Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/75

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In the last chapter every constituency or electoral college has been regarded in the light of a partnership, the members of which are engaged in a great undertaking that requires all their individual as well as their joint skill and energy, and in which none should be even sleeping partners, much less partners repudiating and protesting against the acts of the rest, and yet unable to extricate themselves. It has been said that, in order to express the various opinions of those who form minorities, they should be permitted, not by dissent to impede the free action of the majority of the society or partnership with which the accidents of life, and the frame of our electoral system, has connected them; but, leaving all such free action of the majority untouched, to come out of that society or partnership, and form another society and another partnership, with the members of which they entertain opmions in common. The hypothesis, that they can thus for the time sever their connection with the constituency in which they are registered, is necessarily founded upon the assumption that they are able to find kindred opinions elsewhere than with the majority of that constituency. If such kindred opinions, held by sufficient numbers, cannot be found, the severance would be useless, and their voices, as at present, are necessarily extinguished.