On Thursday night Mr. Bright burst out with an impatience,
and almost passion which he has not exhibited for two years against the application of the English minorityprinciple,—i.e., the creation of a constituency with three members, and only two votes for each member,—to Glasgow. He maintained —incorrectly—that the Com- mons only accepted the amendment of the Lords embodying this principle in the English Bill last year, because Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli did not wish to thwart the Lords altogether, and they had negatived every other of the Lords' amendments. (This appears to be a mistake of Mr. Bright's,—as the amendment in- troducing voting-papers was not proposed, nor of course nega- tived, till after the minority amendment.) Mr. Bright says the minority plan is thoroughly o3ious to all the large constituencies, —because if you propose three members, and the electors have only two votes, the "canvassers" cannot canvas for all three, but only for two out of the three. We suspect this to be one of the great benefits instead of evils of the method. There is nothing worse than the present canvassing system. Till men take enough in- terest in elections to vote without being canvassed, they had better not vote at all. The truth is, Mr. Bright does not care for a repre- sentation of the people,—he wants, and admits he wants,—a repre- sentation only of the majority of the people. But that is not democracy ; though not oligarchy, it is nearly as bad, polyarchy. As Mr. Mill truly says, to represent minorities as fairly as majorities is "time only true democratic principle of representa- tion, and you could not have a complete principle of representation without it."
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