Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/260

 ority and demanded for them at least, an equality of political rights. He would be surprised to learn, that, so far from finding advocates in their territorial and natural chieftains, it is from some of them that the attempt to confer upon the inhabitants of counties a franchise, nominally of an equal, but really of a greater, amount than that existing in the towns, has met with the greatest opposition. Mr. Bright gave utterance to what a correct sense of truth prompted, when he characterised the indifference to the rights of the county inhabitants, as an "understanding," and with an equal sense of justice he informs them beforehand, that it is not his province to become their champion. An "understanding" every lawyer knows is a covert expression, generally introduced when one person wishes to impose upon another terms which have not been agreed upon between them. One party is sufficient for an understanding, but two are required to an agreement The understanding has not yet been ratified by the persons whose political equality it menaces.

It will be said, that the distinction between the electoral standard in the boroughs mi in the counties is founded not on any inferiority in capacity or in any consideration of danger in the opinions or dispositions of the people in the country districts, but on the constitutional necessity of guarding in this manner the interests of the proprietors of the land. The argument, of course, assumes—first, that there exists in the country an antagonism between the proprietors and those who are occupiers, and not proprietors, of houses or lands; and secondly, that the constitution affords no adequate protection to the proprietary class, except by the exclusion as far as possible of county voters who are not proprietors. In the long discussions on representation which took place before the Reform Bill, the antagonistic bodies were supposed to be the landed and the mercantile classes; and it is a doctrine of