Constituencies would
become competitors for the best candidates, and would vie with one
another in selecting from among the men of local knowledge and
connections those who were most distinguished in every other respect.
The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern
civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is
increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their
effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more
and more below the highest level of instruction in the community.
But though the superior intellects and characters will necessarily
be outnumbered, it makes a great difference whether or not they are
heard. In the false democracy which, instead of giving
representation to all gives it only to the local majorities, the voice
of the instructed minority may have no organs at all in the
representative body. It is an admitted fact that in the American
democracy, which is constructed on this faulty model, the
highly-cultivated members of the community, except such of them as are
willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment, and
become the servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, seldom
even offer themselves for Congress or the State Legislatures, so
little likelihood have they of being returned.
Had a plan like Mr. Hare's by good fortune suggested itself to the
enlightened and patriotic founders of the American Republic, the
Federal and State Assemblies would have contained many of these
distinguished men, and democracy would have been spared its greatest
reproach and one of its most formidable evils.
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