Essays on ReformMacmillan, 1867 - 336 pages |
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admit advantage America argument aristocracy artisans body character circumstances citizens colonies Conservative Constitution Corn Law corruption cracy danger Democracy democratic districts doubt election electors eminence enfranchisement England English equality evil existence fact favour feeling France franchise give House of Commons Hugh Cairns ideas important individual influence institutions Irish labour landed interest landowners leaders least legislation legislature less Liberals liberty majority means Members of Parliament ment middle class mind moral nation never Number of Members oligarchy opinion Parlia Parliamentary government party peers political power polling-booth popular population position present principles privileges progress question Reform Bill reformed Parliament repre representatives republics result rich rural boroughs sense small boroughs social society South Australia South Wales Speeches and Letters spirit statesmen suffrage sympathy theory things tical tion Total towns trade true universal suffrage votes wealth whole
Popular passages
Page 10 - I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.
Page 19 - M. de Tocqueville assumed that democracy was inevitable, and that the question to be considered was, not whether it was good or evil in itself, but how we could best adapt ourselves to it. This is ignava ratio, the coward's argument, by which I hope this House will not be influenced. If this Democracy be a good thing, let us clasp it to our bosoms ; if not, there is, I am sure, spirit and feeling enough in this country to prevent us from allowing ourselves to be overawed by any vague presage of...
Page 152 - It is fortuitous, masonic. Practically it is none the less powerful. There it is, a positive result of an electoral system which knows nothing of insurance offices. Here, then, is one example, which proves the necessity of bearing in mind the fundamental distinction between direct and indirect representation. Let us take one more preliminary example, though of a different kind. The aristocracy and the landowners are overwhelmingly represented not only in the House of Lords, but in the House of Commons....
Page 4 - ... mind that the end we ought to have in view is not the class which receives the franchise, not the district that obtains the power of sending members to Parliament, but that Parliament itself in which those members are to sit, and for the sake of constituting which properly those powers ought alone to be exercised. To consider the franchise as an end in itself — to suppose that we should confer it on any one class of persons because we think them deserving, that we should take it away from one...
Page 154 - So vast is their traditional power, so broadly does it sit over the land, so deep and ancient are its roots, so multiplied and ramified everywhere are its tendrils, and creepers, and feelers, that the danger is never lest they should have too little, but always lest they should have too much power, and so, even involuntarily, choke down the possibilities of new life from below.
Page 42 - Southern feeling of the Liverpool merchants was exceptional, and the result of their special interest in the prosperity, and their special connexion with the aristocracy, of the Slave-owning States. III. ON THE ADMISSION OF THE WORKING CLASSES AS PART OF OUR SOCIAL SYSTEM; AND ON THEIR RECOGNITION FOR ALL PURPOSES AS PART OF THE NATION. BY LORD HOUGHTON. IN urging the question of the extension of the suffrage, it is by no means superfluous to require from our opponents the admission that Representative...
Page 10 - To that assumption of the a priori rights of man which formed the terror and the ridicule of that grotesque tragedy the French Revolution. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the onus probandi lay with his adversary, in this instance he must have meant that anterior to the existence of society there was vested in every man some personal a priori right which nobody had authority to touch. When Mr. Mill, in like manner, speaks of every citizen of a State having a perfect right to a share...
Page 10 - If so, nothing can be more difficult than to meet such concise and sweeping arguments as those to which I have referred, because a man who is careful to weigh what he has to say on a subject like this cannot put the results of an intricate and exhaustive process in a single sentence. And to what do the arguments of those who, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer, advocate the right of the working classes to be admitted to the exercise of the franchise amount ? To that assumption of the a priori rights...
Page 158 - I could > count them, 1 429, and, as the list of the remaining 229 comprises some sixty or seventy names belonging to the aristocratic element, additional light is thrown upon the calculation. As a general result, I fearlessly challenge the reader to test my assertion, that not less than 500 Members in the House of Commons are either county Members, or, if representing boroughs, either peers or relations of peers, or landowners or under landowners
Page 14 - right' and ' justice ' have a perfectly clear and defined meaning when applied to the administration of justice under a settled law, but are really without meaning, except as vague and inappropriate metaphors, when applied to the distribution of political power.