Recent elections for the United States Congress are shown by Professor Commons to present striking inequalities.  At the election for the 51st Congress, 1888, the Republicans polled 5,348,379, and the Democrats 5,502,581.  But the Republican minority actually secured 164 seats against 161, a majority of 3, and were enabled to carry the McKinley tariff law.  For the 52nd Congress, 1890, the Republicans, with 4,217,266 votes, only elected 88, while the Democrats, with 4,974,450 votes, elected 235, and the Populists, with 354,217 votes, elected 9 Congressmen.  The Democratic majority should have been only 2, instead of 138.  Compared with the 51st Congress, their proportion of the popular vote increased only 1 per cent., but their proportion of the representatives increased 21 per cent.  It required 47,923 votes to elect a Republican, 44,276 to elect a Populist, and only 21,078 to elect a Democrat.

To come nearer home, did not Mr. Reid return to power at the 1898 election in New South Wales although the Opposition polled a majority of 15,000 against him?  The last election in Victoria illustrates nothing so much as the chaotic state of parties, brought about by newspaper influence in promoting false lines of division.  No less than 30 seats, representing 81,857 votes, were contested only by candidates who professed to be Ministerialists of various shades.  Of 52 seats contested by Ministerial and Opposition candidates, each party secured 26; but the Ministerialists paid 59,255 votes for their seats as against 44,327 cast for the Opposition. 13 seats were uncontested, 9 Ministerial and 4 Opposition, giving a total of 65 members to the Ministerial party and 30 members to the Opposition.

The arbitrary and haphazard character of these results is obvious.  It would be entirely removed by the reform.  Every election would reflect the true feeling of the country; the right of the majority to rule would be rendered certain, and the right of the minority to a fair hearing would be assured.  Taking the country as a whole, the Ministerialists would pay almost exactly the same number of votes for each seat as the Opposition.  In each separate electorate the accuracy would not be so great, but the rectification of even this slight and unavoidable inequality would, instead of being arbitrary, be subject to the laws of chance.

+Ineffective Votes.+—­Under the present system, all votes cast for rejected candidates are ineffective; therefore nearly one-half of the electors have no voice in the Government.  A Liberal elector may live in a Conservative constituency all his life without having the opportunity to cast an effective vote.  The evil of popular indifference is largely to be explained by this fact.  It is no answer to say that it affects both parties equally.  The trouble is that nearly one-half of the electors of each party have no influence in deciding who are to represent the party, and therefore do not help to frame its policy.