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it favoured organized opinion as against individualized, sectarian and specialized opinion; it elected Parliaments that could work and carry out policies rather than Parliaments that stuck owing to the presence of groups elected on particularist issues that had to be squared up in order to produce a working majority for the whole. If Parliament was a failure, it was not because the theoretical objections to our system of voting had evil practical results. But when the war, by fusing parties and ending the political conditions which made the system practicable, brought out in practice the possible evils of the system, it broke down and returned a Parliament which no fair-minded observer can credit with any moral authority if that depends on the expressed will of the electors shown in relation to State problems.

Proportional Representation, with all its deficiencies, alone seems to afford a practical working scheme, and the political parties will have to be left to work out for themselves the various electoral problems which this method will present to them. It will tend to stereotype politics, to diminish rather than increase the representative character of Parliament, to produce governments also less representative than those we now have. But the increase in the size of registers and the revolution in political parties force it upon us to prevent political tyranny securing itself by apparently democratic means. The greater, the incurable and the more pressing dangers must overshadow the smaller, the curable and less pressing

ones.

A SECOND CHAMBER

There still remains the question of a Second Chamber, so dear to British habit though so anomalous

in the British Constitution. Our British House of Lords from being a chamber of distinction has become a break upon the wheel of legislative change. Purchased peerages can carry no social respect and no political authority, and therefore the House of Lords as it exists whilst this is being written is doomed. People seek to devise something to take its place as a watchdog of habit, and of the established interests, as a power, the chief use of which will be to say "No" to the House of Commons. Their task, therefore, is to search about in Society and try to find where, in individual variety and organized interest, that power can be found. Having made their discoveries they proceed to construct their chamber.

Obviously, this is not the right way to set about the business. One understands the principles of democratic representation. The citizens vote, and the declared majority rules during the lifetime of a Parliament. If any further principle has to be brought in, it must not be of the nature of a limitation of this fundamental one, but of an amplification of it. To form people who have inherited or bought peerages into a constituency has obviously no justification in reason. These men and women can appeal to ordinary constituencies. To have special elections from municipal administrative bodies is also obviously unnecessary, because municipal life is already represented. To have specialized commercial representatives with, as a necessary complement, specialized representatives of organized labour, is equally obviously unnecessary, as these interests are included in civic representation, and to specialize them is to set them against communal interests, and the objections which I have taken to functional representation apply. A Second Chamber acting as a corrective

to the House of Commons is an anachronism. If it be reactionary, it will not check the excesses and the follies of reaction; if it is democratic, it will not check the excesses and follies of democracy. It will act only when it is in opposition to the Commons, and then the reasons for its acting will have nothing to do with communal well-being or political wisdom, but will belong solely to the lower motives of sectional strife. Socialism rejects the idea that any Second Chamber can be created which at any given time can bring to bear upon public affairs a superior wisdom and a larger view than democratic representation can command. If such a Chamber could be created, it ought to use its virtues for governing and not keep them in wasteful reserve for watching the errors of the House of Commons. Such wonderful wisdom ought not to be a brake, but the team driving the coach!

There may be something to be said for a Senate of men experienced in public affairs-men who have served the State in places of responsibility, and who know the difficulties of government. But its function should not be to legislate, or check, or set itself up as a rival legislative authority, but to revise, co-ordinate, advise. Legislation embodying the intention of the House of Commons, studied not to criticize the policy embodied in it, but to test its form, its phrasing, its machinery, could be improved in precision, and a Senate might do this. If this body also had the power to debate resolutions on public affairs it would be helpful. That is one type of a Second Chamber which would serve a useful purpose within a scheme of democratic government. But there is another possible type and perhaps both might be amalgamated.

The relation between the State and Industry which I have been discussing, suggests the advisability of an industrial chamber of limited authority which will act in the capacity of advisor and administrator in the industrial activities of the community. I commit myself to no precise scheme for the construction or authority of such an institution. It would represent the interests and activities of production and distribution, it would include representatives chosen by the Commons and the Government, and it would have the status of a great Council of State which could provide Ministers, be in organic relationship with the House of Commons, and be part of Parliament. It would have a constitutional right to concern itself with all industrial legislation, and its judicial committee would settle all disputed points in industrial law. It would control the whole machinery for making industry efficient, and would be responsible for the national statistics and reports concerning production and distribution. It would have direct contact with the National Councils of the various industries and with the distributing organization. In short, it would be the link between the political and the industrial State, and be used by the political State for the work now done by the House of Lords in so far as that is necessary for the machinery of democratic government. A Socialist State would require such a body, and the working out of the details of its constitution, powers and relationships is only a matter for the practical intelligence of experienced people. It would meet all the legitimate political requirements of the functionalists and the Guild Socialists, without involving the community in the confusion which would follow the adoption of their fanciful political structures.

REVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY

When we have surveyed all these difficulties we must perhaps confess with Bolingbroke in the end that: "Every system of human invention must be liable to some objections; and it would be chimerical for us to expect a form of government liable to none." It is sheer folly to search for perfect forms that themselves will will produce perfect results. Democracy is an affair of intelligence not of form. It is the rule of the people, but if it is to have any qualitative results it must also be the rule of intelligently responsible people. So, in discussing its problems, we must come ultimately to the bed rock question: How much will the intelligence of the democracy bear? Is democracy in fact free to operate within the modern State or is it absolutely fettered by its conditions? For unless democracy can defend itself against demagogues, cheap jacks and other types of perverters, and unless it is free to exercise its creative will on social institutions, no mechanical system will provide the required defence, and no majority will give it the power to rule. These considerations have, owing to the revolutionary influences of war, marked the starting-point of a new propaganda against democratic constitutionalism which has been directed with special assiduity within the Socialist movement. It urges two major arguments: political democracy must always be dominated and controlled by the capitalist system in which it works, and in terms of which it must think when using political methods, therefore, by political means and within the system of capitalist constitutionalism, democracy can never transform the Capitalist State into anything that is beyond Capitalism; and, the method of

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