Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/154

148 tion on principle arises in limine. So long as there was a substantial difference between the borough and the county franchises, there could be no valid objection on principle to abstracting towns from the county and linking them together in a group of boroughs; but now, when the franchise is uniform, on what principle can the intervening district, containing in many instances large villages with a manufacturing or mining population, be omitted from the group and retained in the county? Indeed it would often happen that the town, the centre of an agricultural district, would have more real affinity to, and a closer connection with, the county out of which it is proposed to take it, than the village a few miles off, which, containing a factory or works of some kind, would be left in it. If, in addition to this initial objection, the practical difficulty which would attend any attempt to segregate the unrepresented towns from the counties be taken into consideration – and a glance at Sir John Hay's ingenious map attached to his scheme of grouping will show how great that difficulty is – we are driven to the conclusion that the object aimed at can best be accomplished by the method adopted by the bill, – one-membered constituencies.

In a system of representation which is based on uniformity, it is no small advantage, when you come to reconstruct the constituencies, to adopt a principle which is capable of application to the whole country, town and county alike; and this advantage is gained by the scheme of the bill. It is said, indeed, that we owe it to the intervention of our leaders, and that the Government are pledged to its maintenance; but whether that be so or not, we advocate it as the best and most statesmanlike solution of the many difficulties surrounding the whole question of redistribution.

Let us consider, in the first place, its probable operation in the borough constituencies. At the outset, the anomaly of the exception of eighteen large boroughs from the rule encounters us; and while we understand the motives which induced the Government to make that exception, it appears to us quite indefensible, and irreconcilable with the impartial application of the principle. We shall assume, therefore, that the exception will disappear in committee, and the principle of one-membered seats be established throughout the borough as well as the county constituencies. First, then, as to the advantages of the system. To the electors a sense alike of their responsibilities and privileges is brought more closely home. In the large areas of our existing two or three membered constituencies, experience shows at every election an immense number of voters who will not take the trouble of going to the poll – actuated, no doubt, by the feeling that in so vast an electorate it is a matter of practical indifference whether they vote or not. In this way thousands of the more quiet, moderate, and least partisan electors in our great towns habitually refrain from approaching the ballot-boxes. The fact is too notorious to need proof: but it may be pointed out, that even in 1880, when political excitement was stirred to its very depths, in Glasgow not less than 20,000 voters out of 57,000 on the roll abstained from voting; in Manchester, 16,000 out of 61,000; in Finsbury, 17,000 out of 45,000; while in the Tower Hamlets, where