The post of Chief Whip is characteristically English. It is an undefined offshoot of the constitution. It is not mentioned in Sir Erskine May's “Parliamentary Practice.” It has a sporting origin—“whipper-in of foxhounds.”

Formerly, when a division was taken in the House of Commons, members on one side remained and were counted in the House. The other side went into the lobby and were counted on their return into the House. But in 1836 the present system was adopted. Members divide into Aye and No lobbies and are counted by tellers. These tellers were, and are, appointed by the Speaker, from men identified with each side of the question at issue.

Obviously, the Government of the day was primarily concerned in the result of divisions on critical or important occasions. Before going to a division it was essential to know as accurately as possible what was the general sense of their supporters. The flock had to be herded in the fullest strength possible.

The tendency of all government is toward bureaucracy. The government official is inclined to exaggerate the importance of his office. He is constantly tempted to expand its scope. He is properly jealous of his authority. He looks askance upon the activities of other officials who seem to be trespassing upon his ground. In his construction of the law he is prone to insist upon the letter which killeth but to overlook the spirit which giveth life.

I think that this tendency is inevitable. It is inseparable from zeal and pride, and these qualities are essential to successful administration. Where, however, the enterprise is a vast one, as in government, or as in a great business organization, these tendencies, if left uncontrolled, are likely to inflict serious injury upon the service. There will be constant friction among the various subdivisions of the particular department. At times the activities of one will neutralize the activities of the other. A set of arbitrary rules is likely to be evolved which will vex everyone who comes in contact with the particular bureau. The original purpose of the creation of the bureau is finally lost sight of, and it is likely to seem to those who direct it an end and not a means.

The American viewing present-day European governments is more than ordinarily perplexed. He knew that states, great and small, had adopted nineteenth-century constitutions in conscious imitation of free British parliamentary self-government. The four ancient governmental systems associated with the names Romanoff, Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, and Othman, which were based on autocracy, with or without a claim of divine sanction, with or without a record of efficient service—these he had seen the Great War bring down to cataclysmic ruin. Perhaps he had thought of that war as democracy's righteous, forceful defense of itself against the aggression of imperialism. He had seen, if not shared, high hopes of a reconstruction, wherein free states should cooperate in a league of peace, and rival each other only peacefully, in perfecting democratic constitutions and the mechanisms of individual liberty and social order.

The Interparliamentary Union, an organization composed of delegates from some thirty legislatures scattered at large in the world, voted at its twenty-third conference, which was held at Washington and Ottawa during October, 1925, a striking resolution. A plenary session of the conference, having before it a carefully prepared report of a distinguished Swiss national councillor, debated this report and the resolution which it proposed; and at the end of the discussion, the conference unanimously adopted the resolution. The subject of the resolution was “the parliamentary system, the present crisis in that system, and its remedies”; and the resolution itself spoke of “the crisis through which the parliamentary system is now passing in almost every country, the criticism, and even the attacks, to which it is subjected from the most diverse quarters.”

Legislative Apportionment. The problem of the representation of large cities or metropolitan districts in state legislatures is becoming increasingly difficult and acute. The number of states in which a single center of population is with each census approaching a size which entitles it, on the basis of its inhabitants, to a controlling proportion of the representatives in the state legislature grows steadily as the current of population toward the city continues to flow. Certain states have dealt with this situation by frankly and openly discriminating against these metropolitan areas by specifying that they shall never be entitled to more than a fixed percentage of the representatives. The constitutions of certain other states do not permit this, however, but require that after each decennial census a total fixed number of members in the legislative body shall be allotted equally to districts of equal population. If this is done the metropolis is guaranteed under each apportionment the increase in representation to which its proportionate increase in population entitles it. And the answer volunteered to this problem by several state legislatures has been steadily to refuse to reapportion the state.