Mill's philosophy finds but little favour in many quarters of political
activity to-day, and the rejection of his philosophy has induced many to
regard his views on representative government as of little value. Even
so staunch an admirer as Lord Morley of Blackburn has underestimated the
importance of Mill's declaration, for, in a recent appreciation of the
philosopher[9] he declared that Mill "was less successful in dealing
with parliamentary machinery than in the infinitely more important task
of moulding and elevating popular character, motives, ideals, and steady
respect for truth, equity and common sense--things that matter a vast
deal more than machinery." Yet Lord Morley, in his attempt to make a
beginning with representative institutions in India, found that
questions of electoral machinery were of the first importance; that
they, indeed, constituted his chief difficulty; and he was compelled in
adjusting the respective claims of Hindus and Muhammadans to have
recourse to Mill's famous principle--the due representation of
minorities. Mill, as subsequent chapters will show, understood what Lord
Morley seems to have insufficiently recognized, that the development or
repression of growth in popular character, motives and ideals, nay, the
successful working of representative institutions themselves, depends in
a very considerable degree upon electoral machinery. Its importance
increases with every fresh assertion of democratic principles, and the
constitutional issues raised during the Parliaments of 1906, 1910, and
1911 must involve a revision of our electoral methods before a complete
solution is attained. The demand on the part of the House of Commons for
complete sovereignty must evoke a counter demand that that House shall
make itself fully representative.

_The rise of a new party._

But the relations which should subsist between the two Houses of