Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 441
In the case of the United Kingdom the parliamentary franchise is of the most complicated character. The reason for this is that Parliament has never seen fit to revise the existing franchise at a single stroke and to repeal all previous statutes and substitute for them a single and uniform suffrage law. Instead of this each measure of parliamentary reform has only partially repealed existing legislation. Three great statutes have been passed in the nineteenth century in extension of the right to vote. The Reform Act of 1832 widened the old county franchise by including tenants as well as owners of land, and gave the borough franchise to rate-paying householders occupying premises worth at least ten pounds a year. The Reform Act of 1867 further extended the franchise. Finally the Representation of the People Act of 1884 establishes both in towns and county a very democratic suffrage: a person entitled to vote must be of the male sex, at least twenty-one years of age; must be either the owner or the lessee of land or premises of a certain yearly value, the sum varying according to the nature of the tenure; or else must occupy or be a lodger in fixed premises of a certain yearly value, or on which the local rates have been paid. In addition to this persons may be qualified by virtue of the remnants of earlier unrepealed laws; they may for example be voters by virtue of being born and resident freemen of certain towns, or liverymen of one of the city companies of the city of London, or as graduates on the electoral roll of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, or London, etc. The list of excluded persons comprises aliens not naturalized, idiots, convicted felons, and members of the peerage. It is impossible in short compass to give the exact details of the parliamentary franchise in the United Kingdom. For fuller information reference may be made to the first volume of Sir William Anson’s “Law and Custom of the Constitution.” The complex historical aspect of the present English suffrage and its practically democratic operation is highly characteristic of English political institutions. Little heed is taken of the logical requirements of abstract political theory provided that the practical operation is not, to an appreciable degree, repugnant to the demands of common-sense justice.
5. Criticism of Existing Systems; the Case of Women, of Negroes, etc. From what has been said of existing suffrages we may now turn to consider the validity of the theory of so-called universal suffrage. In the first place it is to be noted that the suffrage in question is by no means universal. It nowhere includes more than a minority of the population. It omits everywhere children and minors, and persons of unsound mind and of proven criminality. It leaves out almost everywhere the female half of the population. That the right to vote cannot be absolutely and literally universal requires no proof: no amount of political dogma could make it appear reasonable that a ballot should be deposited by a two-year-old child or by an incapable idiot. That the principle of exclusion must be adopted is an actual if not a logical necessity. It is extremely important to duly appreciate this fact. Universal suffrage everywhere omits a large number of citizens, and the reason is in every case that the excluded classes are composed mainly of persons who, in the opinion of those who vote, are not fitted to exercise the right of voting. It is to be observed that the excluded class is not in reality composed entirely of persons unfit to vote. No one would claim that no young men of twenty are ever fit to vote, and that all men over twenty-one are always fit to vote. The exclusion merely means that on the average persons under twenty-one have not the required capacity, and that those over twenty-one have it. It appears, then, there is no such thing in theory or in practice as an absolute and universal right to vote. Nor is the exclusion of any class of citizens, in and of itself, a violation of any abstract law of political justice. Every such exclusion must rest for its justification on the question whether the excluded persons are — taken on the average — not capable of the political judgment required in voting.
The general view thus obtained may be applied to two of the prominent questions of the time in regard to the suffrage, the right of women and of negroes to exercise a vote. The political rights of women have been much agitated during the last fifty years, but as yet no very great advance has been made in the direction of female suffrage. In the United States, as has been said above, four of the states grant to women on equal terms with men the full suffrage both for local and state elections. In addition to this women vote in school elections in nineteen states; they vote in Kansas in municipal elections; in Iowa and Montana when a vote of the citizens is taken on a proposed issue of municipal bonds, and in New York state by a law of 1901 women owning assessed village property have a similar voice in a local referendum. As against this it is to be recorded that the proposal to admit women to the full suffrage has recently been defeated in New Hampshire (1903) and in several Western states (South Dakota, Washington, Oregon). Nor is the extension of the right to vote for members of the national legislature granted to women anywhere in Europe, except in the case of widows who own property in the kingdom of Italy. In England women cannot vote at parliamentary elections, but, if qualified, may vote in any local elections. Women are granted the full suffrage in New Zealand and in the states of Australia. The suffrage in the latter case carries with it, as in the United States, the right to vote for members of the federal house of representatives.
