Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/175

 entitle him to vote for more candidates than if he lived in a place which returned only one member. There is sufficient reason for giving a great community more weight in the Legislature than a small one; but there is no reason why a single elector, dwelling in the great community, should have more or less weight than a single elector in the small one. A delusion is, in truth, fostered in many minds, by the present mode of election, which gives to one in London votes for three candidates and in Finsbury or Birmingham for two, as if it were a larger privilege than that of those who in smaller boroughs can vote for one only, while the real electoral power at present is plainly far less in the greater constituency. It should always be borne in mind that it is the number of voters who can elect a representative, and not the number of votes which any one can give, that is the true test of electoral weight. One of the first objections commonly uttered by those who have but superficially looked at the proposed system is that persons who are accustomed to a vote, which may contribute to elect several candidates, will not consent to be reduced to a vote that can elect but one. What they have to be persuaded of is, that the certain and unerring force which they may employ in the choice of one representative invests every single vote with incalculably more electoral power than any multiplication of the votes on individual electors will confer without it. This gain to the electors of a self-governed nation was forcibly expressed by the late Prevost-Paradol:—"Proportional Representation is to our mind as evident and almost as important an improvement upon the majority system of representative government now in vogue, as the application of steam has been to indus-