Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/90

 chise, and of electoral divisions, as will tend to throw all power into their hands, every class but their own being numerically overpowered. It may be hoped that the friends of good government will avail themselves of a period of tranquillity to place the representation on such a basis of justice as shall make it thenceforth unassailable.

In the state of society at which we have arrived, the vesting in every elector of a power to act, if such be his will, without any trammel created by the particular section of voters to which he is nominally annexed, is the keystone of parliamentary reform. It is by this means that the utmost facility and inducement will be afforded to every elector to exercise his judgment in making the best and wisest choice. “That the service of our country is no chimerical, but a real duty,” are the words of a great constitutional philosopher. When a political system promotes and encourages the association of minds having common pursuits and common sympathies, and when these associations are necessarily so extensive that they can be governed by no narrow or selfish motives, and by nothing less comprehensive than a desire to further the moral or material welfare of large numbers of men, the union becomes necessarily the occasion of exciting generous sentiments, and to the degree in which the object of the association is pure and wise, to that degree are its members elevated above all ignoble and selfish objects. All good influences will be aided and all evil ones discouraged, not as results directly aimed at, but as the indirect and natural consequence of a wholesome state of political existence; just as the cultivation of a pure mind, and application to honest objects, is a better protection for virtue than all the repressive laws that can be made to extirpate vice. Full scope will be given to every generous sentiment by which men may be drawn together. Devotion to a great principle—regard for an illustrious name—affection for an ancient house—admiration of worthy deeds—attachment to a particular neighbourhood—