Historically considered the exclusion of women is only a part of the general economic and legal position of dependence in which women have been placed. Indeed the word “exclusion” is hardly applicable. What has happened has been negative rather than positive. Until quite recent times only a very small part of the men of the community had the right to vote. It is more accurate to say that the women have never been admitted than that they have been expressly excluded. The arguments of John Stuart Mill and others in favor of female suffrage have turned partly on abstract justice — the claim of every person, as a person, to vote — and partly on the idea that women are in the main as well qualified as men, or at any rate sufficiently qualified. The first contention seems quite invalid: the principle of exclusion is, as has been shown, a necessary one. The second contention remains still a debatable point. As against these arguments it has been urged that women, being mentally inferior to men in those particular aptitudes required for the proper exercise of political rights, had better be excluded. It is also claimed that women are for the most part dependent for their political convictions on the opinions of a husband, father, or other male relation; they are thus already represented in an indirect fashion, and to give them a vote would unfairly duplicate the voting power of their male relations. On these grounds a distinction is sometimes made between the claims of married and unmarried women.
The other vexed question relating to the suffrage is that of permitting the negro race to vote. Every one knows that the Southern states — the white people of the Southern states — would never have conferred even a nominal voting power on the black race except by compulsion. This compulsion has been found in the amendment to the Constitution already mentioned. Its adoption was due partly to the desire to make use of the negro vote for political purposes, and partly to the force of public opinion generated by the idea that abstract principles of justice gave the negro a right to the suffrage. There has resulted the rather absurd situation whereby many persons in the United States have been ardent champions of the supposedly inherent political rights of the blacks while willing to apply an entirely different criterion to the case of women, both the white and the black. Women are excluded as unfit to vote, and blacks are included on the ground that nobody can be unfit to vote. The exact extent of political capacity of these two classes is a matter that would admit of some discussion; but it seems hardly reasonable to think that an illiterate and in many ways debased negro population can have a political claim superior to that of educated and intelligent American women. Unhappily a false and hopelessly abstract view of political rights and the rigidity of the federal Constitution prevents a rectification of the political error made in admitting the negroes to the suffrage. In practice the Southern states have found various means to render the negro vote largely illusory. But legally the anomaly persists.
6. Representation of Minorities. A question of especial interest in reference to voting is the representation of minorities. If the members of a national legislature were all elected out of the whole community on one “general ticket,” — each voter voting as many times as there were places to be filled, — it is clear that there would be a minority group of voters who elected none of their candidates. So glaring an illustration of the “unrepresented minority” does not in practice occur. The need of representing at least a part of the people in each district naturally leads to the division of the whole country into districts from each of which a candidate, or a group of candidates, is elected. But even with such a division into districts, a number of the people in each throw away their votes on a candidate not elected and thus remain in a sense unrepresented. This evil may be aggravated if those in power so divide up the election districts as to make the most of the votes of the adherents of their own party and to make the least of the votes of their opponents. This is the process known as gerrymandering, and unfortunately only too familiar in modern politics. At times it is effected by so allotting the electoral districts that the adverse voters will be too few everywhere to carry any district. If this is impossible the districts are so contrived as to “bunch together” the hostile voters, and thus it results that when they do carry a district, they carry it by a needlessly large majority, and so practically lose a lot of voters.
Much attention has been given to the problem of how to represent the minority, and various schemes have been proposed for this purpose, and to some extent adopted. Of these a few may be mentioned. The most noteworthy of all, historically, is the scheme of Mr. Thomas Hare, which attracted considerable attention in England in the middle of the nineteenth century. This was the plan of “self-made constituencies.” Instead of dividing the country into districts, it was proposed that any candidate should be elected for whom sufficient votes were cast anywhere in the country. The number required was to be found by dividing the number of voters by the number of seats in Parliament to be filled. By this means any particular minority group, instead of being scattered in district constituencies, and everywhere swamped, could combine themselves into a united vote. The scheme, however, demands too elaborate a political activity on the part of each voter to be at all practical.
Another method of minority representation is the plan of “limited voting.” This is used whenever several candidates are to be elected to form a board or council; it would not apply to districts where only one candidate is to be elected. Each voter is allowed to vote, not for as many candidates as there are places to fill, but only a limited number of times. For example, in the elections to a city council, there may be twelve places to fill, but each voter has only seven votes. The result is to elect seven members of one political party, and five of the other. No one party could elect all unless strong enough to divide its adherents into two distinct voting groups, and still defeat the other party. Such a system meets the case of representing a second party, but may, of course, leave a further majority unrepresented. Similar to this is the cumulative vote. In this plan, where a number of persons are to be elected, each voter may vote once for each of several candidates, or give all his votes to one. Thus, if twelve candidates had to be chosen, a very feeble minority could get a representative if each person gave all his votes to the same candidate.
