supported it that I agreed to do
so. I maintained that the fundamental necessity of a democratic
Constitution such as we hoped would evolve from the combined efforts of
the ablest men in the Australian States was a just system of
representation and it was as the advocate of effective voting that I
took my stand. My personal observation in the United States and Canada
had impressed me with the dangers inseparable from the election of
Federal Legislatures by local majorities--sometimes by
minorities--where money and influence could be employed, particularly
where a line in a tariff spelt a fortune to a section of the people, in
the manipulation of the floating vote. Parties may boast of their
voting strength and their compactness, but their voting strength under
the present system of voting is only as strong as its weakest link,
discordant or discontented minorities, will permit it to be. The
stronger a party is in the Legislature the more is expected from it by
every little section of voters to whom it owes its victory at the
polls. The impelling force of responsibility which makes all
Governments "go slow" creates the greatest discontent among impatient
followers of the rank and file, and where a few votes may turn the
scale at any general election a Government is often compelled to choose
between yielding to the demands of its more clamorous followers at the
expense of the general taxpayer or submitting to a Ministerial defeat.

As much as we may talk of democracy in Australia, we are far from
realizing a truly democratic ideal. A State in a pure democracy draws
no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man. She disclaims
the right of favouring either property, education, talent, or virtue.
She conceives that all alike have an interest in good government, and
that all who form the community, of full age and untainted by crime,
should have a right to their share in the representation. She allows
education to exert its legitimate power through the press; talent in
every department of business, property in its social and material
advantages; virtue and religion to influence public opinion and the
public conscience. But she views all men as politically equal, and
rightly so, if the equality is to be as real in operation as in theory.
If the equality is actual in the representation of the citizens--truth
and virtue, being stronger than error and vice, and wisdom being
greater than folly, when a fair field is offer