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reformers of Europe, or at any rate of England, between 1832 and 1880. We now know for certain that while popular government may be under wise leadership a good machine for simply destroying existing evils, it may turn out a very poor instrument for the construction of new institutions or the realisation of new ideals. We know further that party government, which to many among the wisest of modern constitutionalists appears to be the essence of England’s far-famed constitution, inevitably gives rise to partisanship, and at last produces a machine which may well lead to political corruption and may, when this evil is escaped, lead to the strange but acknowledged result that a not unfairly elected legislature may misrepresent the permanent will of the electors. This fact has made much impression on the political opinion both of England and of the United States. The above considerations taken as a whole afford some explanation of a demand for that referendum which, though it originates in Switzerland, flourishes in reality, though not in name, in almost every state of the American Commonwealth.
The Main Argument Against the Referendum
To almost all Englishmen the chief objection to the referendum is so obvious, and seems to many fair-minded men so conclusive, that it ought to be put forward in its full strength and to be carefully examined before the reader is called upon to consider the possible advantages of a great change in our constitution. This objection may be thus stated:
In England the introduction of the referendum means, it is urged, the transfer of political power from knowledge to ignorance. Let us put this point in a concrete form. The 670 members of the House of Commons together with the 600 and odd members of the House of Lords112 contain a far greater proportion of educated men endowed with marked intellectual power and trained in the exercise of some high political virtues than would generally be found among, say, 1270 electors collected merely by chance from an electorate of more than 8,000,000. The truth of this allegation can hardly be disputed; the
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inference is drawn therefrom that to substitute the authority of the electorate for the authority of the House of Commons and the House of Lords is to transfer the government of the country from the rule of intelligence to the rule of ignorance. This line of argument can be put in various shapes. It is, in whatever form it appears, the reasoning on which the most capable censors of the referendum rely. Oddly enough (though the matter admits of explanation) this line of reasoning is adopted at once by a thoughtful conservative, such as Maine, and by revolutionists who wish to force upon England, through the use of authoritative legislation, the ideals of socialism. Maine saw in the referendum a bar to all reasonable reforms. He impresses upon his readers that democracy is not in itself a progressive form of government, and expresses this view in words which deserve quotation and attention:
The delusion that democracy when it has once had all things put under its feet, is a progressive form of government, lies deep in the convictions of a particular political school; but there can be no delusion grosser. . . . All that has made England famous, and all that has made England wealthy, has been the work of minorities, sometimes very small ones. It seems to me quite certain that, if for four centuries there had been a very widely extended franchise and a very large electoral body in this country, there would have been no reformation of religion, no change of dynasty, no toleration of Dissent, not even an accurate Calendar. The threshing-machine, the power-loom, the spinning-jenny, and possibly the steam-engine, would have been prohibited. Even in our day, vaccination is in the utmost danger, and we may say generally that the gradual establishment of the masses in power is of the blackest omen for all legislation founded on scientific opinion, which requires tension of mind to understand it, and self-denial to submit to it.113
And he thence practically infers that democracy as it now exists in England would, combined with the referendum, be probably a death-blow to all reasonable reform.114 To Maine, in short, the referendum is the last step in the development of democracy, and his censure of the referendum is part of a powerful attack by an intellectual
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conservative on democratic government which he distrusted and abhorred. Now revolutionists who probably think themselves democrats have of recent years attacked the referendum on grounds which might have been suggested by Maine’s pages. The referendum, we are told by socialistic writers, will work steadily to the disadvantage of the Liberal Party.115 Would not, we are asked, the anti-reforming press exhaust itself in malignant falsehoods calculated to deceive the people? Such suggestions and others of the same quality may be summed up in an argument which from a socialistic point of view has considerable force. The people, it is said, are too stupid to be entrusted with the referendum; the questions on which the electors are nominally called upon to decide must never be put before them with such clearness that they may understand the true issues submitted to their arbitrament. The party machine, think our new democrats, may be made the instrument for foisting upon the people of England changes which revolutionary radicals or enthusiasts know to be reforms, but which the majority of the electorate, if they understood what was being done, might condemn as revolution or confiscation. The attacks of conservatives and the attacks of socialistic democrats to a certain extent balance one another, but they contain a common element of truth. The referendum is a mere veto. It may indeed often stand in the way of salutary reforms, but it may on the other hand delay or forbid innovations condemned by the weight both of the uneducated and of the educated opinion of England. Thus it is, to say the least, highly probable that, if the demand of votes for women were submitted to the present electorate by means of a referendum, a negative answer would be returned, and an answer of such decision as to check for years the progress or success of the movement in favour of woman suffrage. It must, in short, be admitted that a veto on legislation, whether placed in the hands of the King, or in the hands of the House of Lords, or of the House of Commons, or of the 8,000,000 electors, would necessarily work sometimes well and sometimes ill. It might, for example, in England forbid the enforcement or extension of the vaccination laws; it might forbid the grant of parliamentary
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votes to Englishwomen; it might have forbidden the passing of the Government of Ireland Act, 1914; it might certainly have forbidden the putting of any tax whatever on the importation of corn into the United Kingdom. Now observe that if you take any person, whether an Englishman or Englishwoman, he or she will probably hold that in some one or more of these instances the referendum would have worked ill, and that in some one or more of these instances it would have worked well. All, therefore, that can be conclusively inferred from the argument against the referendum is that the people’s veto, like any other veto, may sometimes be ill, and sometimes be well employed. Still it certainly would be urged by a fair-minded opponent of the referendum that there exists a presumption that the Houses of Parliament acting together will exhibit something more of legislative intelligence than would the mass of the electorate when returning their answer to a question put to them by the referendum. But a reasonable supporter of the referendum, while admitting that such a presumption may exist, will however maintain that it is of very slight weight. The Parliament Act gives unlimited authority to a parliamentary or rather House of Commons majority. The wisdom or experience