cannot be personally executed. It intervenes in commerce, in jurisprudence, in education, and in a thousand other forms. In a multitude of circumstances people are compelled to place themselves and their interests in the hands of others. The exercise of individual judgment and deliberation suffices for all these purposes; and if, in the choice of their parliamentary representatives,—the electors were freed from the embarrassing restrictions by which their action is incumbered, there is no reason to doubt that they would employ the same care and caution as that with which they select persons to fill other fiduciary or vicarious offices.
The object of this Treatise[1] is to show that the attainment of a perfect system of personal representation is not opposed by any difficulties inherent in the subject; and that such a system is not only consistent with the due and just representation of every class and interest in the kingdom, as well as of the public which comprises all, but that it affords the most permanent and certain mode of representing and expressing the special views and opinions of all interests and classes; and that it also goes very far to remove, even if it does not entirely obviate all the sinister influences which have been hitherto found to prevail in the collection of the suffrages of the electors. It will be seen that personal representation, to be perfectly carried out, must be founded upon the basis of individual independence; that such independence
- ↑ The author first publish the principle of the suggestions contained in this Treatise soon after the general election of 1857, in a pamphlet intituled The Machinery of Representation (Maxwell, Bell Yard). A note to the same pamphlet, and, subsequently, a second edition, was published in the same year, the details being materially altered, and brought much nearer their present shape. The communications which the author from time to time received, led him to believe that the scheme had excited interest in the minds of many who had given much thought to this and kindred subjects; and that it was generally considered to stand in need of development more in the way of showing its practicability, than of proving the value of the objects which it was directed to attain.
