BELFAST 



NATURAL HISTORY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY 



SESSION 1890-91. 



\oth Ociober, 1890. 



J. H. Greenhill, Esq., Mus. Bac, in the Chair. 



The Right Hon. Leonard H. Courtney, M.P., deHvered an 



Address on 



PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. 



The subject on which I have to address you is one which some 

 would describe as a hobby of mine, others as a fad ; and 

 certainly it is one upon which I am easily led to talk. The 

 question I have to bring before you is a question of what some 

 would call political machinery. We have got a work to do, and 

 how can that work be secured ? If I can impress you in any 

 degree with my own ideas, I shall lead you at the end to regard 

 it not so much as a matter of political machinery as a matter of 

 political physiology ; for we are not dealing with a manipulation 

 of inanimate units, mere rods, or molecules of matter ; we are 

 dealing with human beings, whose wills have to be expressed, 

 and whose resolution has to be determined, whose minds have 

 to be measured, and whose desires have in some measure to be 

 reflected. More than that, we are dealing with human beings 

 upon whose individual activity, upon whose energy and whose 

 life what some would regard as the dead machinery of which we 

 are talking might have the most vital and stimulating influence. 

 It is one of the essential questions of modern life to know how 

 to carry out that great idea of constructing a representative 

 body that shall represent the will and secure the desire of the 



