A PRIME MINISTER ON CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM.
[To TEM EDITOR OR TII8 " SpicarsToR."1 SIR,—The letter under the above heading from Professor Goldwin Smith which appeared in your issue of the 16th inst. adds further testimony to the fact that the Constitutional questions now under discussion cannot be solved without taking into consideration the effect of present electoral methods upon the character of the House of Commons. Professor Goldwin Smith points out that the present method "one day gives an overwhelming majority to the Miuistry of the Boer War, and the next day a majority still more over- whelming to its opposite." But democracies are not so unstable as such electoral results would tend to show. The change in representation was not only a gross exaggeration of the corresponding movement in public opinion; but it must be remembered that those electors who, from whatever cause, were dissatisfied with Mr. Balfour's Government, bad no way of expressing that dissatisfaction but that of voting for its opponents. Present electoral methods, not the electore, are responsible. for these catastrophic changes, and to the same cause is due that failure of -the moderating forces in the country to secure adequate expression in the House of Commons. It is interesting to note that the measures recently adopted in Sweden as a result of the differences between the two Houses of Parliament contain provisions for a system of proportional representation.—I am, Sir, &c., Joni,/ H. HUMPHREYS, Hon. Secretary, The Proportional Representation Society,
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