rom each State, directly
chosen by the people, voting as one electorate. The problem thus
presented has been keenly discussed. On the one hand we have the
advocates of the Block Vote asserting that the party in a majority is
entitled to return all six senators; and on the other, a small band of
ardent reformers pressing the claims of the Hare system, which would
allow the people in each State to group themselves into six sections,
each returning one senator. The claim that every section of the people
is entitled to representation appears at first sight so just that it
seems intolerable that a method should have been used all these years
which excludes the minority in each electorate from any share of
representation; and, of course, the injustice becomes more evident when
the electorate returns several members. But in view of the adage that
it is the excellence of old institutions which preserves them, it is
surely a rash conclusion that the present method of election has no
compensating merit. We believe there is such a merit--namely, that _the
present method of election has developed the party system_. Once this
truth is grasped, it is quite evident that the Hare system would be
absolutely destructive to party government, since each electorate would
be contested, not by two organized parties, but by several groups. For
it is precisely this splitting into groups which is causing such anxiety
among thoughtful observers as to the future of representative
institutions; Mr. Lecky has attributed to it, in his "Democracy and
Liberty," the decline in the parliamentary system which has accompanied
the progress of democracy all over the world. The object of this book is
to suggest a reform, which possesses the advantages of both methods and
the disadvantages of neither; which will still ensure that each
electorate is contested by the two main parties, but will allow its just
share of representation to each; and which will, by discouraging the
formation of minor groups, provide a remedy for the evil instead of
aggravating it.

T.R.A.
H.P.C.A.

325 COLLINS STREET, MELBOURNE.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

APPLIED TO

PARTY GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I.

THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION.

Old establishments, like the British Constitution, said Edmund Burke,
"are not often c