WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS WHICH DETERMINE 

 THE JUST AND EQUITABLE REPRESENTATION 

 OF THE PEOPLE? 



By R. M. Johnston, F.L.S. 

 To secure a just and equitable representation of the people 

 in Parliament is a matter which has at all times engaged the 

 attention of thoughtful, practical legislators, and of great 

 thinkers. That the idealist should be far in advance of the 

 practical legislator is what we must naturally expect ; for in 

 their ideal schemes of " The Best Form of Grovernment," or 

 " The Best Form of Representation," the former may easily 

 overlook or surmount obstacles by assumptions which are not 

 open to the practical legislator who attempts to reduce any 

 ideal to practice. If knowledge and justice were synonymous, 

 there would be less difficulty as regards the attainment of an 

 ideally perfect representation, for this might be secured by 

 basing the electorate upon some common fixed minimum 

 standard of education. But the practical legislator cannot 

 entertain this dream, for his experience has too well taught 

 him that selfishness and injustice are not eliminated by 

 greater intelligence, nor is the sense of justice necessarily 

 absent where the intelligence is small. An education 

 standard, therefore, only helps us a very little way towards 

 securing a basis for the formation of a just representation of 

 the people. Indeed, another chapter in history is no longer 

 necessary to us to demonstrate that the great barrier to 

 just representation in the future is immediate self-interest, not 

 ignorance. Self-interest is not always base, in the sense of 

 being restricted to the individual, although it is always 

 distinguished as the centre of those graduated rings of 

 sympathies and interests which are in greatest harmony with 

 those of the individual. These rings of sympathies, however, 

 are themselves variable and complex, and sometimes conflict 

 with each other. 



The interests and sympathies which most strongly affect 

 all individuals in common are approximately related to the 

 individual in the following order, which, in a general way, 

 correspond with a diminution of intensity, viz.: 



Public Interests. 



2. Family 



Individuals of the Family 

 Group. 



Family. 



Invariable, and simple 

 within the Family 

 Group. 

 Practically the same. 



Head of Family. 



4 National 



± 



Moral 

 Sympathies. 



Ditto, ditto. 



Interests variable 

 and often conflict- 

 ing in the same 

 individual. 



