Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/243

 them. We do not refuse to confide our interests to a particular counsel or attorney because his eminence in character and ability has led a great number of other persons to appoint him as their counsel or attorney also. We rather expect his power to be of service to us, will be greater from that very cause." But it is clear, nevertheless, that the elector though thus represented, has not that due representative force to which he is entitled so far as it can be given to him, and which is far more perfectly secured in the manner now indicated.

If we suppose nothing more than the most ordinary degree of acquaintance with the names of a few public men, or even of one, coupled with that degree of interest in public affairs which would induce the voter to be at the pains of exercising his franchise, it is probable that under such a law every elector in the kingdom who may take the trouble to vote, will he represented by a candidate whom he has especially named and selected. An unrepresented voter will be a rare exception. By fixing on any candidate of high and general reputation, the elector will be morally certain of securing him, if no other, as his representative in the national councils; and where the elector does not rely exclusively on one name, but introduces different names, as so many alternatives, the system affords a practical application of that principle of compromise, the adaptation of the will, the pretensions, and the conduct to circumstances,—the yielding something of which we are less tenacious to secure that on which we set a still higher value,—which is of such potent influence and incalculable value in political as well as in social life. The voter expresses in effect his wish to be represented by the second person named on his paper if he cannot be by the first,—by the third if he cannot be by the second, and so on. Instead of crushing the opinions or sentiments of any elector, it leads him by a gentle and unresisted constraint to blend and harmonise them with those of others, until a voluntary unanimity is attained.