The Cause of the Evil.

All, or nearly all, of these calls for reform have something to recommend them. All, or nearly all, might probably be sought for with advantage; hut will it never occur to the minds of these reformers that the evils they deplore are more properly classed as results, not causes, nearly all springing from the one cause: That the Country is not, in the True Sense, Represented in Parliament at all?

"Nonsense," says some well-informed political reader; "have we not our ninety-one members, duly elected after months of intelligent canvass of their capacities and merits by an enlightened democracy? Do we not pay these representatives a fair sum by way of fixed salary, so that entrance to the highest court of the land may be open to all deemed qualified by the electors, without restriction upon electors or elected?" True, and, further, a number of other provisions are made which pass current as aids to the representative government of the people in Parliament; but, nevertheless, it is equally true that the people fail to be represented, as theoretically they are supposed to be—by men holding political views in consonance with themselves—and that a large mass of the people (voters), amounting to nearly one-half the whole, have no representatives at all.

An analysis of the voting returns at the late general election will well repay the mental labour entailed, and prove to a demonstration that our system of election is faulty in the highest degree. It necessitates the disfranchisement of a tremendous proportion of the people, narrows the choice to a minimum of those permitted to select members, deals out death to all colonial patriotism, and finally succeeds in making our boasted "representative institutions" the very means by which we are impoverished, degraded and betrayed.