Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/272

 making together six members for North Cheshire. The arrangement of the number of members to be returned for every constituency, under a system regulated by its magnitude, whilst it gives to every locality an effectual and substantial representation, becomes, so far as relates to form, no more than a question of nomenclature.

The contest in which the nation will, so long as the present system continues, be periodically and more or less fiercely engaged, with reference to the relative importance and right of counties, cities, and towns, and other constituencies, to return severally one or more members, and to the propriety of disenfranchising boroughs, the only fault of whose inhabit ants is, that nature has not placed them on a seaboard, or on some great stream of communication, or enriched them with mineral treasure,—is worthy of the times when laws were made to enable one city or class to exercise privileges hostile to another, and when the statute of Kilkenny was in force. It will not continue for an hour after our leading statesmen and public men shall be able to perceive that there is no more wisdom in incumbering our political institutions with the difficulties, and deteriorating them by the rude and barbarous practices of bygone ages, than there would be in rejecting the aid of modem science in the performance of any other operation.