This
is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which the votes are now
taken, to the complete disfranchisement of minorities.
The confusion of ideas here is great, but it is so easily cleared up
that one would suppose the slightest indication would be sufficient to
place the matter in its true light before any mind of average
intelligence. It would be so, but for the power of habit; owing to
which the simplest idea, if unfamiliar, has as great difficulty in
making its way to the mind as a far more complicated one. That the
minority must yield to the majority, the smaller number to the
greater, is a familiar idea; and accordingly men think there is no
necessity for using their minds any further, and it does not occur
to them that there is any medium between allowing the smaller number
to be equally powerful with the greater, and blotting out the
smaller number altogether. In a representative body actually
deliberating, the minority must of course be overruled; and in an
equal democracy (since the opinions of the constituents, when they
insist on them, determine those of the representative body) the
majority of the people, through their representatives, will outvote
and prevail over the minority and their representatives. But does it
follow that the minority should have no representatives at all?
Because the majority ought to prevail over the minority, must the
majority have all the votes, the minority none? Is it necessary that
the minority should not even be heard? Nothing but habit and old
association can reconcile any reasonable being to the needless
injustice.
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