The GLIO Site

THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM.
(From the Manchester Guardian.)

    While the farce of election has been going on around us, we have amused ourselves with examining the actual state of what is called the Representation of the Country, and have called out some choice proofs of the absurdity of denominating the House of Commons the Representatives of the People, which on some future opportunity we shall lay before our readers. In the meantime we shall present them with some gleanings from the population returns of 1821.

    We there found that the population of the unrepresented Parish of Manchester amounted to 187,031. Being desirous of ascertaining how many represented boroughs united would give a population equal to our unrepresented Parish, we set about adding up the numbers in each, as contained in the table of returns, and found that the united population of one hundred boroughs amounted to only 185,197.

    We subjoin the list, and beg our readers to recollect, as they read over the names of these miserable villages, that each of them sends two Representatives, forsooth, to Parliament:

    Can any one read this list of places which send two hundred members to the Honourable House, and bearing in mind that Manchester, which has a population greater than that of them altogether, is without one single representative,—can any one read this list, and contend that the people of England are represented.

    The list, however, presents too favourable a view of the system. The numbers given include all the inhabitants of the Boroughs, while in many, we believe we may say in the majority of instances, the inhabitants have no more to do with the election of members than the man in the moon. Let us take Midhurst for example. It has a respectable population. There are nearly as many people in it as are employed in Mr. Murray’s factory; but they are not electors. “The constituent body,’ says Oldfield, “consists of one hundred and eighteen STONES, denoting where the same number of burgage tenures are to be found. These are represented at an election by three or four of the proprietor’s friends, each holding a piece of parchment in his hand, called a conveyance, which invests them with a right, pro tempore, of acting as proxies for the dumb body of constituents!” St. Mawes too, looks respectable in the list; it is set down as having 1648 inhabitants—about as many people as are employed in Messrs. McConnell and Kennedy’s factory; but the number of voters is only six! Another instance, to show that the list, bad as it exhibits the system to be, is yet too favourable, and we have done. Wootton Bassett, which has had the honour of sending, to augment the “collective wisdom of the empire,” our worthy townsman George Philips, Esq., the doughty advocate (in former times) of annual Parliaments, universal suffrage, and election by ballot;—Wootten Bassett appears in the population returns, and in the above list, with a respectable population—a large population—exceeding probably by three or four hundred, the number of persons Mr. Philips employs in his mill in Salford; but the number of voters is only one hundred, and we presume they have as little to say in the choice of their representative, as any of Mr. Philips’ spinners in Salford have in dictating to him what he shall say in that Honourable House of which he is so distinguished an ornament.