The argument of the Fabian opponents to Proportional Representation is frankly that the strongest Government is got in a House of half a hundred or fewer leading men, with the rest of the Parliament driven sheep.  But the whole mischief of the present system is that the obscure members of Parliament are not sheep; they are a crowd of little-minded, second-rate men just as greedy and eager and self-seeking as any of us.  They vote straight indeed on all the main party questions, they obey their Whips like sheep then; but there is a great bulk of business in Parliament outside the main party questions, and obedience is not without its price.  These are matters vitally affecting our railways and ships and communications generally, the food and health of the people, armaments, every sort of employment, the appointment of public servants, the everyday texture of all our lives.  Then the nobody becomes somebody, the party hack gets busy, the rat is in the granary....

In these recent debates in the House of Commons one can see every stock trick of the wire-puller in operation.  Particularly we have the old dodge of the man who is “in theory quite in sympathy with Proportional Representation, but ...”  It is, he declares regretfully, too late.  It will cause delay.  Difficult to make arrangements.  Later on perhaps.  And so on.  It is never too late for a vital issue.  Upon the speedy adoption of Proportional Representation depends, as Mr. Balfour made plain in an admirable speech, whether the great occasions of the peace and after the peace are to be handled by a grand council of all that is best and most leaderlike in the nation, or whether they are to be left to a few leaders, apparently leading, but really profoundly swayed by the obscure crowd of politicians and jobbers behind them.  Are the politicians to hamper and stifle us in this supreme crisis of our national destinies or are we British peoples to have a real control of our own affairs in this momentous time?  Are men of light and purpose to have a voice in public affairs or not?  Proportional Representation is supremely a test question.  It is a question that no adverse decision in the House of Commons can stifle.  There are too many people now who grasp its importance and significance.  Every one who sets a proper value upon purity in public life and the vitality of democratic institutions will, I am convinced, vote and continue to vote across every other question against the antiquated, foul, and fraudulent electoral methods that have hitherto robbed democracy of three-quarters of its efficiency.

XI

THE STUDY AND PROPAGANDA OF DEMOCRACY