sympathy with either political party, and consequently rendering
obsolete all the arts of persuasion and deliberation, and reducing
parliamentary discussion to a struggle between obstruction on the one
side and closure on the other. The disproportion, moreover, between the
majority in the House and that in the country, which it is supposed to
represent, deprives the decisions of the House of much of their moral
authority. The rigid partisanship, and the essentially unrepresentative
character of the House of Commons as now constituted, leave it only the
credit which belongs to the instrument of a party, and deprive it of
that higher authority which should be the portion of the representatives
of the whole people. "Similarly Mr. Birrell, in speaking[11] of the
debate on the Women's Franchise Bill (12 July 1910), stated that he
rejoiced in the immunity on that occasion from the tyranny of Government
programmes and the obligation to all to think alike. "To think in
programmes," said he, "is Egyptian bondage, and works the sterilization
of the political intellect." And the nation suffers.

_The disfranchisement of minorities in bi-racial countries_

The extreme partizan who believes that political action is possible only
through a well-controlled organization may be affected but little by the
preceding arguments, and is, moreover, nearly always inclined to
postpone the consideration of any reform which might possibly deprive
his party of the advantages which he imagines it may obtain at the next
General Election. Yet cases have occurred when parties have sacrificed
their own advantage to the higher interests of the nation as a whole,
and national interests demand a change in electoral methods. For the
disfranchisement of minorities often gives rise to serious difficulties.
The elections which took place in the Transvaal and Orange River
Colony,[12] after the grant of self-government in 1906, show how racial