The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal/Chapter 1

by Thomas Hare

THE

ELECTION OF REPRESENTATIVES, &c.

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CHAPTER I.

THE REPRESENTATION OF MAJORITIES, MINORITIES, AND INDIVIDUALS.

The position which majorities and minorities of the people should respectively occupy in representative government has, within a few years past, been frequently considered. The title or claim of majorities to be exclusively regarded and obeyed must have its foundation either in agreement or in force. The power of acting by a majority, so far as it depends on an agreement, Mr. Burke observes, “must be grounded on two assumptions, first, that of an incorporation produced by unanimity; and, secondly, an unanimous agreement that the act of a mere majority (say of one) shall pass, with them and with others, as the act of the whole.”^[1] He adds: “If men dissolve their ancient incorporation, in order to regenerate their community, in that state of things each man has a right, if he pleases, to remain an individual. Any number of individuals, who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right to form themselves into a state apart and wholly independent. If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another, this is conquest, and not compact. On every principle which supposes society to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulsive incorporation must be null and void.”^[2] M. Guizot, treating of the same subject, points out the inconsistency of the claim of the majority to absolute power, with another principle, sometimes asserted, which affirms a right in every individual to be governed only by those laws to which he has given his assent,^[3] unless the latter be accompanied with a right in the minority to withdraw themselves from the state. He adds, “dans l'idée de majorité entrent deux éléments très différents ; l'idée d'une opinion qui est accréditée, et celle d'une force qui est prépondérante. Comme force, la majorité n'a aucun droit que celui de la force même qui ne peut être, à ce titre seul, la souveraineté légitime. Comme opinion la majorité est-elle infaillible ? Saint-elle et veut-elle toujours la raison, la justice, qui sont la vraie loi et confèrent seules la souveraineté légitime ? L'expérience dépose du contraire. La majorité en tant que majorité, c'est-à-dire en tant que nombre, ne possède donc la souveraineté légitime, ni en vertu de la force qui ne la confère jamais, ni en vertu de l'infaillibilité qu'elle n'a point.”^[4]

The majority in the sense which expresses the major or greater power has ever been purely conventional, some civil institutions requiring it to be composed of a greater and some of a less number of voices. It may be, either a majority consisting of the more numerous of two bodies supporting respectively two contrary propositions, or of the more numerous of several bodies supporting respectively several distinct propositions. If ten propositions, or, which is the same thing, ten candidates be offered to the choice of fifty persons, that they may select one of the ten, six of the fifty persons might form the majority, and the voices of forty-four have no weight. If there be no law—as in our electoral system there is no law—which requires a moiety, or any definite proportion of the entire body, including both the present or active and the absent or inactive members to form an effectual majority, the six must prevail, and yet the excluded candidates, or propositions, might perfectly express the sentiments of those who put them forward; and, moreover, may even be in harmony with the opinions of the most part of the fifty voters, and who are thus silenced by the six. An attempt has been made in a few recent borough elections to prevent the division of parties or interests amongst several candidates, by subjecting them to the difficult, cumbrous, and often illusory trial of a preliminary ballot. Under the prevailing systems, some means of giving unity to party action becomes, indeed, indispensable unless the result be abandoned to accident or chance. In America it has led to that species of political movement known by the appellation of the “caucus.”^[5] It is, in fact, the method by which a few clever and adroit persons substitute their dictation for that of the leadership which, in earlier times, was conceded to territorial power, high birth, or natures fitted to command. The misfortune is that the qualities which are best adapted to succeed by intrigue, cajolery, and pandering to mean desires and appetites are far more common and degrading than those which formerly compelled submission, if they did not always inspire confidence.

