orian and publicist, Mr.
W.E.H. Leeky, M.P., as given in his recent work on "Democracy and
Liberty":--

After all due weight has been given to the possible remedies that
have been considered, it still seems to me that the parliamentary
system, when it rests on manhood suffrage, or something closely
approaching to manhood suffrage, is extremely unlikely to be
permanent. This was evidently the opinion of Tocqueville, who was
strongly persuaded that the natural result of democracy was a
highly concentrated, enervating, but mild despotism. It is the
opinion of many of the most eminent contemporary thinkers in France
and Germany, and it is, I think, steadily growing in England. This
does not mean that parliaments will cease, or that a wide suffrage
will be abolished. It means that parliaments, if constructed on
this type, cannot permanently remain the supreme power among the
nations of the world. Sooner or later they will sink by their own
vices and inefficiencies into a lower plane. They will lose the
power of making and unmaking ministries, and it will be found
absolutely necessary to establish some strong executive
independently of their fluctuations. Very probably this executive
may be established, as in America and under the French Empire, upon
a broad basis of an independent suffrage. Very possibly upper
chambers, constituted upon some sagacious plan, will again play a
great restraining and directing part in the government of the
world. Few persons who have watched the changes that have passed
over our own House of Commons within the last few years will either
believe or wish that in fifty years' time it can exercise the power
it now does. It is only too probable that some great catastrophe or
the stress of a great war may accelerate the change. (Vol. i., pp.
300, 301.)

And the reason assigned for this very unsatisfactory state of affairs is
precisely as before:

All the signs of the times point to the probability in England as
elsewhere of many ministries resting on precarious majorities
formed out of independent or heterogeneous groups. There are few
conditions less favourable to the healthy working of parliamentary
institutions or in which the danger of an uncontrolled House of
Commons is more evident. One consequence of this disintegration of