Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/86

 elements that might be derived from a population which thus partakes both of the rural and the urban character,—elements not surpassed in value by that of any class in the country,—would be, for the most part, sacrificed. They would be lost to the boroughs, and not gained by the counties. To secure, or preserve, a selfish and an invidious power—which, after all, will escape their grasp,—the landowners, if they were betrayed into such a course, would have excluded from the representation a conservative force of great value, daily augmented in strength and importance, and to the growth of which there is no conceivable limit.

The more extensive, the more numerous and varied the ramifications of any interest, the less should it trust, and the less does it need to trust, to any geographical limitations, and the more may it safely rely on its inherent strength. The landed interest under a free system could not be dependent on the county constituencies. It has its branches in every city and borough in the kingdom. Its interests are identified with those of large numbers of the inhabitants of London. Not only in Belgravia, or Tyburnia, or May-fair, but with the clergy, the lawyers, with Westminster, with Finsbury, with many of the professional classes, the wealthy manufacturers, the principal merchants, the chief tradesmen. Again, in the census of 1851, about 300,000 persons are returned as formers, nearly all of whom would probably be voters under a system which recognised their equality with the voters in the boroughs. The numbers who reside in cities and boroughs, and who have connections and interests with the same great class, are incalculable by any data which these tables afford, but their numbers must be enormous. In the place of a fatal policy, which seeks—through geographical limits and arbifrary distinctions, by unequal apportionments of political power, and by creating or adhering to unreasonable and invidious inequalities of capacity and franchise,—to secure some remnants of their preponderance, the landowners and