SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN'S ZEAL FOR REFORM.
IR GEORGE TREVELYAN'S speech at Downend, near Bristol, last Saturday, on the political wisdom and fruitfulness of passing Reform Bills on Reform Bills with an ever-increasing acceleration of political momentum, fills us with astonishment. Does he really believe all that he seems to imply in that speech ? Does he think that with a Reform Bill in 1832 which lasted us thirty-five years, and a Reform Bill in 1867 which lasted us eighteen years, and a Reform Bill in 1885 which has as yet lasted us only six years, and even in 1893 would have lasted us only eight years, the country is eager for another Reform Bill in 1892 or 1893, which would last us presumably only about four years before another would be needed ? At that rate, before the end of the century we should be having a Reform Bill a year, and very early in the next century we should be yearning for one every two or three months. It certainly does seem to us a very odd travesty on the old Liberal doctrines to get so enamoured of Reform Bills, that the more democratic and drastic they are, the sooner they come to stand in need of repair and renewal. Sir George is so thirsty for Reform Bills, that even the nine University seats out of 670 fill him with a sort of noble rage. He would evidently think it quite worth while to have a Reform Bill just to get rid of the nine University seats and the double seat for the City of London, though of course, while he was about it, he would abolish all the plural votes and establish the great prin- ciple of" One man, one vote." Well, for our part, we have no objection, and were distinctly favourable to that prin- ciple in 1885 when Mr. Gladstone put his veto upon it; and as for the nine University seats and the double seat for the City of London, so far as any general pohtical effect that the abolition of these exceptional constituencies would produce, no sensible man would regard it as more than a drop in the bucket. What Sir George Trevelyan does not seem to realise is this, that the more thoroughly democratic you make your Parliament, the more cer- tain it will be that a new type of popular Con- servatism will emerge, no less vehement, and in all probability a good deal more impenetrable to argu- ment, than the Conservatism of the last generation. Mr. Disraeli was certainly right in anticipating that such a thing as Tory democracy really existed. The General Election of 1874 sufficiently proved this, and we have had further verifications since the Reform Act of 1885. No doubt the more largely the franchise is extended, the more grave becomes the tendency to excuse the democracy from fiscal burdens, and to open out to selected persons among the great mass of the voters, the opportunity of profiting more directly by official incomes. This kind of collective bribery has increased in every great democracy, and is still increasing. It is the source of endless mischief in the United States, in our democratic Colonies, and in France ; and it is becoming the great danger of the United King- dom. Sir George Trevelyan's prediction, that with a more perfectly elaborated democracy, and with an official recom- pense for the time given to representing the people in Parliament, all lavish expenditure and great scandals in the way of jobbery would disappear, is one of the wildest and the most directly contradicted by experience that even Sir George Trevelyan has ever uttered. What is the existing experience of the United States, of France, of Canada ? Have we not all heard within the last few months of the alarm excited in all these countries by the enormous growth of scandals of this kind It is about as reasonable to expect that a large extension of the suffrage and the payment of Members can lead to economy and purity, as it is to expect that the overflow of the Nile can take place without a great alluvial deposit on its banks. But none the less certainly will there be developed a type of popular Conservatism such as Mr. Disraeli and Sir John Macdonald have successfully de- veloped in England and Canada, and Mr. BlaMe in the United States. There is a Conservatism as narrow, and for that very reason as popular, in great democracies as any aristocratic or monarchical Conservatism in the world. Sir George Trevelyan may succeed in altering the type of Conservatism by his new cataract of reforms ; but he cer- tainly will not succeed in rendering it less likely to achieve victory. The evidence is overwhelming that the more you increase the volume and mass of the popular vote, the more certain you are to divert a good deal of what would otherwise have been popular Radicalism into a new channel, which, though it condemns anything like avowed pressure on the people, yet openly advocates all sorts of plausible fallacies, like Protection, a minimum rate of wages, and various State enterprises on a large scale, of which the effect is anything but the safeguarding of individual liberty, and the free competition of individual talents. The more thoroughly democratic a. State becomes, the closer, no doubt, the two great parties approach to each other in general aims ; but none the less hostile are they to each other for that approximation. Though the Liberal relaxes his anxiety for individual liberty, and the Conservative becomes willing and even eager for any change which promises the people greater privileges and greater gains, they agree in attacking each other with more, and more bitterness and finding the very narrow strait which divides them a more impassable gulf than ever. This seems to us the great lesson of democracy, a .lesson which Sir George Trevelyan has not yet learned.