With regard to the character of government by a numerical majority, where there is no constitutional provision for giving due weight to the minority, it is useful to listen to republican statesmen. Mr. Calhoun, who occupied at different times some of the highest offices in the government of the United States, and who studied American institutions with the aid of long experience, employed his latest hours and his most elaborate efforts, in a work designed as a warning against the dangers of that absolutism which would result from committing the destinies of the country to the uncontrolled government of the numerical majority. The right of suffrage, he says, is, indeed, the indispensable and primary principle; “but it would be a great and dangerous mistake to suppose, as many do, that it is of itself sufficient to form constitutional governments.”^[6] “To this erroneous opinion,” he adds, “may be traced one of the causes why so few attempts to form constitutional governments have succeeded; and why, of the few which have, so small a number have had a durable existence. It has led not only to mistakes in the attempt to form such governments, but to their overthrow, when they have, by some good fortune, been correctly formed. So far from being of itself sufficient—however well guarded it might be, and however enlightened the people—it would, unaided by other provisions, leave the government as absolute as it would be in the hands of irresponsible rulers, and with a tendency, at least as strong, towards oppression and abuse of its powers.”^[7] “The more extensive and populous the country, the more diversified the condition and pursuits of its population; and the richer, more luxurious, and dissimilar the people, the more difficult it is to equalise the action of the government, and the more easy for one portion of the community to pervert its powers to oppress and plunder the other.”^[8] “The dominant majority for the time,” he repeats, “ would have the same tendency to oppression and abuse of power, which, without the right of suffrage, irresponsible rulers would have. No reason, indeed, can be assigned why the latter would abuse their power, which would not apply with equal force to the former. The dominant majority for the time would, in reality, through the right of suffrage, be the rulers—the controlling, governing, and irresponsible power,—and those who make and execute the laws would, for the time, in reality be but their representatives and agents.”^[9] And he proceeds to show that the abuse of the power which would thus be acquired, could only be counteracted by giving to each division, or interest, through its appropriate organ, a concurrent voice.^[10] The majority which is formed by this concurrence he calls the constitutional majority, in contradistinction to that which is obtained by treating the whole community as a unit, having but one common interest. “The first and leading error,” he says, “which naturally arises from overlooking the distinction referred to, is to confound the numerical majority with the people, and this so completely as to regard them as identical. This is a consequence that necessarily results from considering the numerical as the only majority. All admit, that a popular government, or democracy, is the government of the people; for the terms imply this. A perfect government of the kind would be one which would embrace the consent of every citizen, or member, of the community; but as this is impracticable, in the opinion of those who regard the numerical as the only majority, and who can perceive no other way by which the sense of the people can be taken, they are compelled to adopt this as the only true basis of popular government, in contradistinction to governments of the aristocratical or monarchical form. Being thus constrained, they are, in the next place, forced to regard the numerical majority as, in effect, the entire people; that is, the greater part as the whole; and the government of the greater part as the government of the whole.”^[11]

The work being adapted to a republican form of government, contains observations on a political organism, by the concurrence and veto of different bodies, which happily is, in this country, provided for by a different constitution; but all the remarks on the error of so dealing with numbers as to extinguish interests, is equally applicable to the constitution of the House of Commons. The danger of a popular body, unbalanced by the introduction of elements other than those which have their origin in a triumphant numerical force, is stated, with equal confidence, by Mr. Burke. He says,—“Of this I am certain, that, in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority, whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre.”^[12]

Those who contend that neither good government nor individual liberty is necessarily secured by a suffrage which commits the government absolutely to the numerical majority, do not, therefore, argue that there must not be a resort to arithmetic. It is impossible to suppose a popular form of government in which the votes must not be counted. The problem of constitutional organism is, in what manner the individuals composing the entire community are to be classed so that no opinions or interests shall be unheard, or extinguished, in representation.

