rejected, and his votes transferred to the next available preference on his ballot papers; then the next lowest would be rejected, and so on till all the votes were equally distributed among the 654 members.  Such was the Hare system as propounded by its author.  The electors were to divide themselves into voluntary groups; then the groups which were too large were to be cut down by transferring the surplus votes, and the smaller groups were to be excluded and the votes also transferred until the groups were reduced to 654 equal constituencies.  These two processes, transferring surplus votes and transferring votes from excluded candidates, are the main features of the system.  Mr. Hare’s rules for carrying them out are drawn up in the form of a proposed electoral law, and in the different editions of his work the clauses vary somewhat.  They are also complicated by an impossible attempt to retain the local nomenclature of members.  As regards surplus votes it was provided that the ballot papers which had the most preferences expressed should be transferred; still a good deal was left to chance or to the sweet will of the returning officer, and this has always been admitted as a serious objection.  The process of elimination is still more unsatisfactory.  Mr. Hare was from the first strongly opposed to the elimination of the candidate who had least first preferences, and he therefore proposed that, in order to decide which candidate had least support, all expressed preferences should be counted.  This involved such enormous complication that in the 1861 edition of his work he abandoned the process of elimination altogether in favour of a process of selection.  He then proposed to distribute surplus votes only, and to elect the highest of the remainder, regardless of the fact that they had less than a quota.  He then wrote:—­“The reduction of the number of candidates remaining at this stage of the election may be effected by taking out the names of all those who have the smallest number of actual votes—­that is, who are named at the head of the smallest number of voting papers, and appropriating each vote to the candidate standing next in order on each paper.  This process would be so arbitrary and inequitable in its operation as to be intolerable.  It might have the effect of cancelling step by step more votes given to one candidate than would be sufficient to return another....  Such a process disregards the legitimate rights both of electors and of candidates.”  But the process of selection was not proportional representation at all, being practically equivalent to a single untransferable vote, and Mr. Hare finally adopted, in spite of its defects, the “arbitrary and inequitable” process of elimination in his last edition in 1873.  And all his recent disciples have been forced to do the same, because nothing better is known.

Mr. Hare’s scheme has ceased to be of any practical interest, since it is now generally admitted that electorates should not return more than ten or twenty members.  Moreover, it is admitted that the electors would group themselves in very undesirable ways, and not as Mr. Hare expected.  And yet the only effect of limiting the size of the electorates is to reduce the number of undesirable ways in which electors might group themselves.  Let us briefly note the different proposals which have been made.