Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/87

 the agricultural interest might safely rely, under a free and equal system of representation, on the elements of their just, and legitimate, and unquestionable strength. A distribution of electoral bodies, which would give to every voter the power of adding his vote to those of other electors, with whom he might more perfectly agree in interest and opinion, would, it may be safely predicate, give to the agricultural interest a weight and influence greater than can be attained by the most ingeniously-constructed territorial system they can devise. It would be a weight and influence obtained without any sacrifice of the claims of others. In principle and practice it would be perfectly unassailable, inasmuch as it would be determined, like that of all other bodies, by the measure of the numbers, intelligence, and property which it comprehends.

A similar reasoning will apply to every other class of interest, great or small. The various manufacturing, the mining, the shipping interests, might severally be the framers of their own constituencies, and be thoroughly and satisfactorily represented in the national councils. The population of the manufacturing, commercial, or maritime towns, in which the operations of any of these departments of industry are chiefly carried on, is too miscellaneous to be the organ of any common principle having relation to such special interests. There might have been a time when Norwich or Exeter was ready to advocate, above all others, the real or supposed intereste of the woollen, and Newcastle or Liverpool those of the shipping trades; but these times have passed. In the present century, although especial interests may accidentally obtain an exponent of their views in the persons of some of their body who have chanced to find their way into the House, they cannot generally obtain any such representation except by tampering with and corrupting the voters of limited constituencies. No interest, in truth, is provided with any proper or legitimate means of securing at all times its due weight and representation in the legislature. The