“in a visible shape,” by which he explained that he did not
mean “indirect taxes,” a “mode of defraying a share of the
public expenses which is hardly felt.” He advocated for this
purpose “a direct tax, in the simple form of a capitation” on
every grown person. But even more than this, he was in favour
of a form of plural voting, so that the intellectual classes of the
community should have more proportionate weight than the
numerically larger working-classes: “though every one ought
to have a voice, that every one should have an equal voice is a
totally different proposition.” The well-informed and capable
man’s opinion being more valuable than that of the barely
qualified elector, it should be given more effect by a system of
plural voting, which should give him more votes than one. As
to the test of value of opinion, Mill was careful to say he did not
mean property—though the principle was so important that he
would not abolish such a test where it existed—but individual
mental superiority, which he would gauge by the rough indication
afforded by occupation in the higher forms of business or
profession, or by such a criterion as a university degree or the
passing of an examination of a fairly high standard.
“Until there shall have been devised some mode of plural voting, which may assign to education as such the degree of superior influence due to it, and sufficient as a counterpoise to the numerical weight of the least educated class, for so long the benefits of completely universal suffrage cannot be obtained without bringing with them, as it appears to me, more than equivalent evils.” “Equal voting,” he repeated, “is in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter’s mind. It is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge.”
Modern democracy may ignore Mill’s emphatic plea for plural voting, as it ignores his equally strong arguments against the ballot[1]—his contention being that secret voting violated the spirit of the suffrage, according to which the voter was a trustee for the public, whose acts should be publicly known—but Mill’s discussion of the whole subject proceeds on high grounds which are still worth careful consideration. Where a representative system, as such, is extolled as the ideal polity, the reservations made by Mill, a liberal thinker who cannot be dismissed as a prejudiced reactionary, should be remembered. Mill postulated, in any event, a state of society which was worthy of such a system, no less than the necessary checks and balances which should make it correspond to the real conditions of rational government. “Representative institutions,” he pointed out, “are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrage’s on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election, as thus practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its machinery.” When, in modern days, advocates of representative institutions seem ready to extend them to all countries, they become doctrinaires who depart widely from the standpoint of Mill, and forget that democracy is itself only a “form of government,” as Sir Henry Maine insisted, for which all communities may not be ripe or fitted. The ideal form of government must be relative to a certain state of civilization and certain conditions of national life, and its advantages can only be tested by results and practical working.
(2) As regards the important question of the selection of candidates (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 Selection of Candidates. 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 “professional” 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 support 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 parliament vote for measures embodying certain general principles as indicated in some vague party programme. Since the elector as a rule himself supports a party, he votes accordingly, but there are always a good many electors who under such a system fail to get a chance of voting for a candidate who fully represents their views. The supremacy of party interests, resulting from the difficulty of having any other form of electoral organization, is apt to bring many evils in its train, including the corruption of the electorate, and the practice of “lobbying,” i.e. the pressure upon members in parliament of important “interests” whose electoral assistance is indispensable.
(3) The more important point to be considered 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
as a unit should elect all the members en bloc, or, as this
usually appears impracticable, that the mass of electors should be
Systems
of Voting.
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 representative
is to be returned, except on the terms that they are exactly
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, &c.). 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
practical 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 representation is always stultified by the necessary
inequalities involved; 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 the United Kingdom[2] and the United States, is the lack of
correspondence 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 Professor
J. R. Commons of Wisconsin (Proportional Representation,
1907), “the national House of Representatives (in America) is
scarcely a representative body. In the Fifty-first Congress, a
majority of representatives were elected by a minority of the
voters”; the figures being 5,348,379 Republican votes with 164
elected, and 5,502,581 Democratic votes with 161 elected. In
- ↑ Before 1872, when the Ballot Act was passed, voting was public.
- ↑ The House of Commons in 1910 was elected by 643 constituencies, of which 27 (including three universities), returned two members each, and the rest one; and the Royal Commission, which reported in that year, recommended the abandonment of the existing two member constituencies “at the earliest convenient opportunity.”
