PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. By G. Horwill. (London : G. Allen and
Unwin. 6s. net.) PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. By G. Horwill. (London : G. Allen and Unwin. 6s. net.) OUR opinion of Proportional Representation has wavered since it has been put to the proof in different countries and under different conditions. We still hold that logically it
is sound and desirable, but, as with some other schemes which seem to our reason impregnable, it has not worked as well as we thought it would ; it has not brought the expected benefits where it has been adopted. Mr. Horwill has written a book which sets out usefully the methods employed or proposed, and proceeds to find every possible fault in them, and no single merit except, perhaps, for some country such as India where peoples of utterly different races and religions may be gathered into one electorate. His sweeping and almost angry tone must be distasteful to those who like ourselves have hankering sympathy with such well-meant and reasonable proposals, but we cannot deny some of his conclusions. The machinery of " P.R." has not yet been adapted perfectly to bring about its aims, and perhaps cannot be. It opens the way for vigorous minorities, who deserve recognition, to impose their will on majorities who do not deserve to lose their powers.
It does lead to the formation of numerous groups with their evils and lessens the chance of any Government having a trustworthy working majority. We are driven to the con- clusion that those who should support it most heartily are those unbending individualists, who, not without some good reason, would like to sterilize Governments in which they only see the means of men infringing each other's liberties, impeding the free play of natural and economic laws and undermining the spirit of self-reliance and individual enterprise.
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