Most of the advocates for the amendment of our system of representation seem content with, or to despair of obtaining anything better than, a division of the country into certain districts or localities.^[13]

If it were not a low and unbecoming view of political parties to liken them to enemies in a hostile camp, a case might be imagined of the division of the electors generally into two classes: one satisfied with the condition of things, apprehensive of the consequences of change, and ready to oppose all experiments the utility of which is not manifest; and the other uneasy in their position, imagining that social alterations might be made which would ameliorate their condition, and who are not deterred by the apprehension of consequences which they do not see or admit. Supposing there were a contest between these classes, a struggle, not of arms, but of the peaceable forces which are brought to bear in the operation of representative institutions, and the proportion in which these classes is found in every locality be, for the purpose of argument, taken as two to three, the majority of every constituency would, of course, elect a representative of the more numerous class. If five constituencies be taken as the entire number, there would be in the representative assembly five members for the party of progress and none for the party of preservation; whilst, in justice, the majority and minority ought to stand in the constituted assembly in the same proportion as in their constituents, that is, three against two. It is clear, as a matter of strategy, that by the defeat in every constituency of the detached minorities, the less numerous class have no means of meeting their adversaries in the representative council, but are previously cut off in detail.

“Le but du gouvernement représentatif est de mettre publiquement en présence et aux prises les grands intérêts, les opinions diverses, qui se partagent la société et s'en disputent l'empire, dans la juste confiance que, de leurs débats, sortiront la connaissance et l'adoption des lois et des mesures qui conviennent le mieux aux pays en général. Ce but n'est atteint que par le triomphe de la vraie majorité, la minorité constamment présente et entendue. Si la majorité est déplacée par artifice il y a mensonge. Si la minorité est d'avance hors de combat, il y a oppression, Dans l'un ou l'autre cas, le gouvernement représentatif est corrompu.”^[14]

In the general election of 1852, the aggregate number of votes polled by the majorities where the seats were contested was 291,118, whilst the minorities polled 199,994. These numbers may, with sufficient accuracy, be treated as represented by three and two; and if the same calculation be extended to the whole of the constituencies, and taken as expressing the silent and suppressed differences of opinion where no contest was attempted, it would appear that 500,000 electors are not represented, except, by a sort of fiction of law, their opinions are supposed to be expressed by other means. If liberalism be triumphant in one constituency, conservatism, it is answered, is triumphant in another. The argument is as untenable as the principle is dangerous. It is not the fact that the opinions suppressed by the electoral voice at one place are expressed in those of another. It has been truly said that “the separation of parties according to localities does not even approach completeness. The number of localities in which any given opinions prevail are not proportioned to the general prevalence of those opinions. Large political parties are widely scattered and intermixed throughout the country.”^[15] This supposed system of balances and counteractions is the ignis fatuus of the politicians of this century, and the source of jealousies and wranglings without end. It recedes as they pursue it. No sooner do they imagine that its elements are caught and fixed upon their canvas than they are gone like a dissolving view. The discovery or the opening up of some unexpected mineral wealth creates a town on a barren moor. Commerce establishes a thriving port where stood the hovels of a few fishermen. A rapidly-increasing population overflows the boundaries of the city. The ease and rapidity of locomotion open to the middle classes of the towns the advantages and the pleasures of rural life. The more agreeable sites of a country, rich in natural beauties, are being covered with the dwellings of classes who were formerly a town population. On the shores of our island coast, wherever they can be approached, on every hill-side and in every valley from which can be beheld

“The many-twinkling smile of ocean,”

the builder is constantly engaged in the construction of dwellings replete with comfort, if not remarkable for architectural beauty. Numerous residences, many almost of palatial character, have in several places, in less than half a century, formed, what in earlier times would have deserved and received the name of cities, but are now hardly recognised as municipalities. The rate of progress of the first forty years of that period was as nothing to that of the last ten years; and probably the progress of the last ten years will be inconceivably outstripped by that of the ten which are to come. Industry, education, the progress of civilisation, and the diffusion of higher tastes and enjoyments, all contribute to defeat every attempt to attach special interests or objects to specific districts. The lines of distinction between the town and country population become more and more faint, and are constantly shifting their places. To form a constitution on such a foundation is to build on sand.

