A commentary of present-day politics? The sentiments might touch some chords with today's electoral reformers, but the words were written a century and a half ago. The writer, Thomas Hare, born on 28 March 1806, was the principal founding father of the single transferable vote system.

Hare, from a relatively humble farming background, worked his way from a solicitor's clerk to the Bar, but his contributions to democracy date from after 1853 when he joined the then newly established Charity Commission. As an Inspector of Charities, Hare would have had a broad view of the many pressing social issues of the day, but also of the political system's failure to address them. For him, a major problem was in the way the party-political system was debasing politics: maintaining a parliamentary majority "demoralises most of those who compose it … it excludes the action of their higher moral attributes, and brings into operation the lower motives … The same injurious influences, in a measure, operate on the minorities …".

For Hare the answer was a more representative parliament, to be achieved through a change to a voting system that would reward candidates of merit, allow representation to significant minorities and tackling a problem still with us today:

"in the large constituencies, nearly half of the electors are, for all useful purposes, in the same position as if they were disenfranchised".