moves steadily towards more and more democratic opinions and institutions. On the other hand, in spite of the successful efforts of reformers carried out in every possible direction, England still stands the most conservative of modern nations. But I question whether party government based on majority representation is the source of her strength.

In a debate in the Belgium Chamber in May 1892, M. Beernaert, Minister of Finance, in introducing a new electoral bill, sought to alter a clause in the constitution so as to allow of proportional representation. When the objection was raised that under that system it would be impossible to form a strong government, he replied:

"I, who have the honour of speaking to you today in the name of the government, and who have at my back the strongest majority that was ever known in Belgium, I owe it to truth to say that our opinions have not a corresponding preponderance in the country. I believe that if that majority were always correctly expressed, we should gain in stability what we might lose in apparent strength.

Of what use besides are very strong majorities, when we have a fixed resolution to oppress nobody? Gentlemen, in the actual state of affairs, to whom belongs the government of the country? It belongs to some two or three thousand electors, who are certainly neither the best nor the most intelligent.

I see to the right and to the left, two grand corps-d'armee, Catholics and Liberals, of force almost equal, whom nothing would tempt to desert their standard, and who serve that standard from conviction and with devotion. Well, these grand corps do not count, or scarcely count. On the day of battle, it is as if they did not exist.

What triumphs, what decides, is another body of electors altogether, a floating body, knowing little what they wish, and too often swayed by their passions, by their grudges, and what is worse still, by their interests. These are our masters. According as they veer from right to left, the government of the country changes, and its history takes a new direction.

I ask is it well that it should be so? Is it well that the government should be at the mercy of such contemptible elements as these?"

M. Beernaert is right. It is the party government that is essentially the weak government.

It cannot afford to estrange or offend any one who commands votes. It has been said that every prominent member of the English House of Commons is being perpetually tempted and tormented by his friends not to be honest. And he is also perpetually assailed by his enemies in order to be made not to appear honest. The opposition are ready to trip up the ministry at every step. They exaggerate mistakes, misrepresent motives, combat even measures they believe to be good if brought forward by the other party. They bully in public. They undermine in secret and count all things fair in political warfare.

The opposition is always prepared to step into the shoes of the ministry, and to undergo the same treatment from the defeated foe. And this is the sort of strength that is supposed to be imperilled if the nation were equitably represented in the Legislature!

Colonial parties have not the same sharp lines of demarcation. Ministers are frequently brought in and defeated on merely personal grounds. But Colonial parties are often less scrupulous than English politicians. There must always be "the ins and the outs." These in Canada and in Australia are more keenly apprehended than the time-honoured parties of order and progress. Perhaps there are fewer great questions to discuss, and local and personal politics preponderate.

Whether the legislative bodies are paid or un-paid, it makes a difference to the locality that he represents, if a man votes with the ministry or against it, or if he is a member of it himself. Nor is it merely the loaves and fishes that make office so desirable.

[page 103]

Every citizen is disposed to think he is as clever as his neighbours. When that citizen is an elected member of parliament, he is inclined to think he is quite fit to administer public affairs. Gratified activity is the greatest pleasure in life, and there is credit as well as profit to be gained. Thus votes of no confidence are brought forward by weak men as well as by strong, and coalitions are formed of the most discordant elements, and you hear men lament there are no strong parties in the colonies to form strong governments. Strength is to be sought in quite another direction.

In the present state of the world, it is of the first importance that public administration should be watched from all sides, and not merely from the point of view of the party that desires to sit as government. In order that government should be honest, intelligent, and economical, it needs helpful criticism rather than destructive opposition. This criticism may be expected from the less compact and more independent ranks of a legislature which truly represents the people.

V. There would be a difficulty in case of a by-election caused by death or resignation of one member of a large constituency.

It could not be filled up by proportional representation. Where the tenure is for seven years as in England, there is a natural desire to gauge public opinion through a by-election, but for the shorter terms in Canada, America, and Australia, it is not necessary.

Let the voting papers used at the last election be preserved. Those that had returned the retiring member be distributed according to contingent votes among the unsuccessful candidates, and added to the number of first votes polled by each. Let the candidate who has more than the rest be returned for the remainder of the term. [that is, assuming the old candidates still want the seat]

(For example, see Appendix II.)

