CHAPTER IV.

NUMERICAL DIVISIONS OF ELECTORS.

Duke of Richmond's plan in 1780-Reform Act of 1832-Shaftesbury - Ayr district-Finsbury - Exeter-Annexation of suburbs to towns-Symmetrical reform-Equality and permanency of geographical divisions impossible-All involve the extinction of minorities-United States-Apportionment of representatives to the several states-Aliquot proportions of population-Aliquot numbers of electors-The number of members the divisor - Proposed law requiring a quota of votes for every member-Comparison of the proposed system with that of contributory boroughs-Ayr district-Anticipated efforts to pack the constituencies-Mr. Bright-Majorities pronouncing on peace or war-Voluntary constituencies pronouncing on such questions-Inquiry as to what classes are represented in the small boroughs.

THE formation of electoral districts has been a subject of discussion from almost the earliest time at which the question of parliamentary reform began to be agitated. Various plans have been suggested for forming such districts or divisions. In the year 1780, the Duke of Richmond propounded, in the House of Lords, a comprehensive scheme of reform, in a bill which the brief record of that day states occupied an hour and a-half in reading. This measure, after declaring the right of suffrage to be in male persons of twenty-one, went on to prescribe that a list should be taken in every parish of the number of voters, and returns of

them made to the Lord Chancellor.

"The numbers

to be told-up, and divided by 558 (the number of members then in the house), and the quotient to be the number by which one member of parliament was to be elected. Every county to be divided into as many districts as they contain quotients of this nature, and these districts to be called boroughs."*

The course adopted in the Reform Act of 1832, is so well known that it will be sufficient to refer to some of its features. As an alternative to avoid the disfranchisement of some small boroughs, the area of such boroughs for parliamentary purposes was extended to much of the surrounding country,-embracing, in some cases, a circuit of many miles. Of this the borough of Shaftesbury may be taken as an example, which was made to include thirteen surrounding parishes. In other cases, several towns, sometimes with their adjoining parishes, contributed to form a district of boroughs, and were empowered to return one member. In the Ayr district, for example,-Ayr, with portions of two adjoining parishes, having, in 1851, 17,624 inhabitants, Cambeltown, 6880 inhabitants,-Inverary, 1064 inhabitants,-Irvine, and part of an adjoining parish, 7534 inhabitants, and Oban, with part of an adjoining parish, 1742 inhabitants, were formed into such a constituency. In the case of a very large population, as in the metropolis, a district was formed by combining groups of contiguous parishes into a borough returning two members, as Finsbury. In other cases, where the neighbourhood of an ancient

* Parl. Hist. vol. xxi. p. 687.

borough had become populous, the surrounding population was taken within the precincts of the parliamentary borough, as Exeter, a city of 34,317 inhabitants, which, for parliamentary purposes, was made to include parts of the parishes of Topsham, Heavitree, St. Thomas, and Alphington, containing together 6371 inhabitants. The principles involved in these forms of division or annexation exhaust all that has been proposed by reformers in this country. The plan of the Duke of Richmond is perhaps the nearest approach to that which was adopted in France by the National Assembly, and founded on the several bases of territory, population, and contribution; the territorial basis being created by a division into departments, communes, and cantons.

The annexation of several agricultural parishes to a borough in their centre, as in the case of Shaftesbury, is remarkable as a recognition of the fact that the alleged distinction between the interests of the borough and the county electors is but imaginary; for, if any real distinction existed, injury would have been done to one or the other. It would have been an injustice to hamper the action of either set of electors by attaching them to the other. It may possibly be said that the borough electors are, in the cases of towns situated like Shaftesbury, only another class of county electors, and that the addition of the county electors to the borough was of no other importance than that of giving them another polling place, and a larger share in the election of a member. All such considerations are in truth but solemn trifling. The parade of distinct interests and distinct objects in the country and the

town is used on neither side for any purpose but to blind the eyes of the public, and perplex the question of representation.

The addition of populous suburbs to the constituency of a city or borough, already possessing no more than its share in the general representation, is certainly a mode of removing the discrepancy between the electoral privileges of the inhabitants of the city and the suburb: but when a suburb, containing a thousand voters, is added to a city which already contains four thousand, it is very difficult to say in what sense the representation is improved. If anything be gained by the thousand new electors,-any power of infusing their opinions into the representative body,—it must be so much taken from the four thousand old electors. The representation must have been made less a reflex of their opinions. "Au lieu de dénaturer les droits politiques en les exténuant, sous prétexte de les répandre, qu'il y a partout des libertés locales, garanties par des droits réels."*

Such annexations to boroughs, or extensions of the franchise to surrounding districts, are, however, still gravely proposed as amendments. They may remove an inequality between the inhabitants of two contiguous places, leaving the greater anomalies and inequalities which extend over the kingdom untouched; but this is to divert the amendment which pretends to make, and should make, the representation more perfect, to another, a distinct, and a far inferior, object, the mere abolition of a local discrepancy,—an alteration which, it is seen, may even render the actual

* Guizot, Gouv. Rep. vol. ii. p. 263.

representation less perfect. In striving at symmetry, the substance is forgotten.

The disposition to bestow undue attention to smoothing down the face of things, and of resting satisfied with proposing to remove such local irregularities, has earned for a class of politicians the title of "symmetrical reformers." The name has been given to them by those who seem to consider symmetry in itself an evil. Symmetry, when attained, may be but a "fair and sightly vision;" within, full of all uncleanness. To seek it exclusively for itself is a poor pursuit. But symmetry is, certainly, not a fault, and it may be a sign of merit. In a general congruity, a sense of the aptness and fitness of every part of an edifice for its true purpose, there is a natural symmetry, which resembles that unstudied grace above the reach of art, the result of an instinctive consciousness of propriety. There is no wisdom in shrinking from a political system merely because it may happen to contain within it the elements of symmetry.

There are insurmountable objections to an electoral division founded solely on a geographical or territorial basis, and not corrected by some balancing movement, which answers to the fluctuations of society. In addition to the difficulty of arriving, even in the outset, at anything like equality in such a division, it has constantly to be reconstructed. The shifting centres of population and industry will every year disarrange and disturb it. No session of Parliament would ever pass without claims being urged for a new Reform Bill,— claims which, upon the principle of the divisions supposed to have been already made, are necessarily well