Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/41

Rh may be obtained without departing from any of our traditional forms of electoral incorporation,—and that it even affords peculiar facilities for giving greater scope and expansion to such local and traditional combinations. The electoral arrangements which are proposed require no operation that cannot readily be executed by instruments which the administrator will always have at his command; and they prescribe no duty, which any person of ordinary capacity is not competent to perform. It is only necessary to resort to those common aids which education and science now afford,—the knowledge of letters, which was not implied in times when the election was made by a show of hands,—and the means of rapid conveyance and transport, which were not possessed by former generations.

With a view, to avoid any expressions which might be vague or indeterminate, to render the proposal definite and precise, and enable its practicability to be readily and distinctly considered, the whole scheme has been wrought into the form of a supposed electoral law, the clauses of which are distributed amongst the several chapters,—following the respective branches of the subjects to which they relate, and in which are explanations of the principle, the purpose, and the operation of every clause. A table has also been introduced, showing the entire law, and referring to the pages in which every clause will be severally found.

If, by the means which are here proposed, or by any which are better and wiser, an electoral system can be established, which, in the work of forming a representative body, shall succeed in calling into action all the thought and intellect of the nation, the effect would be to create a new object of inquiry and study, extending over a field of which we know not the bounds. All attempts to engage society in potential conflicts for abstract principles would be thenceforth vain, and statesmen would seek to build their fame on something more