Australia would elect than to the best newspaper the mind of man
has ever imagined.

It is little use, therefore, for the press to further degrade Parliament
in the eyes of the people by railing at it in the following terms:--

So it is that Parliament as a working machine is about the
clumsiest and least effective that can be conceived of. All our
Parliaments are modelled on the necessities of bygone centuries. We
want a working Parliament improved up to date; but we lack
political invention, and have to jog along with the old lumbering
machine--a sort of bullock dray trying to compete with an age of
electric railways and motor cars.[3]

The remedy lies with the press itself. Let it abandon all illegitimate
influence, and use its power in a legitimate direction to give effect to
the principles of organization and responsible leadership in Parliament.
But just as the Labour faction cannot altogether be blamed for the
present disintegration of Parliament, so the press cannot be held
responsible for its degradation. In both eases cause and effect have
been interrelated. The mistake which the press has made has been in not
perceiving that the more it interferes with the legitimate functions of
Parliament, even although with the best intentions, the more it degrades
Parliament.

We have now passed in review the two great dangers which assail the
Commonwealth at the inception of federation. We have shown how
intimately related they are to the two great principles underlying
representative government--organization and leadership. Nay, we have
seen that all the varied phenomena presented by the great democracies of
the world can be expressed in terms of the same two principles.

It remains to show that to give effect to the expression of these two
principles in a more perfect manner than ever yet attained is a problem
of electoral machinery. This task we shall now undertake.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] "Representative Government in England," p. 123.

[3] _Age_, 28th June, 1900.

CHAPTER IV.

THE REFORM: TRUE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION.

How to give effect to the principles of organization and leadership in
an electoral reform--that is the problem which we shall now attempt to
solve. We have already laid down the theoretical requirements, which are
(1) proportional representation to the two parties--the majority and the
minority, and (2) the election by each party separately