James.] 4:<U [Dec. 6, 



bore to the total vote. The names standing first on the party list should 

 be declared elected until the number assigned to the party should be ex- 

 hausted. The sj'stem is worked out in considerable detail in the pam- 

 phlet. It is practically the Free List System, which has been adopted of 

 late in portions of Switzerland. 



There is no indication in the proceedings of the American Philosophi- 

 cal Society that the paper was discussed in that body, either at that time 

 or later ; nor is it very apparent from the history of the time what the 

 immediate occasion was which gave rise to the paper. The subject of 

 representative reform was, of course, on the tapis at the time. The law 

 of Congress requiring the States to be divided into single-member dis- 

 tricts had only just been passed, after great excitement in Congress, in 

 answer to a demand for fairer representation and a chance for the minor- 

 ity. It is quite possible that more detailed researches will show that 

 these ideas were advanced by earlier writers during the discussions 

 incident to this act of Congress. At present they seem, in this form at 

 any rate, to have been original with Thomas Gilpin ; even if they had 

 been advanced before by writers and thinkers in Europe, which does not 

 yet appear. 



Hare does not mention having seen this pamphlet, though the expres- 

 sions, qaota and representative quota, are here used much in the Hare 

 sense. J. Francis Fisher, of Philadelphia, in his Degradation of Our 

 Representative System and Its Reform (Philadelphia, 1863), claims to 

 have worked out a plan similar to Hare's before the latter had published 

 anything upon the subject. In such case he may have been indebted to 

 Gilpin, or at least to the discussion which Gilpin started, for the funda- 

 mental thought ; but if so, he forgot to give Gilpin credit for it. Fisher 

 was also a member of the Philosophical Society and may have heard Gil- 

 pin's paper. He must have known of Kane's claim for Gilpin, in the 

 obituary notice of the latter, read before the Society, February 17, 1854, 

 in which he said that Gilpin had proposed the first matuied plan for mi- 

 nority representation, wliich had gained public attention among us. 

 Indeed, Fisher could hardly have escaped seeing the pamphlet itself, 

 as Gilpin doubtless sent copies to all his colleagues in the Society. 



Salem Dutchcr, in his Minority or Proportional Repo'eaentation, speaks 

 of it as the first essay on the subject of Minority Representation in 

 English, and states that only one copy was known to be in existence.. 



Thomas Gilpin, the author of the paper— which, whether the first or 

 not, is certainly an early and cogent argument for the principle of fair 

 play for the minorities — was born in Philadelphia in 1776, and died in the 

 same city in 1853. He was a successful paper manufacturer, and has the 

 credit of liaving introduced many improvements into that branch of indus- 

 try in this country. He came of good old Quaker stock. His father, 

 Thomas Gilpin, was banished from Philadelphia at the outbreak of the 

 Revolution on account of supposed sympathy with England. lie had 

 felt in his life the bitterness of belonging to a minority which not only 



