22 Proportional Representation. 



persons who have the privilege of electing that representative 

 body. Wherever nioJern civilisation extends, wherever there 

 is an enfranchised community, wherever there is a body of cer- 

 tain persons who have the privilege of electing the governing 

 assembly of a community, we are concerned with the question 

 of how that governing assembly should be elected, and the 

 first thing we have to secure is this, that the governing 

 assembly should at least represent the will of the persons 

 who have the privilege of electing. That is essential. If we 

 go through the process of electing a body and the body elected 

 does not represent the determination of the will of the com- 

 munity, we have failed in the very first thing we meant to 

 secure. 



It is of no use for a hundred thousand persons to go 

 through any process of election, if, in the end, the body 

 they elect has a will one way, and the opinions of the hundred 

 thousand persons go the other way. Let us suppose the 

 election of one person by, say a hundred thousand persons, as 

 they do by a plebiscite in France and in America, where they 

 elect a President. A bare majority of the hundred thousand 

 voters elects a President, and he, when elected, may be held to 

 express the determination of the will of the majority of the 

 electorate ; but, of course, he does so temporarily only ; there 

 can be no certainty that he will continue to represent the com- 

 munity, and he only does so in the sense of representing the 

 balance of their opinion. Sometimes it has been held that in 

 the election of one man they do secure what is wanted. They 

 secure, no doubt, for that one moment, but not for any time to 

 be measured afterwards, the expression of the determination of 

 the popular will. 



Another method which has been proposed is this : Suppose a 

 hundred thousand persons have to elect a hundred persons 

 as their representatives. Let each one of the hundred 

 thousand vote for a hundred persons. Now, you might 

 suppose that never could be proposed as a practical sug- 

 gestion ; but it was once carried out in one of our Australian 



