Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/60

 d'avance hors de combat, il y a oppression, Dans l'un ou l'autre cas, le gouvernement représentatif est corrompu.”

In the general election of 1852, the aggregate number of votes polled by the majorities where the seats were contested was 291,118, whilst the minorities polled 199,994. These numbers may, with sufficient accuracy, be treated as represented by three and two; and if the same calculation be extended to the whole of the constituencies, and taken as expressing the silent and suppressed differences of opinion where no contest was attempted, it would appear that 500,000 electors are not represented, except, by a sort of fiction of law, their opinions are supposed to be expressed by other means. If liberalism be triumphant in one constituency, conservatism, it is answered, is triumphant in another. The argument is as untenable as the principle is dangerous. It is not the fact that the opinions suppressed by the electoral voice at one place are expressed in those of another. It has been truly said that “the separation of parties according to localities does not even approach completeness. The number of localities in which any given opinions prevail are not proportioned to the general prevalence of those opinions. Large political parties are widely scattered and intermixed throughout the country.” This supposed system of balances and counteractions is the ignis fatuus of the politicians of this century, and the source of jealousies and wranglings without end. It recedes as they pursue it. No sooner do they imagine that its elements are caught and fixed upon their canvas than they are gone like a dissolving view. The discovery or the opening up of some unexpected mineral wealth creates a town on a barren moor. Commerce establishes a thriving port where stood the hovels of a few fishermen. A rapidly-increasing population overflows the boundaries of the city. The ease and rapidity of