Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 75, No. 462, April 1854Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Vol. 75, No. 462, April 1854
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
There is but one way of remedying this, and that is by recurring to the
simple principle _that no man shall be entitled, in one place, to vote
for more than a single member_. We do not mean by this that large
populations should be restricted to a single member—that would be
unfair, and even preposterous. We mean that each county, division of a
county, city, town, or borough, which has more than one member allotted
to it, should be subdivided into parishes, districts, or wards, each to
return a member, according to the votes of the majority of the qualified
electors within it. Thus London would be divided into four electoral
districts; Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, and others into two; and
the counties would, in the same way, be partitioned into so many
districts as there were members to be returned. This system is at
present in partial operation in the counties of England, which are split
into divisions, and there undoubtedly the system has worked well and
satisfactorily. No man in his senses would propose that each county
elector of Yorkshire should have six votes; and we really cannot see why
one man, because he happens to live in a large town, should have double
the personal political influence of another who resides in a small
borough. It does not necessarily follow, by any means, that the members
to be returned under the operation of the system which we propose should
be antagonistic to one another. It would, we are convinced, materially
tend to improve the representation, by infusing fresh energy into the
constituencies; it is already recognised, and partially in effect; and
it is not liable to any of the objections which it requires no ingenuity
to rear against Lord John Russell’s absurd scheme for giving members to
minorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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