Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/82

 to avoid the conclusion that a division of electors throughout the kingdom into two classes, the learned and the unlearned, would place the classes which assumed the pre-eminence in a position impossible to be maintained. An institution which might too often have the misfortune of exhibiting to mankind the practical distinction between learning and wisdom, would be little calculated to promote either. It would be always exposed to the most powerful engine of assault which can exist in a civilised age,—that of ridicule. It is not, however, on such objections that it is useful here to dwell. A territorial arrangement must operate by majorities. But the circumstance that the educated classes formed the minorities in the detached constituencies, was the cause of the application for a separate representation; and yet the minorities of the electors, thus permitted to sever themselves from the majorities, would, in their turn, be extinguished; and the very inconvenience which led to the severance would, at the utmost, be but little more than half cured. Indeed, if the educated classes to be thus formed into distinct territorial constituencies, should be composed of men of independent minds, taking their own distinct and varied views of public affairs, and determined to act for themselves, instead of being led by a few of their number,—they would be likely to bring forward more candidates than appear in a borough in which differences are suppressed. This would be the natural tendency of a highly-instructed constituency; and in such an event, it might happen that a small part of the aggregate number of the educated electors within the territorial division would impose their views upon the rest.

The adoption of the principle that a quota of electors, by unanimity in their choice, may return a representative, would, with the aid of other arrangements of a mechanical kind, and of no difficulty, enable every individual elector,—who shall consider the choice that the majority of the constituency in which he happens to be registered is disposed to make, as the