BRITISH POLITICS.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20496, 15 March 1932, Page 6

BRITISH POLITICS.

THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM. PROFESSOR MURRAY'S VIEWS. (FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON. February 2. Professor Gilbert Murray, who delivered the Aneurin Williams Memorial lecture in London, said that during soni 40 years' interest in politics he ha never yet been represented in 1 arliamcnt by a member in w hom , he^ ad . c „°": fidence, or whom he should dreamed of choosing as a political leader or. guide. He did not think that this was accidental, he added, it was a natural result of the system. Although in nation after nation it had failed to maintain itself, Parliamentary Government, when once well rooted, with all its faults, seemed to be the best system yet discovered. To save Parliamentary Government, the system of voting must satisfy lit least three conditions. It must be fair —not, of course, ideally fair, but roughly and decently fair; it must be stable and not subject to violent oscillations; and it must give the more thoughtful, rightful elements of the population a fair chance of being represented in Parliament. By all these tests the present system used in Great Britain failed. It was not fair. The result of the last election was that a million Ministerialists got 3-1 seats and a million Labour voters seven. What would have happened if the result had been the other way about? Might it not have meant a revolution to the Left? "I do not want," continued Professor Murray, "to pronounce any opiniou whether such a revolution would be right or wrong, nor yet whether the Beave'rbrook policy of extreme Nationalism and Imperialism is right or wrong; I only appeal to all reasonable citizens to agree in Heaven's name that we ought not to be plunged into revolution unless the country really wishes it." Next, he proceeded, the system should be stable—when gusts of passion or terror sweep the "country, Parliament should not be more violently affected than the people as a whole. With Proportional Representation there would have been a large vative majority in the famous Khaki election of the Boer War; in the Coupon election of 1919; the Red Letter election of 1924, and the hitherto unnamed election of 1931; and rightly so. But there would not have been a complete submergence of all Liberal or moderate opinion, nor yet a general annihilation of those public men who dared oppose „the flood. Such men were of th.e greatest value in Parliament. But under the present system they were apt to be turned out of public- life just when they were wanted most. "The same cannot be said for. all the witnesses one of whom deposed to something she did not sco—the result no doubt of after-thought and imagination. "It seems to me," continued the Coroner, "that Cook was travelling too fast under the conditions obtaining on the road. With so much traffic about he should have been responsible for taxing the utmost care. It may be —I don't say that it is so—that further proceedings may have to be taken, but I do not think they would be of *o grave a nature as one might have anticipated before hearing the evidence of Cook, Hickmott, and Candy."