A great many of them return their Members by means of
corruption, more or less, and a free and real representation of the
people is hardly ever possible in a borough of that small size.
But if I were to compare your boroughs with your counties, see how it
stands. You have thirty-nine borough Members, with 30,000 electors, and
you have sixty-four county Members, with 172,000 electors. Therefore you
see that the Members are so distributed that the great populations have
not one quarter of the influence in Parliament which those small
populations in the small boroughs have. We come next to another question
which is of great consequence. Not only are those small boroughs
altogether too email for independence, but if we come to your large
county constituencies, we find that from the peculiar circumstances and
the relations which exist between the voter and the owner of the land,
there is scarcely any freedom of election. Even in your counties I
should suppose that if there was no compulsion from the landowners or
their agents, that in at least three-fourths of this island the vote of
the county electors would be by a vast majority in favour of the Liberal
candidates.
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