LAWLESSNESS AND LOG-ROLLING.
AFEW days ago Lady Bryce drew attention to the attitude of lawlessness and of resistance to legisla- tive authority which marks the present time. No impartial observer can fail to confirm Lady Bryce's view of the facts. The tendency to resist enactments, even when they are passed with all the solemnities and formalities of legis- lation, is very strongly marked. In former times new enactments were opposed up to the very last moment with all possible energy, but once they had received the sanction of Parliament there was almost always a general acquiescence throughout the country. People accepted the inevitable. Why do they not do so now ? That is a question well worth asking. Many pessimists will no doubt be inclined to tell us that the answer is to be found in the degeneracy of the race, and in the fact that we are fallen-on what are vaguely called " evil times." People, it is urged, have lost their old reverence for the law, and in their selfishness and pride are unwilling to obey. Our sense of discipline has decayed, and in a disorganized society each "man wants to do only what is pleasant or right in his own eyes. If the law strikes him as disagreeable, he tries to evade it, and, when he dares, he resists.
We do not believe in this ready-made explanation. We see no reason to think that mhn are worse citizens than they used to be, or in essentials less inclined to be law-abiding. Human nature, we feel sure, remains very much as it was. The mass of mankind recognize as keenly as ever that anarchy is the greatest of all evils, and that if a community is to keep in health and strength there must be a law-abiding spirit within it. But if this is so, and if people are really at heart as law-abiding as before, how comes it that, as we have admitted, there is so much less willingness than formerly to acquiesce in the law? We believe that the answer is to be found in a very simple fact. No laws ever are, or ever will be, willingly acquiesced in by those who are injured by them, or who disbelieve in their utility or soundness, unless they have a strong sanction behind them—unless there is a general belief that, whether right or wrong, they represent the wishes of a real and sub- stantial majority of the community, unless, in fact, they represent the considered will and determination of the majority, and have not been secured by what we may call accidental legislation or party trickery. " The greater the sanction, the less the resistance," is a very natural and, in the widest sense, a very reasonable maxim.
But who can doubt that, owing to certain recent developments in our political system, our laws tend to have a far less potent sanction than previously ? The first of the tendencies which result in a diminution of sanction is what we may term the screwing up of the party system. Under a loose party system public opinion acts strongly upon the Legislature, and Bills which do not receive a general acquiescence have very little chance of passing. When they are introduced a certain number of people in the party which proposes them revolt if they are not modified or withdrawn. The result of this is that Bills which command the support of only a section of a party fail to get through. When, however, the party system is very highly developed and party discipline is very strict, this wholesome lever for the enforcement of compromise is done away with. The minority, even if it is a very large minority, in a party, when once it is voted down, feels that it must in loyalty accept the decision of the majority of the party. [Note how in American party Conventions a minority which has been voting and working furiously against a certain candidate will, directly it is "finally beaten," agree to make the choice " unanimous."
The base and blatant blunderer " of five minutes before becomes " a venerated leader of the people, hallowed by the consenting voices of an historic party."] Hence, as Mill pointed out long ago, we tend now to get, not the will of the majority, but only the will of the majority of the majority, which may often be, nay, almost certainly is, a minority of the nation. Another practice which has robbed Acts of Parliament of their sanction is the use of such Parliamentary devices as the Closure and the Guillotine. In old days Governments had very largely to give way to opposition and to the force of argument in order to get their measures through. It was often physically impossible for them to wear down a strong
Opposition, and therefore they bought off the Opposition by judicious compromises, and by so modifying their measures that they represented rather the general will than merely the will of the majority—i.e., of the odd man. Now, how- ever, under the Closure and the Guillotine, a Parlia- mentary majority has little or nothing to fear from the Opposition. The Opposition are allowed to attack for a certain period, and then the will of the Parliamentary majority falls like the knife of the Revolution.
