tracts, relating to general considerations connected with reform in representation, are added below.]

The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilization, is toward collective mediocrity; and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community. But, though the superior intellects and characters will necessarily be outnumbered, it makes a great difference whether or not they are heard. In the false democracy which, instead of giving representation to all, gives it only to the local majorities, the voice of the instructed minority may have no organs at all in the representative body. In the American democracy, which is constructed on this faulty model, the highly-cultivated members of the community, except such of them as are willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment and become the servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer themselves for Congress or the State legislatures, so certain is it that they would have no chance of being returned. . . . In every government there is some power stronger than all the rest, and the power which is strongest tends perpetually to become the sole power. Partly by intention and partly unconsciously it is ever striving to make all other things bend to itself, and is not content while there is anything which makes permanent head against it-any influence not in agreement with its spirit. Yet, if it succeeds in suppressing all rival influences, and moulding every

thing after its own model, improvement in that country is at an end, and decline commences. Human improvement is a product of many factors, and no power ever yet constituted among mankind includes them all. Even the most beneficent power only contains in itself some of the requisites of good, and the remainder, if progress is to continue, must be derived from some other source. No community has ever long continued progressive but while a conflict was going on between the strongest power in the community and some rival powerbetween the spiritual and temporal authorities, the military or territorial and the industrious classes, the king and the people, the orthodox and religious reformers. When the victory on either side was so complete as to put an end to the strife, and no other conflict took its place, first stagnation followed, and then decay. The ascendency of the numerical majority is less unjust and, on the whole, less mischievous than many others, but it is attended with the very same kind of dangers, and even more certainly, for when the government is in the hands of one or a few, the many are always existent as a rival power which may not be strong enough ever to control the other, but whose opinion and sentiment are a moral and even a social support to all who, either from conviction or contrariety of interests, are opposed to any of the tendencies of the ruling authority. But when the democracy is supreme there is no one or few strong enough for dissentient opinions and injured or menaced interests to lean upon. The great difficulty of democratic government has hitherto seemed to be how to provide, in a democratic

society, what circumstances have provided hitherto in all the societies which have maintained themselves ahead of others a social support, a point d'appui for individual resistance to the tendencies of the ruling power, a protection, a rallying point for opinions and interests which the ascendant public opinion views with disfavor. For want of such a point d'appui the older societies, and all but a few modern ones, either fell into dissolution or became stationary (which means slow deterioration) through the exclusive predominance of a part only of the conditions of social and mental well-being. The only quarter in which to look for a supplement, or completing corrective to the instincts of a democratic majority, is the instructed minority, but in the ordinary mode of constituting democracy this minority has no organ.-Considerations on Representative Government, chapter vii., Harper's Edition, 1862.

[March 2, 1869, the foregoing Report (with Appendix) upon being presented to the Senate was ordered to be printed. The following day it was further ordered that 2000 additional copies should be printed for the use of the Senate. Two editions of it were subsequently published by the Personal Representation Society of Chicago, for distribution at home and abroad.]

AN ADDRESS

ON

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION BY THE FREE VOTE.

DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION, PHILADELPHIA,

TUESDAY EVENING, OCT. 25, 1870.

Gentlemen of the Association :-I desire my remarks to-night to be understood as made in continuation of what was said and written by me on former occasions on the subject of Electoral Reform. In a speech in this city on the 19th of November, 1867, in a speech in the Senate on the 11th of July of the same year, and in a report from the Senate Committee on representative reform, 2d of March, 1869, I discussed the Free Vote in its proposed application to Federal Elections and stated the general arguments in favor of its adoption. I do not propose to go over again the ground covered by those speeches and by that report, but to present additional views, the product of further reflection upon this question of reform, and to mention the steps which have been taken in this State and in other States, looking toward the submitting of the plan of reformed voting to practice.

THE FREE VOTE.

The Free Vote may be applied to elections whenever two or more persons are to be chosen together to the same office for the same term of service, and it consists in allowing the voter to distribute his votes among candidates as he shall think fit, or to concentrate them upon one. It is here assumed that the voter shall have the same number of votes as the number of persons to be chosen, and that the candidates highest in vote shall be declared elected.

ITS EFFECT ON SINGLE ELECTIONS.

It will be observed that the free vote is inapplicable to the election of a single person; it can be applied only where two or more are to be chosen. But it will be a great mistake to assume that it will have no effect upon single elections because it cannot be applied to them in form and directly. Due reflection and a careful examination of the subject will convince any intelligent man-any man well acquainted with the practical workings of our political system—that while its direct operation must be confined to plural elections its indirect effects upon single ones will be very great, and very salutary also, whenever it shall come to be established. For the advocates of the new plan assert with confidence and upon fair grounds of reason, that it will secure absolutely to political parties their just representation in all ordinary cases of Presidential, Congressional, Legislative and other elections to which it shall be applied, and will therefore greatly weaken the tendency toward violent and corrupt party action in the elections to which it shall not apply.