Let it be supposed, however, that it were possible to succeed in accomplishing that which the changes in society forbid, the system would be founded upon injustice, and, therefore, could not be permanent. To contend that, although the opinion and sympathies of a minority are set at defiance in one place, it is a sufficient justification for this state of things that persons, whose opinions correspond with those of that minority, may form a majority in some other place, and that they then succeed in suppressing the voices of those whose opinions are in harmony with the victorious party elsewhere, is to set up one great evil as a compensation for another. “Can it,” inquires the writer last quoted, “be seriously argued that to balance one great mischief against another, is as well and as safe a mode of proceeding as an endeavour to avert both ?” Political action, instead of being the result of a steady and legitimate adaptation of means to an end, is converted into a game of chance, a speculation in which the failure upon one card is to be compensated by success upon another, and, by the sacrifice of the active and cordial assistance and adherence of two-thirds of the people, we even profess to gain no more than the same relative power for each of two or more parties, which they may have obtained without such sacrifice. Assuming, however, that the equivalent result, as a matter of party warfare, were in this manner obtained, the purpose of constitutional and representative government would be as far off as ever. The purpose of such a government is not satisfied by dividing the nation into two parties, and converting the area of legislation into a battle-field. It is not necessary here to discuss the merits of party government, it is enough to say, that in the vast field of modern legislation, in the adaptation of our ancient institutions to a new state of society, and in providing for new emergencies, a multitude of political and social problems come to be solved with which party has nothing to do, and into which the introduction of party elements and considerations is not only useless, but is absolutely pernicious. It is obvious that the tendency of a system of government founded on numerical majorities alone, is to absorb all differences into one issue—a contest for power. The extension of knowledge and the progress of civilization open the door of inquiry, prompt activity of thought, encourage diversities of opinion, and thus lead the way to social improvement ; but the benefit of this progress in the composition of a representative assembly is excluded when every variety of opinion and shadow of thought is expurgated—thrown aside as so much lumber, in order that both sides may come unencumbered to the trial of strength which is to determine the single issue—the possession of power. Such a result would be impossible if full play were given to the partialities which arise from individual character and sympathy, for these would be in constant rebellion against the tyranny of faction, and would moderate its influence even amongst those who might be subject to it. Every man, according to the degree in which he is intellectual, and possesses public spirit, would bring his talent and weight to the public aid, in the business of concentrating in the representative assembly a selection of the best minds of the nation, and the statesmen who shall have been proved by experience to be trustworthy; and the deposit of official power, from time to time, would be safely left to an assembly thus constituted, under the conditions which our parliamentary system imposes.

In the selection or choice of representatives we require the aid of the multitude of electors whose votes are rendered useless, and whose judgment is thus rejected. Instead of damping and extinguishing their patriotic zeal by destroying that hope of the utility of exertion which can alone keep it alive, every disposition to political action on the part of every worthy and sensible citizen should be encouraged and assisted. By making elections nothing but a question of adhesion to one of two or three parties, the standard of merit and qualification in the candidate is lowered to a bare question of party tests.

It has been seen that about half a million of voters are in this country incapable of securing a representation by any act of their own. The public loss is surely not trifling. To what a multitude of subjects of public and private interest have the thoughts and studies of large numbers amongst that half million of voters been directed! If we go through many of the streets and squares of the metropolitan boroughs, and form our conclusions of the intellectual rank of the inhabitants from their probable education and means of acquiring knowledge, and when we know that of these thousands would in vain approach the hustings to give expression to their views or opinions, it is impossible to look on the nominal representation of the metropolis as other than a mockery of the name. Yet the House of Commons has been truly described as “a place where minorities, heresies, oppositions, remonstrances, and protests of all sorts are to be represented and entitled to a hearing, and it is intended to comprehend, and not to exclude them.”

