THE PARTY SYSTEM AND A SECOND BALLOT,
[To Tall EDITOR Ow Till " SPRCTATOR."] observe that you regard with some favour the proposal to institute a second ballot; but I venture to hope that you will reconsider the question, and throw your influence against the measure, if, as seems not improbable, the Government adopts it. For it would deal a fatal blow at our party system. The present method of election, on the contrary, must render the groups, which threaten both parties from time to time, evanescent. A three-cornered election in which a minority wins is a bitter pill to swallow, and the experiment is not likely to be repeated in the same constituency. A body of electors, whether predominantly Radical or Conservative, will not sacrifice its representative twice to minor political differences. And even if an independent group is lucky enough to secure a number of seats at one election, owing either to some springtide of political feeling or- to such a compromise as the Liberal and Labour organisations made in England last January, yet the stability, perhaps even the existence, of such a group will be most seriously threatened once the tide of enthusiasm has receded and opposition, if not recrimination, has destroyed the possibility of renewing the compromise. Is it likely that the Liberal Party will make way for Labour candidates at the next General Election ? And is the spent wave of Radicalism likely to float a Labour candidate to the bead of the poll when he is opposed both by a Liberal and by a Con- servative with a united party at his back ? Our present method of election must either extinguish the Labour Members or force them into one or other of the two great parties. If, however, a second ballot is instituted, Labour candidates and extremists of all complexions will crop up everywhere. The clinch of responsibility will be relaxed. People will feel that they have a second chance. If they fail to return a man who professes just what they think, they can put in one with whose political views they sympathise. And so we shall have all the evils of a group system, which the student of foreign politics will allow to be more insidious and persistent than the evils incidental to our own two-party system. If the Liberal Party introduces a second ballot, the wreck of that party will bitterly regret its folly in a very few years. Even now it shows disruptive tendencies. The Constitutional change con- templated will shatter it irretrievably.—I r.m, Sir, &c.,
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