most
in its behalf, shall be placed in the closest contact with the actual
world. Our English system contains both contrivances; it makes party
government permanent and possible in the sole way in which it can be
so, by making it mild.

But these expedients, though they sufficiently remove the defects which
make a common club or quarter-sessions impotent, would not enable the
House of Commons to govern England. A representative public meeting is
subject to a defect over and above those of other public meetings. It
may not be independent. The constituencies may not let it alone. But if
they do not, all the checks which have been enumerated upon the evils
of a party organisation would be futile. The feeling of a constituency
is the feeling of a dominant party, and that feeling is elicited,
stimulated, sometimes even manufactured by the local political agent.
Such an opinion could not be moderate; could not be subject to
effectual discussion; could not be in close contact with pressing
facts; could not be framed under a chastening sense of near
responsibility; could not be formed as those form their opinions who
have to act upon them. Constituency government is the precise opposite
of Parliamentary government. It is the government of immoderate persons
far from the scene of action, instead of the government of moderate
persons close to the scene of action; it is the judgment of persons
judging in the last resort and without a penalty, in lieu of persons
judging in fear of a dissolution, and ever conscious that they are
subject to an appeal.

Most persons would admit these conditions of Parliamentary government
when they read them, but two at least of the most prominent ideas in
the public mind are inconsistent with them. The scheme to which the
arguments of our demagogues distinctly tend, and the scheme to which
the predilections of some most eminent philosophers cleave, are both
so. They would not only make Parliamentary government work ill, but
they would prevent its working at all; they would not render it bad,
for they would make it impossible.

The first of these is the ultra-democratic theory. This theory demands
that every man of twenty-one years of age (if not every woman too)
should have an equal vote in electing Parliament. Suppose that last
year there were twelve million adult males in England. Upon this theory
each man is to have one twelve-millionth share in electing a
Parliament; the rich and wise are no