VI. If constituencies were fixed now on an equal basis, what should be done in case of growth of population? How shift the boundaries? I should not suggest shifting boundaries at all, for that lends itself to dishonest gerrymandering.

At present in the U.S., the uni-nominal districts are gerrymandered in the interests of party. Where the Republicans are the stronger, the changes are made to throw the Democrats into one district, so that several others that be round may bring in Republicans. Where the Democrats are stronger, the process is reversed. One electoral district may curl like a salamander round another or may stretch like a long ribbon through the middle of a state. A single county actually belonged to five electoral districts in nine years.

Let no one say that because these tactics are practised by both parties, one injustice rectifies another. Injustice can rectify nothing! It is always and everywhere an intolerable evil.

The larger electorate will be more stable as to relative population than the uni-nominal one. But according to our system, there need be no shifting of boundaries at all. After each decennial census, a readjustment might be made, and one member more given to any district that had made an equivalent comparative increase, while one member was taken from any that had comparatively declined.

[Number of representatives]

There are already too many representatives in Canada and in Australia, and I should recommend their decrease. It was a great mistake to fix by the Constitution that Quebec should send always 65 members to the Dominion Parliament, and all the other provinces in proportion to their population as compared with hers. Where all members of the legislature are paid, such large numbers are a heavy tax on industry and production, and half the present number would do the work better. And besides the Dominion Parliament, there are also the local Provincial Legislatures to be paid, and fitting men to be found.

When New Zealand federated, she gave up the provincial parliaments, though she retained more local government and better means for it than we in Australia have evolved for ourselves.

In the larger electorates necessitated by proportional representation, it will be easier to reduce the number of members than it is now, when each little growing locality demands increase of political influence, yet the declining will not consent to reduction.

Local interests would be so far shorn of their power that the voice of reason and commonsense might be heard.

Before we are federated in Australia, I hope some limits will be put on the number of legislators. Perhaps the financial crisis through which the colonies are passing may direct public attention to the unnecessary cost of our whole administration, and that the people and the press will demand from the parliament reduction of numbers, if not of pay.

[page 104]

VII.—The objection has been raised that in delocalising politics, or at all events greatly diminishing the local benefits sought from congressman or member of parliament, people would become quite indifferent to politics. I expected to hear at my meetings that the people disliked being merged in a large group. But it was never brought forward. Only once was it mentioned by a Member of Parliament, who was in the chair, and he did not give as his own opinion, but as an objection natural to the electors. I suppose I had so thoroughly convinced my hearers that however large the electorate might be, no vote would miss its aim, that they did not object.

I suppose that in South Australia as elsewhere, a voter thinks his member ought to do something for him or for the district. Still he may be able to see that if every member did the same for other voters and other districts, more taxes must be paid by all. Every one can see that log-rolling practised for the advantage of other districts is done at his cost. It needs little acumen to perceive that ministries would be more stable and more honest, as well as more happy, if their hand was not so often forced by the need of votes that demand local concessions. Party spirit might decline, local and parochial matters might suffer, but real public spirit would be strengthened and purified.

There are three kinds of interests that an honest man should watch, lest they lead him astray.

The first is his personal interest. He may have a piece of land to sell to the government or to the municipality, for which he may ask a higher price than he would gladly take from a private individual.

The next is his class interest. This leads him to desire laws passed for the benefit of his trade or his business, at the cost of other trades and businesses.

The third is his local interest, which seeks an advantage to his town or his county, at the cost of other towns and counties.

Our personal interests are, however, watched by people who have interests in other directions, while our class and local interests are flattered, exaggerated, intensified, by the public opinion that is nearest to us — that of our own class and our own locality, who would also be benefited, and who have the same bias as ourselves. "Tax the squatters (the pastoral lessees) to make our roads," said a South Australian farmer some years ago in my hearing. The squatters did not need the roads. This was both a local and a class bias, but we hear a good many such cries.

"Give us some advantage for ourselves, for our class or our district, at the expense of other people, other districts, and other classes." If it needs the chance of local appropriation to induce interest in public matters, the electoral stuff must be poor indeed. It is time public spirit was fed on better food and roused to better purpose.

