Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/285

 candidates of such exceptional honesty of purpose as the admiral. His high courage, resolute purpose, and lofty enthusiasm would be a very clear addition of strength to the flaccid Radicalism of St. Stephen's. His failings outside Parliament would very closely resemble virtues inside.

Admiral Maxse's name is closely identified with several questions of vital interest to the nation, more particularly with electoral reform, land-tenure reform, religious equality, national education, the enfranchisement of the agricultural laborers, and woman suffrage. He has probed the inequalities of our representative system to the core; and if there be any one who still believes in the delusion that this is a self-governed land, and has any desire to know the naked truth, I cannot do better than recommend him to peruse Maxse's pamphlet, "Whether the Minority of Electors should be represented by a Majority in the House of Commons." Thirty thousand electors, he shows, in small constituencies, elect forty-four members of Parliament, while five hundred and forty-six thousand in large boroughs return only thirty-five. Thirty thousand electors thus outvote five hundred and forty-six thousand. At the last general election eighteen thousand electors of Manchester, who recorded their votes in favor of a candidate, failed to return him; while eighteen thousand electors, living in petty boroughs or rural constituencies, seated no fewer than thirty honorable members! Fourteen thousand electors in Buckinghamshire return eight members; fifty thousand in Lambeth have but two allotted to them.

Commenting on such stupendous anomalies, the admiral indignantly observes, "The splendid outcome