Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/94

 can scarcely be otherwise than a source of discord. It is without landmarks. It has not its origin in that stream of events which has disposed material things in an order wherein all are the more inclined to acquiesce because they have not seen it disturbed or controlled by any visible hand. The example of other countries, as well as of our own, teaches us that, if an arbitrary division for electoral or other purposes is formed to-day, there will not be wanting reasons for its reconstruction to-morrow. On the other hand, these political incorporations which grow out of the constantly operating causes by which all human associations, like material things, are dissolved and reorganised, are found to have the deepest roots. “By preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the State, in what we improve, we are never wholly new; in what we retain, we are never wholly obsolete. By adhering in this manner, and on those principles, to our forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians, but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. “Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts, wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, mouldng together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole at one time is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy,—moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

The people of this country have always evinced great reluctance to be arbitrarily parcelled out, formed into sections, and divided by metes and bounds, to correspond with a theory, and they have commonly cast aside, at the first opportunity, such artificial limits. The advocates of equal electoral divisions, who look to a new geographical distribution as the only means of accomplishing their object, will have to surmount