Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/66

 were made to repeal these provisions, and thus put an end to the opportunities they give for a better representation of the various sentiments and opinions of the electoral body. In the former year the restricted vote, simply on the ground of the justice of the basis on which it stands, although it has practically less to recommend it than any of the other methods by which the extinction of minorities is sought to be averted, was retained by the vote of 183 members in a House of 358, notwithstanding the weight of the Government was thrown into the opposite scale. On a motion in the latter year for the second reading of a bill that proposed to withdraw the clause as to the cumulative voting, of nine members who took part in the debate, only one, besides the mover, supported the second reading, and he stated that he did so because “our ancestors had always been content with the old clumsy system of representation by majorities; and he believed proportional representation was contrary to the habits and sentiments of the people.” It was rejected without a division.

Nothing is perhaps more remarkable than that the attempts to retrace the steps that have been made towards rendering the representative bodies comprehensive and not exclusive in their character, should all emanate from members of the Liberal party, which is understood to insist upon equality in political freedom, without partiality in favour of person or of place. The abolition of the restricted vote was put forward as a pretended vindication of electoral rights, while by delivering the electoral power of every community over to the majority, it would practically disfranchise a third or more of the electors. Its promoters argue that if two members, say for Manchester or Birmingham, vote with one party, and one with the other, those great towns have not their due weight in the government, but are partially neutralised, and reduced in parliamentary force to a level with the smallest borough. This, however, is to forget the people who form the aggregate