Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/242



In the last edition of this treatise, a clause was introduced for appropriating the votes of elector's that had been ineffectual owing to having the names of unsuccessful candidates at the head of their voting papers, by assigning them as part of the constituency of any member whom they had named lower on the voting paper, in order to compensate them in some measure for the loss. It was argued that if the voter were not represented by the man whom he would above all desire, because he could not procure a sufficient concurrence of opinion or sentiment for his election, he is yet represented by the man who stands highest in his favour for whom that concurrence can be obtained: that the variation in the numbers of the constituencies which the ultimate appropriation of votes might introduce, derogated in no degree from the true principle of representation, "A is not the less perfectly represented by Z because B and C have likewise chosen Z to represent