Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/29

 every corrupting taint, and every degrading element, that it may attract to its service and duties the most enlightened and the purest minds. Instead of excluding large classes from the franchise, they should rather be invited to its exercise; but the invitation should be accompanied with the inseparable condition that every elector shall, in the act of voting, show both his capacity and his worth, and be enabled gradually to rise to the importance and dignity of the function with which he is intrusted.

I have collected in an Appendix to this edition, extracts showing the efforts that have been made to introduce this system in different parts of the world, and the large degree of support they have met with, notwithstanding its novelty. The progress of the idea among the more profound writers on political subjects is not less remarkable. If it has yet been adopted only in one northern kingdom,—if in the other free states of Europe, and the great Anglo-Saxon communities of the Southern Seas and the New World it has been hitherto a subject of barren discussion, it must be remembered that the powers of statesmen are limited; whilst effort for improvement is still the duty of all who possess any portion of political power. “A great ruler cannot shape the world after his own pattern. He is condemned to work in the direction of existing and spontaneous tendencies, and has only the discretion of singling out the most beneficial of these. Yet though a pilot cannot steer in opposition to wind and tide, the difference is great between a skilful pilot and none at all. Improvements of the very first order, and for which society is completely prepared, which lie in the natural course and tendency of human events, and are the next stage through which mankind will pass, may be retarded indefinitely for want of a great man, to throw the weight of his individual will and faculties into the trembling scale.”

February, 1865.