Even with the present distribution of seats the system is very unsatisfactory and imperfect. In my own county of Kent we polled in the three divisions at the last election over 13,000 votes, against 16,000 given to our opponents, and yet they have all the six seats. Taking all the contested seats in the county, we polled 32,000 votes ́against 36,000, and yet the Conservatives carried sixteen members and we only two.

If we draw a line across England from Lincolnshire to Devonshire, there are on the south-east side 99 county seats. In many of these the Conservatives had no contest, but the majority of the seats were fought, and the Liberals polled 96,000 votes against 116,000 given to the Tories. On this basis therefore we ought to have had, say, 40 seats and the Conservatives 59. As a matter of fact, however, we only secured 15 against 84. Moreover of our 15, 5 were minority seats; so that but for the introduction of the principle of minority representation, limited though it was, we should have only had 10 seats in the whole district, while we were fairly entitled to 40.

Out of 60 members from Scotland and 28 from Wales, only 9 and 2 respectively are Conservatives.

The Roman Catholics are a very large and respectable portion of the nation; yet in the whole of England and Scotland they have never, I believe, for years past secured more than a single seat at any one time.

The case of Ireland is the most serious of all. Certainly onethird of the population is moderate, loyal, and desires to maintain the integrity of the Empire. But we are told on high authority that under this Bill, unless some system of proportional representation be adopted, the Home Rulers will secure over 90 seats out of 100, leaving only half-a-dozen to the Liberals and Conservatives together, whereas it is clear that under any just system of representation they ought to have over 30. The result of such a system would be that Ireland would be entirely misrepresented, and that we should gratuitously create serious and unnecessary difficulties for ourselves.

To adopt a system by which we should exclude from the representation of Ireland one-third of the electors, and give the whole power to two-thirds, would, under any circumstances, be unjust; but to do so when the one-third comprise those who are moderate and loyal, while the two-thirds are led by men not only opposed to the Union, but in many cases animated by a bitter and extraordinary hatred of this country, would be an act of political madness.

To tell the Liberals of Kent and Surrey that they are represented by the Liberal members for Scotch and Welsh counties is just the old and exploded argument which used to maintain that the people of Birmingham and Manchester were really represented by the Liberal members of some other borough. We are glad, no doubt, that Scotland and Wales send us such admirable colleagues; it is a consolation,

but it is not the same thing. Perhaps the one question about which our farmers in Kent care most is the subject of extraordinary tithes. Mr. Gladstone will sympathise with us, because he has so powerfully advocated the cultivation of vegetables and the growth of fruit. He has raised the question of jam to a dignity which it never before attained. But while the extraordinary tithe question remains in its present position I fear it will long be with us a case of jam every other day. But the farmers of Kent cannot expect the Liberal members from Scotland to help them as regards extraordinary tithes. It is conceivable that they do not even know what extraordinary tithes are.

It would not then be satisfactory, even if it were true, that inequalities in one district are made up for by those in another. But it is not true. Let us look for instance at the elections of 1874 and 1880. In the former, as Mr. Hayward has shown in this Review, the Conservatives had a majority of 50 over the Liberals and Home Rulers put together, while in 1880 the Liberals had a majority over the Conservatives and Home Rulers of more than 50. Of course if this change were due to a corresponding alteration in public opinion, then, however much each side of the House might regret its defeat in the one case and rejoice over its victory in the other, there would be nothing to be said as regards the system.

But what are the facts? In 1874 the Conservatives polled 1,200,000 votes against 1,400,000 given to the Liberals and Home Rulers; so that, though they were in a majority of 50 in the House of Commons, they actually polled 200,000 votes in the country less than their opponents. Perhaps I shall be told that this was due to the small boroughs. But the experience of 1880 proves that this was not In 1880 Liberals and Home Rulers so, cr only to a certain extent. together polled 1,880,000 votes against 1,420,000 given to Conservative candidates. The proportions ought then to have been 370 Liberal and Home Rule members to 280 Conservatives, whereas they really were 414 to 236. In 1874 therefore the Liberals and Home Rulers had 56 members too few in relation to their total poll, while on the contrary in 1880 they secured 43 too many. The difference between the two elections was therefore enormous-namely, 99 out of a total of 650.

The present system, then, renders the result of a general election uncertain, and to a large extent a matter of chance; it leads to violent fluctuations in the balance of political power, and consequently in the policy of the country. In fact the present system may be good or may be bad, but it is not representation; and the question is whether we wish for representation in fact or in name only.

The adoption of proportional representation moreover would raise and purify the whole tone of political contests. What do we see now when there is a contest in any of our great northern cities? The majority of the Irish electors, instructed by the honourable

member for Cork, withhold their votes. They do not consider the prosperity of the Empire as a whole, but what they regard as the advantage of Ireland. I do not blame them. They do not seem to me wise: yet I can sympathise with their devotion, mistaken though I think it is, to their own island. Then some deputy in the confidence of the Home Rule party has more or less clandestine and secret interviews with the candidates or their leading supporters. We hear the most opposite accounts of what has occurred. Each side accuses the other of truckling to the Home Rule party and selfishly imperilling the integrity of the Empire. It must be very unsatisfactory to all concerned; and it would be far better if Liverpool had eight votes, and the Home Rulers there are sufficiently strong to return a Home Rule member, than that they should extract doubtful pledges from reluctant candidates.

Moreover the geographical differentiation of political views tends to become more and more accentuated, and might, I think, constitute a real danger. At present Scotland is overpoweringly Liberal, while the south-eastern counties of England, with scarcely an exception, are represented by honourable members sitting on the opposite side of the House. It is but a small consolation to the unrepresented Liberals of Kent to be told that the Conservatives of Scotland share the same grievance, and are as badly off as they are.

