10 JANUARY 1885, Page 13

THE FATE OF MINORITIES.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR, —Allow me to reply by a single sentence to your note on my letter in the last Spectator. 1 read all you write on the subject from week to week, and I admit the difficulty of teaching the people to employ an exact scientific method of voting, such as the one Mr. Hare has framed ; for this reason I have always preferred the three-cornered constituencies, which would ensure one seat to a substantial minority, without running any risk of crowding Parliament with the nominees of insignificant or fanatical juntos. An elector who could vote for two candidates if he thought proper, and never for more than two, would run no risk, I submit, of being puzzled by so simple a duty.— I am, Sir, &c., Cintic:, Nice, Yanuary 5th. C. CAVAN DUFFY.

P.S.—Let me add that for twenty years and upwards, during which I have constantly read the Spectator, I have never found myself so little in accord with it as in the perilous experiment you seem willing to make of swamping the educated thoughtful minority, without any effectual effort on their behalf, while there is still an opportunity. A few months hence it will be too late for ever and ever; and it does not modify one's discontent with the result that the Spectator is of all journals most distinctly the organ of the class who will be drowned iu the deluge.