at committee, and pledged to party violence, and
of characteristic, and therefore unmoderate, representatives for every
'ism' in all England. Instead of a deliberate assembly of moderate and
judicious men, we should have a various compound of all sorts of
violence. I may seem to be drawing a caricature, but I have not reached
the worst. Bad as these members would be if they were left to
themselves--if in a free Parliament they were confronted with the perils
of government, close responsibility might improve them, and make them
tolerable. But they would not be left to themselves. A voluntary
constituency will nearly always be a despotic constituency."

The practical difficulties in the application of Mr. Hare's scheme are
almost insuperable, but it is not worth while pursuing the subject,
since it is now admitted by recent advocates that the faddist argument
is fatal. This is an admission that Mr. Hare completely neglected the
factor of human nature. Professor Nanson writes:--"Hare proposed that
there should be only one electorate, consisting of the whole State. It
is unfortunate that this proposal was made. There can be no doubt that
it has retarded the progress of true electoral reform for at least a
generation ... it would inevitably lead to the election of a certain
number of faddists."

+John Stuart Mill.+--The great vogue which the Hare system has obtained
is to be traced more to the influence of John Stuart Mill than to that
of anyone else. Mill was captivated by the apparent justice of the
proposal, and devoted a chapter of his "Representative Government" to
it, wherein he declared:--"Mr. Hare's scheme has the almost unparalleled
merit of carrying out a great principle of government in a manner
approaching to ideal perfection, while it attains incidentally several
other things of scarcely inferior importance." Believing in the absolute
justice of the principle, Mill and Hare were certainly consistent in
setting no limit to its application except the size of the assembly.
Mill is emphatic on this point. "Real equality of representation," he
asserted, "is not obtained unless any set of electors, amounting to
average number of a constituency, wherever they happen to reside, have
the power of combining with one another to return a representative."
Now, the recent disciples of Mr. Hare are never tired of claiming the
support of Mill, although they have thrown this definition to the
winds. But they are guilty of far m