The end of representative government is to bring publicly into proximity and contact the chief interests and various opinions which divide society, and dispute for supremacy, in the just confidence that from their debates will result the recognition and adoption of the laws and measures which are most suitable for the country in general. This end is only attained by the triumph of the true majority—the minority being constantly listened to with respect.
If the majority is displaced by artifice, there is falsity. If the minority is removed from the struggle beforehand, there is oppression. In either case representative government is corrupted.
All the constituent laws of this form of government have, then, two fundamental conditions to fulfil: first, to secure the manifestation and triumph of the true majority; and, secondly, to insure the intervention and unshackled endeavour of the minority.
These two conditions are as essential to the laws which regulate the mode of the election of representatives, as to those which preside over the debates of deliberative assemblies. In neither case ought there to be falsehood or tyranny.
An electoral system which would annul beforehand,—with regard to the final result of the elections, that is to say, with regard to the formation of the deliberative assembly,—the influence and participation of the minority, would destroy representative government, and would be as fatal to the majority itself as any law which, in the deliberative assembly, should condemn the minority to silence.
This, to a certain extent, is the result of indirect election,
By direct election, and supposing that the limit of electoral capacity has been reasonably fixed by law, that is to say, at the point at which true capacity actually ceases, all the citizens whose social position, fortune, or intelligence place them above this limit, are equally summoned to unite in the choice of representatives. No inquiry is made of them concerning the opinions or interests which they advocate. The result of the election will make known the true majority; but whatever that may be they will have no cause to complain: the trial will have been complete, and they will have taken their rightful part in it.
Indirect election, on the contrary, effects beforehand a thorough purgation of the electoral capacities, and eliminates a certain number, solely on account of the opinions or interests which they may hold. It intrudes into the sphere of these capacities in order to exclude a part of the minority, so as to give to the majority a factitious force, and thus to destroy the true expression of the general opinion. We should exclaim loudly against a law which should say, à priori: "All the men, or only the third or fourth part of the men, attached to such an interest or such an opinion, shall be excluded from all participation in the election of representatives, whatever may otherwise be their importance and social position."