The other parts of my member’s speech do not, I confess, fill me with the easy confidence I would like to feel in my proxy.  Let me extract a few gems of eloquence from the speech of this voice which speaks for me, and give also the only argument he advanced that needs consideration.  “History repeats itself,” he said, “very often in curious ways as to facts, but generally with very different results.”  That, honestly, I like.  It is a sentence one can read over several times.  But he went on to talk of the entirely different scheme for minority representation, which was introduced into the Reform Bill of 1867, and there I am obliged to part company with him.  That was a silly scheme for giving two votes to each voter in a three-member constituency.  It has about as much resemblance to the method of scientific voting under discussion as a bath-chair has to an aeroplane.  “But that measure of minority representation led to a baneful invention,” my representative went on to say, “and left behind it a hateful memory in the Birmingham caucus.  I well remember that when I stood for Parliament thirty-two years ago we had no better platform weapon than repeating over and over again in a sentence the name of Mr. Schnadhorst, and I am not sure that it would not serve the same purpose now.  Under that system the work of the caucus was, of course, far simpler than it will be if this system ever comes into operation.  All the caucus had to do under that measure was to divide the electors into three groups and with three candidates, A., B., and C., to order one group to vote for A. and B., another for B. and C., and the third for A. and C., and they carried the whole of their candidates and kept them for many years.  But the multiplicity of ordinal preferences, second, third, fourth, fifth, up to tenth, which the single transferable vote system would involve, will require a more scientific handling in party interests, and neither party will be able to face an election with any hope of success without the assistance of the most drastic form of caucus and without its orders being carried out by the electors.”

Now, I swear by Heaven that, lowly creature as I am, a lost vote, a nothing, voiceless and helpless in public affairs, I am not going to stand the imputation that that sort of reasoning represents the average mental quality of Westminster—­outside Parliament, that is.  Most of my neighbours in St. James’s Court, for example, have quite large pieces of head above their eyebrows.  Read these above sentences over and ponder their significance—­so far as they have any significance.  Never mind my keen personal humiliation at this display of the mental calibre of my representative, but consider what the mental calibre of a House must be that did not break out into loud guffaws at such a passage.  The line of argument is about as lucid as if one reasoned that because one can break a window with a stone it is no use buying a telescope.  And it remains entirely