79 



THE APPLICATION OF THE HARE SYSTEM IN 



TASMANIA, 



BY 



"W. Jethro Brown, M.A., LL.D. (Cantab ) 



The fate of the Hare system constitutes one of the most remark- 

 able incidents in the history of representative government. Mr 

 Hare's treatise, " The Election of Representatives," was 

 published in 1859. It claimed to have discovered a remedy for 

 some of the most serious of the evils to which Democracy is 

 subject, and almost immediately received an attention not un- 

 worthy of the capacity of the writer and the magnitude of the 

 problems discussed. In 1860 the celebrated Henry Fawcett was 

 responsible for the publication, " Mr Hare's Keform Bill Simplified 

 and Explained." In the following year there appeared the 

 " Bfpresentative Government " of John Stuart Mill. The latest 

 advocate spoke in no uncertain tone : — " Mr Hare's scheme 

 has the almost unparalleled merit of carrying out a great principle 

 of government in a manner approaching to ideal perfection as 

 regards the special object in view, while it attains incidentally 

 several other ends, of scarcely inferior importance. . . . Such 

 and so numerous are its advantages that they place it among the 

 very greatest improvements yet made in the theory and practice 

 of government." Such commendation, where it failed to evoke the 

 enthusiasm of the reformer, should at least have aroused the 

 interest of the citizen. No champion came forward to defend 

 the older system ; many of the evils which the new was designed 

 to remedy were becoming increasingly grave. If we attach to 

 such circumstances the importance they deserve, the issue must 

 appear surprising. Thirty-five years after the publication of Mill's 

 treatise, when the Hon. A. I. Clark, Attorney-General of Tasmania, 

 introduced a Bill to apply the Hare system to city constituencies 

 he could appeal to no precedent in the Parliamentary experience of 

 English-speaking peoples! 



Weighed in the balance and found wanting I The conclusion 

 seems irresistible but it is not supported by facts. Neither 

 experience nor argument has condemned the Hare system. To 

 what circumstances, then, may we attribute its ill fortune ? Not to 

 the objections which have been urged, for these are commonly 

 but the after-thoughts which justify an argument founded in 

 prejudice. Even where they are serious they are not unanswer- 

 able. The sDlution of the mystery is rather to be found in two 

 facts, of which one is a weakness of human nature, and the other 

 a satire on party government. In the first place the plan of Mr 

 Hare suggests innovation. In the second place it is one of those 

 innovations which share the fate of the inconstant lover ; by 

 affecting all parties it secures the allegiance of none. It might 

 be added as a third explanation that the most serious of the 



