Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/61

 locomotion open to the middle classes of the towns the advantages and the pleasures of rural life. The more agreeable sites of a country, rich in natural beauties, are being covered with the dwellings of classes who were formerly a town population. On the shores of our island coast, wherever they can be approached, on every hill-side and in every valley from which can be beheld

the builder is constantly engaged in the construction of dwellings replete with comfort, if not remarkable for architectural beauty. Numerous residences, many almost of palatial character, have in several places, in less than half a century, formed, what in earlier times would have deserved and received the name of cities, but are now hardly recognised as municipalities. The rate of progress of the first forty years of that period was as nothing to that of the last ten years; and probably the progress of the last ten years will be inconceivably outstripped by that of the ten which are to come. Industry, education, the progress of civilisation, and the diffusion of higher tastes and enjoyments, all contribute to defeat every attempt to attach special interests or objects to specific districts. The lines of distinction between the town and country population become more and more faint, and are constantly shifting their places. To form a constitution on such a foundation is to build on sand.

Let it be supposed, however, that it were possible to succeed in accomplishing that which the changes in society forbid, the system would be founded upon injustice, and, therefore, could not be permanent. To contend that, although the opinion and sympathies of a minority are set at defiance in one place, it is a sufficient justification for this state of things that persons, whose opinions correspond with those of that minority, may form a majority in some other place, and that they then succeed in suppressing the voices of those whose