“Le but du système représentatif, dans ses éléments généraux, comme dnas tous les détails de son organisation, est de recueillir, de concentrer toute la raison qui existe éparse dans la société, et de l'appliquer à son gouvernement.”^[16]

If our present method of obtaining this concentration of the national reason be considered with analogy to operations connected with the material world, the comparison at once displays its unscientific character. Two-fifths of the intelligence of the country is lost in the process. It is a waste of material which would have been a reproach to any operation in physical science in its rudest day; even if the material so lost were only of the average value of that of which the constituencies are composed; but it is far more lamentable: it is considered that the material thus lost comprises a very large proportion of the best moral and intellectual elements of society, whilst the process of local condensation to which the numerical majorities owe their success has done much to extinguish independent thought, convert men into machines, and thereby deteriorate the result of the votes by which the supposed representative assembly has been actually chosen.

The first and greatest practical attempt which was made, at least in this country, to remedy this defect in representative institutions was the provision introduced by Lord John Russell in the bill of 1854. It was proposed that, in cities and boroughs returning three members, no elector should vote for more than two, which would have the effect of permitting a minority of two-fifths of the constituency to return one member. This, called the “restricted vote,” is said to have been suggested by Mr. Praed in 1832. It admits, and indeed requires in most cases, an organisation of parties. Suppose eighty-four voters, of whom, say, fifty-one are supporters of the ministry, and thirty-three of the opposition, and that there are four candidates. A, B, and C, of the ministerial party, and D of the opposition. It might be supposed that the minority would succeed in returning D; but this would be prevented by the majority dividing themselves into three distinct bodies of seventeen each, one of which shall vote for A and B, another for B and C, and the third for A and C. The consequence would be, that each of the three ministerial candidates would have thirty-four votes, and all would be returned, and the thirty-three voices of the minority would be silenced.^[17] In the discussions in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill, in 1867, the cumulative vote, originally suggested by Mr. Marshall in 1857, was proposed for adoption by Mr. Lowe,^[18] but was rejected by a large majority. Subsequently, in the House of Lords, the restricted vote was adopted by a majority in proportion nearly the same as that which opposed the cumulative vote in the Commons.^[19] On the return of the bill to the Lower House the amendment was accepted,^[20] and the principle was thus embodied in the Reform Act of that year. Three years later the principle received a further practical extension by the introduction of the cumulative vote for the election of the School Boards.^[21] In the sessions of 1870 and 1871 attempts were made to repeal these provisions, and thus put an end to the opportunities they give for a better representation of the various sentiments and opinions of the electoral body. In the former year the restricted vote, simply on the ground of the justice of the basis on which it stands, although it has practically less to recommend it than any of the other methods by which the extinction of minorities is sought to be averted, was retained by the vote of 183 members in a House of 358, notwithstanding the weight of the Government was thrown into the opposite scale. On a motion in the latter year for the second reading of a bill that proposed to withdraw the clause as to the cumulative voting, of nine members who took part in the debate, only one, besides the mover, supported the second reading, and he stated that he did so because “our ancestors had always been content with the old clumsy system of representation by majorities; and he believed proportional representation was contrary to the habits and sentiments of the people.” It was rejected without a division.

Nothing is perhaps more remarkable than that the attempts to retrace the steps that have been made towards rendering the representative bodies comprehensive and not exclusive in their character, should all emanate from members of the Liberal party, which is understood to insist upon equality in political freedom, without partiality in favour of person or of place. The abolition of the restricted vote was put forward as a pretended vindication of electoral rights,^[22] while by delivering the electoral power of every community over to the majority, it would practically disfranchise a third or more of the electors. Its promoters argue that if two members, say for Manchester or Birmingham, vote with one party, and one with the other, those great towns have not their due weight in the government, but are partially neutralised, and reduced in parliamentary force to a level with the smallest borough. This, however, is to forget the people who form the aggregate or corporate bodies known as Birmingham or Manchester, and to require that the individual interests and wishes of a third or more of them shall be sacrificed to the name by which the community is designated,—to an abstract conception which has no existence apart from the living beings whom it describes or indicates. The true way of reconciling the corporate influence of these great centres of industry with that of the individuals who inhabit them, is a fair distribution of seats, no longer assuming, as the present arrangement practically does, that one voter in Bury St. Edmunds is to be recognised as worth ten voters in Birmingham, or that the Irish and Scotch constituencies are reasonably treated, when “the inhabitants of Portarlington have 132 times as much representation as the inhabitants of Glasgow.”^[23] It will be well to compare the result upon the electoral power which Birmingham, for example, could gain by the reactionary efforts in favour of exclusive majority representation, supposing they were successful, with that which it would acquire by a just system of proportional representation.^[24] In the meantime it is surely desirable to secure the means of gathering the fullest expression possible of the views of all the inhabitants of our greater cities and districts, trusting that thereby their corporate interest and dignity will be best served and sustained.

