Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/157

 work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base." Experience teaches that none of these factitious aids can supply the want or fill the place of wisdom or integrity, and that these qualities are as likely to be found under circumstances fitted to call them forth in one rank or condition as in another. The true interests of all classes, the highest as well as the lowest, would be best consulted by opening the avenues to the House of Commons, and collecting within it the best that the nation possesses of ability and character. This may be prevented, but will never be assisted, by adding conditions which insure neither the one nor the other. The prudent man, indisposed to risk his patrimony on a game of chance, too conscientious not to respect the claims of family, and the regard which he owes to those who are dependent upon him,—is entitled to greater confidence than one who is reckless of his own fortune, or is trafficking with that of others; yet by rendering political competition a source always of indefinite, and often of ruinous, expense, the latter is admitted, and the former excluded.

The charges, which it is absolutely necessary that a candidate should incur, ought not to exceed a sum sufficient to prevent any trifling or idle experiment, whereby the lists of candidates might be encumbered with the names of persons who can have no rational expectations of being usefully placed in nomination. For this it is proposed to provide, by requiring a preliminary payment to the Registrar, which shall exonerate the candidate from all liability in respect of any farther expenses, except such as he may voluntarily incur. Such voluntary expenses will of course, as now, vary according to the peculiar circumstances of every candidate. They will probably be in the inverse ratio of his political eminence and distinction. Men of high character and reputation, and those whose political conduct and discretion have been tested and