Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/431

Rh This place, although never entitled, by the utmost stretch of courtesy, to the appellation of a town, was privileged with sending Members to Parliament in the time of King Edward the Sixth, probably to increase the political power of the Lords Arundell, who then possessed the paramount manor of Michel, together with an unrivalled influence in that part of Cornwall.

Many of the small places in Cornwall received this privilege from the Tudors, for the express purpose of becoming close or nomination boroughs, withdrawn as they then were from public view or attention.

The system thus created has acted at different periods in various ways. At first, many of the small Boroughs returned neighbouring gentlemen to Parliament, the natural aristocracy of the country, and practically the peers of other gentlemen holding hereditary seats, and distinguished by the shadowy appellation of offices long since extinct. These representatives formed the strongest bulwark of national liberty in the subsequent reigns of the Stuarts. So that Charles the Second, and his brother King James, endeavoured to smooth the way for their progress towards despotism by invading chartered or prescriptive rights; and thus the inviolability of these rights became associated in men's minds, after the Revolution, with the very idea of liberty itself; and this union remained so permanently fixed and strong at the distance of a century, as to dash in pieces the otherwise powerful administration of Mr. Fox and Lord North, because they proposed to interfere authoritatively with the Charter of the East India Company. Times were, however, at that period completely changed. The English Empire had extended itself into all parts of the globe; an immense manufacturing and commercial interest had grown up; and, of still greater consequence, the national debt had created a vast monied capital, not subject to the laws of primogeniture, and therefore inclined towards democracy. All these obtained representatives through the small Boroughs, but tempered in most cases