ct is visible.

The generality of corporation towns are in a state of solitary decay,
and prevented from further ruin only by some circumstance in their
situation, such as a navigable river, or a plentiful surrounding
country. As population is one of the chief sources of wealth (for
without it land itself has no value), everything which operates to
prevent it must lessen the value of property; and as corporations have
not only this tendency, but directly this effect, they cannot but be
injurious. If any policy were to be followed, instead of that of general
freedom, to every person to settle where he chose (as in France or
America) it would be more consistent to give encouragement to new comers
than to preclude their admission by exacting premiums from them.*[29]

The persons most immediately interested in the abolition of corporations
are the inhabitants of the towns where corporations are established. The
instances of Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield show, by contrast,
the injuries which those Gothic institutions are to property and
commerce. A few examples may be found, such as that of London, whose
natural and commercial advantage, owing to its situation on the Thames,
is capable of bearing up against the political evils of a corporation;
but in almost all other cases the fatality is too visible to be doubted
or denied.

Though the whole nation is not so directly affected by the depression of
property in corporation towns as the inhabitants themselves, it partakes
of the consequence. By lessening the value of property, the quantity of
national commerce is curtailed. Every man is a customer in proportion
to his ability; and as all parts of a nation trade with each other,
whatever affects any of the parts must necessarily communicate to the
whole.

As one of the Houses of the English Parliament is, in a great measure,
made up of elections from these corporations; and as it is unnatural
that a pure stream should flow from a foul fountain, its vices are but a
continuation of the vices of its origin. A man of moral honour and good
political principles cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful
arts, by which such elections are carried. To be a successful candidate,
he must be destitute of the qualities that constitute a just legislator;
and being thus disciplined to corruption by the mode of entering into
Parliament, it is not to be expected that the representative should be
better than the man.

Mr. B