A

TREATISE

ON THE

ELECTION OF REPRESENTATIVES,

PARLIAMENTARY AND MUNICIPAL.

BY

THOMAS HARE, Esq.

BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

A NEW AND REVISED EDITION.

LONDON:

LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, & ROBERTS.

1861.

200 a 40.

232. e. 3/5.

ADVERTISEMENT

TO

THE NEW AND REVISED EDITION.

THE discussion which the subject of this Treatise has received since the publication of the first edition, has led to a great simplification of the proposed method of election. The original clauses, I., II., and III., are now reduced to two, and are framed so as to ascertain the quota of actual voters, instead of a quota of registered electors. Clauses XXV. and XXVI. effect, in a readier and more satisfactory manner, the selection of members from the candidates who have less than the quota of votes, and determine the ultimate appropriation of the voting papers; and Clause XXVII. provides for the public verification of the poll, and a permanent record of the composition of every constituency.

Besides the more rapid progress which the proposed system is likely to make towards a general acceptance, when it is thus freed from apparent complication, it is no small additional advantage of the greater simplicity of detail, that, being no longer embarrassed by machinery applicable only to the special forms of our own electoral constitution, the system at once assumes a shape adapted to the use of other communities, national or municipal, in which representative government is established; and especially in those of America and Australia, where this system has already engaged the attention of some of the most powerful and far-seeing minds.