Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/9



issue of another edition has become necessary, not only to introduce such alterations as shall adapt the proposed electoral law to the Ballot Act, but also to make known the progress of the representative principle in actual practice, and in theoretical development. In both, the greatest advances have been made in the United States. The experiments in Harvard College, Massachusetts, and in the Technological Institute at Boston, show that a preferential choice from competing claims to distinction, may form a highly instructive part of the historical and political education in our schools; while the recent election in Illinois, of the Upper House by the old, and the Lower by a proportional system, contrasts their results.

In our own country the preferential and proportional method of election has been twice brought before the House of Commons : first on Mr. Mill's amendment to the Reform Bill (29th May, 1867), and again on the motion for the second reading of Mr. Morrison's Bill (10th July, 1872).

When in 1869 the House of Commons appointed a Committee to inquire into the modes of conducting elections, with a view to provide further guarantees for their purity, tranquillity, and freedom, the event was hailed as an opportunity of subjecting the proposed method to an exhaustive inquiry, and bringing prominently forward the anticipated results. Evidence was therefore tendered to the Committee for the purpose of showing how greatly the temptations to corruption