Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/270

 property is situated, the first object of consideration. Local obligations can go no farther than this fall liberty extends,—unless it be really meant that the duty of protection is attached, not to men but to inorganic nature, as to the soil or the houses; or to unsentient life, the woods and forests, and other productions of the vegetable kingdom. It is only on the supposition that these existences are to control the human will, that there can be any necessity for adhering to an electoral system forcibly bound by territorial limits.

A system of individual independence is not only consistent with every territorial view which the elector may entertain, but the method of election which is here proposed does not permit an elector of one constituency to interfere with the electors of another. The distinct and independent action of every constituency is perfectly preserved. No elector for Marylebone can interfere with the electors for Warwickshire, nor the elector of Warwickshire with those of Marylebone. An elector of Marylebone may vote for a candidate who may be a candidate for the county of Warwick, and the votes of electors of Marylebone may furnish a quota who may return him,—but not for Warwickshire. Nothing but a majority in that county could return him as a member for it, as the act of a return of the candidate by votes from Marylebone, in the case supposed, when he had no sufficient majority in Warwickshire, would be the same thing in effect as if he had been at the first a candidate for Marylebone. It would be that borough he would be returned to represent, and not Warwickshire.

The adoption of a rule giving to every unanimous quota of votes the power of electing a representative, would operate in fact as a perfect and self-adjusting system of electoral division, at all times corresponding with the fluctuations of population and wealth. One of the suggested provisions is directed to the object of admitting the separation of the larger