THE FORECASTS OF REDISTRIBUTION.
AS Mr. Bright justly said at the Eighty Club, it is very seldom a thing to be desired that a measure Liberal in its very essence, should be drawn cai lines concerted with the Conservative Party. The presumption, at least, would usually be that the heart of the measure would be more or less paralysed by the attempt to satisfy the conditions imposed by the Conservatives. We are willing to admit, with Mr. Bright, that in one direction, though in one direction only, there is some such danger at the present moment. Undoubtedly, the Conservatives have got a deep-rooted idea that they can best preserve the influence of the landowners by weeding the county constituencies as thoroughly as possible of urban elements. The Pall Mall Gazette even professed to know that they wished to leave no country town of more than 10,000 inhabitants in any county constituency. All larger towns were either to be ' grouped ' until they made up the minimum constituency ; or, when large enough, they were to have a Member or Members of their own. We heartily agree with Mr. Bright, that this would be a most undesirable arrangement. It would be undesirable in principle, because there is no other case in which a single in- terest like the Land is regarded as entitled to separate repre- sentation. Cotton manufacturers do not wish to be represented separately from machine manufacturers, nor worsted manu- facturers to be represented separately from cotton manu- facturers. We never dream of giving the shipowners a separate representation from the merchants, or the merchants a separate representation from the retail traders. The attempt so to weed the counties of all interests other than agri- cultural, in order that the landowners may retain their full influence over county elections, is wholly objectionable on principle. Nor is it objectionable only for the reason which Mr. Bright alleges, namely, that it may give too much power to the landowner. It mayprove to be objectionable for the very opposite reason, because it will give him too little. There are not a few counties in which the agricultural labourers have very strange dreams of their own, and in which it is not at all unlikely, if they should find leaders of the type of Mr. Henry George, that they mighereturn representatives of a very well-marked Socialist type, instead of the type which the landlords desire. It is of the greatest possible importance to the weight and even to the sanity of the new county constituencies, that a very large infusion of the moderating urban element,—the element contributed by considerable country towns, and not merely by prosperous villages,— should be contained in them. We believe that the Government will be fully alive, however, to the importance of this consideration ; and that their hands will be strengthened in dealing with the Tory leaders,—if there be any need of such strengthening,—by the wholesome fear which the sagacious Conservatives feel of leaving the counties too completely in the power of a little- educated and often rather excitable agricultural constituency. For ourselves, we should regard any attempt to weed the counties of all towns containing fewer than 15,000 inhabitants as a most dangerous and rash experiment ; but we feel tolerably certain that the Government will resist any such attempt, and will be heartily supported by the moderate Conservative county Members in doing so.
And there, so far as we can judge, the danger of a concerted scheme,—a scheme adapted to the Conservative ideal,—ends. We have no belief at all that the leaders on the Conservative side will ask for minority representation on a large scale or for any other device the operation of which will not be easily grasped by the people at large. The Tory leaders are even more likely than the Liberal leaders to fight shy of subtleties in our Con- stitutional system. Such trial as has been made of these subtleties has not been favourable to them ; and Conserva- tives well know that the very first condition of all popular Constitutions is to have a plain, broad test, intelligible to everybody, of the wishes of the people, not a test which can be shown with any plausibility to have gone wrong, and to have yielded a result which seems to make the weaker party equal in strength to the stronger. You cannot work a Democracy by methods the nature of which it takes a professor of mathematics to expound. Lord Salisbury and Sir Stafford Northcote would, we believe, be the last men to insist on any such doubtful expedients, as if these were the best strongholds of the Conservative Party. But on all other points it seems perfectly clear that we shall get a much better and stronger Redistribution Bill out of the consent of the two parties, than we could get by the action of either party taken alone. In the first place, the great danger
of disfranchising the small constituencies totally disappears if both parties combine to recommend it. That danger arises entirely in the liability to desertions caused by the vexation of individual Members at the threatening of their seats. And that is a very great danger indeed if there be an enemy to te strengthened by the desertion. But if there be no such enemy, desertion is a mere futile protest, without risk to any one, and without result. Hence, it will be possible for the two parties, in conjunction, to disfranchise and rearrange the constituencies far more boldly than it would be possible for either party to do this separately—assum- ing, that is, that both parties wish to arrive at a satis- factory result, a result promising a sort of permanence. Now, in the present case, we have no doubt that both parties do wish this,—the Liberals, because they think Demo- cracy right as well as inevitable ; the Tories, because they see that it is in the large constituencies, rather than in the small, that they have recently won their most telling victories,—in such constituencies, that is, as Greenwich, the Tower Hamlets, Westminster, Liverpool, Preston, and Belfast. In the minuter boroughs it was admitted that the Liberal Party had a con- siderable majority. Of course, we hold that in the greater boroughs we shall increase that majority. But that is not the Tory creed. In the Metropolis, in the great suburban counties, in Lancashire, and even in occasional successes in such con- stituencies as Sheffield, they have had glimpses of hope which they not unnaturally magnify into a fair prospect of a great future for Tory Democracy. Hence, we sincerely hope for Tory help in fixing the lowest constituency entitled to a single Member at something like 25,000,—a great step towards the equalisation of electoral power, and one which would render it extremely unlikely that another Democratic agitation could be got up with any hope of success for two or three generations at least.
Again, we may look with some confidence to Conservative help in resisting what seems to us the unjust proposal to give the new constituencies the same right which the historical con- stituencies have hitherto had, of returning two Members both of the party of the majority. We can easily understand how that practice grew up at a time when there was no intention at all of creating a true representation of the people. We can understand how the conservative English mind, which regards the parish as a sort of a priori idea, clings to it, where it exists as a pious tradition. But we cannot under- stand for a moment how, where it is proposed to create new constituencies, any just man can think it right to create an electorate out of a population of 100,000 with the right to return two Members, instead of creating two electorates out of populations of 50,000 each, with the right of returning only one. It is perfectly clear that if the minority of one constituency is to be represented by the majority of another, it is absolutely essential to multiply as largely as possible the number of chances which this silenced minority in one place will have of constituting the majority of other places. Under a large Democratic Constitution, the double- barrelled system must undoubtedly augment, and augment seriously, the apparent preponderance of the majority ; and against this injustice we can trust to the Conservatives to protest with vigour. Their hope mainly depends on the equity with which electoral power is distributed, on the chance that if they were hopelessly outnumbered in one place, they may outnumber their opponents almost as much elsewhere, and that as many opportunities as possible shall be fairly secured to them of obtaining this result. We as Liberals contend for this principle, not only be- cause it is but fair to the Conservatives,—though that is our- chief reason,—but also because we believe that the fairer the principle of the test applied, the more decisively will the nation comprehend the result, and the more peremptorily will it insist that its decisions, when they are given, shall not be evaded. If, without exaggerating the real strength of the majority, the majority turns out to be very great, we may be sure that it will also be much more resolute in its action than it would be if it had its misgivings as to the true state of the case. We want to see not only a good majority, but a con- fident majority. And we believe that the Conservatives will help us greatly to this result, by helping us to insist that the real significance of the majority shall not be ex- aggerated—that it shall really represent the actual diffusion through the electorates of the political principles which the nation avows. We have no sympathy with those who approve the idea of first ascertaining what the majority of any con- stituency is, and then multiplying its significance by two.
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