Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/89

 New subjects for consideration incessantly arise. Legislation has dealt at different times more or less superficially and partially with the hours of female and infantine labour, the education of children, the application of endowments for the aid or relief of poverty; the imposition of public taxes to avert destitution; with sanitary necessities, with friendly societies, and the investment of savings; and there is still probably none of these subjects on which the existing legislation is not capable of great amendment. The laws that govern the tenure and conveyance of interests of smaller value in real property, especially of cottages, and of the dwellings of the labouring classes in towns, require extensive modification and improvement; and open a large field of civil reformation, in which the wealthier proprietors may have no sympathy, even if it be not altogether opposed to their prejudices. There is much that touches the condition of the poorer classes which persons in a different social sphere can hardly feel or know. Subjects of still deeper permanent importance appear in the distance. The progress of the co-operative movement is likely to affect extensively the condition of labour, and the relations between the employer and the employed. A consideration of what is due to the vast masses of the working population leads inevitably to the conclusion that they ought to have the power of placing in the House some persons in whom they have confidence, and who are able to view all such questions from their side, who have been brought up with them, and know experimentally where and how their condition needs amelioration. A representative assembly of the Commons, without this element, is grossly defective.

Nothing exemplifies more clearly the maxim, that all injustice rebounds upon its authors, than the claims of the working classes for representation in times of popular excitement. Their class having been unwisely and improperly excluded, they then demand such a construction of the fran-