Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/19

 If we consider the mental effect on the observers, of nearly every kind of competition the result of which is doubtful, we shall find there is every reason to conclude that local interest, activity, and effort will be stimulated by an election in this form to a greater degree than heretofore, and will be of a far more wholesome character. Many more candidates will be everywhere put in nomination. The measure of local regard for each candidate the votes will display,—the anticipated evolution of varieties of preference,—the desire of the more public-spirited inhabitants that the choice of the majority may light on the best, or on him they think so,—will “present the situation of suspense and pleasurable engrossment” in great force. This aspect of the subject has been treated in another place, and, interesting as it is, I forbear to dwell upon it.

The third objection,—that a party “ticket” would be used, and party organization become omnipotent,—is scarcely more than an offet of the last,—that the method delocalizes. If, indeed, it created one electorate,—if every member were chosen for the whole kingdom, and by no county or town in particular,—each party might safely produce a printed ticket for its own followers, and be certain that, to the extent to which they adhered to that ticket, the candidates named upon it, one after the other, would make up their quotas or majorities, until the whole strength of the party is exhausted, and it can elect no more. Supposing, also, party devotion to be thus blind and indiscriminate,—that every voter chose to be either a Tory, a Whig, or a Radical, they might vote either for the T., W., or the K. ticket in blank, and leave it to the leaders of their parties to fill up the names according to the number of quotas which each could muster. Yet see how alien all this management is to our habitual action,—how irreconcileable with our forms of political life! Our pro-