the local boundary of his own constituency, and thus open to every voter full scope and exercise for his predilections, whether of birth or neighbourhood—from community of interest, thought, or opinion, or from any other governing sentiment—an opportunity which under the proportional system it must be remembered may be used as a means of help, but not of conflict or defeat. If a voter whose residence and qualification is in London, but whose early associations are with Cornwall or Devonshire, should prefer to preserve his connection with and vote in the county rather than in the city, he would in no degree interfere with the electoral power of the county voters. He might come to the aid of a minority or add one to the majority who vote for a county candidate; but when it is no longer a struggle on one side to exclude the other, the addition would be felt as purely beneficial in its tendency, as increasing the aggregate county influence without diminishing that of any party or section in it. The election with the proportional system is no longer a strife for mastery, but an exercise in which all are stimulated to do their best, allowing their neighbours to do the same. This character of the system, however, is not generally realised in the popular mind, and therefore it is desirable to show that the provisions introduced to effect the second of these objects are entirely distinct from those which relate to the first, and that the second may be omitted while the first is adopted.
Instead, therefore, of prescribing, as in the Proportional Representation Bill, that the number of members to be returned by the several constituencies in the schedule should be found by dividing the population, as ascertained at the census from time to time, by the number of members to be returned for England and Wales, and assigning to each so many members as the constituency contains entire multiples of the quotient,[1] or even of making the number of registered
- ↑ Sect. VII. Other boroughs were to be withdrawn from the counties and added to those enumerated in the note (p. 196) as soon as they should contain a population equal to three multiples of the quotient.
