Representation in the House of Commons of the Twenty-First Parliament: Party and Province

ALTHOUGH, as Professor Norman Ward pointed out in The Canadian House of Commons: Representation,' statistical studies of the personnel of Parliament are not entirely satisfactory, they are none the less valuable to the political scientist for they help him to a better understanding of legislative bodies. The nature of a parliament is partly determined by the characteristics of its members. Thus the British House of Commons, with its membership broadly distributed in many occupations and its many trade union members, has a collective approach to contemporary problems of government different from that of the American Congress dominated by lawyers; and a legislative body with a large proportion of Roman Catholics will handle legislation on divorce in a manner quite different from that of a parliament composed almost entirely of Protestants.