The representation of minorities
should be provided for in the same manner as in the national
Parliament, and there are the same strong reasons for plurality of
votes. Only, there is not so decisive an objection, in the inferior as
in the higher body, to making the plural voting depend (as in some
of the local elections of our own country) on a mere money
qualification: for the honest and frugal dispensation of money forms
so much larger a part of the business of the local than of the
national body, that there is more justice as well as policy in
allowing a greater proportional influence to those who have a larger
money interest at stake.
In the most recently established of our local representative
institutions, the Boards of Guardians, the justices of peace of the
district sit ex officio along with the elected members, in number
limited by law to a third of the whole. In the peculiar constitution
of English society I have no doubt of the beneficial effect of this
provision. It secures the presence, in these bodies, of a more
educated class than it would perhaps be practicable to attract thither
on any other terms; and while the limitation in number of the ex
officio members precludes them from acquiring predominance by mere
numerical strength, they, as a virtual representation of another
class, having sometimes a different interest from the rest, are a
check upon the class interests of the farmers or petty shopkeepers who
form the bulk of the elected Guardians.
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