Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/174

 elector has named, who shall require the vote to make up his quota, and with whom the vote therefore rests. In order to give to the elector the option and the means of thus transferring his vote, the form of the document must enable him to vote, as he now can, for the single candidate, whom he may select, or to go on farther, and provide for as many contingencies as he may think proper, within the scope which the gazetted lists allow him. It will be found that such a power is not only convenient and necessary for its immediate object, but that it is calculated to be of vast benefit in other respects, especially that of bringing to the duty of voting reflection, judgment, and moderation.

In setting out the form of the voting-paper, it is scarcely necessary to state that no vote can be ultimately effectual for more than one candidate. The inconsistencies and absurdities of our system of election, both for parliamentary and local councillors, have been lately pointed out. They have been the growth of chance and accident, and caused by the inevitable absence of any presiding design. The number of members for whom one vote may be given, on a parliamentary election, varies, in difierent places, from one to four. Whatever the franchise may be, whatever may be the direction in which it is extended, it should be a canon of the reform, that when the franchise is conferred,—the right of assisting in the appointment of a representative once given to any individual, — the value of his single vote, wherever be his dwelling, or his property, shall be the same as that of every other vote. There is nothing in the accidental circumstance that an elector resides, or has property, in a county, or city, or town represented by a plurality of members, which should