An opportunity was
lost when the decision was taken to divide the West Riding of
Yorkshire for the purpose of giving it four members; instead of trying
the new principle, by leaving the constituency undivided, and allowing
a candidate to be returned on obtaining either in first or secondary
votes a fourth part of the whole number of votes given. Such
experiments, would be a very imperfect test of the worth of the
plan: but they would be an exemplification of its mode of working;
they would enable people to convince themselves that it is not
impracticable; would familiarise them with its machinery, and afford
some materials for judging whether the difficulties which are
thought to be so formidable are real or imaginary. The day when such a
partial trial shall be sanctioned by Parliament will, I believe,
inaugurate a new era of Parliamentary Reform; destined to give to
Representative Government a shape fitted to its mature and
triumphant period, when it shall have passed through the militant
stage in which alone the world has yet seen it.*
* In the interval between the last and present editions of this
treatise, it has become known that the experiment here suggested has
actually been made on a larger than any municipal or provincial scale,
and has been in course of trial for several years. In the Danish
Constitution (not that of Denmark proper, but the Constitution
framed for the entire Danish kingdom) the equal representation of
minorities was provided for on a plan so nearly identical with Mr.
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