And next, no party organisation, no intimation from headquarters, no dirty tricks behind the scenes, no conspiracy of spite and scandal would have much chance of keeping out any man of real force and distinction who had impressed the public imagination.  To be famous in science, to have led thought, to have explored or administered or dissented courageously from the schemes of official wire-pullers would no longer be a bar to a man’s attainment of Parliament.  It would be a help.  Not only the level of parliamentary intelligence, but the level of personal independence would be raised far above its present position.  And Parliament would become a gathering of prominent men instead of a means to prominence.

The two-party system which holds all the English-speaking countries to-day in its grip would certainly be broken up by Proportional Representation.  Sane Voting in the end would kill the Liberal and Tory and Democratic and Republican party-machines.  That secret rottenness of our public life, that hidden conclave which sells honours, fouls finance, muddles public affairs, fools the passionate desires of the people, and ruins honest men by obscure campaigns would become impossible.  The advantage of party support would be a doubtful advantage, and in Parliament itself the party men would find themselves outclassed and possibly even outnumbered by the independent.  It would be only a matter of a few years between the adoption of Sane Voting and the disappearance of the Cabinet from British public life.  It would become possible for Parliament to get rid of a minister without getting rid of a ministry, and to express its disapproval of—­let us say—­some foolish project for rearranging the local government of Ireland without opening the door upon a vista of fantastical fiscal adventures.  The party-supported Cabinet, which is now the real government of the so-called democratic countries, would cease to be so, and government would revert more and more to the legislative assembly.  And not only would the latter body resume government, but it would also necessarily take into itself all those large and growing exponents of extra-parliamentary discontent that now darken the social future.  The case of the armed “Unionist” rebel in Ulster, the case of the workman who engages in sabotage, the case for sympathetic strikes and the general strike, all these cases are identical in this, that they declare Parliament a fraud, that justice lies outside it and hopelessly outside it, and that to seek redress through Parliament is a waste of time and energy.  Sane Voting would deprive all these destructive movements of the excuse and necessity for violence.