Yet another tendency subversive of sanction is to be found in the development of Parliamentary log-rolling. The group system which exists within parties leads to agreements under which the Governments which wield legislative power purchase support for the Administration by Promissory Bills. For example, nobody professes to believe that the Liberal Party as a whole wanted the Trade Disputes Act or the Home Rule Bill. They did, however, want, and want very badly, the votes of the Labour Group and of the Irish Group. Accordingly the support of these groups was purchased with the Trade Disputes Act and the Home Rule Bill. In some very interesting articles in the British Weekly a few years ago the writer candidly confessed that no Liberal reforms could ever be carried through Parliament except under the log-rolling principle. Each group of men cared only for their own special nostrum. It was only by agreeing to bear each other's burdens that any reform could be secured. Taken in detail, the Bills representing the respective wishes of the groups would be destroyed. A further cause of this robbing of Acts of Parliament of their sanction is to be found in the payment of Members. Payment of Members has undoubtedly made Members of Parliament less independent, less inclined to feel that they must exercise an individual judgment, more inclined to feel that they must obey the kind caucus which has secured them their office of profit under the State. Lastly, and most important of all, the virtual abolition of the functions of the House of Lords and the introduction of Single-Chamber government have tended to deprive us of the sense of sanction. It is true, no Acts have yet actually come into operation under the Parliament Act, but the shade of the upas-tree is over the Legislature.
What is the remedy? That there is a remedy we are certain, for, though we have written so pessimistically, let no one believe that we think the country is going to endure for long the present lawlessness of mood, whatever the cause. How are we going to restore sanction to our Acts of Parliament, and make men feel that obeying them is inevitable, and that in such obedience duty and necessity are combined ? We believe that there is only one way, and that is by the adoption of the Referendum or Poll of the People. That, and that alone, will restore vitality to the Legislature. If the people of this country knew that all matters of vital importance must be submitted to the electors, and that no Bill could become law, if any great body of opinion in the country challenged it, till the voters as a whole had been given a chance to express their opinion on the work of their representatives, our Acts of Parlia- ment would secure a sanction even greater than that which they obtain by those indirect methods of prevent- ing the usurpation of the legislative function by minorities which we have described above. We do not, of course, mean that every Bill would be, or should be, submitted to the veto of the electorate. In regard to a great many measures it would be quite unnecessary to refer them to the people. They would pass into law unchallenged. In the case, however, of vital Bills, and all Bills dealing with our Constitutional machinery, a Poll of the People would be demanded and be secured.
The cure for our present lawlessness, the way to restore that sanction which is the essential need of legislation on vital questions, is, as we have said, the Referendum or Poll of the People. After all, this is no new idea, no discovery on the part of the Spectator or other advocates of the Referendum. It represents the general sense of the English-speaking race, from the time when Cromwell's army demanded the Referendum after the Long Parliament had abolished the House of Lords, to the institution of the Referendum in America, when the abolition of the Governor's veto had made necessary the introduction of some form of veto to control the State Legislatures. Remember that throughout the States of the
Union no one ever dreams of the possibility of altering a State Constitution or of dealing with matters of vital legislative importance without a reference to the people. Everyone there recognizes that a law in regard to which there is deep feeling cannot have the requisite sanction unless it has been endorsed by a popular vote. As Tacitus said of our Teutonic ancestors, small matters are decided by the few, great matters by the many. Until we, like our forefathers in the Council of the Army, or like our kinsfolk in America and the Colonies, have adopted the Poll of the People as an institution, we shall not be able to re-establish our claim to be the most law-abiding people in the world. That this is worth re-establishing will be admitted by all good citizens, whatever their party. It is an ominous fact that the Radical Party at the present moment hate the Referendum with so deadly a hatred. It is a sign that, like the Jacobins of the French Revolution, they want to pass Bills which they know could never get the sanction of the majority of the voters. They want, not the will of the people, but the will of the party to prevail. The way to make us once more a law-abiding race is to prevent our being minority- ridden—to enable the nation to reject any law which does not command the assent of the majority of the voters.
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