Thomas Hare and Political Representation in Victorian Britain (review)

F. D. Parsons's study of Thomas Hare portrays a man deeply engaged in debates over electoral reform that shaped Victorian political culture. A revised version of his 1976 Cambridge dissertation, Thomas Hare and Political Representation in Victorian Britain traces Hare's theory of political representation primarily through the lens of the theorist's own writings and speeches. The book is also, however, the coming-of-age story of a slow-to-reform nineteenth-century electoral system. Born in 1806, Hare's life spanned almost the entire course of the nineteenth century. By the time he died in 1891 he had witnessed the dramatic changes wrought by industrialization and urbanization that culminated in a long period of economic prosperity.

Hare formulated a theory of political representation from the vantage point of a rising educated elite that looked to protect its class advantages while expanding the democratic mandate embodied in the spirit of Victorian electoral reform. Long over-shadowed by J. S. Mill's ideas on political representation, both Hare and his ideas about reform have languished in obscurity. Parson demonstrates the significance of Hare's political theories to debates over electoral reform by tracing his connection with men like Mill who by 1859 began to advocate for changes that went beyond mere expansion of the electorate. A short introduction makes the case for studying Hare's ideas on their own terms. Chapter 1 puts these ideas in context, offering an overview of his life and—especially—his work. Launching right into an analysis of his free trade position, Parsons is sketchy on the details of Hare's personal life and motivations, which are dealt with only in the last few pages of the chapter.

Born in a pre-reform era that profoundly shaped his politics, Hare did not look backward to Adam Smith for his defense of free trade but forward to an era when debates over government regulation would shape ideas about individual choice. His early work in law led him to a twenty-year-long career as a charity inspector, where he was known as a tireless advocate of a "more flexible" charity policy that sought to improve education and housing for the poor displaced by the effects of rapid urbanization (18). A devout High Churchman, Hare was connected with many of the great liberal thinkers of his day, and he participated in the cooperative movement of the Christian Socialists. Sounding very much like a man of his time in his 1885 essay "Why I am a Liberal," Hare proclaimed that he sought "the profitable industry and happiness of the greatest number of people, and at the same time scrupulously to preserve all that can help to combine and associate together the different classes in mutual love and reverence" (qtd. in Parsons 37).

Chapter 2 is devoted to Hare's big idea: the single transferable vote. Hare rejected the principle of virtual representation in "The Machinery of Representation" (1857), considering it an outmoded excuse used by Tories not to reform Parliament at all, and by Whig advocates of merely moderate reform. Hare in the end supported limited voter enfranchisement—which would require the representation of the clerisy, or educated elite, as an endowed class—over the radical position of universal suffrage. He criticized the 1832 Reform Bill for supporting the continuation of an electoral system based on territorial divisions over a system that recognized the commonality of shared individual interests. "According to Hare," as Parson puts it, "the electoral system as distinct from the franchise had remained unchanged by the Great Reform Act" (45). His idea of the single transferable vote resulted from a fear that the expansion of the electorate would mean that minority interests were overshadowed by majority concerns. This complicated system posited that every voter had the right to vote for the candidate that best represented his views regardless of territorial constituency. The numerous safeguards put in place to insure that all votes...