Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/259

 not be as extensive as in boroughs; but there appears to have been an understanding of late years, that the next step with regard to the county suffrage shall be short of that, and I shall not quarrel with any measure on that ground." It is true, that the inhabitants of the towns who have agitated the subject of parliamentary reform, not only have not thought it desirable to advocate the interests of those who reside in the counties, but have given little support to the principle of residential equality. The people residing beyond the limits of towns and boroughs have comparatively small means of combining to forward their own claims. "The very nature of a country life, the very nature of landed property, in all the occupations and all the pleasures they afford, render combination and arrangement (the sole way of procuring and exerting influence) in a manner impossible amongst country people. Combine them by all the art you can, and all the industry, they are always dissolving into individuality. Anything in the nature of incorporation is almost impracticable amongst them. Hope, fear, alarm, jealousy, the ephemerous tale that does its business and dies in a day,—all these things, which are the reins and spurs by which leaders check or urge the minds of followers, are not easily employed, or hardly at all, amongst scattered people. They assemble, they arm, they act with the utmost difficulty and at the greatest charge. Their efforts, if ever they can be commenced, cannot be sustained. They cannot proceed systematically." It might have been expected, by a foreigner unacquainted with the working of our representative institutions, that the landed proprietors, who are in a condition to make themselves heard in Parliament, would have been the efficient protectors of their neighbours, the inhabitants of the country,—that they would have indignantly repelled any insinuation of mental or physical inferi-