Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/108

 surround the throne with the best and wisest counsellors which their times afford. When the present rude and undiscriminating method of election has ceased, and the names of the most distinguished men in every walk of life are laid before the electors, it will not be easy to make even the humblest voter turn aside to the inferior claims of more obscure men, unless they are brought before him with better recommendations than now suffice to determine his choice.

It has been a subject of great and just regret, that one consequence of the abolition of the close boroughs has been, in a great measure, to impede the access to parliament of a class of able men, who by their aid were enabled to devote themselves, and were gradually disciplined, to political labours. The complaint is admitted to have some foundation, even by those who had no confidence in the proprietors of the close boroughs as the examiners of rising ability or the arbiters of political success. The law which is here proposed would enable every University and College, every Inn of Court, and every collection of learned or professional men, having a corporate union, to be distinctly represented. It will open to all such bodies an honourable rivalry in an object which will at once confer dignity on themselves, and promote the public good. It will be their especial office and laudable pride to bring forward the men in whom they observe the highest qualifications. They will supply in at least an equally effectual, and, in a far more satisfactory manner, that avenue for talent, which the existing system has closed. The judgment of small and highly-qualified bodies of men, in selecting as candidates for public life those amongst themselves, or within the range of their observation, who have displayed remarkable abilities or qualities of mind, is more to be relied on than the operation of the uncontrolled will of any single individual, especially when the choice so made, in order to be effectual, requires the confirmation and approval of a considerable number of their countrymen. We may hesitate to