POPULAR SUFFRAGE 423 



under any conceivable regime of representative government, the 

 majority of the voters will probably own the majority of the seats 

 gerrymandering being left out of consideration and overrule the 

 minority. 



But the great boon of proportional representation is that it insures 

 the actual and permanent check of the majority by representative 

 minorities, and in that way it procures better legislation and a more 

 moderate and more conscientious expression of the general will of the 

 community through the legislative activity of Parliament. 



The consequences for public life are obvious: the stability of a 

 government and the unquestionable authority of laws deriving 

 their prestige from the undisputed majority of a whole nation, while 

 the minority cannot any more claim that it is overridden or foully 

 suppressed. 



Those reforms, however considerable they are in themselves, 

 would not amount to much if the Belgian law had not, by a remark- 

 ably bold departure from the accepted ideas, made voting a com- 

 pulsory duty. 



For it is not much use to devise a nicely balanced machinery 

 and to fit it so that it will work smoothly, unless the whole body 

 of the voters can be got to make it work. 



And precisely the worst to be looked for in a political organization 

 resting upon popular suffrage is an ill-fated combination of excessive 

 activity on the part of the disorderly elements with the natural 

 apathy of the orderly ones, for politics repels the latter just as much 

 as it attracts the former. 



True it is that the electoral trust rests imperatively upon all the 

 citizens and that nobody who has been honored with it can neglect 

 it without committing a serious breach of duty. But it is too well 

 known also that mere suasion is not always strong enough to over- 

 come the aversion which most of the honest and quiet people feel for 

 active political demonstrations of any kind. 



Hence it is necessary for the law to compel them to perform their 

 duty. And the law could do that all the better in Belgium since it 

 had already guaranteed to every one the efficiency of his vote; stay- 

 at-home voters in Belgium no longer have any excuse. 



I said that the institution of compulsory voting was a bold stroke 

 of policy, because whereas most people agreed upon the desirability 

 of it in theory, yet before that practical experiment, almost every- 

 body equally believed that it was impossible in practice. 



Just a little common sense proved enough to overcome that 

 unreasonable fear. 



The failure to vote in an individual instance may be a slight thing 

 in itself, but it is primarily a bad example, and it is positively fatal 

 as soon as it becomes general. 



