Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. A. V. Dicey
of the House of Lords is in matters of permanent legislation thereby deprived of all influence. A House of Commons majority acts more and more exclusively under the influence of party interests. It is more than possible that the referendum might, if introduced into England, increase the authority of voters not deeply pledged to the dogmas of any party. The referendum, as I have dealt with it, cannot, be it always borne in mind, enforce any law to which at any rate the House of Commons has not consented. It has the merits as also the weaknesses of a veto. Its strongest recommendation is that it may keep in check the inordinate power now bestowed on the party machine.
The Main Argument in Favour of the Referendum
The referendum is an institution which, if introduced into England, would be strong enough to curb the absolutism of a party possessed of a parliamentary majority. The referendum is also an institution which in England promises some considerable diminution in the most
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patent defects of party government. Consider first the strength of the referendum. It lies in the fact that the people’s veto is at once a democratic institution, and, owing to its merely negative character, may be a strictly conservative institution. It is democratic, for it is in reality, as also on the face thereof, an appeal to the people. It is conservative since it ensures the maintenance of any law or institution which the majority of the electors effectively wish to preserve. Nor can any one who studies the present condition of English society seriously believe that, under any system whatever, an institution deliberately condemned by the voice of the people can for a long time be kept in existence. The referendum is, in short, merely the clear recognition in its negative form of that sovereignty of the nation of which under a system of popular government every leading statesman admits the existence. But the mere consonance of a given arrangement with some received doctrine, such as “the sovereignty of the people,” must with a thoughtful man carry little weight, except in so far as this harmony with prevalent ideas promises permanence to some suggested reform or beneficial institution. Let us then consider next the tendency of the referendum to lessen the evils of the party system. An elected legislature may well misrepresent the will of the nation. This is proved by the constant experience of Switzerland and of each of the States which make up the American Commonwealth. This danger of misrepresenting the will of the nation may exist even in the case of an honest and a fairly-elected legislative body. This misrepresentation is likely or even certain to arise where, as in England, a general election comes more and more to resemble the election of a given man or a given party to hold office for five years. Partisanship must, under such a system, have more weight than patriotism. The issues further to be determined by the electors will year by year become, in the absence of the referendum, more complicated and confused. But in the world of politics confusion naturally begets intrigue, sometimes coming near to fraud. Trust in elected legislative bodies is, as already noted, dying out under every form of popular government. The party machine is regarded with suspicion, and often with detestation, by public-spirited citizens of the United States. Coalitions, log-rolling, and parliamentary intrigue are in England
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diminishing the moral and political faith in the House of Commons. Some means must, many Englishmen believe, be found for the diminution of evils which are under a large electorate the natural, if not the necessary, outcome of our party system. The obvious corrective is to confer upon the people a veto which may restrict the unbounded power of a parliamentary majority. No doubt the referendum must be used with vigilance and with sagacity. Perpetual watchfulness on the part of all honest citizens is the unavoidable price to be paid for the maintenance of sound popular government. The referendum futher will promote or tend to promote among the electors a kind of intellectual honesty which, as our constitution now works, is being rapidly destroyed. For the referendum will make it possible to detach the question, whether a particular law, e.g. a law introducing some system of so-called tariff reform, shall be passed, from the totally different question, whether Mr. A or Mr. B shall be elected for five years Prime Minister of England. Under the referendum an elector may begin to find it possible to vote for or against a given law in accordance with his real view as to its merits or demerits, without being harassed through the knowledge that if he votes against a law which his conscience and his judgment condemns, he will also be voting that A, whom he deems the fittest man in England to be Prime Minister, shall cease to hold office, and that B, whom the elector happens to distrust, shall at once become Prime Minister. And no doubt the referendum, if ever established in England, may have the effect, which it already has in Switzerland, of making it possible that a minister or a Cabinet, supported on the whole by the electorate, shall retain office honestly and openly, though some proposal made by the Prime Minister and his colleagues and assented to by both Houses of Parliament is, through the referendum, condemned by the electorate. These possible results are undoubtedly repulsive to men who see nothing to censure in our party system. But, as I have throughout insisted, the great recommendation of the referendum is that it tends to correct, or at lowest greatly to diminish, the worst and the most patent evils of party government.
No effort has been made by me to exhaust the arguments against or in favour of the referendum. My aim in this Introduction has been
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to place before my readers the strongest argument against and also the strongest argument in favour of the introduction of the referendum into the constitution of England. It is certain that no man, who is really satisfied with the working of our party system, will ever look with favour on an institution which aims at correcting the vices of party government. It is probable, if not certain, that any one, who realises the extent to which parliamentary government itself is losing credit from its too close connection with the increasing power of the party machine, will hold with myself that the referendum judiciously used may, at any rate in the case of England, by checking the omnipotence of partisanship, revive faith in that parliamentary government which has been the glory of English constitutional history.
CONCLUSIONS
1. The sovereignty of Parliament is still the fundamental doctrine of English constitutionalists. But the authority of the House of Lords has been gravely diminished, whilst the authority of the House of Commons, or rather of the majority thereof during any one Parliament, has been immensely increased. Now this increased portion of sovereignty can be effectively exercised only by the Cabinet which holds in its hands the guidance of the party machine. And of the party which the parliamentary majority supports, the Premier has become at once the legal head and, if he is a man of ability, the real leader.116 This gradual development of the power of the Cabinet and of the Premier is a change in the working of the English constitution. It is due to at least two interconnected causes. The one is the advance towards democracy resulting from the establishment, 1867 to 1884, of Household Suffrage; the other is the increasing rigidity of the party system. The result of a state of things which is not yet fully recognised inside or outside Parliament is that the Cabinet, under a leader who has fully studied and mastered the arts of modern parliamentary warfare, can defy, on matters of the highest importance, the possible or certain will of the nation. This growth of the authority obtained by
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the men who can control the party machine is the more formidable if we adopt the view propounded by the ablest of the critics of the Government of England, and hold with Lowell that party government has been for generations not the accident or the corruption but, so to speak, the very foundation of our constitutional system.117 The best way to measure the extent of a hardly recognised alteration in the working of parliamentary government in England is to note the way in which a system nominally unchanged worked in the days of Palmerston, i.e. from 1855 to 1865, that is rather less than sixty years ago. He became Premier in 1855. He was in 1857 the most popular of Prime Ministers. After a contest with a coalition of all his opponents, a dissolution of Parliament gave to the old parliamentary hand a large and decisive majority. For once he lost his head. He became for the minute unpopular in the House of Commons. A cry in which there was little of real substance was raised against him amongst the electors. In 1858 he resigned office; in 1859 another dissolution restored to office the favourite of the people. He remained Premier with the support