Mr. Courtney, in his speech at Cramlington yesterday week, made
effective use of the condition of the present Metropolitan counties as illustrating the one-sided results of the existing system. He said you might find in the three divisions of Kent, in the three divisions of Surrey, in the two divisions of Sussex, and so forth, none but Conservative Members. That is quite true ; and it is perfectly true that it is also an illustration of the defective working of the existing principle in relation to the present very limited county constituencies. But in the first place, the sub-division of counties into a much more considerable number of divisions, each returning only one Member, will render such a result vastly less likely, as it is all but certain that the large Liberal minorities in these Metropolitan counties would yield considerable majorities in many sub-divi- sions of those counties. In the next place, there will be in the new and larger constituencies no uniformity of interest and caste, such as exists in the present villa-ridden constituencies. And lastly, the question is not whether we can get rid of all faults in our system, but whether Mr. Courtney can hold out hopes of a system less faulty. In our opinion, if the single- seat system would fail in one case out of ten to yield the true opinions of the constituencies, the Hare scheme would fail in four or five cases out of ten, and would produce a perfectly intolerable misrepresentation of the political convictions of the people.
