Of course, if vox populi is in truth vox Dei, the Abbé Siéyès and the supporters of an uncontrolled Single Chamber are undoubtedly in the right. But was not Sir Henry Maine justified in asking, "Is the voice of the People the voice which speaks through scrutin d'arrondissement, or scrutin de liste, by plebiscite, or by tumultuary Assembly? Is it a sound in which the note struck by minorities is entirely silent? Is the People which speaks the People according to household suffrage, or the People according to universal suffrage, the People with all the women excluded from it, or the People, men, women, and children together assembling casually in voluntary meeting? None of these questions have been settled: some have hardly been thought about. In reality, the devotee of Democracy is much in the same position as the Greeks with their oracles. All agreed that the voice of an oracle was the voice of a God; but everybody allowed that when he spoke he was not as intelligible as might be desired, and nobody was quite sure whether it was safer to go to Delphi or to Dodona."

Surely, in political matters, it is better to walk by sight than by faith, and whether they are judged by the test of criticism or past history or contemporary experience, it must be admitted that the principles underlying the Parliament Act are both unsound and undemocratic. On November 28, 1908, during the Second Reading of the Licensing Bill

in the House of Lords, Lord Loreburn, then the Radical Lord Chancellor, said: "I know very well that the subject is unpopular, and it may have influenced the recent byelection. But I think that it is our duty to stand by the Bill, no matter how many byelections may have gone against us." Again, Mr Lloyd George, speaking recently on the Insurance Act at Birmingham, laid down that "it is rather late in the day to say that working men ought not to be compelled to do anything they did not like when they would be benefited by it." Behold the Radical interpretation of the "Government of the People for the People by the People"!

In the teeth of these and innumerable similar utterances can any reasonable man assert with any regard to accuracy that the House of Commons is the "mirror of the People," or that the measures which have passed the present House of Commons have coincided with the wishes of the electors, or even with the opinions of the members of Parliament themselves? The truth is, that under Democracy parliamentary and electoral votes are usually solicited and allocated with less regard to the interests of the community as a whole, or the wishes of the constituents, than under any other form of Government. It is a fallacy to suppose that Democracies seek "the greatest good of the greatest number "; on the contrary, the wider the franchise the narrower is the outlook of the electorate, and

the more readily are votes influenced by appeals to class prejudice, and by the wiles and catchwords of artful demagogues. "Political liberty," said Hobbes, "is political power," but in Democracies political power is "minced in morsels," and, as Sir James Stephen has pointed out, "The man who can sweep the greatest number of fragments of political power into one heap will govern the rest; the strongest man in one form or another will always rule; . . . in a pure Democracy the ruling men will be wirepullers and their friends: . . . in some ages a powerful character; in others cunning; in others power of transacting business; in others eloquence; in others a good hold upon commonplaces, and a facility in applying them to practical purposes, will enable a man to climb on his neighbours' shoulders and drag them this way or that; but under all circumstances the rank and file are directed by leaders of one kind or another who get the command of their collective force." It is of paramount importance, therefore, in a democratic country that the leaders of the people should be men of high moral character. Integrity without ability will, at any rate, never corrupt the people; but ability without integrity will always tend to cheat the electorate of of its rights, and deprive a nation of its freedom. A popular assembly, however, when endowed with unfettered authority, is a school in which corruption, not rectitude, is

taught. The members of such a body learn to follow and not to lead their constituents, and to pander to the desires of the noisiest sections of their supporters, if only they may perchance retain their seats and their emoluments. They carry through their Parliamentary duties "listening nervously at one end of a speaking-tube which receives at its other end the suggestions of a lower intelligence." They are, indeed, elected by the people, but they represent themselves. The Framers of the American Constitution were well aware of this. Alexander Hamilton, writing in 1788 in the 'Federalist,' perhaps the greatest constitutional treatise ever compiled, expressed the opinion that "A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of Government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing as demagogues and ending tyrants."

