Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/369

Rh repeated until the electors were tired of travelling backwards and forwards to the poll. If it were practicable to prevent votes being thrown away at elections by any such publication as his hon. friend suggested, it would surely have been long ago introduced in connection with the existing system. It was no part of the avowed policy of the electoral law that votes should be thrown away. It had only been tolerated, as an evil supposed to be unavoidable, until Mr. Hare's invention had, for the first time, supplied a remedy.

The second reading was carried by a majority of 11 to 4. It was passed by the Legislative Council, and read a first time in the Legislative Assembly. In that House, on the 13th November, 1862, on the order of the day for the second reading,—

Mr., after addressing himself to the other questions, said he had heard no one who had risen to speak attempt to defend the principle of one electorate only, and the only question was, would it be at all tolerable even under Hare's system ?—though it was scarcely to be dreamt of that that should be adopted here. He believed it to be too complicated for any person to understand it; so much so, that he did not think there were ten members in this House and the other who thoroughly understood it. [An hon. member: “It is very simple.”] Possibly it might be; but they had the declaration of the Master of the Mint, who was no mean authority in mathematical matters, that it was directly the reverse. For himself he would confess that he had not understood much of it when it was first introduced into the Bill, but afterwards the explanations of the hon. gentleman who had proposed it had so mystified him, that he now knew less of it than before.

Mr., after adverting to the franchise and other subjects, added, the principle, however, most important in this Bill, whatever franchise might be adopted, was the principle known as Hare*s system—a system of election by quotas. There had been great prejudices against this system, and it had been frequently observed by hon. members that they could not understand the practical working of it. He would explain to the House in a few minutes that there was no mystery in connection with the practical application of this principle. Hare's system was the only one by which representation according to numbers could possibly be secured. Under that system a man carried his rights with him, and could exercise his power of voting in whatever part of the colony he might be at the time of an election. If the Upper House be composed of members returned for large districts, it would, after all, be a mere reflex of the majority of the community; and consequently, out of a community of 100,000 people, it might so happen that 49,000 were not represented at all. But such a state of things could not