66 66 It belong, summing up my opinion on the Electoral Reform Bill in the following words :-"This system may be said to "be an improved Scrutin de Liste, which preserves the char"acter of a collective election, without the inconvenience of having too long a list or too large a Constituency. "is equally free from the evils of a too extended district, "and from the immediate contact of elector and elected in "a narrow district, since the candidate is not quite a stranger to the electors, as in the Provincial Elections, "while yet not so bound up with them as in the uninominal Constituency, in which he cannot, without peril to himself, devote himself to the general interest instead of the "interests of a Commune, of a family, or even of one "individual. In this intermediate Constituency, the elector "is not subject to be surprised by an unknown candidate, as in the Provincial Elections, or to the corruption, which may prevail in the present Constituencies. The horizon now open to him is wider than heretofore, and he is able "to soar above private interests, though still not so high as in the Provincial Elections, where he may perchance "see nothing at all." 66 Before concluding I must examine one very important point. Does the Scrutin de Liste reproduce as its result the physiognomy of the electoral body in such a manner as to be a true and genuine representation of the country? It may do so, but on one condition, that is, that it be coupled with one of the systems that have been proposed to secure also the representation of minorities. That question, therefore, must be answered in the negative for the Scrutin de Liste of the French school, and only partially in the affirmative for the Scrutinio di Lista enacted by the Italian law. In the French Assembly, Gambetta said that the Scrutin d'Arrondissement is the image of the country in a broken mirror; one might have answered him that the Scrutin de Liste according to his system may have been the image of the country in an unbroken mirror, but that the image reproduced was a distorted one. The system of Proportional Representation seems to be unintelligible to the French Political Schools, which, save individual exceptions, be they Conservative, Liberal or Radical, are always metaphysical and doctrinaire. That system, on the only occasion on which it was proposed to the French Assembly, was rejected by an immense majority with scarcely even the honour of a discussion. Now, without that corrective, the Scrutin de Liste not only does not give to parties the importance they must have according to the number of votes which they can command in the country; it not only makes it impossible for some views to be represented; but it may entirely falsify the will of the nation by giving the majority in the House to those who are in a minority in the electoral body. And herein it deserves not only the severe sentence of Lamartine which I have quoted, but also that other of Laboulaye, who called it a mere 'mystification, unworthy of a free nation." The prevalence of minorities through greater ability and activity, is a phenomenon which we frequently see. Our great poet Giusti has wittily remarked: Che i più tirano i meno è verità Se i più trattiene inerzia o asinità. "That the many draw after them the few is indeed true, provided wisdom and virtue be with the many; but the few, my friend, draw after them the many, when the many are sluggards or fools." And this is only right. But an electoral system which of itself produces such an effect cannot bear the most elementary criticism, and that is quite sufficient for its condemnation without appeal. I therefore sum up my opinion thus. The Scrutinio di Lista tempered by the Proportional Representation of minorities, is by far preferable to the uninominal Constituency; the uninominal Consituency is preferable to the Scrutinio di Lista without that corrective. And the great Patriot, whose name is indissolubly connected with our glorious national resurrection, Count Cavour, declared himself favourable to the uninominal Constituency for the sole reason that the multiplicity of circumscriptions affords greater facilities for minorities being represented. It may suffice to prove the fallacy of the Scrutin de Liste pure and simple, if we cast a glance at the Presidential election in the United States of America, which is carried out on that system by the selection of the electors in the second degree. In 1860 Lincoln obtained 1,867,000 votes from universal suffrage and 180 from the Presidential Constituency, and was proclaimed elected, whilst his competitor with 2,801,00 votes from the universal suffrage had only 123 from the Presidential Constituency. Lincoln, therefore, with a minority of supporters in the country obtained a majority in the Presidential Constituency. Moreover, of the competitors with Lincoln, Douglas, who had a number of votes almost equal to his, that is 1,376,000, had only 12 electors in his favour; while Breckenridge, with 836,000, had 72; and Bell, with 590,000, had 39. So in 1875, instead of Tilden, who had a majority of votes in the country, Hayes was elected, who had obtained a minority; and so also in 1880, General Garfield had two-thirds of the votes of the Presidential Constituency, although in the country he had only a majority of 3,400 out of 9,000,000 of voters. How this happens is very simply explained. The majority of one vote in the State of New York suffices to secure thirty-five representatives, while one of twenty thousand in Colorado would secure only one. And if by a practically impossible hypothesis it should be attempted as a remedy to create Constituencies all equal, the disproportion would not be avoided, because a difference would always result from the majorities and minorities of each Constituency; and the minorities of the greater number of Constituencies joined to the majority of the smaller number may form the majority of the nation. Hence we have on one hand the danger that the real majority may have a smaller number of representatives, as on the other hand it may have an excessive number of them, when, by the distribution of its votes, it can secure a preponderance of votes, however small, yet in a great number of Constituencies. I say, then, that this alone would suffice to demonstrate the necessity of Proportional Representation of parties, besides all the other reasons alleged by its supporters, many of which have been set forth at length by Stuart Mill in his work on Representative Government. I will here mention three special advantages which that system offers to Italy. Firstly, it removes one of the principal motives of the hitherto numerous abstentions. Secondly, it renders useless the personal coalitions among candidates of different parties, which certainly do not improve the national character. And, thirdly, it takes away from the Parliamentary parties all local colour, by rendering impossible what does now happen, and would still more frequently happen with the extending of the Constituencies, which is, that some Provinces have all their members belonging to the Left, others all belonging to the Right. It has been calculated that if the Scrutinio di Lista had been enacted at the time of the elections of 1876, no member of the Right would have been elected in Southern and Insular Italy. And, again, no member of the secessionist Left would have been elected in 1880 in North and Central Italy, so that we might have seen in the Italian Parliament two parties with a very pronounced local character. The maxim of the representation of minorities was loudly proclaimed in the Italian Parliament. One of the most. prominent members of the Radical party, Signor Bovio, to combat it, said :-" If minorities wish to be represented, let "them become majorities." That sentence some thought contained a deep meaning; in my opinion it is devoid of all meaning, for if a minority becomes a majority, that can only happen by the majority becoming in its turn a minority, and therefore the state of the question remains still the same. Against the representation of minorities there rose, besides the Radical party, Signor Crispi, the chief of the so-called Historical Left, a designation of which on this occasion it showed itself well worthy, for by combating a principle which is the offspring of the most recent studies and of the latest evolution of sound Constitutional principles, it has given evidence of having halted at the antiquated premises of the Constitutional doctrinism of twenty or thirty years ago. Crispi is certainly one of the most important political men in the Italian Parliament, but his speech on that occasion was erroneous in its calculations, inexact in its historical comparisons, and weak in its arguments, which were easily combated by a masterly speech of Minghetti, and by that also of the young member Genala, who has made an active propaganda, and written a much valued book in favour of the representation of minorities. Still, although the maxim of the representation of minorities has been adopted by the Italian Parliament, its application was made in a very homœopathic dose. The minority had at first proposed to apply it to the Constituencies which return four members, and the Commission, who at first wanted to extend it to those also which return only three, yielded at the eleventh hour, with reprehensible weakness, to the pressure of the Extreme Left, and its application was limited to the colleges returning five members, which are thirty-three out of one hundred and |