of members every county, city, or borough may return, not by the number of its electors on the register, but by the number of those electors who take the trouble to vote at the election.[1] It is the same in effect as if the whole nation, all the adult and trusted of the people to whom the suffrage is given, had been summoned to meet on some great central plain, and the business of the assembly is then and there determined by those who obey the summons and attend, and not by those who are absent; in fact, every elector who does not go to the poll is absent from the great national conclave, and it is but just that he should be so regarded. This principle of the system might have formed part of the proposed measure of the last session, or might be adopted in any future Reform Bill. It cannot be doubted that it would operate as a powerful appeal to the public spirit and patriotism of every voter, to be careful not by his abstention to diminish the fair political influence of his town or county. It would in fact put all the people of Britain as it were on their mettle that they may not fall behind others in the performance of their electoral duties, and lose that influence in the state which is its consequence.
In working out the details of that phase of this system which equalizes and adjusts the comparative power of every voter, to whatever constituency he belongs, and liberates him at the same time from every restriction which at present abridges his opportunities of association with others of like sympathies, two things have been contemplated; first, this equality of numbers making up the quota sufficient to return a member, and which the foregoing explanation will show to be applicable to constituencies however rigidly localized; and secondly, the enlarged and vast extension of the field open to the individual elector by enabling him to carry his vote to the aid of those with whom he agrees, and whose candidate he would desire to see elected, whether within or without
- ↑ See pp. 25–31; and Sect. XXXIII., p. 219.
