Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/69

 the injustice of extinguishing the opinions of minorities, it at the same time declares to the minorities in most constituencies that, however entitled to respect they might be from their intelligence or their aggregate numbers, still they are not, individually, large enough to be protected. Even in the constituencies to which it applies a minority considerably more in number than one-third of the entire constituency may, it has been seen, be defeated by a skilful organisation of the majority. The cumulative system is also susceptible of organisation, and in its present unguarded form is open to great uncertainty, and subject to a vast waste and fruitless expenditure of electoral energy, as is hereafter shown. Both belong to what M. Ernest Naville has, in his examination of the several methods of electoral action, styled the “empirical,” as distinguished from the “scientific” systems. It is indeed impossible to know how much of the hostility to the restricted vote in these discussions, has been really owing to objections entertained to the principle of proportional representation, and how much to the partial extent, and the infirmity of the remedies that have been chosen. That these are the main causes of the opposition instinctively suggest itself on considering the language of Mr. Bright, its most eminent opponent in the debate on the Lord's amendment. He studiously admonished his hearers that the restricted vote was no “portion of a grand scheme to give to every person in the country, whether one of a minority or one of a majority, a representation in this House.” He cautioned those who did not value it as a correction of a democratic measure, not to be misled by supposing it to “approximate to or be an admission of the principle of a plan in which everybody would be represented, and such things as majorities and minorities never known.” A description more truly characteristic of what is