A meeting of the Social Science Association was held in
London on Monday, to hear Mr. T. Hare read a plan for remodelling metropolitan elections. We have described the plan else- where, but we may here mention that Mr. Mill supported the scheme, arguing that it would give the voters the choice of the most eminent men in the country, and that it would put an end to bribery, we presume by making it too expensive. Lord Stanley distrusted the plan as tending to a great increase in the power of the Clubs, and thought the use of voting-papers tended to increase the facilities for intimidation. The dislike of voting- papers expressed at the meeting was quite curious, every kind of joint-stock business in the country being managed by such documents. If Lord Stanley honestly wants to prevent intimi- dation, he must devise some means by which a decent voter on the unpopular side can record his name, without being browbeat or bludgeoned by a mob of half-drunken roughs on his way to the hustings.
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