It is possible that some of those who desire the repeal of the restrictive and the cumulative vote may be less offended by their effect on reducing the nominal power of the city or county than by their attack on the exclusive dominion of the local majority. In this right it is a painful symptom of the arbitrary and intolerant character of majorities. It affords an illustration of the principle which has been quoted from the work of Mr. Calhoun, a principle which all history corroborates, that government by numbers is not less insatiable of power, and certainly not more scrupulous of the claims of those who are without its pale, than any other absolute, uncontrolled, and irresponsible authority. Looking at the place which representative institutions are apparently destined to fill in the govemment of mankind, it becomes of the highest importance to consider whether means cannot be found to eradicate the vice in their constitution which deprives the state of the benefit of the judgment—it is to be feared of a large number—of the most calm and dispassionate, as well as of the most instructed and thoughtful of its people. The problem is, how to render representation in fact what it is in name,—to make it universally truthful, and to give to the best elements in every constituency their best and most perfect expression.

The founders of our parliamentary system,—if that appellation can be justly conferred upon any particular men in any age,—did not contemplate, and could not provide, for the difference of political opinion to be evolved in the progress of civilisation. Yet, on the other hand, they certainly did not contemplate a state of things in which the will of a vast proportion of those whom they entrusted with the franchise would be wholly disregarded. It is remarkable that the writs require the returning officers to send the knights and burgesses to Parliament “with full and sufficient powers;”^[25]—a form of expression which students of common law know is inconsistent with the existence of a body some of whom repudiate the person whom the others have nominated, and refuse to concur in investing him with such powers. It is probable that the idea of the constitution and unanimity of the jury entered into the conception of its framers.

The restricted vote, in the Reform Act of 1867, is, no doubt, open to several objections. It operates very partially in reaching only a few constituencies; in the far greater number it leaves the evil untouched. Whilst the law recognises, in a measure, 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.^[26] 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.^[27] 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.”^[28] A description more truly characteristic of what is here proposed had not proceeded from any pen or tongue, and not a word implies that the speaker thought it undesirable if it were possible; not the smallest intimation that he was adverse to giving every considerable section of opinion in the nation, whether it be more or less centred in any particular locality, its just expression in the national council. On the contrary there are to be found in Mr. Bright's speeches the most powerful arguments for the necessity and duty of exercising individual thought, the strongest appeals to the intellect and conscience of every elector, addressed to them as persons capable of meditation in silence, and not to conglomerate masses who can only act upon one another through external signs. To the people of Birmingham, on the eve of the election, he says:—“Bear in mind that you are now going to make a machine more important than any that is made in the manufactories of Birmingham—you are going to make a parliament that shall legislate directly for the United Kingdom, and indirectly for two hundred millions of men—a parliament that will levy taxes in the United Kingdom, and in India, to the amount of £110,000,000, and a parliament that, when it once takes its seat in Westminster, is all-important for all these things; and every member you send is a part of that grand machine, and every elector throughout the United Kingdom who shall vote at the coming contest is partly the manufacturer of that stupendous machine whose power no man could measure.” The force of this exhortation is lost if it fails to lead those whom it reaches to recall facts, and thereupon to awaken reflection in their minds—that faculty which is the exclusive possession of each individual brain. In this process everyone must work alone; though the physical force of a hundred or a thousand arms may be combined to accomplish a mechanical result, there can be no common cerebral action of so many heads to solve a problem in moral science, any more than to invent a steam engine or write ‘Paradise Lost.’ Those who thus address the people know that if their advice be fruitful it must be through its influence in leading every voter at the election to do what in his own judgment he shall conclude to be best and wisest. The counsel is not to find out what the majority will do and blindly follow it. Everyone would feel that it would be of small use to ponder over any solution of social or economical problems, in order to select, for the business of government, those in whom he could most perfectly trust, if after all his study his conclusion could not be acted upon unless more than half of his constituency, by something in the nature of a miracle, arrived at precisely the same conclusion. When we would stimulate thought and inquiry as a guide to action, we intend the action to be directed by the thought, and not by some accident independent of it.

