Page:The English Constitution (1894).djvu/255

Rh artizans, the “great reality” will be a diffused dissatisfaction. Thirty years ago it was vain to prove that Gatton and Old Sarum were valuable seats, and sent good members. Everybody said, “Why, there are no people there.” Just so everybody must say now, “Our representative system must be imperfect, for an immense class has no members to speak for it.” The only answer to the cry against constituencies without inhabitants was to transfer their power to constituencies with inhabitants. Just so, the way to stop the complaint that artizans have no members is to give them members,—to create a body of representatives, chosen by artizans, believing, as Mr. Carlyle would say, “that artizanism is the one thing needful.”