Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/101

 republic, modern or ancient. Far from it. He has studied the form and spirit of republics very early in life; he has studied them with great attention, and with a mind undisturbed by affection or prejudice. He is indeed convinced that the science of government would be poorly cultivated without that study. But the result in his mind from that investigation has been and is, that neither England nor France, without infinite detriment to them, as well in the event as in the experiment, could be brought into a republican form; but that everything republican, which can be introduced with safety into either of them, must be built upon a monarchy; built upon a real, not a nominal monarchy, as its essential basis; that all such institutions, whether aristocratic or democratic, must originate from the Crown, and in all their proceedings must refer to it; that by the energy of that mainspring alone those republican parts must be set in action, and from thence must derive their whole legal effect (as amongst us they actually do), or the whole will fall into confusion. These republican members have no other point but the Crown in which they can possibly unite. This is the opinion expressed in Mr. Burke's book. He has never varied in that opinion since he came to years of discretion.

It is through the constant exercise of the authority of the Crown, to the prerogative of which it belongs to confer corporate powers—that the creation of electoral bodies can most effectually keep pace with the rapidity of internal changes. The census of 1851 is, in many places, no guide to the state of the country, or of its population in 1858. It is only in the localities where these alterations in the face of society, and in the condition of the neighbourhood, are actually going on, that their extent can be fully appreciated. It is from the people who are themselves affected by such alterations, that any application for separate or local incorporation should emanate. It is not the business of a central power to