On the other hand a large part of the constituencies would be town districts, and these would send up persons representing the beliefs or unbeliefs of the lowest classes in their towns.
Walter Bagehot
The Public Record
Walter Bagehot was an English journalist, businessman, and essayist, who wrote extensively about government, economics, literature and race. He is known for co-founding the National Review in 1855, and for his works The English Constitution and Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873).
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They would, perhaps, be divided between the genuine representatives of the artisans--not possibly of the best of the artisans, who are a select and intellectual class, but of the common order of workpeople--and the merely pretended members…
In all big towns in which there is electioneering these houses are the centres of illicit corruption and illicit management.
Our new Parliament, therefore, would be made up of two sorts of representatives from the town lowest class, and one sort of representatives from the agricultural lowest class.
The genuine representatives of the country would be men of one marked sort, and the genuine representatives for the county men of another marked sort, but very opposite: one would have the prejudices of town artisans, and the other the…
Each class would speak a language of its own; each would be unintelligible to the other; and the only thriving class would be the immoral representatives, who were chosen by corrupt machination, and who would probably get a good profit on…
The world seems growing young when grave old lawyers and mature philosophers propose a scheme promising so much.
It is from these classes that young men suffer commonly the chilling demonstration that their fine plans are opposed to rooted obstacles, that they are repetitions of other plans which failed long ago, and that we must be content with the…
A great change of this sort happily cannot be sudden; a free people cannot be confused by new institutions which they do not understand, for they will not adopt them till they understand them.
We ought incessantly to popularise the principle by writing; and, what is better than writing, small preliminary bits of experiment.
There is so much that is wearisome and detestable in all other election machineries, that I well understand, and wish I could share, the sense of relief with which the believers in this scheme throw aside all their trammels, and look to an…
First, the law may make them, as in England and almost everywhere: the law may say such and such qualifications shall give a vote for constituency X; those who have that qualification shall BE constituency X.
Under the compulsory form of constituency the votes of the minorities are thrown away.
In the city of London, now, there are many Tories, but all the members are Whigs; every London Tory, therefore, is by law and principle misrepresented: his city sends to Parliament not the member whom he wished to have, but the member he…
In many existing constituencies the disfranchisement of minorities is hopeless and chronic.
I have myself had a vote for an agricultural county for twenty years, and I am a Liberal; but two Tories have always been returned, and all my life will be returned.
But if I could combine with 1000 other Liberals in that and other Conservative counties, we might choose a Liberal member.
It is said to be unreasonable that Liverpool should return only the same number of members as King's Lynn or Lyme Regis; but upon the voluntary plan, Liverpool could come down to King's Lynn.
The Liberal minority in King's Lynn could communicate with the Liberal minority in Liverpool, and make up 1000; and so everywhere.
Mill was returned by the electors of Westminster; and they have never, since they had members, done themselves so great an honour.
They meant to do homage to mental ability, but it was the worship of an unknown God--if ever there was such a thing in this world.
What are the counterweights which overpower these merits?
I reply that the voluntary composition of constituencies appears to me inconsistent with the necessary prerequisites of Parliamentary government as they have been just laid down.
Under the voluntary system, the crisis of politics is not the election of the member, but the making the constituency.
The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history.
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