Part 20 (1/2)
The question of free trade or protection does not, at the present time, occupy a prominent place in Belgian politics, but should it do so, there is no reason to a.s.sume that opinions either for or against free trade would involve, as here, ostracism from any party. Such conditions admit of a much more genuine discussion of public and of economic questions.
In England, with the system of single-member const.i.tuencies, Unionist Free Traders have had the alternative placed before them of submitting to the opinions of the majority of the party or of retiring from all active partic.i.p.ation in public life. In Belgium, on the other hand, proportional representation has induced parties, while adhering to their fundamental principles, to make their lists of candidates as inclusive as possible. The list presented by the Catholics at Ghent in 1908 contained not only a free trader and a protectionist, but representatives of different cla.s.ses of interests within the const.i.tuency, of agriculture, of landed proprietors, of workmen and of masters of industry. Stress was laid upon the comprehensive character of their list in the election address issued by the Catholics, and each party endeavoured to make its list representative of the forces within the party. Special efforts indeed are taken to accomplish this end; in the preparation of the Liberal list members of the organization took part in the preliminary selection of candidates, the final choice being determined by a formal election. In reporting that the Belgian system of proportional representation ”is not favourable to small independent parties, or, what is of greater interest to many observers in this country, to small sections or wings of large parties,” the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems misinterpreted the working of the Belgian system. It is true that the Christian Democrats form the only small party in Belgium which has obtained direct representation, but the Belgian system has certainly given representation to the wings of large parties. Count Goblet d'Alviella, who was examined by the Commission, has kindly furnished some observations upon the Commission's statement.
”Whenever there is room,” he writes, ”that is, where the seats are numerous enough, the leaders take the greatest care to choose representatives of the princ.i.p.al shades of opinion within their party lines. At Brussels in 1910 the Catholics placed on their list not only M. Colfs, who upset their order of precedence in the previous election, but also M. Theodor, who, for the last three times, headed--unsuccessfully--a separate list of the so-called Independent Party. The Liberal list at Brussels has been formed by the joint action of Moderates (Ligue liberale) and Radicals (a.s.sociation liberale), each of these two organizations trying to give satisfaction to their own subdivisions (Flemish and Walloon, rural and urban, &c.). At Antwerp the Liberal list has been formed by five Liberal organizations, each one choosing its own representative.” The M. Colfs referred to in Count Goblet d'Alviella's letter strongly opposed the military proposals of the Belgian Government, but he was, nevertheless, placed by the party organization on the official list. Thus, in Belgium wings of parties undoubtedly obtain their legitimate influence, and this renders the formation of independent small parties superfluous. The number of broad general principles on which political parties can be based is strictly limited, and this explains why neither the Belgian nor any other system of proportional representation will produce innumerable parties.
_”Free Questions” in j.a.pan._
The electoral system in j.a.pan, giving as it does great freedom for the expression of political opinion, has resulted, as in Belgium, in the separation of political questions into two types--party and free.
According to Mr. Kametaro Hayas.h.i.+da, the Secretary of the j.a.panese House of Representatives, the measures before parliament are duly considered at party meetings; after deliberation a decision is taken as to whether the measure under discussion should be treated as a party question, or whether freedom of action should be permitted to the individual members of the party, and a communication, embodying the result of the party meeting, is then sent to every member. Here then we get additional evidence of the amelioration of party spirit, which follows the adoption of a more elastic system of representation. Political debate must become in such cases not only more real but infinitely more valuable. The number of questions left to the discretion of the individual member is by no means inconsiderable, as will be seen from the following figures showing the att.i.tude taken by the various parties towards public questions in 1908:--
(1)--Laws
Party . . . . . Const.i.tutionalist Progressive Conservative Radical
Party questions . 105 75 66 -- Free questions. . 2 32 41 107
(2)--Pet.i.tions
Party . . . . . Const.i.tutionalist Progressive Conservative Radical
Party questions . 63 167 68 -- Free questions. . 119 15 114 182
”It should be noted,” says Mr. Hayas.h.i.+da, ”that the Radicals had no party questions, but made all questions free. On the other hand, the Const.i.tutionalists, who supported the Government, made party questions of practically all laws submitted. On the average, apart from the Radicals, the three other parties treated 23 per cent. of the laws, and 37 per cent. of the pet.i.tions in the twenty-sixth session of the Imperial j.a.panese Diet as free questions.”
