Indeed, there are some who contend that we ought frankly to accept this development and universalise it, basing our political organisation upon what they describe (in a blessed, Mesopotamic phrase) as "functional representation." The doctrine seems to have, for some minds, a strange plausibility. But is it not plain that it could not be justly carried out? Who could define or enumerate the "functions" that are to be represented? If you limit them to economic functions (as, in practice, the advocates of this doctrine do), will you provide separate representation, for example, for the average-adjusters--a mere handful of men, who nevertheless perform a highly important function? But you cannot thus limit functions to the economic sphere without distorting your representation of the national mind and will. If you represent miners merely as miners, you misrepresent them, for they are also Baptists or Anglicans, dog-fanciers, or lovers of Shelley, prize-fighters, or choral singers. The notion that you can represent the mind of the nation on a basis of functions is the merest moonshine. The most you can hope for is to get a body of 700 men and women who will form a sort of microcosm of the more intelligent mind of the nation, and trust to it to control your Government. Such a body will consist of men who follow various trades. But the conditions under which they are chosen ought to be such as to impress upon them the duty of thinking of the national interest as a whole in the first instance, and of their trade interests only as they are consistent with that. The fundamental danger of functional representation is that it reverses this principle, and impresses upon the representative the view that his trade is his politics. But it is useless to deplore or condemn a tendency unless you see how it can be checked. Why has this representation of economic interests become so strong? Because Parliament is the arena in which important industrial problems are discussed and settled. It is not a very good body for that purpose. If we had a National Industrial Council charged, not with the final decision, but with the most serious and systematic discussion of such problems, they would be more wisely dealt with. And, what is quite as important, such a body would offer precisely the kind of sphere within which the representation of interests as such would be altogether wholesome and useful; and, once it became the main arena of discussion, it would satisfy the demand for interest-representation, which is undermining the character of Parliament. In other words, the true alternative to functional representation in Parliament is functional devolution under the supreme authority of Parliament.