Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/79

 million, and not only half a million, but when they are exceed the entire number of any minorities now existing, by the operation of numberless affinities and repulsions, which, in a state of liberation, will dissolve the present majorities. Opinions which approve themselves, and sympathies which are common to any considerable number of minds,—and it is chiefly these with which we have to deal,—will form round different centres, whilst the parts, or atoms, actually incapable of cohesion, would be reduced to their minimum.

It will be found, upon consideration, that it is not more difficult for the State to provide for its people the means of combining, for the purpose of representation, all the elements which make up its intelligence and judgment, infinitely dispersed and varied as these appear to be,—than it is by the simple mechanism of the Post-Office, that vast contrivance, at once a cause and an effect of civilization, to perform its wondrous daily task of interchanging knowledge and thought, and thereby instructing and enriching society. In our own day, the facilities of intercourse have brought almost into contact with one another those who dwell at opposite quarters of the empire, and have produced effects which our ancestors could never have anticipated or imagined. Full of interest are those inquiries, which show the connection between external things and mental progress, and trace the influence on human institutions, of literature and its allied and hand-maid arts. The amazement of Atahualpa, when he saw that a few mysterious lines, without speech, conveyed, from one to another of his stem conquerors, their words and thoughts, exhibits the untaught condition of a perishing race. In other regions, and more cultivated minds, letters had long sown the seeds of enterprise and freedom, but had not always preserved its fruits. They afforded to the world but a twilight gleam. The brighter rays shone but in a few solitary or isolated spots, until a student-artisan taught to stamp by one block or type many repetitions of the same thought, and