# The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal/Preface to the fourth edition

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
The issue of another edition has become necessary, not only to introduce such alterations as shall adapt the proposed electoral law to the Ballot Act, but also to make known the progress of the representative principle in actual practice, and in theoretical development. In both, the greatest advances have been made in the United States. The experiments in Harvard College, Massachusetts, and in the Technological Institute at Boston, show that a preferential choice from competing claims to distinction, may form a highly instructive part of the historical and political education in our schools; while the recent election in Illinois, of the Upper House by the old, and the Lower by a proportional system, contrasts their results.
In our own country the preferential and proportional method of election has been twice brought before the House of Commons : first on Mr. Mill's amendment to the Reform Bill (29th May, 1867), and again on the motion for the second reading of Mr. Morrison's Bill (10th July, 1872).
When in 1869 the House of Commons appointed a Committee to inquire into the modes of conducting elections, with a view to provide further guarantees for their purity, tranquillity, and freedom, the event was hailed as an opportunity of subjecting the proposed method to an exhaustive inquiry, and bringing prominently forward the anticipated results. Evidence was therefore tendered to the Committee for the purpose of showing how greatly the temptations to corruption ​would be reduced, tranquillity assured, and electoral freedom extended by proportional representation. The Committee, however, requested their chairman to reply that the object of their inquiry did not extend to a consideration of the subject under any other than the existing conditions, and they declined to accept the evidence. It is greatly to be regretted that at a period of transition in the history of representative government they should have considered that so comprehensive a reference was satisfied by an inquiry thus superficial, and thought that the evils of corruption, violent manifestations of discontent, and restricted power of selection, had no deeper sources than the imperfect machinery of the polling booth. It would be scarcely thought compatible with scientific investigation if one charged to inquire how the public health in a city might be best promoted, should decline to look into the sources and purity of the water or the completeness of the drainage, and regard himself as confined to the “existing conditions,” assume the existing diseases to be inevitable, and try to discover nothing more than the medicines that could be resorted to as antidotes.
The Ballot Act, whether it be regarded as a fruit of the inquiry of the Committee, or as the result of a foregone conclusion, has now become law; and all the rules and forms heretofore proposed as to voting, which were in any respect incompatible with it, have been altered or expunged. The author has not, however, thought it necessary to withdraw any of the speculative observations which he ventured to make in former editions with regard to secrecy in political action. Secrecy is no obstacle to any part of the scheme ; on the contrary, in many points of view it may render its adoption still more desirable or even necessary; but a frank manifestation of all opinions is more in conformity with the ideal of healthy national life.
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