Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/169

 every voter." These obstacles are wholly taken away, when every vote is converted into a spontaneous tribute to the qualities and attainments of the person for whom it is given. The prelate, in his speech, repudiated the notion of any incompatibility between the studies or duties of a divine, and those of a representative of the people. He pointed to the names of Usher, Pearson, and Barrow, as examples to the contrary, and urged, that divinity, as a science, was intimately blended with the principles of political justice, of morality, and the laws of nature and nations. The bill was characterised by Lord Thurlow as a bill of disfranchisement. It was, in truth, an attack on the rights of every elector in the kingdom. Lord Eldon, who supported it, like a skilful advocate, ingeniously endeavoured to divert the argument and rest the question upon another issue, by introducing a discourse of great learning to prove the indelibility of orders, a point which had nothing whatever to do with the matter in discussion. The only true explanation of this remarkable and unjustifiable law is that which was given by the immediate object of it. Horne Tooke said, "deacons and priests had sat in Parliament for more than a century, but at last one got in who opposed the minister of the day, and then Parliament determined that there should no more be any deacons and priests admitted amongst them."

Nothing abstractedly could appear more unreasonable than the exclusion of a set of men whose education and fonctions necessarily point their attention to the greatest subjects that can occupy the thoughts of men, and whose habits and duties moreover bring them into communication with every phase of society, and especially with the poor, whose interests require the closest, the most attentive, and the most practical consideration. That the effect of local isolation, of too