With regard to the delocalising of politics, people are apt to speak as if because the elector may vote for another man than stands for the segment he lives in, he will always do so. This is contrary to human nature. The great majority of the votes will be given to the local man who best represents the elector's views. There will be local centres in every large district that will compete, but not for local votes only. Therefore they will be anxious to bring forward good men, who might win first and contingent votes to aid his return. Even Mr. Hare expected most of the votes to be polled for the local man candidates, although he allowed free range over the whole United Kingdom. The nomination was to be for the district, though power was given to escape from it.

In the smaller district that I propose, locality will tell more strongly than in Mr. Hare's scheme [of at-large elections]. It will retain much that is good in local representation, its direct interest in the district doing itself credit. It will be stimulated by healthy emulation with other districts, but it will lose much of its narrowness and selfishness. An elector chosen by a quota of the ninth part of the votes of all Liverpool would occupy a higher position in public estimation and in his own, than one elected by a bare majority in a ninth part of that great city.

VIII. While some seem to fear that a strong government cannot be maintained under proportional representation, others say that without the strong organized opposition of the "outs," the "ins" cannot be sufficiently checked. Is there really true strength and progress under the perpetual reign of see-saw, with unfair handicapping on alternate sides, than there would be on a stable government built on a true representation of the people?

Methods might indeed be varied. Capable men adjust themselves to changes, however great and far-reaching. There would be opposition to what appeared bad, criticism of what was doubtful, support to what appeared to be good, more certain than when the leader of the ministry and the opposition count noses, and the debates that fill the newspapers make no change in the following of either.

[page 105]

At the time of the Reform Bill of 1832, the party of order predicted a cataclysm of destruction, and the party of progress looked for a millennium of liberty and prosperity.

Neither expectation was realized. Successive extensions of the suffrage and successive inroads upon privilege have been likewise feared and hailed as if the issues were of life and death. Still in 1893 the party of order finds institutions that are worth preserving, and the party of progress demands further and further advance. The standing ground is shifted, that is all.

[Set terms of service for government cabinets]

A noted politician in South Australia, Thomas Playford, promised recently in his election address that ministries should be elected for the session by the parliament, and that during that term the proceedings of government might he watched and criticized. But the attempt should be made to oust them. A great part of each parliamentary session in the Australian colonies is often spent in trying to unseat the cabinet. When the opposition succeeds, the mover of the "No confidence" vote has the difficult and invidious task of choosing a new team, but then offends more men by leaving them out, than he can please by including them. A ministry elected thus, according to Playford's idea, would be all pretty much of one party, and would all possess the confidence of the majority in parliament to start with, at any rate. If anyone forfeited it, he would not be elected for next session.

This suggestion shows how burdensome a practical politician finds the present conditions of office. He would rather have the choice of colleagues taken out of his hands than have to make compromises and concessions in order to strengthen his position.

If the parliament were elected on proportional lines, a ministry thus formed would be strong for work, and legislation and administration would go on more quickly and more thoroughly when the ministry were relieved from factious opposition during the session.

Next session they might be displaced if the parliament was dissatisfied.

There would not be so many slaughtered innocents, there would not be so many bills passed or rejected by the Upper House without due discussion, if more time was given to work and less to wrangling for place. It may be said that this method would force on the premier a team he does not like, but experience shows that people as unsympathetic are forced on him by the exigencies of party government.

IX.—Another objection made is that the districts would be too large to allow of personal canvassing. But as most honest politicians find it difficult to go through this ordeal with a clear conscience, and would be glad to be relieved from it, it is of no moment from their side.

The elector might complain perhaps, for it is the personal canvass that flatters him most. At that moment, if at no other, ho feels that he is the master of the situation, that he can make and unmake parliaments and governments.

But the candidate's public addresses and speeches would be far more candid and courageous, far more enlightening to the constituency, if he appealed to every elector in a large district who thought with him, or who might be induced to think with him, than if he had to deprecate the antagonism of people who might vote against him in a small district. He must make his appearance at one or more centres in the electorate. He must submit to searching questioning from all points of view. His speeches and replies as well as his address, would be widely circulated, so that first votes and contingent votes may be won. These would come from unexpected quarters without personal canvassing.

[Election deposits Open candidature]

I have already said that I do not think it wise to require a deposit to be paid by every candidate, to be forfeited in case he does not poll a certain percentage of the votes.

Open candidature is the right thing for a free and progressive country. The caucus and convention cannot dictate who shall enter the lists under proportional representation, and by means of the contingent votes no man need lose his vote even if his first choice falls on a most unpopular candidate.

