weakening in the power and influence of representatives and
representative institutions. There has been a growing demand for
personality and initiative in elected persons. The press, which was once
entirely subordinate politically to parliamentary politics, adopts an
attitude towards parliament and party leaders nowadays which would have
seemed inconceivable insolence in the days of Lord Palmerston. And there
has been a vigorous agitation in support of electoral methods which are
manifestly calculated to subordinate "delegated" to "selected" men.

The movement for electoral reform in Great Britain at the present time
is one of quite fundamental importance in the development of modern
democracy. The case of the reformers is that heretofore modern democracy
has not had a fair opportunity of showing its best possibilities to the
world, because the methods of election have persistently set aside the
better types of public men, or rather of would-be public men, in favour
of mere party hacks. That is a story common to Britain and the American
democracies, but in America it was expressed in rather different terms
and dealt with in a less analytical fashion than it has been in Great
Britain. It was not at first clearly understood that the failure of
democracy to produce good government came through the preference of
"delegated" over "selected" men, the idea of delegation did in fact
dominate the minds of both electoral reformers and electoral
conservatives alike, and the earlier stages of the reform movement in
Great Britain were inspired not so much by the idea of getting a better
type of representative as by the idea of getting a fairer
representation of minorities. It was only slowly that the idea that
sensible men do not usually belong to any political "party" took hold.
It is only now being realized that what sensible men desire in a member
of parliament is honour and capacity rather than a mechanical loyalty to
a "platform." They do not want to dictate to their representative; they