XXIII. 1832. their government to the rule of urban constituencies CHAP. in the dominant island, which not only had no interest in common with them, but were actuated by an adverse one. Under the rule of a popular Assembly, thus constituted, a new empire, maintaining itself, like Holland or Venice, by an extensive commerce and flourishing manufactures, without external possessions, may possibly arise; but the preservation of the old empire, extending its offshoots into all the quarters of the globe, and retaining them all in willing subjection to the heart of the State, from the experienced benefits of the connection, is impossible. unrepre Another great error committed in the construction of 150. the new constitution was that, in the majority at least of Labour was the House of Commons, labour was wholly unrepresented. sented. This cannot be disputed, when it is recollected that in the urban constituencies the franchise is fixed at payment of a £10, in the rural of a £50 rent, or a 40s. freehold in England, either of which is exclusive of the great body of labourers both in town and country. The retention of the freemen in a few great cities cannot be called a representation of labour; it is rather a representation of venality and corruption. Without doubt, a uniform representation, founded on a low suffrage, as household or £5 rent, is the worst of all foundations for government, because it is a class government of labourers-that is, of the most ignorant and irresponsible class in the community. But it is one thing to give the operatives, whether in town or country, the entire command of the State; it is another, and a very different thing, to exclude them entirely from its government, and expose them, without the means of legal resistance, to the rule of an assembly almost entirely elected by persons having an adverse interest. To beat down the remuneration of labour, both in the fields and the workshops, is the obvious interest of the employers, either in town or country, and the persons who deal in XXIII. 1832. CHAP. their produce, because it diminishes the cost of production or purchase; and it is soon discovered that this is most effectually done, because in the way least likely to attract attention, by a contraction of the currency, and the application of the principles of free trade to every branch of commerce. The frequency and alarming character of the strikes which have prevailed in every part of the empire since these principles were carried into practice, and the steady emigration of above 250,000 agricultural labourers for the last eight years, even in times of greatest prosperity, from the British Islands, prove that the effects of this class legislation have been fully felt by the working classes, and that they have sought to escape from them, either by illegal combination against the laws, or by withdrawing entirely from the sphere of their influence. 151. Want of the representation of intelli gence and education. The last obvious defect of the new constitution was, that it as completely disfranchised intellect and education as it did labour and production. It is not meant to be asserted, in making this remark, that the reformed House of Commons has been by any means destitute of talent. Beyond all doubt, the new constituencies have sent forward many men of robust intellect and great business information, skilled in the art of guiding the multitude, and who have left indelible marks of their ability in the legislation and fortunes of the country; but still they were not the representatives of intellect and education--they are the representatives of a class interest, that of cheap production and cheap buying. All their talents and energies— and both have often been great indeed-have been directed to advance those interests for the benefit of their constituents, without any regard to the effect of the measures they advocated upon the general or unrepresented interests of the empire. Schedules A and B closed the door as effectually upon the high education and intelligence, as they did upon the colonies or shipping interest of XXIII. 1832. the empire, because they barred the entrance by which alone CHAP. they had hitherto obtained admission into the legislature. The young men of talent and eloquence who had distinguished themselves at college, and got in by a nomination borough the race of Pitt and Fox, of Burke and Sheridan, of Wyndham and Romilly, of Mackintosh and Brougham -has become extinct in the House of Commons since 1832. Such as are still there of the former race, had all found an entrance under the old system by the nomination boroughs. No man who knows anything of human affairs, indeed, will assert that a legislature, the majority of which consisted of such men, would be a good frame of government. There is probably more truth than the learned professors are willing to admit in the celebrated saying of Frederick the Great, that "if he wished utterly to ruin a province, he would put it into the hands of the philosophers;" or of Napoleon, that "if an empire were made of granite, it would soon be reduced to powder by the political economists." But admitting all this, it is equally obvious that to give the learned professions only five seats out of six hundred and sixty-eight to themselves, and send them everywhere else to be swamped by a majority of farmers, provision-dealers, or