X. An objection originally made to Mr. Hare's vast scheme, that it would fill the House of Commons with faddists, is still brought against such a modest modification of it as is advocated here. Crotchetty people are of course completely extinguished by majority election, but under proportional representation it would be only to the extent of its following that faddists would be represented in Parliament.

[page 106]

And the most valuable and vital of all reforms are at first looked on as mere Utopian crotchets.

Mr. Grove's Ballot [machinery for secret voting?], Mr. Villiers' Free Trade were crotchets for many years.

Woman's Suffrage and Proportional Representation were crotchets brought forward in Parliament by John Stuart Mill. This prevented his return to the House for a second term. The electors of Westminster tried him once, but he was too unpractical for them. Under proportional voting, England would have retained his services.

In the modification here proposed, no extreme crotchet could be resented absolutely. Any reform which did not secure the sixth part of the votes given for a six-member, or an eighth part of those for an eight-member constituency, would not be able to return an independent member of its own. But should such minorities lose their power altogether, as is the case with considerable minorities now, when like the Prohibitionists, they conscientiously cast their ballots for the man who truly represents their convictions? No, they should not be extinguished, but should be allowed by means of the contingent votes, to support the most favourable or the least objectionable of the other men standing for the large district. Even if, like George Eliot's old woman, there is but a choice of mis-likings in this world, there are some mis-likings that by comparison are desirable.

The waste of votes given by conscientious third parties is so much political capital to the main contenders, as it narrows the field, and when we add to these the votes that are angled for by promises of concession, we see that everything plays into their hands.

Sinking all minor differences, all third parties ought to unite in the demand for equitable representation, and they would get it, because they would be reinforced by the honest and thoughtful of the main parties themselves.

I have thus endeavoured to answer seriatim, the various objections that have been made, or that may be made, against this radical measure of electoral reform. I hope I have shown that those as to complexity for voter and returning officer are groundless; that the uncertainty as to surplusage in no way affects the result as are proposed; and that party leaders will accommodate themselves to the change of methods.

I hope I have also proved that governments are likely to be more stable and the opposition more intelligent under the new system, and that the filling up of vacancies and the adjustment of electorates would be easily provided for on equitable principles. I hope I have also proved that the best local interests would be preserved, while their mischievous operation would be greatly checked. The process and the results would also be interesting to the electors themselves, as well as to the candidates who offer themselves to the enlarged and truly enfranchised constituencies.

CHAPTER IV. EFFECTIVE VOTING.

The exclusively majority representation that is organized in most civilized countries, gives rise to party government. It creates the impression that there are only two parties in the state whose views are entitled to consideration. To the ineffective third parties, to the original, to the idealist, these parties say scornfully, "Become a majority and then you will be attended to." But at the same time, they carefully close up the avenues through which converts are made in sufficient numbers for such results.

"The truth is great and it will prevail," may be true in the long run, but it has to run the gauntlet of indolence and apathy, of prejudice and opposition, of vested interests and rooted traditions. Meantime all changes in law and administration are made in the real or supposed interests of one of the two parties that happens to be in power at the time, and sufficiently predominant to bear down the organized opposition of the other.

Not only does this party dualism reign supreme in the legislature. It also dominates the chief instructor of the people, the newspaper press. Although proportional representation by means of the Single Transferable Vote has been brought forward by competent advocates for over thirty years, and treated in books and magazine articles as a real issue of the first importance, for the rectification of parliament and the purification of politics, no ordinary newspaper has taken hold of it. It still remains with a sort of academic halo about it, quite apart from the bosom and business of ordinary men.

[page 107]

Editors of papers will not admit articles or even letters on the subject because they "consider it unwise to open the question of improved electoral methods, which might divert public attention from more important and practical matters." I must except the newspaper press of South Australia, which has taken up the subject as a practical matter recently. This was greatly due to the interest excited in the public mind by the lecturing and the trial balloon used all over the province.

When asked how many MPs in my Province are in favour of proportional representation, I have been tempted to reply in the words of scripture, "Have any of the Pharisees or of the Scribes believed in Him?" Until a radical reform like this is brought home to the people so strongly that they demand it, MPs do not care to touch it.

When I advocated proportional representation under the title of Effective Voting, I caught hold of an experience that was familiar to all. Everyone knew of how many votes were wasted at every election, and many knew instances where more votes were lost than were utilized.