_The formation of groups._
Such evidence as we possess does not then warrant the a.s.sumption that a proportional system leads to an increase in the number of political parties. It makes them more elastic. On the other hand, it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that a system of single-member const.i.tuencies has completely failed to maintain the two-party system.
In England the Labour Party forms within the House of Commons a distinct camp by itself, the Nationalist Party still more jealously guards its independence, and at the election of January, 1910, a smaller group of Independent Nationalists was formed. The rise of the Labour Party in Australia was not prevented by a system of single-member const.i.tuencies.
In Germany and France single-member const.i.tuencies have not arrested the development of groups with national, religious, or sectional programmes.
When, therefore, it is contended that proportional representation will lead to the formation of groups, the obvious answer is that it is the present system which is producing groups; and should the representation obtained by these groups, as in France and Germany and in Australia, give no clear indication of public opinion, then the instability which has been a characteristic of French and for a time of Australian parliamentary conditions may become characteristic of the House of Commons.
Nor do those advocates of proportional representation, who desire to maintain the two-party system by artificial means, offer any machinery adequate for the purpose. In an article written before the first elections for the Commonwealth parliament, Mr. Deakin wrote as follows:--
”By the very circ.u.mstances of the case the tariff issue cannot but dominate the first election, and determine the fate of the first ministry of the Commonwealth. There will be no time for second thoughts or for suspension of judgment. The first choice of the people will be final on this head. The first parliament must be either protectionist or anti-protectionist, and its first great work an Australian tariff. That is the clear-cut issue. The risk is that a proportion of the representatives may be returned upon other grounds, as the electors as a whole may not realise all that is at stake or make the necessary sacrifices or opinion and preferences to express themselves emphatically on this point.”
In commenting upon this declaration the supporters of so-called two-party proportional representation[11] said:
”The only way to avoid the risk indicated is to take this one definite issue as the basis of proportional representation. Each State should be divided on it, and should elect its proportional number of Free-trade and Protectionist representatives.” But how are all the electors to be constrained into accepting the dictates of party leaders as to the lines upon which elections shall be fought? The Labour Party in Australia apparently considered the special principles for which they stood of more importance than either Free Trade or Protection. The English Labour Party would doubtless adopt the same point of view, whilst the Nationalists regard the Tariff question as of little importance as compared with Home Rule. ”The rude and crude division,” said Mr.
Asquith, ”which used to correspond more or less accurately with the facts of a representative a.s.sembly of two parties, had perhaps become everywhere more or less a thing of the past.”[12] There are no means available for restoring the earlier conditions, and certainly the existing electoral system of single-member const.i.tuencies affords no guarantee that in the future any one party will obtain a permanent majority strong enough to get its own way. The maintenance in form of the two-party system during the parliament of 1906-10 was merely due to the accident of the phenomenal election of 1906, when the Liberal Party was returned in such numbers as to exceed the combined forces of all other groups. At the General Election of January, 1910, five parties entered the field, and as a result of this election no party obtained an absolute majority. In the important parliamentary debates which arose immediately after the election each of these groups took part, as such, for the purpose of emphasizing their independence, and when, consequent upon the death of King Edward, a conference on the const.i.tutional question was arranged between the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, in commenting upon the conference, made this statement: ”He regretted that there was going to be any conference at all, but if there was going to be one he, as a member of the Labour Party, denied the right of the two front benches to settle it. They no longer represented the House of Commons or the opinion of the country. There were other benches.”[13] Obviously, if other benches are to be taken into consideration in the solution of const.i.tutional questions, it is a matter of importance to know the true strength that lies behind those occupying them. The difference--an extremely important difference--that a proportional system would produce in the composition of the House of Commons is that the representation obtained by these groups would give a much more accurate clue to public opinion and, as in the long-run the strength of an executive depends upon its capacity to interpret the will of the people, the position of the executive would be rendered much more stable. This is the justification of Mr. Asquith's statement: ”Let them have a House of Commons which fully reflected every strain of opinion; that was what made democratic government in the long-run not only safer and more free, but more stable.”
