Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/65

 and boroughs returning three members, no elector should vote for more than two, which would have the effect of permitting a minority of two-fifths of the constituency to return one member. This, called the “restricted vote,” is said to have been suggested by Mr. Praed in 1832. It admits, and indeed requires in most cases, an organisation of parties. Suppose eighty-four voters, of whom, say, fifty-one are supporters of the ministry, and thirty-three of the opposition, and that there are four candidates. A, B, and C, of the ministerial party, and D of the opposition. It might be supposed that the minority would succeed in returning D; but this would be prevented by the majority dividing themselves into three distinct bodies of seventeen each, one of which shall vote for A and B, another for B and C, and the third for A and C. The consequence would be, that each of the three ministerial candidates would have thirty-four votes, and all would be returned, and the thirty-three voices of the minority would be silenced. In the discussions in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill, in 1867, the cumulative vote, originally suggested by Mr. Marshall in 1857, was proposed for adoption by Mr. Lowe, but was rejected by a large majority. Subsequently, in the House of Lords, the restricted vote was adopted by a majority in proportion nearly the same as that which opposed the cumulative vote in the Commons. On the return of the bill to the Lower House the amendment was accepted, and the principle was thus embodied in the Reform Act of that year. Three years later the principle received a further practical extension by the introduction of the cumulative vote for the election of the School Boards. In the sessions of 1870 and 1871 attempts