Proportional Representation. 33 



Note by the Lecturer to the Foregoing Address. 



It has been suggested that the selection of Lord Dufferin's 

 surplus votes for distribution involves the element of chance. 

 No voter will know for whom his vote will tell, and the other 

 candidates may be favoured or injured according to the set of 

 surplus votes that may be selected. 



The voter, at all events, can scarcely complain. If his paper 

 remains one of these securing Lord Dufferin's election, his first 

 desire is fulfilled with his assistance ; if it is passed over as he 

 has directed, it is because his first desire is fulfilled without his 

 assistance, and his contingent order is obeyed. 



But a candidate may be pushed forward or put back. In the 

 test election in the text no manipulation could have produced any 

 other result than the election of Lord Tennyson and Professor 

 Tyndall ; but it is conceivable that when the number of votes 

 given is very small and the motives of second choice very inde- 

 pendent^ manipulation might modify the order of a return. As 

 numbers increase, variations in the distribution of second votes 

 diminish ; so that if out of a heap of 5,000 papers a surplus of a 

 1,000 had to be taken, it would not matter whether this 1,000 

 was taken from the top, the bottom, the middle, or in any other 

 fanciful way ; the 1,000 would be found distributed in the same 

 proportions, with very narrow limits of variation. This is more 

 and more the case when the election is a real act of political or 

 social life, and the surplus votes of the prime favourite of a party 

 become apportionable among second favourites with the 

 regularity of a fixed law. The element of chance disappears ; 

 and it may be noted that even if it could remain potent, it would 

 only affect the question which of two members supported by 

 persons of primarily the same way of thinking should be pre- 

 ferred to the other. 



