stituencies, will not survive. Reform of the electoral procedure will enable a large group of independent men—independent of the large parties—to enter Parliament, and the removal of the Irish and other Members, who concentrate on a single issue and are willing to traffic on other issues, will reduce the old majorities. I do not doubt that fresh complications will arise. The weakness of proportional representation is that it will certainly lead to a number of sectarian groups. “We Catholics” will, of course, return Catholic Members, ready to sell their votes on various issues in the interest of the sect; and the Baptists and Methodists, and so on, will be tempted to retort. We shall have a teetotal group, and a Puritan group, and an anti-wallpaper group, etc. We must hope that the sterner education of the electorate will secure that these trivialities do not endanger grave national interests. The dissolution of the old Conservative party will leave the Liberal party unable to defend its abuses; it will have no opportunity of collusion or retaliation. So we may have in time a political machine—a body of men, appointing their own leaders, soberly chosen by each 100,000 of the population, regarding Parliament as a grave national council, not a theatre for the display of wit and rhetoric—which will effectively carry out the will of an advancing people and enlist the interest of the most thoughtful.
I am in all this assuming that sex-barriers and privileges will be entirely abolished, but I prefer