The reform goes under many names, preferential voting, equal representation, distributive voting, the Single Transferable Vote, representation of minorities. It deserves all these titles. It is equal because it is proportional; it is proportional because it is transferable; it represents minorities as fairly as majorities, it is worked by distributing surplus and minus votes preferentially. Because it is all these things it is effective. It is no party weapon. It is equally just to all. It has thus the advantage of appealing to all parties alike.

But it has the defect of its qualities. Because it does not promise any exclusive advantage to either of the great parties who have in the past exchanged place and power, neither of them are at all eager to take it up. The members of the legislatures who are now there, owe their position to majority or plurality representation.

Their success depended on making all votes ineffective except what were polled for themselves. They know the old ropes, and how to pull them. They cannot tell how they would fare under a system of absolute righteousness. This is the uncertainty that makes so-called practical politicians warn theorists against flying from some small evils that we know of, lest we may encounter other evils probably greater.

If the people do not demand it with a very loud voice indeed, the ordinary political candidate will not touch it with the longest pair of tongs. Even men who believe in the principle hold it back, lest they should be stigmatized as theoretical and Utopian.

Thus the one thing needful is to arouse public opinion, and that not merely by essays read by the few, but by public lecture, familiar speech and practical illustration.

It is a long time since Thomas Hare and John Stuart Mill delivered this Gospel to me, but all the years since have only emphasized the world's need of it. The course of politics in England, France, America, Canada and Australia has been a running comment on the original text. People tell me "You have waited thirty years and more. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small. In the course of another generation or two, truth may prevail. All will come right in time."

I reply that nothing will come right unless those who feel that they have the truth, speak and work and strain. On them depends the destinies of the world. In the substitution of the co-operative spirit for the competitive in politics, I believe we may find deliverance from many evils that are eating into the heart of humanity. Therefore I call upon all who see this truth to aid in the spread of it, and not to keep it as a private opinion. Unless our disciples become apostles, our progress will continue to be slow.

It is easier for a good man to gain a quota in a large district than a plurality in a small one, and he is most likely to get it by the best means; by courage and sincerity, by character and abilities. It is easier for a bad man to get a plurality in a small district than a quota in a large one; and he may gain it by the worst means; by trimming and truckling to what he fancies is the popular feeling; by misrepresenting the views and the motives of his opponents; by pandering to local and class interests; by encouraging too many candidates to start, so that votes may be lost, if not by bribery outright.

I was asked at one of my meetings if I really believed that Effective Voting would put a stop to bribery. I replied that as each vote must count, and no vote extinguished any other, every vote must be bought, and that would be too expensive.

My questioner said that supposing the quota for the district was one thousand, a rich man who wanted very much to get into Parliament would be willing to give a thousand pounds for them. I replied that he might indeed be willing, but where in any district of South Australia, could he find a thousand men willing to sell their birth-right for such a poor mess of pottage?

[page 108]

There are a few weaklings who may be cajoled, and a few crawlers who may be bought, by means of whom the scale may be turned in a uni-nominal constituency, but they are an insignificant portion of any quota.

The use of this doubtful fringe has been long known to electioneering agents. So long as we have plurality representation, the temptation to gain through their means is very great. How to secure a win for our side is the main object, and while it is merely satisfactory to win when we have an undoubted majority, the crowning glory of tactics is to make a victorious plurality with an undoubted minority of the votes.

How often the U.S. president is brought in by a minority of the popular vote. In the case of Harrison this amounted to a hundred thousand (100,000)!

The Liberal-Unionists congratulated themselves on their tactics in Birmingham and the Midland counties. These were so successful that while it took somewhat over four thousand votes to return one candidate for them, it needed eighteen thousand to return a Gladstonian. Elsewhere the process was reversed, and the Gladstonians had the advantage.

A respected deacon of the church confessed that when election time came round and he acted as an agent, he had always to shut up his conscience in a box, and not take it out till it was over. But he did not take out the same article he put in. No, you cannot ignore justice and take every advantage, and trample upon every consideration for others, during the weeks or months of canvassing and polling, without grave moral deterioration.

"Everything is fair in politics," they say. But unfairness is met by unfairness. What is gained here is lost there, even by the party itself. The only certain result is that the tone of morality is lowered, and that the best men keep out of politics altogether.

