Having been slightly concerned in a University election held under
the system known as the single transferable vote, I have had an opportunity of studying the system at close quarters. This is no place for a general disquisition on the subject, and I would do anything to avoid stirring the passions of the advocates of the various forms of proportional representation. I only make two observations, one my own, one not. My own is that it would be fatal to require the public to vote under any system which they cannot understand clearly enough to be sure that there is none of what they would call hanky-panky about it. The other, made by a personage more inti- mately and more authoritatively associated than I was with the voting machinery, was : " I am convinced that if they had put two crosses in the ordinary way against the names of the candidates they wanted the result would have been precisely the same," I think so, too—
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