Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/30



The subject of political representation now assumes an aspect entirely different from that which it presented in the discussions that preceded the Act of 1832. The question was then between a partial representation, the inequalities of which were in their general effects balanced by many compensating influences, and a scheme which, dispensing with most of such influences, made the representation more direct and real, and established it on a wider basis. That Act, which was the offspring of a political compromise, extended the application of the representative principle, without excluding, and not intending to exclude, many imperfections and irregularities. The anomalies which remained were chiefly owing to the attempt to give effect to two principles which the arrangements of our electoral system made it impossible to reconcile,—the representation of interests and the representation of persons. Some constituencies were retained, framed or modified, upon the supposition that they would, in all circumstances, support what were conceived to be special interests. The idea of the constituency as the constituted exponent of an interest having been once received, excluded the idea of personal representation within that constituency, and therefore led to the consequence,—that if persons not governed by the prevailing interest found their way within the prescribed limits, it was necessary, in pursuit of the representation of interest, to exclude such intruders, as