When you hear this phrase so glibly spoken by travelling Americans and Australians, you scarcely appreciate the importance of the fact. It cannot but injure in its most vital points any nation when the best men leave to professional wire-pullers and their backers the large issues of national life, the progress or decline of the land to which they owe a citizen's duty and devotion. Meanwhile these best men immerse themselves in business, or waste themselves in idle pleasure. At the best, they indulge in literary leisure, or cultivate an aesthetic fad, or even a cloistered and academic virtue for their private benefit. But meanwhile they allow a great nation to decline, perhaps to perish, for lack of wisdom and courage.

Mr. Bryce, in "The American Commonwealth," looks on this lightly talked of defection of the best men from political life as the most dangerous feature in the U.S. He says so much about the party machine and the work it does, that one expected him to suggest some radical cure. But he only diagnoses the disease, and trusts to nature and to time for a remedy. As the intrinsically honest character of the people and their practical commonsense has prevented the worst of machinery from doing more than half the mischief that it was likely to work, he believes things will right themselves.

The Australian ballot and the diminution of the "Spoils" system are the most hopeful signs in his eyes. But so long as the caucus limits the choice of candidates, the free ballot is of little value.

Bryce considers that the evils of American political and municipal organizations are bound up with the spoils system. With the spoils of office, a party can directly reward adherents. As well, there are many indirect and secret ways by which wealth in the hands of individuals and corporations can vitiate elections and misrepresent the people.

Mr. Bryce lays his finger on the greatest hindrance to radical reform. This is the essential conservatism of the American people. Probably no statement in the book surprised European readers more, but it is quite true. The parchment constitution under which such gigantic evils have grown up is reverenced — almost worshipped — by the people.

Children at school are taught its provisions. It is the citizen's Bible.

The British Constitution has been the slow growth of centuries and therefore venerable. But there is not a single point in it that is not open to criticism. It has been profoundly modified by men now living, and it is threatened with greater changes still.

[U.S. politics]

The U.S. constitution was the work of the great men who made the nation. It was the outcome of the best thought of the time and provided for dangers that the fathers of the nation state could see. But it could not provide for what they did not dream of. The unification of the States as a single power against a foreign foe, and the free interchange of commodities with each other were indispensable. To secure these a compromise was made with slavery, which afterwards bore such bitter fruits.

[page 109]

The unification of the Republic could only be effected by granting to the sovereign states the largest measure of independence outside those necessary lines, and giving the federal government the greatest strength possible within the limits prescribed. It was a grand idea. But it did not cover all the ground. The framers of the Constitution could not foresee that the checks that seemed to them wise to restrain popular impatience and make presidential and senatorial elections peaceful and dignified, would be over-ridden and undermined by the strength and craft of party. The election of U.S. Senators by the State legislatures makes these bodies, which ought to deal with domestic matters in a business-like way. Instead they are chosen by the party on party lines. This has helped towards the invasion of parties into municipal elections also.

The electoral college chosen by the citizens for the presidential election are simply mandate-bearers, called out for one purpose. The voting in each state is at large, or by scrutin du liste [Block Voting]. A slight wave of public opinion in New York may change 36 Republicans for 36 Democrats, and virtually elect the president.

While the power of the Sovereign of England and of the House of Lords has dwindled during the century, that of the U.S. President and the U.S. Senate has increased. It is the strongest Sovereignty and the strongest Upper House in the civilized world. The Senate being not only stronger collectively than the Representatives, but fewer in number, lobbying goes on there to a far greater extent than in what is supposed to be the People's House. President Harrison, during the last two years of his term, had three to one against him in the Representatives, but got along with a narrow majority in the Senate.

Imagine Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury ruling with three to one against him in the House of Commons!

It is indeed singular how the American seems to enjoy the exercise of the veto by the President, and even by the Governor of a State against the Representatives. He has voted for his Governor and for the presidential electors, and these have been returned by the plurality to whom he is bound to submit, and he admires the pluck of one man against many. In this as in many other respects, America is less democratic than England. The Electoral College dreamed of by the founders of the Republic was a wise deliberative body, and not a lot of message buys. But the thing is so favourable to professional politicians and their employers, and so intrenched by the conservatism of the people, that it stands strong. Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Great is our glorious American Constitution!

Touch it, and our craft is endangered.

