Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/56

 the aid of long experience, employed his latest hours and his most elaborate efforts, in a work designed as a warning against the dangers of that absolutism which would result from committing the destinies of the country to the uncontrolled government of the numerical majority. The right of suffrage, he says, is, indeed, the indispensable and primary principle; “but it would be a great and dangerous mistake to suppose, as many do, that it is of itself sufficient to form constitutional governments.” “To this erroneous opinion,” he adds, “may be traced one of the causes why so few attempts to form constitutional governments have succeeded; and why, of the few which have, so small a number have had a durable existence. It has led not only to mistakes in the attempt to form such governments, but to their overthrow, when they have, by some good fortune, been correctly formed. So far from being of itself sufficient—however well guarded it might be, and however enlightened the people—it would, unaided by other provisions, leave the government as absolute as it would be in the hands of irresponsible rulers, and with a tendency, at least as strong, towards oppression and abuse of its powers.” “The more extensive and populous the country, the more diversified the condition and pursuits of its population; and the richer, more luxurious, and dissimilar the people, the more difficult it is to equalise the action of the government, and the more easy for one portion of the community to pervert its powers to oppress and plunder the other.” “The dominant majority for the time,” he repeats, “ would have the same tendency to oppression and abuse of power, which, without the right of suffrage, irresponsible rulers would have. No reason, indeed, can be assigned why the latter would abuse their power, which would not apply