[!lemma=only]? [tag=□]
[!lemma=only]? [tag=TO]
A student may ask what is the good of insisting upon the absolute sovereignty of Parliament in relation to the Dominions when it is admitted that Parliament never gives , outside the United Kingdom , and probably never will give , full effect to this asserted and more or less fictitious omnipotence . Thus to say that the King appoints the Ministry is untrue ; it is also , of course , untrue to say that he creates courts of justice ; but these two untrue statements each bear a very different relation to actual facts . The new convention , which all but compels a Ministry defeated at a general election to resign office , is , on the face of it , an acknowledgment that the electorate constitutes politically the true sovereign power.65 It also tends to convert a general election into a decision that a particular party shall hold office for the duration of the newly-elected Parliament and , in some instances , into the election of a particular statesman as Prime Minister for that period.66 This new convention is the sign of many minor political or constitutional changes , such , for example , as the introduction of the habit , quite unknown not only to statesmen as far removed from us as Pitt , but to Peel , to Lord John Russell , or to Lord Palmerston , of constantly addressing , not only when out of office but also when in office , speeches to some body of electors and hence to the whole country . Third Objection Proportional representation , just because it aims at the representation of opinions rather than of persons , tends to promote the existence in the House of Commons of numerous party groups and also fosters the admitted evil of log-rolling . But , as I have throughout insisted , the great recommendation of the referendum is that it tends to correct , or at lowest greatly to diminish , the worst and the most patent evils of party government . This argument may best be put in its full strength if it be placed , as it often is , in the form of a question : Was it reasonable that Florence Nightingale should not have possessed the right to vote for a member of Parliament when even in her day her footman or her coachman , if he had happened to be a ten-pound householder , or a forty-shilling freeholder , might have exercised a right denied to a lady who , as appears from her biography , possessed many statesmanlike qualities , who did in fact in some lines of action exert more political power than most M.P.s , and who always exercised power disinterestedly , and generally exercised it with admitted benefit to the country ? No one can rate more highly than myself the success with which a complicated system is worked by the members of the Swiss Council or , to use expressions familiar to Englishmen , by the Swiss Cabinet . Subsequent appointments of judges , at both federal and state levels , tended to be of persons who the nominating official expected would support his positions in court . In other words , federalism tends to pass into nationalism .