But Sir George Trevelyan's eagerness for yet more and more strenuous Reform Bills is to us all the more re- markable because it is quite certain that reform, whenever it comes, will by no means increase for the moment the power of his party in the State. He may be right, or he may not be right, in supposing that the petty changes he proposes, the • abolition of the University constituencies, the improvement of registration, and the adoption of the principle of "One man, one vote," will add to the voting power of the Liberal Party, and diminish that of the Conservative Party. Very likely for the moment that will be the effect of those measures, though in a very few years these effects must be discounted, and the natural tendency towards a balance between the parties will assert itself. But there will be a much more powerful influence set to work as the immediate consequence of reform which must turn the political balance for the time in quite the opposite direction to that which Sir George Trevelyan approves. Sir George Tre- velyan must know very well that it is impossible to dabble in reform in one direction without opening the floodgates altogether. Anything more absurd and impossible than to extinguish a few University constituencies,—if they would indeed be extinguished by the popular sentiment, which rather leans to the encouragement of learning,—and to sup- press a single Member for the City of London, without rectifying the really considerable grievance of the over-repre- sentation of thin populations and the under-representation of crowded populations, we cannot imagine. Englishmen are never going to meddle with such a principle as "One man, one vote," without recognising its logical corollary, that constituencies containing many more voters shall not be reduced to the same electoral power as constituencies con- taining many fewer. If the unit of electoral power is the vote of a qualified person, then it is obvious that an equal number of voters should elect as nearly as possible an equal number of representatives, or the unfair inequality com- plained of is reproduced, and indeed under our present system is reproduced in a much more potent form. Sir George Trevelyan will not succeed in persuading the people of England that it is a great injustice to let a rich man vote in three or four separate constituencies, unless he is willing to admit that it is a still greater injustice to let London, with a population considerably in excess of Ireland, return only about two-thirds of the number of representatives allotted to Ireland. He will not succeed in persuading the English people that the City of London, with 32,000 registered electors, is pampered by being allowed to return two Members, unless he is willing to admit that the City of Cork, with 14,500 registered electors, is twice as much pampered by being allowed to return two also. As the vulgar saying is, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If we are to go on the principle of "One man, one vote," by all means let us go on it thoroughly, and give no elector double or treble the power of any other elector by allowing him a much larger share in the return of a representative than a brother-elector in another constituency. A correspondent of Monday's Times, Mr. Henry F. Bernard, has shown that if the seats in the United Kingdom were redistributed in pro- portion to population, England would gain twenty- one seats, Ireland would lose nearly the same number, while within the Kingdom, the large centres of population, which are also the most Conservative centres, would gain at the expense of the more thinly populated districts, which are the most eager for change. That is a kind of reform which will far more than balance the effect of all Sir George Trevelyan's petty reforms in favour of the Liberal Party. Let us have the plural voters struck off by all means, and if it pleases the people, though we should regret that particular anomaly, the University constituencies too ; but if we are to strain out the gnat, don't let us swallow the camel. If we are to be governed by numbers, let the numbers who live at the great centres of life and power, share and share alike with the scattered electors of thinly populated districts ; and if they do, we shall soon cease to hear of this hankering after a dis- integrated Kingdom, and that disposition to seize on other people's property which is the note of helpless and thrift- less and poverty-stricken districts.
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