Take the
other question--that of land. There is nobody in Great Britain of the
great town population, or of the middle class, or of the still more
numerous working class, who has any sympathy with that condition of the
law and of the administration of the law which has worked such mischiefs
in your country. But these Nonconformists, whether in England, Wales, or
Scotland, these great middle classes, and still greater working classes,
are in the position that you are. Only sixteen of every hundred have a
vote, and those sixteen are so arranged that when their representatives
get to Parliament they turn out for the most part to be no real
representatives of the people.
I will tell you fairly that you, as the less populous and less powerful
part of this great nation--you of all the men in the United Kingdom,
have by far the strongest interest in a thorough reform of the Imperial
Parliament, and I believe that you yourselves could not do yourselves
such complete justice by yourselves as you can do, by fairly acting with
the generous millions of my countrymen in whose name I stand here. You
have on this platform two members of the Reform League from London.
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