publicans, was a very great evil, which may come eventually to affect in a most serious manner the fortunes of the empire. stance. No body of men, and least of all the legislature in- 152. trusted with the government of the country, can emancipate Dangers itself without risk from the influence of intelligence and this circumarising from genius, and surrender itself without reserve to the guidance of material interests. The necessary effect of such exclusion is to produce an absence of enlarged views on general welfare, and to restrict every one to the selfish dictates of interested constituents. Independence of character, intrepidity of thought, wide views for the universal good, can hardly now obtain admission into the House of Commons. Large constituencies have an instinctive dread of such XXIII. 1832. CHAP. characters; they are either jealous of or hate them. Ability and eloquence, indeed, they all desire, but it is ability devoted to their interests, eloquence governed by their will. Their wish is to have, not representatives, but delegates, and no man worthy of ruling an empire will become such. Hence the House of Commons, since the passing of the Reform Bill, has been nearly deserted, so far as new members are concerned, by men of brilliant talents; and they have sought to influence public affairs by writing in the periodical or daily press, the talent in which has as much increased since the change, as that of the new entrants into the legislature has diminished. 153. taken refuge But the great and growing influence of the press is Talent has itself fraught with still greater danger, for it is necessarily in the press: one-sided. Every one reads what suits his own views, and its danger. in general little else; and thus the ability of the press tends rather to confirm preconceived opinions, and widen the breaches which divide society, than to heal divisions or produce rectitude of judgment. The nomination boroughs let in independent talent, because they were either purchased or acquired by the influence of one, always less jealous than a multitude of masters. They were felt as an evil, however, because they produced a legislature at variance, on essential points, with the wishes and interests of the great urban hives of industry. What should have been done, and was not done, was to have given as many seats as were taken away, not to one class, the £10 householders, but to various classes, which might have afforded an inlet into the legislature at once to manufacturing and commercial wealth, colonial industry, shipping interests, and general intelligence and superior education. Perhaps the evil consequence which has been most forcibly brought before the eyes of the public by the working of the Reform Bill, is the vast increase of corruption which it has induced in the borough electors. This has become so obvious that it has attracted universal observation; and if any proof of it were requisite, it would CHAP. XXIII. 154. crease of under the be proved in the fact that fifty-two petitions against 1832. returns, on the ground of bribery, were presented in the Parliament elected in 1852. Nothing approaching to Vast inthis was ever heard of in the worst days of the old House corruption of Commons; and the legislature has been actively en- Reform gaged in devising various remedies for so great an evil— Bill. a sure proof that none of them have had any sensible effect. It is not difficult to see that the evil is irremediable under our present institutions; for it arises from a permanent cause of irresistible force, viz., that supreme power is vested in a class accessible to bribes. As long as this continues, bribes will be expected, given, and taken. The decisive proof of this is to be found in the fact, that though petitions against borough returns have been so frequent since the Reform Bill passed, there have been none against those for counties. The reason of this is, not that the forty-shilling freeholder is inaccessible to bribes-probably he would often as willingly take them as the freeman or ten-pounder in towns-but that that class have not the majority in counties, and they are not bribed, because it is no man's interest to corrupt them. 155. would not but increas The Liberals do not attempt to deny the existence of this great and crying evil in the new borough constituen- Which evil cies, but they affirm that it would be removed by enlarging be removed, the constituencies so as to make bribery impossible, and ed, by the introducing the ballot so as to render it useless. It may lowering with confidence be predicted that the evil, so far from the suffrage. being diminished, would, as in the Roman Republic, * "The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved by an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated against numbers. But the tribunes soon established a more specious and popular maxim, that every citizen has an equal right to enact the laws he is bound to obey. Instead of the centuries they convened the tribes; and the Patricians, after an impotent struggle, submitted to the devices of an assembly in which they were confounded with the meanest plebeian. Yet as long as the tribes passed over narrow bridges, and gave their voices aloud, the conduct of each citizen was exposed to the eyes and the ears of his friends and countrymen. The insolvent ballot and |