But further than this, it will be a great misfortune to the country if one part becomes and continues overwhelmingly Liberal and another Conservative-if their distinctive differences become questions of geography and locality rather than of opinion. The different portions of our Empire are not yet so closely fused that we can afford to despise this danger. In my own county we look on the shires as distinctly lower and less civilised than we are.

America might have been spared a terrible civil war if the principle of proportional representation had been recognised in the composition of the House of Representatives. This was forcibly pointed out in the report unanimously adopted by the Committee of the United States Senate appointed in 1869 to consider the question of representative reform.

The absence (they say) of any provision for the representation of minorities in the States of the South when rebellion was plotted, and when open steps were taken to break the Union, was unfortunate, for it would have held the Union men of those States together, and have given them voice in the electoral colleges and in Congress. But they were fearfully overborne by the plurality rule of elections, and were swept forward by the course of events into impotency or open hostility to our cause. By that rule they were shut out of the electoral colleges. Dispersed, unorganised, unrepresented, without due voice and power, they could interpose no effectual resistance to secession and to civil war.

We shall ourselves make the same mistake and run the same risk of civil war if we neglect all warning, and allow the loyal minority in

Ireland to be altogether silenced and excluded. This is in my humble judgment perhaps the greatest danger with which England is now threatened.

The reasons hitherto given against proportional representation are based on an entire misapprehension of its effect. For instance, the Liberal Conference at Leeds resolved almost unanimously

That, in the opinion of this Conference, the attempt to secure the representation of minorities by special legislative enactments is a violation of the principle of popular representative government.

This was of course a severe and unexpected blow to the friends of proportional representation. But they did not despair. It is obvious indeed from the very terms of the resolution that it is based on an entire misapprehension. One of the ablest supporters of mere majority election, in advocating the resolution, expressed himself as follows:—

What they desired was to remove the anomaly whereby the minorities in the counties and boroughs really ruled the majority. By a notorious artifice the House of Lords' territorial majority adopted the minority clause for the avowed purpose of acting as a brake upon the democracy. Any attempt to place the minority in possession of the power of the majority was treason to the principle of popular representation.

But who has proposed anything of the kind? The argument clearly shows that the speaker entirely misunderstood the object and effect of the system which we advocate. Another leading opponent of proportional representation once characterised it as a pernicious restriction on free voting,' when in fact the very reverse is the case. It would increase the power of free voting; what it would diminish would be the power of wirepullers.

But then it is often said that the minority system, as adopted, say, in Liverpool, reduces that great city to the level of a town returning a single member. Well, but that is only because parties are evenly balanced there. If one-third of the voters are Conservatives, why should they not have one-third of the members? Why should two-thirds of the constituency monopolise the whole of the representatives? Birmingham and Glasgow, where the Liberals are strong enough to do so, return, we know, three Liberal members. We shall give Liverpool, say, eight members because it has 63,000 electors, of whom perhaps 30,000 are Liberals, 30,000 Conservatives, 2,000 Irish Home Rulers, and 1,000 without distinctive political opinions; and I do not understand how any one can really wish that these 3,000 should practically return all the members. We know that generally they join the Conservatives, and the result would be that 30,000 Liberals would be unrepresented. But if it were not for the 30,000 Liberals, Liverpool would have had only four members. It comes, therefore, to this: that because there are 30,000 Liberals in Liverpool you give the Conservatives twice as many members as they would

otherwise have had. If we are told that any proportional system is objectionable because it might reduce Liverpool to a single vote, then I ask, How far are you going to carry this principle? In Lancashire at the last general election the Conservatives polled 38,000 votes, the Liberals 36,000, and the members are four to four. This seems as it should be. The votes were nearly equal, and the members are equal. But shall we be told that Lancashire is unrepresented? Would any one propose that the 36,000 Conservative electors should have returned the whole eight members, and the 34,000 Liberals none at all? Yet this is what we are told is the just system in great cities such as Liverpool and Manchester.

It is possible that her Majesty's Government may propose to divide our cities into wards or districts, and there is much to be said in favour of single seats. I will not now discuss that system, but while no doubt it tends to the protection of minorities it does so very imperfectly; the districts themselves, moreover, soon become very unequal and require continual rectification, giving a great temptation to gerrymandering.' Indeed, the Committee of the United States Senate which reported on this subject states that there is hardly a State in our Union in which the Congressional districts are not gerrymandered in the interests of party."

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Single districts (they continue) will almost always be unfairly made. They must be formed in the interest of party, and to secure an unjust measure of power to their authors, and it may be expected that each successive district apportionment will be more unjust than its predecessor. Parties will retaliate upon each other whenever possible. The disfranchisement suffered through one decade by a political party may be repeated upon it in the next with increased severity; but if it shall happen to have power in the Legislature when the new apportionment for the State is to be made, it will take signal vengeance for its wrongs and in its turn indulge in the luxury of persecution.

Nor, again, would a division into wards by any means secure a majority of members to a majority of electors. Suppose, for instance, that a constituency of 18,000 electors, 10,000 Liberal and 8,000 Conservatives, is divided into three wards, each containing 6,000 electors. It is quite possible that in one ward you might have 5,000 Liberals with 1,000 Conservatives, and in each of the others about 2,500 Liberals and 3,500 Conservatives, the result of which would be that the latter, though in a minority, would return two members out of three.

By the constitution of 1842 Geneva was divided into six colleges, each returning one member. The result was that the Liberal electors, being massed in two wards, only returned two members, and the Conservatives, though in a minority, secured six; and the extreme dissatisfaction thus created greatly contributed to the violent revolution of 1846. In fact, though it sounds a paradox, a majority of electors in each constituency is by no means the same thing as a majority in all the constituencies.

I do not deny that the three-cornered constituencies are somewhat