the election to the House of Commons of the trained representative who has been successful in the parliament of his trade.
Such a suggestion misses the whole moral of Trade Union history. The cotton or coal -mining official repre- sentative succeeds in influencing his own trade assembly because he has mastered the technical details of all the business that comes before it ; because his whole life has been one long training for the duties which he has to discharge ; because, in short, he has become a professionals expert in ascertaining and representing the desires of his constituents and in bringing about the conditions of their fulfilment. But transport this man to the House of- Commons, and he finds himself confronted with facts and problems as foreign to his experience and training as his VOL. I D
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own business would be to the banker or the country gentle- man. What the working class will presently recognise is that the duties of a parliamentary representative constitute as much a new business to the Trade Union official as the duties of a general secretary are to the ordinary ftiechanic. When workmen desire to be as efficiently represented in the Parliament of the nation as they are in their own trade assemblies, they will find themselves compelled to establish a class of expert parliamentary representatives, just as they have had to establish a class of expert trade officials.
We need not consider in any detail what effect an influx of " labor members " of this new type would probably have upon the British House of Commons. Any one who has watched the deliberations of the Coal or the Cotton Parlia- ment, or the periodical revising committees of the other great unions, will have been impressed by the disinclination of the professional representative to mere talk, his impatience of dilatory procedure, and his determination to " get the business through" within working hours. Short speeches, rigorous closure, and an almost extravagant substitution of printed matter for lengthy " front bench " explanations render these assemblies among the most efficient of demo- cratic bodies.^
More important is it to consider in what respects, judging from Trade Union analogies, the expert professional representative will differ from the unpaid politician to whom the middle and upper classes have hitherto been accustomed. We have already described how in the Trade Union world the representative has a twofold function, neither part of which may be neglected with impunity. He makes it just as much his business to ascertain and express the real desires of his constituents as he does to control and direct the operations of the civil servants of his trade. With the
1 These representative assemblies present a great contrast to the Trade Union Congress, as to which see the subsequent chapter on " The Method qI Legal Enactment."
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entrance into the House of Commons of men of this type, the work of ascertaining and expressing the wishes of the constituencies would be much more deliberately pursued than at present. The typical member of Parliament to-day attend? to such actual expressions of opinion as reach him from his constituency in a clear and definite form, but regards it as no part of his work actively to discover what the silent or inarticulate electors are vaguely desiring. He visits his constituency at rare intervals, and then only to expound his own views in set speeches at public meetings, whilst his personal intercourse is almost entirely limited to persons of his own class or to political wire-pullers. Whatever may be his intentions, he is seldom in touch with any but the middle or upper class, together with that tiny section of all classes to whom " politics " is of constant interest. Of the actual grievances and "dim in- articulate " aspirations of the bulk of the people, the lower middle and the wage-earning class, he has practically no conception. When representation of working-class opinion becomes a profession, as in the Trade Union world, we see a complete revolution in the attitude of the representative towards his constituents. iTo fiad-QUt,^iat his constituents desire becomes an essential paxt-oLhis vrorlc.) "Ifwill not do to wait until they write to him, for the working-man is slow to put pen to paper. Hence the professional Trade Union representative takes active steps to learn what the silent members- are thinking. He spends his whole time, when not actually in session, in his constituency. He makes few set speeches at public gatherings, but he is diligent in attending branch meetings, and becomes an attentive listener at local committees. At his office he is accessible to every one of his constituents. It is, moreover, part of the regular routine of such a functionary to be constantly communicating with every one of his constituents by means of frequent circulars on points which he believes to be of special interest to them. If, therefore, the professional representative, as we know him in the Trade Union world, becomes a feature of
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the House of Commons, the future member of Parliament will feel himself not only the authoritative exponent of the votes of his constituents, but also their "London Correspondent," their parliamentary agent, and their expert adviser 1h all matters of legislation or general politics.^
It is impossible to forecast all the consequences that would follow from raising (or, as some would say, degrading) the parliamentary representative from an amateur to a pro- fessional. But among other things the whole etiquette of the situation would be changed. At present it is a point of honor in a member of Parliament not to express his constituents' desires when he conscientiously differs from them. To the " gentleman politician " the only alternative to voting as he himself thinks best is resigning his seat. This delicacy is unknown to any paid professional cigent The architect, solicitor, or permanent civil servant, after t endering his advice and supporting his views with all his expert authority, finally carries out whatever policy his employer commands. Thi s is also the view which the professional representative of the T rade Union world ta kes ot his own duties. It is his business not only to put before his constituents what he believes to be their best policy and to back up his opinion with all the argumentative power he can bring to bear, but also to put his entire energy into wrestling with what he conceives to be their ignorance, and to become for the time a vigorous propagandist of his own policy. But if, when he has done his best in this way, he fails to get a majority over to his view, he loyally accepts the decision and records his vote in accordance with his constituents' desires. We imagine that professional repre- sentatives of working-class opinion in the House of Commons would take the same course.^
' " Representatives ought to give light and leading to the people, just as the people give stimulus and momentum to their representatives."—J. Bryce, TH American Commonwealth (London, 1891), vol. i. p. 297.
It is interesting to notice that in the country in which the "sovereignty of
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This may at first seem to indicate a return of the pro- fessional representative to the position of a delegate. Trade Union experi ence points, however, to the very reverse. In the grggit ^majority of cases a constituency cannot be said to have any clear and decided views on particular*^ projects. What th ey ask from their representative is that he shal l act in the manner which, in his opinion, will best serve to promote the irgeneral desires. It is only in particular instances, usually when some well-intentioned proposal entails im- mediately inconvenient results, that a wave of decided opinion spreads through a working-class constituency. It is exactly in cases of this kind that a propagandist campaign by a professional debater, equipped with all the facts, is of the greatest utility. Such a campaign would be the very last thing that a member of Parliament of the present type would venture upon if he thought that his constituents were against him. He would feel that the less the points of difference were made prominent, the better for his own.- safety. But once it came to be under^bod that the final command of the constituency would beWobeyed, the repre- sentative would run no risk of losing his seat, merely because he did his best to convert his constituents. Judging from^ Trade Union experience he would, in nine cases out Cff Ten, succeed~in converting them to His own view, and thus perform a valuable ~peeg" of "political education. In the tenth " case the campaigri would have been no less educa- tional, though in another way ; and, whichever
