Representation

dates (which depends partly on their willingness to stand, and partly on the means available for discovering suitable persons), modern practice is entirely dominated by the organization of political parties and the requirements of party allegiance. Though much has been said as to the desirability or not of paying members for their services (see PAYMENT OF MEMBERS), this is certainly overshadowed by the question of the availability of really capable men at all to the number required, for all candidates become "pro fessional" politicians, whether paid or not. The ideal of having a "representative man" in the broader sense as a "representative" in the narrower is only very roughly attained where the conditions of public life make a capacity for electioneering a necessity. To a large extent the political candidate depends purely upon the sup port of a party organization. His choice rests with party wire pullers, and the average individual elector is confronted with the task of voting for some one of whom he may personally know very little, except that, if returned, the candidate will in parlia ment vote for measures embodying certain general principles as indicated in some vague party programme.

Systems of Voting.

The more important point to be consid ered here is the third. When a representative assembly is to be elected by a direct popular vote, it is obviously necessary (a) that either there should be some system by which the whole body as a unit should elect all the members en bloc, or, as this usually appears impracticable, that the mass of electors should be divided within defined areas, or "constituencies"; and (b) that in the latter case voting shall take place for the purpose of electing one or more representatives of each such area according to some method by which due effect shall be given to the preferences of the electors. In theory there can be no perfectly fair arrangement as between constituency and constituency, where a single repre sentative is to be returned, except on the terms that they are ex actly equal in the number of electors; each elector's voice would then count equally with that of any other in the nation (or mutatis mutandis in the municipality, etc.). But in practice it is difficult to the point of impossibility to attempt more than an arbitrary distribution of electoral areas, more or less approximating to equality; and recourse is had to the formation of constituencies out of geographical districts taken as units for historical or prac tical reasons, and necessarily fluctuating from time to time in population or influence. It may become necessary periodically to revise these areas by what in England are called Redistribution Acts, but it has to be admitted that any perfect system of repre sentation is always stultified by the necessary inequalities in volved ; and what is known as "gerrymandering" is sometimes the result, when a party in power so recasts the electoral districts as to give more opportunity for its own candidates to be returned than for those of its opponents. This flaw is particularly noticeable

when the arrangement for the method of voting is that which allots only one member or representative to each district (scrutin d' arrondissement).

The essential vice of this single-member system, which prevails in Great Britain and the United States, is the lack of correspond ence between the proportions in which the elected members of each party stand to one another and the proportions in which the numbers of the electors who returned them similarly stand ; and it may well be that the minority party in the country obtains a majority of representatives in the assembly, or at any rate that a substantial minority obtains an absurdly small representation. "As a result of the district system," writes Prof. J. R. Commons of Wisconsin (Proportional Representation, 1907), "the national House of Representatives (in America) is scarcely a representa tive body. In the Fifty-first Congress, a majority of representa tives were elected by a minority of the voters"; the figures being Republican votes with 164 elected, and 5,502,581 Demo cratic votes with 161 elected. In the case of the Fifty-second Congress, the Democrats, with 5o.6% of the votes, returned 71•I% of the representatives; the Republicans, with 42.9% of the votes, returning 26.5% of the representatives. Lord Avebury (Proportional Representation, 1890; new ed. 1906) has given various similar experiences in England ; thus, at the general elec tion of 1886, the Liberals, with 1,333,40o votes, only obtained 176 seats, while the Unionists, with 1,423,500, obtained 283 (not counting 99 unopposed returns on the Liberal side, and III on the Unionist). So with subsequent elections. In 1906, the Union ist vote, though 44% of the total cast, returned only 28% of the members, and the Liberal majority, which in strict proportion would have been 68, actually was 256.

The definite emergence of a third party system in England, with the rise of the Labour Party, has accentuated such paradoxes.

It frequently happens that with three candidates, Conservative, Liberal and Labour, the candidate who heads the poll is returned with a minority of the total number of votes cast. At the general election of 1924, over 16 million votes were recorded, but of the 615 members returned the Liberal party only won 39 seats al though nearly three million electors voted in its favour. On a purely numerical basis of votes it was entitled to at least Poo representatives. Together, the two opposition parties, Liberal and Labour, actually polled some 250,000 more votes than the Conservative Party, but only secured 189 seats against 413 seats won by the Conservatives.