Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/83

 result of corruption or of intrigue to which he will not lend himself, or who shall entertain opinions with which those of their favourite candidate do not harmonise, or who shall consider that a better or a wiser selection can be made, and that with such a belief it is his duty to make it,—to exercise his vote according to his own judgment. The principle might be embodied in and made effectual by the following law:—

It will, of course, be immediately perceived, that this law would have consequences far more extensive even than the admission of the voices and opinions of an aggregate of minorities, numbering half a million of electors, great as those consequences would be. The admission and concentration of all those whom the numerical majorities, when dominant, exclude, in truth involves the representation of all opinions. It is because the simple expression of the numerical majority, under a system of equality in suffrage and district, would deprive all classes, except the most numerous, of any weight in the House of Commons, that the framers of our representative system exhaust themselves in ingenious contrivances to parcel the electors into such divisions that some may neutralise others, and thus reduce to its minimum the evil which they apprehend. More than to diminish the evil effects which must result from the extinction of all political power, except that of the poorer classes, they seem scarcely to hope. The object should rather be, to exclude no legitimate influences, and to give such a scope and direction to all political energy, that every elector, in his sphere, and according to his knowledge, may labour to obtain the maximum of good. If every doctor be made to see and feel that he is personally respon-