Perhaps there is a third, or a least a fourth of the American people who think reform is necessary. They can do no good so long as they only cast hopeless votes to outsiders, or make terms with insiders. If prohibitionists, Populists, Socialists, Single-taxers, and the great inarticulate Labour party would make common cause, and go on together till they secured honest representation, no party force or fraud could withstand them. So long as each of these voices of discontent is single, the wire-pullers, the monopolists, and "the corporations smile." United, they are masters of the situation.

The idea is new to the general public, but the time has come when that which has been whispered in the ear must be proclaimed from the house tops. Let the principle only be grasped by the plain people of Canada, Australia and America, and we shall see a peaceful revolution, founded on peace and good will.

The 23 chapters that Mr. Bryce devotes to the Party System and the Party machine were a revelation to the English people. Yet he rather understates the case. He is just to the people, while condemning the system that tyrannizes over them.

We hear it said that governments are what the people make them, but I do not blame the people. It is the machinery through which they work that is responsible for the faults in American administration. They are not represented in any true sense of the word. It is not even the majority who rule! It is calculated that 47 percent of the votes cast return all the representatives to Congress. These are only what the caucus brought forward.

What would we think of a mirror that only reproduced what was ugly and commonplace, and not the fine expression or the delicate lines of the features? The electoral net is so coarse that the best elements in the nation escape it. Those who haul in that net desire that it should be so. There are good men everywhere whose colours are not those of the party, and whose weapons are not those of the duel. A better system of representation would secure them for the country, to work independently or in conjunction with others like-minded, without fear or favour.

[page 110]

Effective Voting does not fear the most searching criticism. It is not a mere theory, not the fad of the professorial chair, or of the mathematical mind. But when shown to average men and women, it commends itself as equitable and practicable. No party can return more representatives that its numbers entitle it to, and need not return fewer under Effective Voting.

Lord Beaconsfield complained that parliaments were in their decadence and that county and parish politics prevailed over large national questions. If this was said of England, what may be said of Canada and of Australia? Government grants and appropriations are the main demands of local constituencies. In Canada the members sent to the Dominion Parliament were all Conservatives, while the Local Parliaments elected by the same votes were of the other side, because under a Conservative Ministry, there was more chance of grants if the locality supported them.

[South Australia and in New Zealand electoral reform]

It is in South Australia and in New Zealand that I hope to see the first steps taken towards equitable representation. Both these are more democratic than the other Australian colonies. They have "one man one vote." Both colonies have taken steps towards the taxation of land on the best basis. South Australia, eight years ago, imposed a tax of a halfpenny in the pound on assessed value of every acre of freehold land in the Province, whether it is a rood or a hundred thousand acres, and it is the most cheaply collected and certain of all our sources of revenue. New Zealand has tried several modes of direct taxation. The last, exempting from the land tax all improvements up to three thousand pounds, is the best. This and plans to encourage settlement and to stop the selling of Crown lands altogether are in advance of anything done on the island-continent of Australia.

In New Zealand, in 1888, the Atkinson Ministry brought forward an electoral bill embodying Sir John Lubbock's modification of Hare's system, for districts returning from four to eight members, and taking his mathematical quota. There were some new points about the bill open to criticism. Anyhow the Ministry failed to carry it.

As allowing of the transferable vote for quota representation, it would have been most valuable, and not misleading to the public as is the contingent vote in the new electoral law in Queensland, voted under for the first time this year.

[Contingent Vote in use in Queensland]

The Contingent Vote is meant to secure that there shall be an absolute majority for one candidate in every single-member district. It is intended to exclude all minorities. It is a conservative measure passed by a parliament where the capitalist party had the majority. It is designed to prevent earnest and compact minorities from obtaining a member that their numbers did not entitle them to.

The Trades and Labour unions, including the Shearers' union, had scored some triumphs through the divisions of votes among other candidates. Under the contingent vote, in case the first choice does not poll sufficient for return [a majority], the lost votes are heaped on another, so that he is returned by a majority and not by a mere plurality.*

The Labour party have also difficulties placed in the way of registration. In the case of a large nomad population of shearers and knock-about hands this is of great importance, by requiring identification by a J.P., [who is] not always friendly to the Labour vote. Thus the contingent vote, which under Hare's quota would be the means of their complete enfranchisement, is made obnoxious by association with this bill.

