Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/210

 totals from all the constituencies in England and Wales, publishes the sum as the total number of electors who have polled therein, and, dividing it by 493, the number of English and Welsh seats, declares the quotient, omitting fractions, to be the English quota. On receiving the totals from Scotland and dividing by 60, and from Ireland dividing by 105, he declares the quotient to be the quota for Scotland and Ireland respectively."

The latter provision assumes that the number of members for each of the three kingdoms is fixed. The system proposed in this treatise avoids any such prescribed limit, treating England, Scotland, and Ireland, precisely alike. The statement of the method thus suggested will, however, show that the application of the preferential and proportional system is not dependent on any adherence to one particular process, that it may be effected in various forms, and under different adaptations of electoral machinery.

It may appear that it is entering into an unnecessary degree of detail to undertake the explanation of these minor arrangements of the business of the election; but, in truth, a closer consideration will show that there is no step which it is not important to make clear. Upon the establishment of a rational system of representation, vast interests are depending. It is not possible to conceive any subject affecting the temporal welfare of mankind of greater importance. The almost universal disposition is to turn aside from such considerations, with the despairing cry that it is impossible to make the representation pure and faithful. It should therefore be shown that there is no difficulty in establishing a better state of things. In what is proposed there is much less complexity than is daily encountered and overcome by the purest mechanical arrangements in the clearing-house of the London bankers, or in the General Post Office. In explaining by a