Security to possessors; 2. Facility to
acquirers; and; 3. Hope to all.
* * * * *
A nation is the unity of a people. King and parliament are the unity made
visible. The king and the peers are as integral portions of this manifested
unity as the commons.[1]
In that imperfect state of society in which our system of representation
began, the interests of the country were pretty exactly commensurate with
its municipal divisions. The counties, the towns, and the seaports,
accurately enough represented the only interests then existing; that is
say,--the landed, the shop-keeping or manufacturing, and the mercantile.
But for a century past, at least, this division has become notoriously
imperfect, some of the most vital interests of the empire being now totally
unconnected with any English localities. Yet now, when the evil and the
want are known, we are to abandon the accommodations which the necessity of
the case had worked out for itself, and begin again with a rigidly
territorial plan of representation! The miserable tendency of all is to
destroy our nationality, which consists, in a principal degree, in our
representative government, and to convert it into a degrading delegation of
the populace.
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