lastly, a vital interest in accomplishing their purpose. Whether their group loyalty and purpose should imply their endowment with an authority as primary and as absolute as that which the association called the State claims to possess is a question that is not material to this study. The important point is that these associations exist, have a purpose, are the embodiment of an interest and the repository of knowledge vital to the successful operation of the political institutions—so vital that the State consults them from time to time, and is subjected to pressure when its independent course threatens the stultification of their purposes. But the method of action is indirect, roundabout and often secret. The real rulers of a society, it has been said, are undiscoverable.1 Who can tell how far the private and sectional purposes masquerade as public policies owing to the connection between the associations and the various political parties? The action of such bodies as, say, the Federation of British Industries upon the course of government is perfectly legitimate in its object, and could, indeed, be made more fruitful for the State were it not obliged to act by secret manœuvres. It thus becomes suspect; in perfectly open and public deliberation it could perhaps gain public respect. The same holds good of the whole body of Trade Union organisations. Here is a union of men and women based upon productive activity, with regulations, purposes, constitutions and real knowledge of the vital processes of industry and working-class life, attained, after over a century of struggle, to a status which gives it the power and the practically acknowledged right to a positive say in the government of the State.2 Unless 1 Cf. John Chipman Gray, The Nature and Sources of the Law, ed. 1921, chapter ii., "The State." 2 S. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism, ed. 1920. "We may, in fact, not unfairly say that Trade Unionism has, in 1920, won its recognition by Parliament and the Government, by law and by custom, as a separate element in the community, entitled to distinct recognition as part of the social machinery of the State, its members being thus allowed to give-like the clergy in Convocation-not only their votes as it wishes to speak in impotence on the Opposition. benches and even there to prophesy to minds that are, as we have seen, deaf but obstinate-it must adopt the method, only sometimes successful as an instrument of creation, of the deputation to a Government department. Nor can we ignore the possibilities of the Chambers of Commerce. Of them a U.S. Government report1 says that they are in the United Kingdom frequently consulted by Governmental authorities in regard to the commercial interests of local character or matters affecting industries strongly represented in certain localities. They send deputations to Parliament, and submit memorials, suggestions and petitions to the Government. And, further, of the Association of Chambers of Commerce, the objects are. "(e) to prepare and promote in Parliament bills in the interest of the trade, commerce, manufacture, and shipping of the country, and to oppose measures which, in the opinion of the association, are likely to be injurious to those interests." Now, the perception of the activity and essential creativeness of such organisations led, in the years immediately preceding the war and during the war, ¿ to two movements, one theoretical, the other practical. Both were designed to bring together for direct, continuous deliberation, reconciliation and government in the central institutions of the country, persons actuated by the needs of their groups and fertile through immediate contact with the realities of their situation. In the hands of Mr. Cole,2 Guild Socialism, on its constitutional side, denied, with a jargon perhaps unnecessary, the efficacy of the old theory of representative citizens, but also their concurrence as an order or estate." See also Orton, Labour in Transition, passim. 1 Commercial Organisations in the United Kingdom, Special Agents Series, No. 102, Department of Commerce, pp. 9 and 10. 2 E.g. see Self-Government in Industry, 1918; Social Theory, 1920; Guild Socialism Re-stated, 1920. democracy in the modern State; and put in its place a system founded upon largely self-governing functional groups whose inter-relationship was left to be "coordinated" by a head organisation, a Congress of Guilds, composed of representatives from the various guilds (the self-governing functional groups). The necessary preliminary disintegration of the centralised State, the possibility of a too great growth of corporate conceit and professional conservatism, and the revolution in human nature necessary to the realisation of such a social theory, rendered it of little utility for immediate practical purposes. But the theorist pointed in an unmistakable direction, away from the undifferentiated citizen united by the bond of political party and towards the interest and knowledge lying in the group organisation. Then Mr. and Mrs. Webb constructed their Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain.1 We here consider but briefly the central institutions in their Commonwealth. Directed by long study of both producers' and consumers' associations towards a perception of the manifold character of human needs in society, the authors argue the amendment of "our institutions (so) as to sort out the issues" (p. 93). Their central theme becomes the impossibility of the member of Parliament representing the General Will-the representation for all purposes of the whole varied complex of emotions and desires that are combined in the individual elector. The vehicles of representative government, then, are to be two assemblies, both based upon election from territorial constituencies (“local inhabitancy "), though each with differently sized circumscriptions and with elections at different times. They both have the function of expressing the desires and formulating the will of the community as a whole. But they will have distinct spheres, which will 1 A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, 1920. wax or wane in magnitude and importance at different rates. The issues of national policy on which they will be elected will, from the outset, be markedly different; and they can, from the nature of the case, never be identical" (p. 121). The one assembly, the Political Parliament, much like the present House of Commons with its collective responsibility of the Cabinet, will have authority only in Foreign Affairs, the government of the Dominions, India, the Crown Colonies and Dependencies, National Defence and Justice. The second, the Social Parliament, working largely through Committees, and elected for a fixed period, will control the national, economic and social activities. These two Parliaments, it is said, are to be " COequal and independent, neither of them first or last." 1' Each in its own sphere has authority uncontrolled by the other. But it is conceded (p. 123) that the laws passed by the Political Parliament cannot fail to affect the administration of industries and services within the sphere of the Social Parliament and of the various bodies within its jurisdiction." But the practicability of this highly ingenious and important scheme breaks down in relation to finance.' Who shall tax, and how shall revenue be apportioned among the national services? The Social Parliament has a control over the aggregate (and therefore over the detail) of the budget compulsorily to be submitted by the Political Parliament. A final settlement depends, then, upon a joint session of the Houses: that is upon relative numbers. Or there is a referendum vote, or a double dissolution resulting in the election of new Parliaments. The latter solution clearly does away with the separate elections designed to meet the evils of the encyclopaedic representative. Then, finally (p. 127), "It may well be that our proposals do not adequately 1 Thus standing in contradiction to the experience of bicameral systems all over the world. provide for the different problem of the 'power of the purse. The joint session of the two Parliaments may become, not an exceptional expedient, but the regular way in which the year's estimates are voted." It is not too much to say of this final expedient that it would ultimately become a third and decisive Chamber over the body of which all political strife in the two legislatures and the country would take place. It would seem impossible, with the history of federal governments before us, to divide the powers functionally (territorial division is an easier, yet not a quite successful, expedient), and yet keep the authorities co-equal, independent, neither being first or last. The merit, then, plainly contained in the scheme, differentiation of functions, is not adequate to the acceptance of the difficulties, division of power, inherent in its realisation. But in its insistence on differentiation of functions the theory is fruitful. It suggests to the reader the establishment of a second House by the side of a Parliament retaining all its present functions but advised, criticised and helped out both in principles and details, by a body avowedly inferior to it in final power, but superior to it in representative character and the authority of its science. With this in mind we may turn to one practical result of the war, which served to bring into relief, if but for a passing moment, the wealth of creative suggestion which lies in the various organisations, and especially the great industrial organisations of the country-the National Industrial Conference of 1919. Its genesis may be traced in Hansard, beginning with the anxiety shown generally by all members, and particularly by Mr. Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, during the debates on the Royal Address in early February of 1919.1 Parliament was plainly deemed unfit to think out the necessary measures; even its sovereign authority to will the measures when put before it did not at that time 1 Parliamentary Debates, Official Report, 5th series, vol. 112. |