All systems by which hundreds or thousands of persons who are not associated by any pervading harmony of mind or feeling, but are gathered together by the mere accident of living in the same district or town, are led or forced, on pain of political extinction, always to agree in the choice of their representatives, are inconsistent with the free exercise of individual will, guided by those diversities of thought and sentiment upon which men form their various estimates of character; and their subjection to such compulsion tends to the mental and moral deterioration both of the electors and the elected. They degrade men from the rank of living and individually thinking and responsible beings, and treat them only as so many mechanical units making up a certain party. “I always feel,” says Dr. Walker, in his election sermon, “when I put my hand into the ballot box, that I am being used by somebody, I know not whom, for some purpose I know not what.”^[29] “The principle,” says Mr. Calhoun, “by which constitutional governments are upheld, is compromise, that of absolute governments is force” By giving full, and no more than fall weight to opposing and conflicting interests, a salutary check is interposed to all precipitate resolutions. “They render deliberation a matter not of choice but of necessity; they make all change a subject of compromise, which materially begets moderation: they produce temperaments preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations, and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power for ever impracticable.” How are those who form their opinions upon considerations which the majority do not appreciate,—to bring about this compromise? They must have the power of exercising a volition of their own. Without this, neither reason, entreaty, nor persuasion, can be relied upon. The basis of union and permanence, in the ordinary partnerships by which the commercial transactions of the world are carried on, is the necessity of mutual attention, forbearance, and respect. If this be not rendered by one to the other, the partnership is dissolved. That it is not so dissolved, is because the feebler judgment yields to the stronger, the cautious is encouraged by the more impetuous, the more impetuous is tempered by the cautious, and each character and person derives improvement and profit from the combination. The progress of physical science has advanced by observation of laws which apply to things under our sight, and the application of the same laws to bodies of greater magnitude which are otherwise beyond our vision and comprehension. It reasons from the lesser to the greater. So in political life; an element which is potent, and preserves harmony in the smaller sections of society, may be brought to bear on its larger combinations. Let electors, whether they consist only of the “tens or twenties scattered in vast communities, and whose votes are now utterly without influence in any one place,”^[30] or whether they compose any of the various sections of society who look to moral, rather than to purely political doctrines; or, whatever may be their causes of dissent, be permitted, when occasion arises, to dissolve the union which the place of residence or some other accident has created between them and the other members of the constituency on which their votes are registered, and let them add their votes, if they desire, to those of some other constituency, but so as not to interfere in the smallest degree with the just weight of the majority in such other constituency. They may thus become partners with other electors with whom they have more sympathy. Eminent judges, in administering the law, have, when they looked at the losses and evils which commonly accrue to partners from suddenly and angrily severing the connection, considered the union as having some analogy to another,—for better and for worse. There is, however, no such indissoluble bond uniting together the dwellers in every borough. They may be told to be, if they can, unanimous in the choice of a representative; but if an elector cannot agree with the majority on one side of a parish boundary, there would be no necessary breach of the order, or even of the courtesies of society, if he be permitted to unite himself with a number of his fellow-countrymen on the other side. He is not precluded from choosing his friends or associates beyond the boundaries of his own borough, and there does not seem to be any sound reason why he should not be allowed, with a like freedom, to seek elsewhere his fellow-constituents. If the legal obstacles in the way of this exercise of individual volition were removed, and the elector were enabled to add his vote to the votes of any other of his countrymen, agreeing with him in sympathy and opinion, and sufficient to form a constituency, it is obvious that, so far as representation is concerned, the question as to minorities would cease, for the minorities would be absorbed. An age which has achieved the freedom of commercial intercourse in spite of the pretensions of local protection and monopoly, may not unreasonably hope to find advocates for the free interchange and communication, as well of political action as of political thought, against the far less plausible and more insolent claims of dominant inhabitants of arbitrarily selected and privileged boroughs and districts to a monopoly of the great right of national representation.

