Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/95

 great prejudices before they succeed in dividing the country like a chess-board. Many of these prejudices are deeply rooted in historical causes, and deserve the respect, rather than the contempt, of the legislator. “To be attached to the sub-division,—to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle,—the germ, as it were, of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.” “We begin our public affections in our families. No cold relation is a zealous citizen. We pass on to our neighbourhoods, and our habitual provincial connections. These are inns and resting-places; such divisions of our country as have been formed by habit, and not by a sudden jerk of authority, are so many little images of the great country in which the heart finds something which it can fill The love to the whole is not extinguished by this subordinate partiality. Perhaps it is a sort of elemental training to those higher and more large regards, by which alone men come to be affected, as with their own concern, in the prosperity of a kingdom.” “But no man ever was attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement. He will never glory in belonging to the Chequer, No. 71, or to any other badge ticket.” Few, probably, have been known to manifest any degree of pride from their political incorporation with Marylebone, Finsbury, or any other arbitrary metropolitan section.

The glaring anomalies and inconsistencies of a system which enables a great number of the members of the House of Commons to be elected by towns insignificant in wealth and population when compared with other places, often in their immediate neighbourhood, which are without such powers—a system which cannot now be defended on the grounds which were formerly urged in its support—renders some extensive alteration indispensable, if the representation