Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/223

 papers, and the ultimate declaration of the state of the Norwich poll may, therefore, show that each of the three successful candidates, A, B, and F, has a considerably larger number of Norwich supporters than appears in the first statement of the poll, given above.

The portion of the above law which makes it one condition of the return of a candidate for a particular constituency that some of the votes thereof shall not only have been tendered, hut actually appropriated to him, when coupled with the provisions of Clause XXIV., which regulate the appropriation of votes, according to the neighbourhood or nature of the different constituencies, constitute a further security that the members shall have an intimate and personal relation with the special constituencies by which they are severally elected. The votes so appropriated must be those of the constituencies for which they were candidates, and those who are nearest to, and most likely to be connected with, and interested in, the same localities.

A word may here be added to remove any impression which a superficial view of the supposed result of the Norwich election may create, that some injustice has been done to C, D, and E, or their supporters, by the election of F. The cardinal principle is, that no vote can be appropriated to, or affect the return of, more than one member; and, therefore, when the votes for A and B are appropriated, the whole, or a large part, of those given for C, D, and E, being om the same papers, would by that means be exhausted. None of them could be used to aid the return of more than one person. And as to the Norwich votes on which either C, D, or E were placed first, it may be assumed to the credit of those voters that they have sufficient knowledge of their contemporaries, and sufficient interest in political affairs, not to confine their appreciation to those candidates exclusively, but to have provided other alternatives in their voting papers, according to which their votes will be ultimately appropriated