personal element evolved altogether, that anything like an accurate opinion can be arrived at. But this is clearly an impossibility under the present system, when an almost infinite variety of questions are all jumbled up together. Fortunately a single issue can be put before the electors as easily as before a public meeting. The personal element can also be eliminated on these occasions by reserving for periodical general elections the choice of candidates, who could then be selected on account of their personal fitness alone. In appointing a representative to a foreign court personal qualifications are alone taken into consideration. An ambassador is not appointed because his opinions accord with those of his minister, for the minister would of course assume that the representative would be guided by his instructions. The appointment is made first, the instructions come afterwards. If the same principle were adopted in electing parliamentary representatives there could be no confounding of personal qualifications with questions of state policy; and if the latter were left to the constituencies to be dealt with singly, each question as it arose, there would then be no doubt as to the meaning of the votes recorded, as the electors would be able to give a distinct answer to each question on the voting papers while the subject was fresh in their memory and at the precise time their decision on it was re

quired. In order to carry out an arrangement of this kind, however, some organization would be necessary on the part of the electors.

At present the electors have no system of organization. There is no central body in any constituency for the purpose of conducting elections, or for acting as a medium of communication between electors and candidates or constituencies and their members. Each elector acts by and for himself in choosing a candidate, without reference to any other elector; and each candidate appeals directly to each individual elector, without previous consultation with any organization appointed on behalf of the constituents. Electors and candidates are alike free to act as they please, and they usually make the fullest use of their freedom in this respect. There are no means of stopping sham candidates from being put forward. There is no care taken to prevent unsuitable candidates presenting themselves, and no attempt is made to prevent such candidates from being elected. There is also no board or committee through which the constituency may communicate with their representatives, or representatives with their constituency; there is therefore no means whereby the constituents can, as a body, officially convey instructions to their representatives.

A different state of things prevailed in the early

days of our parliamentary history. We have seen that in the borough and city constituencies, at all events, a complete system of organization existed both for electing parliamentary representatives and for communicating with them after election. The borough representatives were chosen by the borough council acting on behalf of the general body of electors; and the borough council was also the medium of communication between the general body of electors and their parliamentary representatives. But all this is now changed. The village community, the old system of concentration of functions in the local body inherited from our Aryan forefathers, is gone and can never be revived. One by one the political and administrative functions of these local bodies have been taken from them, till the mere shadow of their former selves only remains. The police are now under the control of the county authorities; the management of the poor has been handed over to the poorlaw guardians; the board of waywardens maintain the village roads; and questions of health and education have been remitted to separate boards each of which has its own special duties allotted to it. This is the new system that has taken the place. of the old. Instead of concentration there has been differentiation of functions; instead of one body performing a multiplicity of duties, the various duties are

now performed by a multiplicity of bodies who have no relation to each other. But if we are to have differentiation in local matters, why not have it in politics also? We want local political organizations to supply the place of the old village and borough system. The framework of such an organization is to be found in the system of indirect election which was practised in the earlier period of our political history. It was by indirect election that the recognitors of the grand assizes were chosen; it was by indirect election that the Church chose its representatives for convocation; and it was by the same process, as we have seen, that the burgesses and citizens elected their mayors and their parliamentary representatives. An analogous system exists in Scandinavia and nearly all the German States at the present day. In these countries the mode of election is indirect; the general body of electors first choose delegates, and the delegates elect the representatives for their national assemblies. In Norway, for instance, one in fifty voters in towns, and one in a hundred in rural districts, choose a delegate, and the delegates afterwards meet and elect the representatives for the Storthing. Some such delegated power as this, which can speak on behalf and with the authority of the whole body of electors, is what is required. Both the English and the continental systems are objectionable as they

stand; the first, because the delegated body were elected primarily for local purposes, and it is not advisable to combine local and political functions in the same body; the second, because it is a temporary organization, whose functions are restricted to the election of parliamentary representatives and becomes defunct as soon as the elections are over. An organization to act on behalf of the electors generally, not only at election times but during the whole term that Parliament is sitting, is what is wanted. A body of delegates, chosen by the electors of each constituency, could perform all the political functions of the early borough and city councils, while it would be free from the objections which have been urged against them. Such a body would be a medium of communication between candidates and electors for arranging times and places of meeting and for advising the sitting member as to the views of the constituency on the leading questions of the day. But it should exercise no control over the representatives. That power should rest with the electors alone, and provision should be made whereby their votes might be taken when the member disputed the judgment of the board,1

1 The advantage of a body of the kind referred to, even when it is non-official, was strikingly shown by an episode which occurred during the debate on the Reform Bill of 1832. On this occasion the Conservatives had recourse to their usual tactics, when in a minority, of