I came on to the Council without any previous municipal experience
except by observation, that I and other members equally inexperienced
had to take great responsibilities upon ourselves. For instance, I was
vice-chairman of the Finance Committee, and my Chairman also had had no
previous municipal experience; the Finance Committee was felt to be one
of the most important of the Committees of the Council, and the fact
that its Chairman and Vice-chairman were two new members itself was a
weakness."[13] Dr. Slater added that it took three years' hard work
before a councillor could really master the affairs of a London borough,
and that being so, is it surprising that it is becoming increasingly
difficult to secure the services of competent men for the work of our
local bodies? There undoubtedly are, on both aides, men of marked
ability and of whole-hearted devotion to public affairs, but if our
electoral system is such that, in the presence of an undiscriminating
swing of the pendulum, their ability and devotion count for nothing,
such men tend, albeit unwillingly, to withdraw from public life. The
influence of the permanent official increases; the authority of the
representative assembly declines.

_The root of the evil._

In parliamentary, in county, and in borough council elections alike we
trace the evils of defective electoral methods. These evils constitute a
complete answer to Lord Morley's criticism of Mill, that the latter laid
undue stress upon the efficiency of electoral machinery. Erected on a
false basis, those democratic institutions, on which so many hopes have
been built and on which our future still depends, are found full of
shortcomings due not only to the imperfections of human nature but to
the ill-working of a defective electoral system. The evils arising from
the latter cause can at least be remedied, and in remedying them we may