Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/160

 price can be assigned. It is not measured by the general value of a vote; it is the special and inestimable value of those particular votes,—votes for which no others can be substituted,—for the want of which the support of all the wisdom of a senate cannot compensate. It is the pretium affectionis. Like the uncertain and fabulous value of a matchless painting, or work of art; or like the passion of love, which fills the mind and renders the creature of its regard the sole object in the world worthy of desire,—the voices of the small number of electors, on whose support the candidates may rely for their success, become more and more priceless, as the event becomes more and more critical and capricious. If the system—which is the result of accident—had been framed for the very purpose of giving full scope and encouragement to corruption, to provide opportunities for tempting and gratifying the needy and the base, it is scarcely possible to imagine that it could more effectually have completed the design. It is in the highest degree unjust towards the poorer electors to expose them to such influences as these. It cannot be expected that a small tradesman or artificer, labouring with difficulty to procure a subsistence for himself and his family, can reject a gift which is, perhaps, equal to his honest gains for a month. He sees no example of that self-abnegation on the part of men around him, much more wealthy than himself. It is not in the nature of things that he should rise above the temptations to which his neighbours generally succumb.

If the vote of every elector throughout the kingdom had, at all times, the same weight and the same value as a free electoral system would give to it, all these overpowering temptations would necessarily cease. No arbitrary or artificial importance would attach to the vote of any particular man; and any elector who would put a price upon his vote must deliberately seek a market in which he can dispose of it. The number of the bribed would be reduced to the compara-