Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/100

 pertinently asked,—“Why Islington, with its hundred thousand inhabitants, should covet a junction with Saffron-hill and Hatton-garden, Ely-rents, or Glasshouse-yard?—why Bloomsbury and Lincoln's-inn should court the alliance of Clerkenwell, or Clerkenwell hang on to Finsbury?” The electoral amendment which would be most in accordance with the historical forms of social progress in this country, would be that which would enable every locality, every community, and every great or ancient association having a distinct corporate existence, and the ordinary conditions that imply permanency, to form a constituency, or electoral nucleus, capable of being represented in Parliament. It will be only necessary to provide, by a general law, that the relative weight of every new constituency in the representative assembly shall be precisely that of its relative magnitude and importance. In the mode of effecting,—in the construction of the representative branch of our constitution,—such necessary amendments as are from time to time called for by the expanding force of population, wealth, and social changes, every step should have a reference to, and connection with, the other branches of that constitution. It should flow naturally from, and be consonant with, a monarchical form of government. Upon this point it is useful again to listen to the authority so often cited in these pages.

“Mr. Burke was represented as arguing in a manner which implied that the British constitution could not be defended, but by abusing all republics, ancient and modern. He said nothing to give the least ground for such a censure. He never abused all republics. He has never professed himself a friend or an enemy to republics or monarchies in the abstract. He thought that the circumstances and habits of every country, which it is always perilous, and productive of the greatest calamities, to force, are to decide upon the form of its government. There is nothing in his nature, his temper, or his faculties, which should make him an enemy to any