party would have a numerical problem to solve: the leaders would say, "We have 350,000 votes, we must take care to have 350 members;" and the only way to obtain them is to organize. A man who wanted

to compose part of a Liberal constituency must not himself hunt for 1,000 other Liberals: if he did, after writing 10,000 letters, he would probably find he was making part of a constituency of 100, all whose votes would be thrown away, the constituency being too small to be reckoned. Such a Liberal must write to the great Registration Association in Parliament Street; he must communicate with its able managers, and they would soon use his vote for him. They would say, "Sir, you are late: Mr. Gladstone, sir, is full, he got his 1,000 last year. Most of the gentlemen you read of in the papers are full: as soon as a gentleman makes a nice speech, we get a heap of letters to say, 'Make us into that gentleman's constituency;' but we cannot do that. Here is our list: if you do not want to throw your vote away, you must be guided by us. Here are three very satisfactory gentlemen (and one is an Honorable): you may vote for either of these, and we will write your name down; but if you go voting wildly, you'll be thrown out altogether."

The evident result of this organization would be the return of party men mainly. The member-makers would look not for independence, but for subservience; and they could hardly be blamed for so doing: they are agents for the Liberal party, and as such they should be guided by what they take to be the wishes of their principal. The mass of the Liberal party wishes measure A, measure B, measure C. The managers of the registration-the skilled manipulatorsare busy men; they would say, "Sir, here is our card: if you want to get into Parliament on our side, you must go for that card; it was drawn up by Mr. Lloyd, he used to be engaged on railways, but since they passed this new voting plan we get him

to attend to us; it is a sound card,-stick to that and you will be right." Upon this (in theory) voluntary plan, you would get together a set of members bound hard and fast with party bands and fetters, infinitely tighter than any members now.

Whoever hopes anything from desultory popular action if matched against systematized popular action should consider the way in which the American President is chosen. The plan was that the citizens at large should vote for the statesman they liked best but no one does anything of the sort, they vote for the ticket made by "the caucus"; and the caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known and therefore nothing to be alleged. Caucuses or their equivalent would be far worse here in constituency-making than there in Presidentmaking; because on great occasions the American nation can fix on some one great man whom it knows, but the English nation could not fix on six hundred and fifty-eight great men and choose them, it does not know so many, and if it did, would go wrong in the difficulties of the manipulation.

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But though a common voter could only be ranged in an effectual constituency, and a common candidate only reach a constituency, by obeying the orders of the political election-contrivers upon his side, certain voters and certain members would be quite independent of both there are organizations in this country which would soon make a set of constituencies for themselves. Every chapel would be an office for votetransferring before the plan had been known three months. The Church would be much slower in learning it, and much less handy in using it; but would learn. At present the Dissenters are a most energetic and valuable component of the Liberal party; but under the voluntary plan they would not be a

component, they would be a separate independent element. We now propose to group boroughs; but then they would combine chapels. There would be a member for the Baptist congregation of Tavistock, cum Totnes, cum etc., etc.

The full force of this cannot be appreciated except by referring to the former proof that the mass of a parliament ought to be men of moderate sentiments, or they will elect an immoderate ministry and enact violent laws; but upon the plan suggested, the House would be made up of party politicians selected by a party committee, chained to that committee and pledged to party violence, and of characteristic and therefore immoderate representatives for every “ism” in all England. Instead of a deliberate assembly of moderate and judicious men, we should have a various compound of all sorts of violence.

I may seem to be drawing a caricature, but I have not reached the worst. Bad as these members would be, if they were left to themselves-if in a free Parliament they were confronted with the perils of government-close responsibility might improve them and make them tolerable; but they would not be left to themselves. A voluntary constituency will nearly always be a despotic constituency. Even in the best case, where a set of earnest men choose a member to expound their earnestness, they will look after him to see, that he does expound it. The members will be like the minister of a Dissenting congregation: that congregation is collected by a unity of sentiment in doctrine A, and the preacher is to preach doctrine A; if he does not, he is dismissed. At present the member is free because the constituency is not in earnest. No constituency has an acute, accurate doctrinal creed in politics: the law made the constituencies by geographical divisions, and they are not bound together by close unity of belief; they have vague preferences for particular doctrines, and that is all. But a voluntary constituency would be a church with tenets; it

VOL. IV.-12

would make its representative the messenger of its mandates and the delegate of its determinations. As, in the case of a Dissenting congregation, one great minister sometimes rules it, while ninety-nine ministers in the hundred are ruled by it, so here one noted man would rule his electors, but the electors would rule all the others.

'Thus, the members for a good voluntary constituency would be hopelessly enslaved because of its goodness; but the members for a bad voluntary constituency would be yet more enslaved because of its badness. The makers of these constituencies would keep the despotism in their own hands. In America there is a division of politicians into wire-pullers and blowers. Under the voluntary system the member of Parliament would be only the momentary mouthpiece, the impotent blower; while the constituency-maker would be the latent wire-puller, the constant autocrat; he would write to gentlemen in Parliament and say, "You were elected upon the Liberal ticket': if you deviate from that ticket you cannot be chosen again." And there would be no appeal for a common-minded man he is no more likely to make a constituency for himself than a mole is likely to make a planet.

It may indeed be said that against a septennial Parliament such machinations would be powerless; that a member elected for seven years might defy the remonstrances of an earnest constituency or the imprecations of the latent manipulators. But after the voluntary composition of constituencies, there would soon be but short-lived Parliaments. Earnest constituencies would exact frequent elections: they would not like to part with their virtue for a long period; it would anger them to see it used contrary to their wishes, amid circumstances which at the election no one thought of. A seven-years' Parliament is often chosen in one political period, lasts through a second, and is dissolved in a third. A constituency collected by law and on compulsion endures

this change because it has no collective earnestness; it does not mind seeing the power it gave used in a manner that it could not have foreseen: but a selfformed constituency of eager opinions-a missionary constituency, so to speak-would object, it would think it its bounden duty to object; and the crafty manipulators, though they said nothing, in silence would object still more. The two together would enjoin annual elections, and would rule their members unflinchingly.

The voluntary plan, therefore, when tried in this easy form, is inconsistent with the extrinsic independence as well as with the inherent moderation of a parliament, two of the conditions which, as we have seen, are essential to the bare possibility of parliamentary government. The same objections, as is inevitable, adhere to that principle under its more complicated forms. It is in vain to pile detail on detail when the objection is one of first principle. If the above reasoning be sound, compulsory constituencies. necessary, voluntary constituencies destructive; the optional transferability of votes is not a salutary aid, but a ruinous innovation.

I have dwelt upon the proposal of Mr. Hare and upon the ultra-democratic proposal, not only because. of the high intellectual interest of the former and the possible practical interest of the latter, but because they tend to bring into relief two at least of the necessary conditions of parliamentary government; but besides these necessary qualities which are needful before a parliamentary government can work at all, there are some additional prerequisites before it can work well. That a house of commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.

The discussion has a difficulty of its own. What is meant by "well"? Who is to judge? is it to be