TH.E CUMULATIVE VOTE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' Sut,—Will you allow me a comment on your, editorial note to my last letter? You say that the cumulative vote would secure the victory to those who have few, but enthusiastic supporters. I admit it, but is that an evil ? Surely, what we really want is a Parliament composed of the 658 people whom the electors really believe to be the best men. To return men, as is now too often done, merely as poles to stick a flag on (as one modest candidate described himself), is to reduce Parliamentary Govern- inent to government by pldbiscite, and to lower the standard of intelligence required in a Member. Now, the cumulative vote seems to me to meet in some degree that difficulty. The man to whom three or four votes are given is a man, as a rule, who is chosen on his own aceonnt. Mrs. Garrett-Anderson, in the first School-Board election, was distinctly a case in point. No one could reckon her in any particular party, she was chosen for her services in the past to the community, and for her expected services in the future. And, as party feeling has grown stronger in the School Board, and the pride in the institution itself apart from party has declined, electors are more and more disposed to distribute their votes among -different candidates, and less to concentrate them on the persons they care for. I do not wish to make invidious comparisons, but where in the present School Board shall we find three such Members as Lord Lawrence, Mrs. Anderson, and Professor Huxley ? Is the School Board the better for the change? Surely, you ought to ask not whether the cumulative vote would be tolerated, but whether it ought to be tolerated, at Parliamentary elections.—I [We do not think it a good thing that the favourites of a sect or a crotchet should be returned by the enthusiasm of a few, and returned apparently above the heads of those who are the sober choice of the many. We might in that way get, as in School Board elections we have often got—though in that case with much more justification—a good many purely denomina- tional returns.—En. Spectator.]
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