The Question of an Electorate.

IN the course of the article, to which we have referred at some length in our leading article, the Englishman writes:-“A further difficulty in the way of the Congress proposals is that not only does the Congress demand that its proposals shall be accepted and made effective forthwith, but there is no electorate in existence that can be regarded as representative of the people, which is a necessity before a Government can be described as 'responsible,' and consequently the Congress proposals, if carried out at once, would not result in responsible government, but would merely hand over the control of executives to a legislature irresponsible to either His Majesty's Government or to the people.” This is a somewhat clumsy way of saying that responsible government presupposes the existence as a suitable electorate, and that  there is no electorate in existence at present. The first part of this statement we entirely accept; the second we entirely reject.