Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/99

 sympathy between different classes, at this day, as a necessary state of things. In them, high and noble names are combined, in one society, with the citizen and the artificer. They afford examples of the manner in which the claims of the great brotherhood of humanity were understood by many of the proudest of other days. The property of many of these bodies, which had always been looked upon with favour by the Crown, was brought within the Acts which gave to the king the property of other fraternities at the Reformation; but it was, probably, felt to be of a secular character, and much of it was granted either freely, or on easy terms, to several of the London parishes which now hold it. All these are proofs of the prevalent spirit of association. This spirit has taken a different direction, according to the hue of the age. It was the same spirit which led the larger communities, the cities and boroughs, to solicit and obtain incorporation, and its attendant powers. It has been always active amongst us, from that time to the present. Witness the great undertakings which have been accomplished by the combination of individual power, without other aid from the State than that which sanctions and adopts the proceeding. Nothing has been too great, or too small, to be beyond its reach—from making a road leading only to a poor hamlet, to gaining, in other realms, an imperial dominion, which the proudest conqueror might have envied.

It is to this voluntary and natural disposition to associate, to which full scope should be given in forming our electoral divisions. It is thus that, when we amend, we build in the old style. If this be permitted, the huge agglomerations of voters combined in some modern boroughs, the wide expanse of acres added to some ancient ones, and the legal bonds by which many boroughs, having otherwise no connexion with each other, are tied together, will be gradually dissolved; and the communities will assume, without any legislative interference, their natural and convenient form. It has been