But does parliamentary government, as the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems suggests, really depend for its working upon the maintenance of a system of election which admittedly distorts the real wishes of the people? This argument had been antic.i.p.ated and effectively dealt with by M. Ostrogorski in his _Democracy and Political Parties_. ”There arises,”
says he, ”the old question of the Duke of Wellington, frightened by the prospect of the abolition of the rotten boroughs: How will the King's government be carried out? How will parliamentary government work? In reality the catastrophe will not be more than that which so alarmed the hero of Waterloo; now, as then, it will be nothing more nor less than the destruction of something rotten.”[14] The King's government has been improved by the abolition of the rotten boroughs, and will be still further improved if opinion within the House of Commons is brought into more direct relation with opinion outside. The view taken by the Commission was not shared by one of its members, Lord Lochee, who in a note appended to the Report says: ”I am not concerned to dispute that the introduction of proportional representation might involve important changes in parliamentary government. That, in my view, is not a question for the Commission. I shall, therefore, only say that I do not believe that the cause of good government is bound up with the maintenance of a distorted representation, or that British statesmans.h.i.+p would be unable to cope with the problems which a better system might bring in its train.”
_The formation of an executive_.
Changes will doubtless take place in the method of carrying on the King's government, but they will take place very gradually, and will be evolved out of present conditions. It would be essential, as now, that the government should possess the confidence of the House of Commons and of the country, and, in order to obtain this confidence it would not be sufficient to secure a majority by means of bargainings between groups which involved important sacrifices of principle. Even with such rigid party discipline as now obtains it would be difficult and perhaps impossible to effect an alliance between Unionist Tariff Reformers and Nationalists for the purpose of carrying out a double policy of Tariff Reform and Home Rule. It is certain that under a system of proportional representation such an arrangement would be useless as a basis for a stable executive, for with the lessened rigidity in discipline party leaders would have no means of enforcing the terms of such bargains upon their followers. The composition of the House itself would give a clear indication of the main policies which would meet with the approval of the House and also of the Government which would command its confidence.
It is perhaps unwise to attempt to map out in any detail the probable course of events, but there are some who are unwilling to take this step forward in the perfecting of democratic inst.i.tutions without some clear conception of the way in which a good government might be formed under the new conditions. Professor Nanson of Melbourne has endeavoured to satisfy this anxiety by attempting to forecast the probable effect which a system of proportional representation would have upon the formation of governments in Australia, showing how such a system would enable a really stable executive to be formed.
”To bring the matter vividly before us,” says he, ”consider the two vital issues now before the Australian public. These are Protection and the Labour platform. Every elector and every candidate at once falls into one of four groups. For every one is either Protectionist or anti-Protectionist, and every one is either Labour or non-Labour. Every person is therefore either Protectionist and Labour, or Protectionist and non-Labour, or anti-Protectionist and Labour, or anti-Protectionist and non-Labour. Using the letters P, A, L, N to denote Protectionist, Anti-protectionist, Labour, Non-labour, we have four groups which we may denote by PL, PN, AL, AN.
”It is clear that if we can find out the number of voters in each group we can at once declare the verdict of the country for or against Protection, and for or against the Labour platform. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the percentage of voters are: Non-labour Protectionist, 32; Non-labour Anti-protectionist, 28; Labour Protectionist, 24; Labour Anti-protectionist, 16; as shown in the following table:--