Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/93

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In the ancient and historical form of our constitutional system, the right, or privilege of nominating representatives in Parliament, was given,—or, it may be more correct to say, accrued—to the various detached and distinct communities in the then existing divisions of counties, cities, or boroughs, in consequence and as an incident of that previous existence. In the remodelling of the electoral system in 1832, a course in many respects the reverse of this was pursued. Districts, or boroughs, were then created, or unions of such communities formed, without any other basis of connection than that of electing representatives. The representation was not given to the town simply because it was a town containing inhabitants who ought to be represented, for the Reform Bill recognised no such right; but the borough was created, or its limits extended to the surrounding parishes,—a union of boroughs formed,—or counties divided into sections, in order to create an artificial basis of representation. We are now, it may be hoped, unembarrassed by many of the difficulties which impeded the labours of 1832, and enabled to view the entire subject in different aspects. The experience of a quarter of a century does not encourage the extension of a system of arbitrary divisions, constructed entirely for electoral purposes. A representative system, resting on such a basis,