Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/24

 d'affranchie l'électeur du joug des partis et de le relever à ses propres yeux. Pour cela, il le place en face de lui-même pendant l'acte important qu'il est appelé à accomplir et le rend partiellement responsable de la composition de la législature. Ce n'est donc pas sans motifs plausibles que M. Hare se présente comme fauteur de la représentation personnelle, plutôt que comme celle des minorités. La lecture de son traité conduit facilement à la persuasion que le pays qui façonnerait son organisation électorale, d'après de telles idées, s'assurerait les bienfaits d'un corps législatif, composé d'hommes capables et estimés, en même temps qu'il élèverait le niveau moral de la population”

The political education afforded to our people by the occasional opportunity of concurring in or opposing the election of one or two representatives, has been compared with that conferred by the town autonomy of the Greek cities—as of Athens, where the Demos met at short intervals, and exercised the office both of parliament and government, and questions of foreign policy and domestic administration were constantly argued. Certainly, with our present system the comparison is humiliating enough; but if the constitution would open to every voter a scope for thought and reflection as wide as his intellectual and moral horizon,—if it gave him a choice from among all who by their candidature show that they aspire to public distinction,—the political school of the “every-day Englishman” would surpass in value that of the citizen of Athens in its proudest time. The long procession of history, and the phenomena of a progressive civilization,—the accumulated records of human action,—the influence of Christianity,—the opening portals of natural science, afford endless themes for instruction, bearing on the policy and complicate arrangements of social life in modern times, of which the Greek orators or statesmen could not dream. The subjection of a theorem, moreover, to the calm