Parliament now exercises were then vested in the King. But this error is
not confined to the proportionalists, most of whom, indeed, however
inconsistently, favour party government. It is also put forth as an
argument by those who lay all the blame of present evils on the party
system, and who think that all sections should work together as one
united party. Take, for instance, the diatribe of Mr. W.S. Lilly on "The
Price of Party Government" in the _Fortnightly Review_ for June, 1900.
Mr. Lilly complains bitterly that the infallible oracle in politics
to-day is "the man in the street." He asserts that all issues are
settled "by counting heads, in entire disregard of what the heads
contain." His bugbear is the extension of the franchise. "Representative
institutions, for example," he asks, "what do they represent? The true
theory unquestionably is that they should represent all the features of
national life, all the living forces of society, all that makes the
country what it is; and that in due proportion. And such was the
Constitution of England up to the date of the first _Parliamentary
Reform Act_. Its ideal was, to use the words of Bishop Stubbs, 'an
organized collection of the several orders, states, and conditions of
men, recognized as possessing political power.'" Could anything be more
ridiculous? Political power is to be apportioned in the nineteenth
century as it was in the fourteenth century! The people are to be always
governed by their superiors! Mr. Lilly continues:--"It appears to me
that the root of the falsification of our parliamentary system by the
party game is to be found in the falsification of our representative
system by the principle of political atomism. Men are not equal in
rights any more than they are equal in mights. They are unequal in
political value. They ought not to be equal in political power."

The mistake here is in the premise. Has not the demagogue more power
than his dupes, or the Member of Parliament more power than the elector?