We hope to have left on the reader’s mind by this time no doubt as to the intimate connection between the machinery of election and the resulting character of the legislature.  Now it is a most extraordinary fact that this connection is hardly noticed by the leading constitutional authorities.  It is true they often recognize that suggested changes like the Hare system would debase our legislatures, but it never seems to occur to them that present evils might be cured by a change in the electoral machinery.  They point out the evils indeed, but only to indulge in gloomy forebodings at the onward march of democracy, or as warnings of the necessity for placing checks on the people.

Take Bagehot’s study of the House of Commons in his standard work on “The English Constitution,” where he classifies the functions exercised by the House.  He insists that the most important of these is the elective function—­its power to elect and dismiss the ministry.  In addition, it exercises an expressive function, a teaching function, an informing function, and, lastly, the function of legislation.  But not a word is said of the relation of these functions to representation, or to the method of election.  It is asserted that the reason the House of Commons is able to exercise these functions is because England is a deferential nation, and the people leave government in the hands of their betters, the higher classes.  On one point he is emphatic, and that is the absolute necessity of party.  He writes:—­

The moment, indeed, that we distinctly conceive that the House of Commons is mainly and above all things an elective assembly, we at once perceive that party is of its essence.  The House of Commons lives in a state of perpetual potential choice; at any moment it can choose a ruler and dismiss a ruler.  And therefore party is inherent in it, is bone of its bone, and breath of its breath.

As to the present trend of affairs, the opinion of a foreign observer, Gneist—­“History of the English Constitution”—­may be quoted:—­

England, too, will experience the fact that the transition to the new order of industrial society is brought about through a process of dissolution of the old cohesions, upon which the constitution of Parliament is based.  The unrepresented social mass, which is now flooding the substructure of the English Constitution, will only stay its course at a universal suffrage, and a thorough and arithmetical equalization of the constituencies, and will thus attempt, and in a great measure achieve, a further dissolution of the elective bodies.  To meet the coming storm a certain fusion of the old parties seems to be immediately requisite, though the propertied classes, in defending their possessions, will certainly not at first display their best qualities.  As, further, a regular formation in two parties cannot be kept up, a splitting up into fractions, as in the parliaments of the Continent, will ensue, and the changing