t to have, by explicit law, more
votes than the poor and stupid; nor are any latent contrivances to give
them an influence equivalent to more votes. The machinery for carrying
out such a plan is very easy. At each census the country ought to be
divided into 658 electoral districts, in each of which the number of
adult males should be the same; and these districts ought to be the
only constituencies, and elect the whole Parliament. But if the above
prerequisites are needful for Parliamentary government, that Parliament
would not work.

Such a Parliament could not be composed of moderate men. The electoral
districts would be, some of them, in purely agricultural places, and in
these the parson and the squire would have almost unlimited power. They
would be able to drive or send to the poll an entire labouring
population. These districts would return an unmixed squirearchy. The
scattered small towns which now send so many members to Parliament,
would be lost in the clownish mass; their votes would send to
Parliament no distinct members. The agricultural part of England would
choose its representatives from quarter-sessions exclusively. On the
other hand a large part of the constituencies would be town districts,
and these would send up persons representing the beliefs or unbeliefs
of the lowest classes in their towns. They would, perhaps, be divided
between the genuine representatives of the artisans--not possibly of
the best of the artisans, who are a select and intellectual class, but
of the common order of workpeople--and the merely pretended members for
that class whom I may call the members for the public-houses. In all
big towns in which there is electioneering these houses are the centres
of illicit corruption and illicit management. There are pretty good
records of what that corruption and management are, but there is no
need to describe them here. Everybody will understand what sort of
things I mean, and the kind of unprincipled members that are returned
by them. Our new Parliament, therefore, would be made up of two sorts
of representatives from the town lowest class, and one sort of
representatives from the agricultural lowest class. The genuine
representatives of the country would be men of one marked sort, and the
genuine representatives for the county men of another marked sort, but
very opposite: one would have the prejudices of town artisans, and the
other the prejudices of county magistrates. Each class wo