Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/265

 progress in the labour of which they have ceased actively to participate, and in the society of kindred minds. From the metropolis flows that comprehensive literature, the seemingly ever-increasing and inexhaustible stores of which are daily poured forth in article and volume, to feed and guide the realm of thought.

Foreigners should behold in the representation of this mighty community a condensed picture of the greatness of our country, and be compelled to recognise in it a triumphant display of the dignity and virtue of its institutions. Instead of this, the product which our political chemistry extracts from this abundant wealth of material is so immeasurably small that it may well create the deepest alarm in the mind of any statesman, looking to the future, and beholding the shoals into which the representative institutions, even in a highly-intelligent age, may be permitted to drift. With an accidental exception or two, we are unable to refer to the metropolitan constituencies as having given to the senate any members to whom the nation can point, not to say with pride,—but with even the shadow of satisfaction, as illustrating a single ennobling feature of the national character. Under a system which forces every man either to submit to political extinction or to make one of a majority, in which he utterly sacrifices all that in which he differs from the rest in judgment or opinion, it cannot be otherwise. An electoral community formed of thousands of persons, including every diversity of thought, intelligence, education, and feeling, is driven together, and told, — what is, in effect, a cruel irony,—to elect a representative. K it be only that the person chosen is to support this or that minister,—or this or that dogma which the majority in its caprice or its ignorance has set up, the representation may be enough,—but if it be to exercise a judgment on all the subjects which at this day become matters of legislation, then it may be confidently said, that no fable, legend, or allegory, has personified a creature capable