als by bleeding, designed to interfere
with the religious rites of the Jews. Despite the fact that it was
opposed by the Federal Council, as contrary to the right of religious
liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, it was carried by the
referendum. Belgium, again, can hardly be taken as a model of
constitutional liberty. Surely we in Australia do not want the factious
strife of religious, racial, and class sections, which so nearly brought
on a revolution last year. Yet this is exactly what proportional
delegation to sections would bring about. Belgium has a hard task to
reconcile two races so differently constituted as the Walloons and
Flemings, and has been able to avoid instability of the ministry so far
only because the Clerical party, which is mostly Flemish, still has a
majority. The new system has only consecrated the sectional principle,
and will do nothing to restore harmony.

CHAPTER VIII.

PREFERENTIAL VOTING, THE BLOCK VOTE, ETC.

+Preferential Voting.+--Laplace, the great mathematician, to whom we owe
so much of the theory of probability, showed more than a century ago
that although individual electors may have very different views as to
the relative merits of a number of candidates for any office, still the
expression of the degree of favour in which the candidates are held by
the whole body of electors will be the same if each elector be assumed
to have a uniform gradation of preference. Suppose that there are ten
candidates, and it is required to place them in order of general favour.
Each elector should be required to place the whole ten in the order of
his preference, 1, 2, 3, &c. Let the maximum degree of merit be denoted
by ten marks, so that every first preference will count as ten marks.
Then, although an individual elector might be disposed to give his
second preference only five marks, and the rest of his preferences, say,
two marks, Laplace demonstrated that it is most probable that the total
result would be the same if each elector be assumed to give his second
preference nine marks, his third preference eight marks, and so on.
Therefore, if all first preferences be multiplied by ten, second
preferences by nine, and so on in regular order down to last preferences
multiplied by one, the total number of marks will be an index of the
order in general favour. If there is one office to be filled, the
candidate with the highest number of marks should be elected; if there
are two offices,