Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/20

 vinces are not the merely passive and stolid reflex of the opinions of the capital. The people of Liverpool or of Manchester would not set aside their eminent merchants or manufacturers for the nominees of a London club; nor would the inhabitants of Devon, or Warwick, or Edinburgh, or Glasgow, submit to such dictation. No county or borough would consent to use such tickets if they had not been consulted in the selection of any of the names. Even if the kingdom were a single electorate (voting by quotas) no party would dare to ignore,—on the contrary, each party would invite the co-operation of local eminence and the power which it carries with it.

A single electorate, voting by this method, and using party tickets, would still have no resemblance whatever to the “American ticket.” That “ticket” is got up to enable the numerical majority to hold together in one unbroken, compact mass, and crush the minority. It is politically a life-and-death struggle:—it admits of no balancing, no wavering,—no hesitating or half support. The stronger party will emerge in safety,—the weaker will perish.

A single electorate and the use of tickets by party supporters, voting in quotas, by the contingent method, would, alone, be a vast improvement. The strength of each party would be measured by the popularity of its principles,—each party would place its best men foremost in a gradation of supposed merit,—and each would select and nominate its very best to attract the support of the independent electors, while the latter would have before them a choice of the superior men of every party.

The proposed method, however, is not that of a single electorate. The representatives of the United Kingdom would be chosen by seven or eight hundred distinct constituencies, acting separately and apart, and it would become the endeavour of the most intelligent persons of every constituency to prevent it from being stultified by giving the major part of its votes to a candidate who would throw discredit