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58
’TIS SIXTY YEARS SINCE

to have, he also, a taste of public life. In this respect our American system is, I submit, manifestly and incomparably inferior to the system of parliamentary election existing in Great Britain, itself open to grave criticism. In Great Britain the public man seeks the constituency wherever he can find it; or the constituency seeks its representative wherever it recognizes him. The present Prime Minister of Great Britain, for instance, represents a small Scotch constituency in which he never resided, but by which he was elected more than twenty years ago, and through which he has since consecutively remained in public life. On the other hand, look at the waste and extravagance of the system now and traditionally in use with us. To get into public life a man must not only be in sympathy with the majority of the citizens of the locality in which he lives, but he must continue to be in sympathy with that majority; or, at any election, like Mr. Cannon in the election just held, where for any passing cause a majority of his neighbors in the locality in which he lives may fail to support him, he must go into retirement. I cannot here enlarge on this topic, vital as I see it; I have neither space nor time, and must, therefore, needs content myself with the "hints" of Paracelsus. I will merely say that as an outcome this localized majority system practically disfranchises the more intelligent and the more disinterested, the more individual and independent of every constituency. It reduces their influence, and negatives their action. It