Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/88

 possession of such weight, or the existence of such representation, are matters left to the determination of chance or accident. This is surely not a basis on which a great representative system should rest.

Another interest remains—and which, not less than any, if not more than all, deserves consideration—the interest of the working classes. To the honour of the age be it said, that the history of the world does not present a time in which the labours of the wise, the great, and the wealthy, were directed with more persevering energy to promote the social benefit of the great masses who are engaged in the manual occupations of life. Some there are in the House of Commons who address themselves to such questions in the spirit of an enlightened philanthropy. But neither science nor philanthropy can reach the depths of the knowledge painfully won in the daily life and experience of the man or woman. It is unnecessary to advert to the cases in which the doctrines of political economy and considerations of morality and duty, when their several provinces are not sufficiently distinguished, seem to conflict. “The want,” says the economist, “will produce the supply.” “What,” replies the moralist, “if the want be not felt, but is yet one which it is a proof of the degradation of our nature not to feel? The wants which tend to produce a supply are of two kinds—instinctive and artificial. The former seeks after that, a desire of which has been implanted in us by nature,—the latter, after that which we have been taught to desire by experience. The light must enter into the darkness, ere the darkness can know that is without light, and open its heart to desire and embrace it.” The questions in which the working, or, as it has been proposed to call them, the wage classes, are deeply interested, become daily more and more developed, as the increase of the population and the progress of material wealth and civilizing influences render the condition of society more complicated.