Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/16

 a partial degree, into use amongst a people in whom the common current of political feeling and effort is so sluggish that an artificial stimulus must be employed to overcome its inert character. Yet, notwithstanding these hindrances, election by this method is effected without difficulty; it has facilitated the introduction to the national legislature of men of the highest character and intelligence, and is working out a corresponding improvement in the constituent bodies.

Secondly,—of the effect of the method on local elections. The system which really destroys the wholesome influences of locality is that which has long been, and still seems to be, most in favour with popular reformers,—grouping some boroughs, disfranchising others, here severing cities and counties, and there adding a score of villages to some small borough. The component parts are rather repelled than attracted by such undesired combinations. It is proposed to amend this anomalous patchwork, and allow the country spontaneously and without any arbitrary rule, to recover its natural subdivisions,—to recognize no right to any monopoly of electoral privilege, and in the place of disfranchisement to enfranchise not less than four hundred towns which are now shut out from any local action; and the proposed amendment is alleged to be destructive of the local character of our electoral system! To give the widest scope and inducement for local combination is to delocalize!

The apprehension of a disregard to localities is probably owing to the fact that the first step in the method is to add together all the votes given in the kingdom in order to compute the quota. Thence it is imagined that the whole kingdom is in some manner made one electorate, whereas, in truth, the computation is nothing more than a momentary operation to arrive at a common measure of the constituencies without any purpose of blending them together.

A doubt has, indeed, been expressed by one who has given much attention to the plan,—whether it is consistent with