REDISTRIBUTION BEFORE DISSOLUTION.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—I think the inequalities in the representation of different places in the United Kingdom revealed by the late census are of so startling a character as to render a redistribution of seats imperative before the next appeal to the country ; otherwise a majority in the next House of Commons may not represent even a majority of the electorate; and such a House of Commons is especially objectionable while the Parliament Act continues in force. The only ground on which the power of the Commons to override the veto of the Peers can be defended is that the voice of the Commons is the voice of the people. Can we be sure under the present distribution of seats that it is so ? The answer is clearly in the negative. There is no reason why what has happened in the Province of Ulster should not happen in the United Kingdom taken as a whole, viz., that a majority of the members of Parliament should represent a minority both of the population and of the elec- torate. The Ulster constituencies are all single-membered, and in no instance was a seat lost to the largest party at the last election by a three-cornered contest. Of 33 constituencies in Ulster 17 at present return Home Rulers and 16 return Unionists. The 17 Home Rule constituencies have a popula- tion of 673,000, the 16 Unionist constituencies a population of 908,000. This result is confirmed by the religious census. There are 890,000 non-Catholics to 690,000 Catholics in Ulster. All the constituencies in which there is a majority of non-Catholics return Unionist members, yet though the non-Catholic people have a majority of 200,000, the Home Rulers have a majority of 1 in the Parliamentary representa- tion. A majority of 200,000 in the population ought to mean a majority of at least 4 in the representation, besides which Ulster is under-represented relatively to the rest of Ireland. The Home Rulers would, of course, in any event have a large majority among the Irish members of Parliament, but it ought not to be of the overwhelming character which we find at present, and in Ulster it ought to be a minority.
But the over-representation of Ireland in the Imperial Par- liament is a much greater evil than this, and may lead to the Peers' veto being overridden by the representatives of a minority of the people of the United Kingdom. Ireland has now 103 members in the Imperial Parliament. England, Scot- land, and Wales have 567. If Ireland were represented on the same scale, how many members would she have ? Just 60. (The House would consist of 627 members instead of 670. According to the Home Rule Bill it will contain 609 members in ordinary with 18 Irish Jack-in-the-boxes, who will appear on certain occasions and then disappear.) Of these 60 seats the Unionists would, I think, obtain at least 12, leaving 48 for the strength of the Irish Home Rule contingent. What would become of the present majority of, say, 100 in favour of Home Rule after this change ?
The bad distribution of Irish seats is detrimental to the Unionists in more than one way. It enables the Nationalists to represent Ulster as Nationalist (or as equally divided) by a count of representatives or a count of counties, keeping out of sight both the population and the electorate. The largest Home Rule constituency in Ulster—West Belfast—contains less than half the population of Unionist East Belfast, and the three Unionist divisions of Belfast contain a larger population than the six largest Nationalist constituencies in Ulster. And in reckoning by counties we pass over Belfast, which has a larger population than any two Nationalist counties in Ulster. I may note, however, that some of this talk about the equality of parties in Ulster arises from repeating what was once time without inquiring whether it was still so. The religious census of 1861 gave the Roman Catholics a majority of 19,030 in the Province of Ulster. In 1871 the Protestants had a majority of 35,000, and in 1881 of 76,000. This was the census on which the last Redistribution Bill was based, and was the last before Mr. Gladstone's conversion. But the Protestants have continued to gain ground, and their majority, as already stated, now amounts to 200,000.-1 am,
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