+Enlarged Electorates.+—­With enlarged electorates the minority will not be excluded.  Each party will secure its just share of representation.  When both parties are represented in each electorate the interests of the electorate will not be bargained for as the price of support.  Members will cease to be mere local delegates.

+Proportional Representation to the Two Main Parties.+—­Representation must be absolutely confined to the two main parties, and each party must be allowed its just share.  Every candidate should be required to nominate either as a Ministerialist or Oppositionist, and each party should be allotted a number of representatives proportional to the total amount of support received.  If democracy means that every man’s opinion, as expressed by his vote, is to have the same weight, it follows that the parties should be represented in the Legislature in the same proportion as among the people, otherwise it is ridiculous to talk of the rule of the majority.  The present system sometimes results in minority rule and sometimes in minority extermination; it is difficult to say which alternative is the worse.

+Election of its Most Popular Candidates by each Party.+—­It would be little use to confine representation to the two main parties if the parties were allowed to split up into factions.  The only way to prevent this is to provide such electoral machinery as will ensure the return of the candidates most in general favour with all sections, and will exclude the favourites of sections within the party.  This distinction is vital.  The general favourite is a representative; the favourite of a faction is a delegate.  A representative is not only independent of any one section, but if he does favour a faction he will sink in general favour.  He therefore represents a compromise of the demands of all sections.  But a delegate is the mouthpiece of a faction—­a follower, not a leader of the people.

No section will be disfranchised by this proposal, for the true function of all minor sections is to influence the policies of the two main parties.  Thus every section will be proportionally represented in one or the other policy and by all the party candidates.  Not only will each party be proportionally represented but all the sections which compose each party will be proportionally represented in its policy.  This is the only true meaning of proportional representation.

CHAPTER II.

The so-called representative principle.

All schemes of electoral reform hitherto proposed under the name of proportional representation are based on the so-called “representative principle”—­viz., that every section of the people is entitled to separate representation in proportion to its numbers.  The ideal varies somewhat, but the usual conception, is that if each member represents a different section or interest the assembly will represent all sections