The ablest candidate may be a Tory and the electors
Liberals; or a Liberal and they may be Tories. The political questions
of the day may be Church questions, and he may be a High Churchman
or a Rationalist, while they may be Dissenters or Evangelicals; and
vice versa. His abilities, in these cases, might only enable him to go
greater lengths, and act with greater effect, in what they may
conscientiously believe to be a wrong course; and they may be bound,
by their sincere convictions, to think it more important that their
representative should be kept, on these points, to what they deem
the dictate of duty, than that they should be represented by a
person of more than average abilities. They may also have to consider,
not solely how they can be most ably represented, but how their
particular moral position and mental point of view shall be
represented at all.
The influence of every mode of thinking which is shared by numbers
ought to be felt in the legislature: and the constitution being
supposed to have made due provision that other and conflicting modes
of thinking shall be represented likewise, to secure the proper
representation for their own mode may be the most important matter
which the electors on the particular occasion have to attend to. In
some cases, too, it may be necessary that the representative should
have his hands tied, to keep him true to their interest, or rather
to the public interest as they conceive it.
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