The purpose of this work is to show how practically small in form is the change that would suffice to liberate the elector from the bonds that now tie him to the other voters of the borough in which he happens to dwell, whereby his action is absolutely fettered to theirs, however weak, ignorant, or corrupt they may be,—how perfectly such a change would be in accordance with the letter and spirit of our constitution, and how trivial are the arguments against it, when thoroughly weighed. By such means, the unrepresented minority would be reduced to the smallest limits, and include only those impracticable tempers, for whose satisfaction it is neither possible nor desirable to provide.

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1. Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. 3rd ed., p. 103.
2. Id., p105.
3. Histoire des Origines du Gouvernement Représentatif, vol. i., p. 106. Paris, 1851.
4. Id., p. 107. Sir George Cornewall Lewis has collected the reasons given for the rule that the decision of the majority shall govern, and remarks that they are exhausted in Barbeyrae's translation of Puffendorf, in which the rule is simply founded on this;—“parce qu'il n'y a presque point d'autre expédient pour terminer les affaires”—Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion, § 246, new ed. London, Parker, 1849.
5. For the origin of this word, see Pickering's Vocabulary, Boston, 1816; Webster's Dictionary, New York, 1828. On the operation of the caucus, Tremenheere, Constitution of the United States, p. 223.
6. A Disquisition on Government, and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, by John C, Calhoun, Edited by R. C. Cralle, p. 13. Charleston, 1851.
7. Id., p. 13.
8. Id., p. 16.
9. Id., p.22.
10. Id. p. 25.
11. Id. p. 27
12. Reflections on the French Bevolution, &c., p. 186. See Mill, Considerations on on Representative Government, c. vi. (Note to 3rd ed.)
13. Lord Grey, in the last edition of his work on Parliamentary Government (pp. 209–213), has suggested that the votes of graduates of colleges and universities, and of workmen in trades, to be incorporated for the purpose, might be taken without regard to localities, but still, as I gather, by majorities, and not in unanimity, as here proposed. (Note to 3rd ed.)
14. Guisot, Gouvernement Représentatif, vol. ii. p. 259.
15. Edinburgh Review, vol. c., p.229
16. Guizot, Gouvemement Représentatif, vol. ii., p. 253.
17. See Appendix N.
18. Hansard, Parl. Deb., vol. clxxxviii., pp. 1068–1120.
19. The speech of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (Hansard, clxxxix., p. 465) refers to the abuse of the power of majorities in remarkable examples.
20. Hansard, Id., pp. 1125–1179.
21. Appendix N.
22. Appendix N, p. 365 (§8)
23. “Proportional Representation” by Milicent Garrett Fawcett, Macmillan's Magazine, Sept., 1870, p. 376
24. See Mr. Morrison's Bill, infra, p. 196, n.
25. Brady, Histor. Treat., Lond., 1777, p. 54. Hallam's Middle Ages, Eng. Const., c. 8, part 3.
26. See Appendix N, infra, pp. 359–372.
27. Appendix A, infra, p. 293.
28. Hansard's Parl. Deb., vol. clxxxix., pp. 1126, 1127.
29. “Machinery of Politics, &c., American Law Review, Jan., 1872. Boston.
30. Parl. Hist., vol. cxxii., p. 1184. This claim on behalf of voters of the learned professions distributed throughout the country was put forward in a petition presented by Lord Harrowby.