of this chapter.

On a more important occasion, when replying to an influential deputation
of members of Parliament and others,[10] Mr. Asquith, with all the
responsibility which attaches to the words of a Prime Minister, made
this further statement: "I have said in public before now, and am
therefore only repeating an opinion which I have never ceased to hold,
namely, that there can be no question in the mind of any one familiar
with the actual operation of our constitutional system that it permits,
and I might say that it facilitates--but it certainly permits--a
minority of voters, whether in the country at large or in particular
constituencies, to determine the representation--the relative
representation in the one case of the whole nation, and the actual
representation in the other case of the particular
constituency--sometimes in defiance of the opinions and wishes of the
majority of the electors. The moment you have stated that as a fact
which cannot be disputed, and it cannot be contradicted by any one, you
have pointed out a flaw of a most serious character, and some might say
of an almost fatal character, when your constitutional and Parliamentary
system appears at the bar of judgment upon the issue whether or not it
does from the democratic point of view really carry out the first
principles of representative government. I therefore agree that it is
impossible to defend the rough and ready method which has been hitherto
adopted as a proper or satisfactory explanation of the representative
principle. It is not merely, as more than one speaker has pointed out,
that under our existing system a minority in the country may return a
majority of the House of Commons, but what more frequently happens, and
what I am disposed to agree is equally injurious in its results, is that
you have almost always a great disproportion in the relative size of the
majority and minority in the House of Commons as compared with their