ning
influence, but more formal restraints on sudden decisions and violent
changes are necessary. A single vote of a popular assembly may not
represent the well-considered judgment and permanent will of the people.
Steps may be taken which it is impossible to recall. To insist on an
appeal from "Philip drunk to Philip sober" is not to deprive him of his
real liberty. It is a safeguard, not an infringement of the principles
of true democracy, to provide some body of men of experience who can
exercise an independent judgment, and who, when some violent change is
proposed, have the right and the duty to reply in effect:

Old things may not be therefore true,
Oh brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah, still awhile the old thought retain,
And yet consider it again.

Such a justification, such a statement of the function of a Second
Chamber, not directly elected, may provoke a histrionic smile among
extreme advocates of so-called popular rights, but has never evoked an
argument which can displace it as based on sound reason and common
sense. There are some changes, too, which ought not to be made without a
specific appeal to the people on that particular issue. To make them as
part of the programme, as one plank in the platform of a party dominant
for the moment, is not to execute but to evade the real will of the
nation. We know by experience how the vote of a popular representative
assembly may represent the opinion of "a bare majority of a bare
majority;" conceivably anything over one-eighth of the nation. A
committee is elected by some eager partisans supposed to represent a
party. That party perhaps represents a bare majority of the
constituency. The caucus chooses a candidate whose views suit a bare
majority of its members who hold the most extreme views. He and others
go to Parliament as representing one party, and a majority of such
members decides what policy shall be adopted. Party discipline compels
the acquiescence of the rest. The machine is cleverly constructed to
make the will of certain party managers of mere sections of the
constituencies the dominant factor. No wonder that they denounce
Proportional Representation as a dangerous fad. Undoubtedly the will of
the people must prevail, but the exercise of that will should depend on
and be the result of their own deliberate judgment. Whether what is done
is a blessing or curse depends not on whether it is the act of an
autocrat, of an aristocracy, or