Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/73

pose any of the various sections of society who look to moral, rather than to purely political doctrines; or, whatever may be their causes of dissent, be permitted, when occasion arises, to dissolve the union which the place of residence or some other accident has created between them and the other members of the constituency on which their votes are registered, and let them add their votes, if they desire, to those of some other constituency, but so as not to interfere in the smallest degree with the just weight of the majority in such other constituency. They may thus become partners with other electors with whom they have more sympathy. Eminent judges, in administering the law, have, when they looked at the losses and evils which commonly accrue to partners from suddenly and angrily severing the connection, considered the union as having some analogy to another,—for better and for worse. There is, however, no such indissoluble bond uniting together the dwellers in every borough. They may be told to be, if they can, unanimous in the choice of a representative; but if an elector cannot agree with the majority on one side of a parish boundary, there would be no necessary breach of the order, or even of the courtesies of society, if he be permitted to unite himself with a number of his fellow-countrymen on the other side. He is not precluded from choosing his friends or associates beyond the boundaries of his own borough, and there does not seem to be any sound reason why he should not be allowed, with a like freedom, to seek elsewhere his fellow-constituents. If the legal obstacles in the way of this exercise of individual volition were removed, and the elector were enabled to add his vote to the votes of any other of his countrymen, agreeing with him in sympathy and opinion, and sufficient to form a constituency, it is obvious that, so far as representation is concerned, the question as to minorities would cease, for the minorities would be absorbed. An age which has achieved the freedom of commercial intercourse in spite of the pretensions of local protection and