Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/256



The effect of the law may be illustrated by supposing that James Watt had been a candidate for Birmingham, and that Glasgow, remembering the "frown severe" with which she had beheld his earlier exertions, desired to testify her sense of the debt the marvellous city of the Clyde owed to one who was, almost by inheritance, the tutelary genius of that river, by placing him in the front rank as her representative. James Watt might have been at the head of the poll, and returned for Glasgow as well as for Birmingham, whilst Glasgow would have, in addition, her complement of representatives under the general rule expressed in the succeeding law.

It is important in so great a national work as the election of a representative assembly, to secure the aid of all the better feelings and higher motives,—to bind the representative and the constituent by the ties of mutual respect and attachment, and thus render names subservient to things. With this view the designation of members is a subject of no slight moment. It is the sign, as well as the result of the intimate connection of the members with the various constituencies dispersed throughout the length and breadth of the land. The names by which the members are severally designated constitute the marks or imprint in the Parliament of the distinct vitality and force of every part of Britain. Still, all these distinct sources from which the members receive their appellation and derive their function and authority, are to be regarded, to use the words of Bacon, as lines and veins rather than as sections and separations. Or, to borrow an illustra-