names. The deficient votes would be dealt with in like manner, and thus the sympathies of all would be awakened and called into exercise.[1] The electors in the metropolis, emancipated from the trammels by which they are now restricted, and having before them a field of choice, including many men amongst their contemporaries whose names they have been accustomed to admire or venerate, would gather together members certainly not less eminent than those of any other constituency in the kingdom. In an equal system of suffrage in counties and boroughs—and of individual independence—it is probable that the county electors between the Humber, the Mersey, and the Tees—or the county electors south of the Severn, would be entitled to nearly the same number of members as the electors of the metropolis; and a competition between the metropolis, the north, and the south, to be represented in the state by the most distinguished of contemporaneous statesmen, would impart a new and incalcu-
- ↑ The author pointed out this method in his evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Franchise (Report, June 26, 1860). See also the 'Journal of the Social Science Association,' April 10, 1865. The practical objection to an application of this system to the metropolis alone, of course, is the immediate effect it would have in transferring power from one party to another. It must in justice be accompanied by a redistribution of seats, giving to the metropolis its due number of members, and thus full representation both to Liberals and Conservatives. The division of the capital into new boroughs, as Finsbury, Marylebone, &c., has not the justification that it preserves the bonds of neighbourhood, local sympathy and intercourse which exist in provincial towns. These ties are scarcely known in the metropolitan localities. It was desired that the School Board should contain ladies practically acquainted with the education of girls, yet of 38,000 surplus votes for Miss Garrett in Marylebone, none could go to make up the 100 wanting for Mrs. Grey in Chelsea. It is absurd enough that the seat of Mr. Gladstone in Parliament, for whom 100,000 electors would have voted if they could, is made to depend upon a majority of the voters of Oxford University, of South Lancashire, or of Gravesend. But it is, if possible, still more absurd that the 6,000 electors south of Oxford Street, who vainly struggled to be represented by Mr. Mill, could not be reinforced by any of the vast number of voters at the north of the same street who would have rejoiced to lend their aid. Note to 4th edition.
