1 DECEMBER 1883, Page 3

Mr. Shaw Lefevre made a telling speech at the Gladstone

.Club on Thursday, in which he abused the attempt to secure by any direct scheme the representation of minorities up hill and down dale. But while attacking it thus furiously with his lips, he showed himself to be very favourable to the one device -on which alone we look with much hope,—that of subdividing con- stituencies to something like the same limit, and giving to every such constituency but one Member, and to every elector but one vote. That, we believe, if honestly done with the help of a Boun- dary Commission anxious to secure a genuine variety in the class of constituencies to be represented, would really result in giving a fair representation to minorities. Indeed, this, as Mr. Lefevre well showed, is at present very tolerably secured in the metro- polis itself. The fallacy of Mr. Lefevre's speech was his calm assumption that we who fear the undue suppression of minorities, advocate some juggle of machinery by which a minority may be transformed into a majority. We desire nothing of the kind. But we do desire to see the minority of the nation fairly represented by a proportional minority in Parliament, and not to see it ex- tinguished in Parliament altogether. To pretend that this is -either impossible, or so much even as unlikely, with household suffrage all over the country, is almost foolish. By a very little manipulation of the constituencies, in the interest of one party, -a grossly unfair result might be very easily secured.