rmous difference between Lord
Courtney's proposed system and the existing system in the London
Boroughs. But if the fact is that the names in each case are mere names,
there is little effective difference between the working of the two
systems until the votes are counted.

If the sole object of an election were to discover and record the exact
proportion of the electorate who are prepared to vote for candidates
nominated by the several party organisations Lord Courtney's scheme
might be adopted as a whole. But English experience, and a longer
experience in America, has shown that the personality of the candidate
nominated is at least as important as his party allegiance, and that a
parliament of well-selected members who represent somewhat roughly the
opinion of the nation is better than a parliament of ill-selected
members who, as far as their party labels are concerned, are, to quote
Lord Courtney, 'a distillation, a quintessence, a microcosm, a
reflection of the community.'[79]

[79] Address at Stockport, p. 11.

To Lord Courtney the multi-member constituency, which permits of a wide
choice, and the preferential vote, which permits of full use of that
choice, are equally essential parts of his plan; and that plan will
soon be seriously discussed, because parliament, owing to the rise of
the Labour Party and the late prevalence of 'three-cornered' contests,
will soon have to deal with the question. It will then be interesting to
see whether the growing substitution of the new quantitative and
psychological for the old absolute and logical way of thinking about
elections will have advanced sufficiently far to enable the House of
Commons to distinguish between the two points. If so, they will adopt
the transferable vote, and so get over the difficulty of three-cornered
elections, while retaining single-member constituencies, and therewith
the possibility of making the personality of a candidate known to the
whole of his constituents.

A further effect of the way in which we are beginning to think of the
electoral process is that, since 1888, parliament, in reconstructing the
system of English local government, has steadily diminished the number
of elections, with the avowed purpose of increasing their efficiency.
The Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894 swept away thousands of
elections for Improvement Boards, Burial Boards, Vestries, etc. In 1902
the separately elected School Boards were abolished, and it is cert