estates of the realm, are just as much part of “the people,” in
the widest sense, as “the commons” are; they are an integral
part of the nation. In a republic they would as individuals be
equal citizens, able to become candidates for the representative
chamber or chambers; but as it is, since they are expressly
debarred from taking part in elections to the House of Commons,
they remain entitled and expected to use their historic method
of playing a part in the government of the state. They assist
to constitute “the people” in the wider sense, and in the
narrower sense “the people” (i.e. the commons) know it and
rely on it. Under the British constitution the commons have
habitually relied on the monarchy and the House of Lords to
play their part in the state, and on many occasions it has been
proved, by various methods by which it is open to the commons
themselves to show their real feeling, that action on the part of
the monarch (e.g. in foreign affairs) or the House of Lords (in
rejecting or modifying bills sent up by the House of Commons),
in which a popular vote has played no initiating or controlling
part, is welcomed and ratified, by consent of a large majority,
on the part of the nation at large. So much is this so that it is
notorious, in the case of the House of Lords, that elected members
of the House of Commons, tied by purely party allegiance and
pledges, have constantly voted for a measure they did not want
to see passed, relying on the House of Lords to throw it out.
Ultimately, no doubt, the reconciliation of this “preventative”
element in the British form of constitution with the growth of
democracy and the predominance of the “representative”
system depends purely on the waiving of historical theory both
by king and peers, and its adaptation to the fact of popular
government through the recognition that their action rests for
its efficient authority upon conformity with the “will of the
people.” Thus it has become an established maxim in England
that while it is the proper function of the House of Lords to
reject a measure which in their opinion is not in accordance with
the wishes of the nation, they could not repeat such a rejection
after a general election had shown that its authors in the House
of Commons were supported by the country. The experience
of politics from 1832 to 1910 gave abundant justification to the
House of Lords for supposing that in such cases they were
interpreting the desire of the country better than the House of
Commons; the case of the Irish Home Rule bill of 1893 is, of
course, the classical example.[1] So that in practice the House
of Lords only acts in opposition to the House of Commons,
subject to the remedy of a dissolution of parliament (which
depends strictly on the prerogative of the Crown, but in practice
on the advice of the leader of the majority in the House of
Commons), at which the view of the House of Commons might
be confirmed and reasserted, and in that case would prevail.
The violent attacks made on the House of Lords by the Liberal
party, on occasions when that party has had a majority in the
commons and has had its measures rejected or distastefully
amended, have always been open to the criticism that if the
majority in the House of Commons were really supported by the
electorate in the country they had the remedy in their own hands.
If it were shown by the result of a general election that their
defeated measure were the “will of the people,” the House of
Lords, as was generally understood, must give way. Such a
position, though naturally objectionable to a party in power in
the House of Commons (because general elections are uncertain
things in every respect but that of trouble and expense), could
clearly be strong only in view of the confidence of the House of
Lords in its action being more truly representative of public
opinion. It therefore must be said to have acted, however
clumsily and indirectly—and no direct way would be feasible
except that of the Referendum—as a “representative” body,
i.e. as carrying out what it judged to be the national will and
not merely the will of the peers, although not constituted as
such in the narrower sense. In practice, and in accordance
with this view, it has on more than one occasion (e.g. in the case
of the Trades Disputes Act of 1906) accepted and passed measures
which it was notorious, and indeed avowed, that the peers
themselves regarded as bad.
The immense extension of the “representative principle”
in government, by means of popular election, and its adaptation
to municipal as well as national councils, has in recent
times resulted in attracting much attention to the
problem of making such elected bodies more accurately
representative of public opinion than they frequentlyDifficulties
in obtaining Representation by Election.
There are three distinct problems involved—(1)
that of making the number of enfranchised citizens
correspond to a real embodiment of the nation; (2) that
of getting candidates to stand for the office of representative
who are competent and incorruptible exponents of the national
will, and (3) that of adopting a system of voting which shall
result in the elected representatives forming an assembly which
shall adequately reflect the balance of opinion in the electorate.
(1) The history of the gradual extension of the franchise in the United Kingdom is given under Parliament, and the conditions for other countries under their respective headings. But while, in countries with a representative system at all, the question as to the extent to which the male citizens shall have the vote is mainly one of degree—as The Suffrage. to property or other qualification, up to the inclusion of all adults (see Vote and Voting)—the question of the incapacity of women, as a sex, raises a distinction which is more radical. The facts as to the progress of the movement for women's suffrage are given in the article Women. It is only necessary to say here that, where the franchise is limited to the male sex, the theory of “no taxation without representation” is under modern conditions of life carried out in a decidedly one-sided way. The question of women's suffrage is, however, one of public policy, in whatever state it is raised; and even where, as in Great Britain, it has been adopted for municipal affairs, a distinction is commonly made as regards the national assembly. So far as the historical facts as to the disability of women are concerned, it has been unanimously decided in England by the highest law-court of the realm (judgment of the House of Lords in the Edinburgh University case, December 1908), presided over on this occasion by a Liberal Lord Chancellor (Lord Loreburn), that, according to their authoritative statement of the common law, women never had in earlier times any legal right to vote for members of parliament; this judgment is therefore entirely adverse to such ingenious arguments to the contrary as are ably expressed in Mrs Charlotte Carmichael Stopes’s British Freewomen (1907).
Sex, however, apart, there are various interesting questions as to the principles which should govern the extension of the suffrage and its limitations, to which a brief reference may here be made. It is noteworthy that John Stuart Mill, the philosophical radical whose work on Representative Government (first published in 1861) is a classic on the subject, and who regarded the representative system as the highest ideal of polity, made a good many reservations which have been ignored by those who frequently quote him. Mill's ideal was by no means that popular government should involve a mere counting of heads, or absolute equality of value among the citizens. While holding that “no arrangement of the suffrage can be permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is peremptorily excluded, or in which the electoral privilege is not open to all persons of full age who desire to obtain it,” he insisted on “certain exclusions.” Thus he demanded that universal education should precede universal enfranchisement, and laid it down that if education to the required amount had not become universally accessible and thus a hardship arose, this was “a hardship that had to be borne.” He would not grant the suffrage to any one who could not read, write and perform a sum in the rule of three. Further, he insisted on the electors being taxpayers, and emphasized the view that, as a condition annexed to representation, such taxation should descend to the poorest class
- ↑ The result of the general election of January 1910, following on the rejection of the Budget by the House of Lords, cannot properly be said to show anything to the contrary. It was notorious that there was no genuine majority in the new House of Commons for the Budget, and that the Irish Nationalists only voted for it as part of an arrangement for ulterior purposes.
