Part 16 (2/2)

His rele election should be kept secret till the general election is over:--

It surely would involve no practical difficulty to provide that the boxes of voting papers should be sealed up by a Government official and placed in such custody as would make it impossible to tamper with them; and that when the last election had been held they should be opened, the votes counted, and the results announced

The article on ”Parlia alterations The opening paragraph will show its general purport:--

The question, how to arrange our constituencies and conduct our Parliamentary elections so as to make the House of Commons, as far as possible, a true index of the state of opinion in the nation it professes to represent, is surely equal in ieneration has had to settle And the leap in the dark, which we seem about to take in a sudden and vast extension of the franchise, would be robbed of half its terrors could we feel assured that each political party will be duly represented in the next Parlia

The axioms on which his scheme was based were as follows:--

(1) That each Member of Parliament should represent approximately the same number of electors

(2) That the , each district may be divided, should be adequately represented

(3) That the waste of votes, caused by accidentally giving one candidateanother of the same party with less than he needs, should be, if possible, avoided

(4) That the process ofa ballot-paper should be reduced to the utmost possible simplicity, to meet the case of voters of the very narrowestvotes should be as simple as possible

Then came a precise proposal I do not pause to coestions of Mr Hare, Mr Courtney, and others:--

I proceed to give a summary of rules for the method I propose Form districts which shall return three, four, or more Members, in proportion to their size Let each elector vote for one candidate only When the poll is closed, divide the total number of votes by the nureater integer as ”quota” Let the returning officer publish the list of candidates, with the votes given for each, and declare as ”returned” each that has obtained the quota If there are still Members to return, let him name a time when all the candidates shall appear before hin his surplus votes to whomsoever of the other candidates he will, while the other candidates n their votes to one another

This method would enable each of the two parties in a district to return as many Members as it could muster ”quotas,” no matter how the votes were distributed If, for example, 10,000 were the quota, and the ”reds” mustered 30,000 votes, they could return three Members; for, suppose they had four candidates, and that A had 22,000 votes, B 4,000, C 3,000, D 1,000, A would sin 6,000 votes to B and 6,000 to C; while D, being hopeless of success, would naturally let C have his 1,000 also There would be no risk of a seat being left vacant through two candidates of the sa a quota between thenised--that the one with fewest votes should give place to the other And, with candidates of two opposite parties, this difficulty could not arise at all; one or the other could always be returned by the surplus votes of his party

So here:--

_March_ 1_st_--Sent off two letters of literary ireaves, to ask her consent to inal MS of ”Alice” in facsimile (the idea occurred to me the other day); the other to Mr H

Furniss, a very clever illustrator in _Punch_, asking if he is open to proposals to draw pictures for reaves, which, it will be noticed, was earlier in date than the short note already quoted in this chapter, ran as follows:--

My Dear Mrs Hargreaves,--I fancy this will come to you almost like a voice from the dead, after so many years of silence, and yet those years have made no difference that I can perceive in _my_ clearness ofto feel what an oldmemory is as to recent events and new friends, (for instance, I o, with a very nice little maid of about twelve, and had a ith her--and now I can't recall either of her names!), but h so many years, my ideal child-friend I have had scores of child-friends since your ti

However, I did not begin this letter to say all _that_ What I want to ask is, Would you have any objection to the original MS book of ”Alice's Adventures” (which I suppose you still possess) being published in facsi so occurred to me only the other day If, on consideration, you come to the conclusion that you would rather _not_ have it done, there is an end of the ive a favourable reply, I would be istered post, I should think, would be safest) that I may consider the possibilities I have not seen it for about twenty years, so am by no means sure that the illustrations may not prove to be so awfully bad that to reproduce them would be absurd

There can be no doubt that I should incur the charge of gross egois it But I don't care for that in the least, knowing that I have no suchthe extraordinary popularity the books have had (we have sold more than 120,000 of the two), there inal forson