Hare's, as to add another to the examples how the ideas which
resolve difficulties arising out of a general situation of the human
mind or of society, present themselves, without communication, to
several superior minds at once. This feature of the Danish electoral
law has been brought fully and clearly before the British public in an
able paper by Mr. Robert Lytton, forming one of the valuable reports
by Secretaries of Legation, printed by order of the House of Commons
in 1864, Mr. Hare's plan, which may now be also called M. Andrae's,
has thus advanced from the position of a simple project to that of a
realised political fact.
Though Denmark is as yet the only country in which Personal
Representation has become an institution, the progress of the idea
among thinking minds has been very rapid. In almost all the
countries in which universal suffrage is now regarded as a
necessity, the scheme is rapidly making its way: with the friends of
democracy, as a logical consequence of their principle; with those who
rather accept than prefer democratic government, as indispensable
corrective of its inconveniences. The political thinkers of
Switzerland led the way. Those of France followed. To mention no
others, within a very recent period two of the most influential and
authoritative writers in France, one belonging to the moderate liberal
and the other to the extreme democratic school, have given in a public
adhesion to the plan.
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