-" ONE VOTE ONE VALUE" IN THE TRANSVAAL.
pro TRH EDITOR. UP Tlla "SPZOTATOR.-] Sin,—In an editorial note which appears in your issue of February 3rd you ask : " Why should a man have bestowed upon him a double dose of political power because he lives in the country ? " I venture to suggest that this is not the basis of the claim put forward by the advocates of electoral districts in proportion to population rather than in proportion to names on the register. When challenged by the advocates of woman's suffrage for our justification for excluding female citizens from the franchise, we are wont to reply that women generally are represented by their male relatives ; and this is largely true, and in old settled countries where there is no great variation of the numerical relation of the sexes no great injustice is done. In the Transvaal, however, the case is very different. The new settlers congregated in the mining districts are mostly single men ; their interest in the country is certainly recent, and may be transient; and at best they represent only themselves—I had almost written, their own selfishness—whilst the older inhabitants are mostly. heads of households, and represent besides themselves a number of unenfranchised citizens whose interests the State would ignore under a registerial basis of representation. It seems to me that a franchise which is limited in any way is a trust conferred on one section of the community for the interests of the whole, and in this sense is not personal but representative, and should in fairness carry weight in proportion to the numbers it represents.—I am,
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