On January 13, 1837, Sir Robert Peel, who habitually couched his sentiments in moderate language, expressed a similar opinion in the course of a memorable address to the Conservatives of Glasgow: "If you give your

consent to measures which tend to the dissolution of existing institutions, what security have you that there will be any reaction at any future time? What security have you against proscriptions-against the creeping forth of men of a type not yet heard of in England,what security have you against the ascendancy of blood-stained miscreants like Robespierre and Marat, lusus naturæ hitherto engendered, I am happy to say, in France alone, but from which no country can be protected if institutions congenial to its national character and hallowed by the lapse of ages are dissolved by violence or corrupted by fraud? You may rest assured that in every village a miscreant will arise to exercise a grinding tyranny by calling himself the People.'

It is for this reason that no European State of any importance, except Great Britain, is prepared to surrender its destinies to the tender mercies of an omnipotent Single Chamber. In practically every civilised community the Second Chamber of the Legislature possesses co-ordinate authority with the popular Assembly; no fundamental changes can be carried out except in accordance with special provisions inserted in the Constitution to prevent the abuse of legislative power, and nowhere are more stringent safeguards to be found than in the democratic Constitutions of the United States and of the British Dominions in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Upon what principle are the Radical Gov

ernment justified in setting up a strong Second Chamber in South Africa, and destroying the powers of the Second Chamber

in the Mother

Country? The advocates of powerful Second Chambers, as Sir Henry Maine has pointed out, "do not assert that the decisions of a popularly elected Chamber are always or generally wrong. Their decisions

But it is

are very often right. impossible to be sure that they are right, and the more the difficulties of multitudinous government are probed, and the more carefully the influences acting upon it are examined, the stronger grows the doubt of the infallibility of popularly elected Legislatures. What, then, is expected from a wellconstituted Second Chamber is not a rival infallibility, but an additional security. It is hardly too much to say that in this view almost any Second Chamber is better than none. ... The conception of an Upper House as a mere revising Body, trusted with the privilege of dotting i's and crossing t's in measures sent up by the other Chamber, seems as irrational as it is poor. What is wanted from an Upper House is the security of its concurrence after full examination of the measures concurred in." Mr Asquith himself expressed a similar opinion at Newcastle on January 30, 1895. there are advantages-I am the last to deny that there are advantages-in the existence of a Second Chamber, they are the advantages which result from the existence of an

"If

impartial, dispassionate, reviewing power, which will correct slovenliness, which will check dissipation, and which, in case of extreme need, will refer back to the people for consideration measures which the people cannot be supposed to have deliberately approved."

It may well be that in this country the Second Chamber will rest in the future upon an elective basis. At any rate, the hereditary qualification per se has been abandoned by every party in the State; but the composition of the Second Chamber is of little importance in comparison with its powers, and it is the foremost and paramount duty of Unionists to work for the restoration of a Second Chamber with authority co-ordinate with that possessed by the House of Commons. But there is only one way by which the Unionist Party will be able to accomplish the task which lies before them. The claim of the Radical Party to be "the Representatives of the People" (too long allowed to pass unchallenged) must be laid bare before the electors, and the People must be made to appreciate that it is only by repealing the Par

liament Act that they will be able to regain control of their own destinies. If it is once realised that the Radical Government has deprived the electors of their right to effectually express their opinion in legislative matters, the end of the present Administration will be near at hand, and His Majesty's present advisers will receive their congé in the words used by Cromwell at the end of the Long Parliament: "You must go: the nation loathes your sitting." "In our day," wrote Sir Henry Maine, "when the extension of popular government is throwing all the older political ideas into utter confusion, a man of ability can hardly render a higher service to his country than by the analysis and correction of the assumptions which pass from mind to mind in the multitude, without inspiring a doubt of their truth and genuineness." Will the educated classes realise their duty in this matter, or will they remain immersed in selfishness and apathy, to their own undoing, and to the danger of the State? We shall see: "By their fruits ye shall know them."

ARTHUR PAGE.