In practically all elections it happens that the elected candidate gets more than enough votes to elect him. Only in rare instances will he happen to get just the necessary odd vote and no more. The surplus votes, therefore, again constitute an unrepresented minority. To meet this difficulty there has been contrived the device of “proportional representation.” Here the voter is called upon to indicate not only his choice of a candidate, but the names he would choose as a second or third choice, and so on. The surplus votes of each elected candidate are then handed on to the voter’s second choice, or, if not needed there, to the third, etc. The difficulty lies in deciding which are to be considered the tickets that elected the first candidate, and, consequently, to which one the votes are to be given away. In practice this can be done only by lot. This system has been put in practice in Tasmania, in the city constituencies. Adverse critics have pronounced it an “arithmetical jungle.” A quite distinct form of minority representation, directed towards a particular political end, is found in the elections of the kingdom of Prussia. It is used in the elections for the Prussian parliament, though not, of course, in those for the imperial Reichstag. The voters are divided into three classes, not numerically, but according to the taxes that they pay. If the total taxation of the district amounts to a certain sum, then the first class is made up of the richest property-owners in sufficient number to represent one third of the taxes. The second class represents the next third of the taxes, and the third class the rest. Each class chooses an equal number of “electors” for an electoral college, and this latter makes the actual selection of the members of Parliament. It can be seen at once that the two upper classes, voting together, though representing only a minority of the people, can absolutely outvote the third. Much the same plan is adopted in Prussian local elections. To American ideas this system is grossly unjust. The Socialist party in Prussia has largely abstained from voting in Prussian elections rather than accept a vote on such conditions. It can only be defended on the principle that property, not the citizens personally, is the thing to be represented in a legislative body.
READINGS SUGGESTED
Dicey, A. V., Law of the Constitution (4th edition, 1893), part ii, chap. xii.
Willoughby, W. W., The Supreme Court of the United States (1890), chap. v.
Schouler, J., Constitutional Studies (1897), part iii, chap. iv.
Bradford, G., The Lesson of Popular Government (1899), vol. i, chap. i.
FURTHER AUTHORITIES
Von Holst, H., Constitutional Law of the United States of America (1887).
Goodnow, F., Comparative Administrative Law (1897).
Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History (5th edition, 1896).
De la Bigne de Villeneuve, Eléments de Droit Constitutionnel Français.
Arndt, A., Staatsrecht des Deutschen Reiches (1901).
Hélie, Les Constitutions de la France (1880).
Freeman, E. A., Comparative Politics, Lecture V (1873).
Stubbs, W., Constitutional History of England (4th edition, 1883).
Ridges, E. W., English Constitutional Law (1905).
Brown, W. J., The New Democracy (1899).
Hare, T., The Election of Representatives (1859).
Walpole, S., The Electorate and the Legislature (1881).
Mill, J. S., The Subjection of Women (1869).
Mill, J. S., Representative Government (1875).
CHAPTER V. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
1. IMPORTANCE OF the Federal Principle; its Historical Development. — 2. The Different Kinds of Federations. — 3. Sovereignty in a Federal State. — 4. Utility of the Federal Principle in effecting a Compromise. — 5. Distribution of Power in Federal States. — 6. Conclusions.
1. Importance of the Federal Principle; its Historical Development. The subject of federal government is so important that it may well merit a separate chapter. The origin and growth of federation and the purpose it has served in the evolution of the past are among the most interesting topics of historical study. Of the political problems of our own time none are of more vital bearing than the relation of the local and central powers in a federal system. In the development of modern states the principle of federation has played a prominent part. It has supplied the requisite cohesive power to bind together the commonwealths that compose the United States, and the unequal monarchies and free cities that are joined into the German Empire. Mexico, Brazil, and Switzerland are federal republics. The British Empire is, as a whole, a unitary state, but its two most important dependencies, the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia, are, when considered separately, federal systems closely resembling that of the United States. As far as our present political vision reaches, it seems as if any attempt to create a universal state must proceed along the lines of federation. It may perhaps be reasonably thought that the experience now being gained in the construction of composite governments on a federal plan is supplying to civilized mankind the requisite training for the making of the world state of future ages.