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* A clearer explanation of contingent voting is that voters mark preferences on their ballots. If no candidates has majority of votes in the first count, all but the top two are eliminated and their votes are transferred as per the marked preferences. One of the remaining two must have majority and is declared elected.

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[Run-off voting]

No doubt the contingent vote used thus is much better than the second election [run-off voting] This is used to secure an absolute majority that is required by French and German law, whereby the two highest at the poll are put up again. The election agents try all they can to secure a first or second place for their candidate. In the second election they go to work anew, not only to secure the lost votes, but to change the destination of those previously given to the only remaining competitor. Grevillo Murray's brilliant novel The Member for Paris shows how strangely the result may come out.

But why did this bill pass the Queensland Parliament so easily, while the far more valuable bill was lost in New Zealand? Because the Conservative party saw that Contingent Voting would work in their interests. The great Maritime strike, the Shearers' strike, and the Broken Hill Miners' strike had alarmed capitalists and merchants, pastoralists, sugar-growers and shippers. All the moneyed interests of Queensland were threatened by the claims of labour. And by this apparently just system, they could extinguish the voice of Labour in all but two or three districts in Queensland.*

There was no such motive for passing the New Zealand bill.

*[The UFA's use of Alternative Voting in the rural districts of Alberta was criticized for the same reason. Certainly the Liberal and Conservative minorities were mostly unrepresented under the system.]

[page 111]

[Pro-rep]

M. Smet de Borman, in the debate in the Belgian Chamber from which I quoted M. Beernaert's remarks, speaks thus on the wisdom and justice of combining a provision for proportional representation, with the extension of the suffrage from its former limit of the payment of direct taxes to the amount of 45 francs:

"For whom then do we ask the right to vote? Is it for the bourgeoisie, greater or smaller? No, it is for the toilers. It is their situation that we are told has not been sufficiently studied. It is their grievances that have found no echo in Parliament. These are the malcontents whom we desire in the spirit of patriotic justice to disarm.

What do we propose to give them?

I do not hesitate to say that without proportional representation, we give them nothing. While with it we give them all to which they can legitimately aspire. Let us admit even manhood suffrage. I assert that in almost every district in Belgium the workers would be excluded from the representation.

Out of 600 deputies how many working men are in the Parliament of France? We scarcely count two or three! And France has a paid parliament and manhood suffrage!

So we hear the same complaints and the same attacks on Parliament by the Labour party in France as we read in the Belgian proletariat press. Neither in Brussels, nor in Liege, nor in Ghent could the Labour party succeed in sending a deputy to parliament even with manhood suffrage, unless it allies itself with the bourgeoise advanced party. By means of such alliance a representative may be returned who only knows the working man because he applauds him at the meetings, and makes use of him as a stepping-stone, or the labour party flourishing their own standard may be crushed in detail in every electorate in the kingdom."

Thus this reform is truly a working man's measure.

If South Australia takes the lead with Effective Voting, I trust she will take a better grasp than was attempted in New Zealand, and not cumber the reform by other doubtful provisions. It can be adapted to the present electoral law, and only requires the change of a few clauses. If Canada takes the lead for the Dominion Parliament, which most needs the reform, it will be a more prominent example than can be furnished by a distant Australian province. But whether an Australian or a Canadian province sets the example, it will be followed. [TM: After Manitoba and Alberta adopted STV, still no such reform happened in Britain.]

Simultaneous interest is aroused as to electoral reform in Canada, in Australia and in America, as well as in Switzerland and Belgium. The minds of thoughtful men are turning from tinkering to radical changes. This is a presage for good. Some blunders may be made. Many reformers are shortsighted and one sided.

But the greatest hindrances to progress are the inertia of indifference and the apathy of despair. Citizens who talk constantly about the evils of the political machine without doing anything to amend them, and as if they were incidental to a free government, intensify these evils, for they create a despair of good.

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(Essay continued in blog entitled

"Fleming- Essays on Rectification of Parliament Part 4")

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Fleming's 1893 book Essays on Rectification of Parliament are reprinted in these blogs:

Part 1 covers to page 38, so includes the introduction and the first five essays.

Part 2 covers Essays Nos. 6 to 9, thus to pages 39 to 89.

Parts 3-5 covers Essay No. 10, thus pages 90 to 121.

Parts 6-7 covers Essay No. 11, thus pages 122 to the end.

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