Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/144

 from being affected by the act of his neighbour without his own consent. For example,—as a town increases in size, a landed proprietor grants to a builder the lease of a field, on which he is to erect a number of houses, and keep them in repair for a term of years, and if he omits to repair, he is to be subject to ejectment. Fifty houses are built, and sold to as many different people. The owner of No. 50 permits his house to fall into decay, and the owner of No. 1 finds that he is liable to lose his house for the default of his neighbour. This happened a few years ago to the inhabitants of a large part of Somers Town. It is a state of things which people naturally regard as intolerable. Lawyers dissuade their clients from purchasing houses unless they have an independent lease directly from the landowner. It is one of those cases against which Lord St. Leonards, in his familiar epistles on the law of property, has, no doubt, guarded his readers. Yet the owner of the house No. 1 is not more clearly deprived of his property by the conduct of the owner of No. 50, than one voter may be deprived of his power of choosing a representative by a combination of a few other voters. The situation of a shareholder in a joint-stock bank has been thought one of great hardship when he finds himself ruined by the directors; and the constant resort to the protection of a limited liability—are all so many protests in favour of the principle of individual responsibility.

It may be thought a gigantic undertaking to bring home personal responsibility to every individual of a million of electors ; but that must be done if every individual of the million is to have a will and a voice. The other multiform duties of individuals, of family and social life, notwithstanding all the infirmities of our nature, which the divine and the moralist reprove,—are performed with sufficient exactness to preserve the general tranquillity. Why should this great social duty be alone out of the pale of morals, and be thought one which anybody may trifle with, disregard, or violate? The same