Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/182

 majority so compact as to be enabled wholly to despise and condemn the minority—to suppress and conceal some of his opinions, lest he might lose votes by his candour, in the proposed method of introduction every candidate will be encouraged to express himself fully and distinctly, in order that he may be perfectly comprehended by minds in sympathy with his own. Such candid explanations will have both an affirmative and a negative effect. Every elector will learn with more exactness who are those with whom he can more entirely agree, and with whom he totally disagrees. The encouragement afforded on all sides to truth will immensely increase the value of the evidence as to the real character and opinions of all who present themselves.

When population was scanty, and most of the burgesses chose their townsmen or neighbours, their knowledge of them might have been personal; though even then it is propable that familiar knowledge of the chosen member had little place. At present, the knowledge which the elector has of the member must for all practical purposes be gathered by other means. He may see his face occasionally—there may be a shake of the hand at the canvass—he may have spoken a dozen words to him in the market-place—there may be an annual dinner and harangue—perhaps an address at opening a mechanics' institute or a ragged school. He may read in the newspaper an occasional interlocutory observation in the House—perhaps a set speech. He finds his name in the list of those who voted for or against this or that measure, but of any knowledge of his habits of thought, disposition, or mental qualities, the elector has none which he may not, with the same attention, gather in the daily or weekly press, concerning the members for any other constituency. What the electors in general know of any public man, at this day, is derived not from any observation of his words and conduct, which they have been able personally to make or to witness, but of what they read and gather from that ubiquitous litera-