that minority be worse than the first. A Maryland member advocating the interests of a Maine minority is where Mr. Mill, in his work "On Representative Government," puts the champion of an English bill: "The explaining and defending of a bill and of its various provisions is scarcely ever performed by the person from whose mind they emanated, who probably has not a seat in the House. Their defence rests upon some minister or member of Parliament who did not frame them, who is dependent on cramming for all his arguments but those which are perfectly obvious, who does not know the full strength of his case, nor the best reasons by which to support it, and is wholly incapable of meeting unforeseen objections." The theories of extraneous representation and of the member representing the district to the contrary notwithstanding, we may take it that for all practical purposes minorities are unrepresented. How great the aggregate of the unrepresented, may be seen from some figures. Subjoined are three tables, showing the aggregates respectively of the majorities and minorities in the several districts of each State in the elections for the Fortieth, the Forty-first, and the Forty-second Congresses. Scattering and independent votes are not computed, and the composition of the three successive Houses is given as appearing on the vote as cast. Expulsions and contested elections very slightly vary the political complexion of each House, and some few thousand votes were cast outside of strict party lines; but with these exceptions, the tables, it is thought, will be found to present a minutely accurate view of the Congressional elections throughout the United States since 1866. The method of computation carried through all the tables is this: Taking California, for instance, in 1866-7, the vote stood in the first district, Democratic, 18,793; Republican, 13,989; in the second, Democratic, 14,786; Republican, 16,053; and in the third, Democratic, 14,767; Republican, 14,394. In the first and third districts the Democrats elected the Representative, and the sum of the Democratic vote in those districts is the number of Democrats who obtained representation at that election. In the second district, where the Republican candidate for Representative was elected, the Democratic vote is the number of Democratic voters who were unrepresented in Congress. Similarly, the Republicans represented are those who elected the Representative in the second district; and the unrepresented Republicans are those who voted in the first and third districts. This method is carried through all the States at each election, with the astounding results apparent in the tables. I. A TABLE OF THE VOTERS REPRESENTED AND UNREPRESENTED The amazing thing in these tables is the heavy percentage of unrepresented voters they uniformly return. Whether the vote be that of a part of the States, as that for the Fortieth Congress, or of all the States, as in case of the Forty-first and Forty-second Congresses; whether taken in the year of a Presidential election, as in 1868, or in ordinary years, as in 1866–7, and in 1870-1-the result is the same: fifty-eight (58) per cent. of the voters secure all the representation, and forty-two (42) per cent. have none; out of every 100 men who approach the polls, 60 make their suffrage count, and 40 might as well not vote at all; or, to reduce it to its last analysis, our present electoral system disfranchises 2 men out of 5. In State as well as in Congressional elections, the same rule will be found to prevail. Taking New York, for instance, the following results are obtained: A TABLE OF THE VOTERS REPRESENTED AND UNREPRESENTED IN THE NEW YORK LEGISLATURE IN 1869 AND IN 1871. As a prominent incident of the present electoral system, we have thus a non-representation of minorities so great as to furnish this general rule: Given any general or extended election of representatives, and two-fifths of those voting at such election will not elect a single representative. When such a rule is possible, and when it works out such a result as we have seen it produce in the case of the elections for the Forty-first Congress, the absolute exclusion from representation of 2,500,000 voters at one swoop, it is not surprising we should hear such an opinion of the existing electoral system as |