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of their party ; and through whom they could make the system work well . ' On similar ground * they propose continuing the present aldermen for life , withoiit regard to property , although the pauperism of many of the order' is notorious . The poverty is no objection , so long as there is no responsibility to the people . The poor and irresponsible manager of public property naturally belongs to the Tory party ; he may be reckoned upon ; by aH means make him irremovable . In . this connexion poverty is
ptecious to the Peerage ; it touches their hearts with the teridefness which softened the Whig poet to the sufferings of the exiled Stuart ' A wretch to misery ' s still a sacred thing ; How much more sacred , then , a wretched King ! And hence , by analogy , the sacredness of a pauper alderman * There is in him the very essence of Toryism . Beautiful fellowfeeling of the Robe and the Gown , the Coronet and the Cap < rf Maintenance ! Is the fur , which is their common adofnment ,
only a sly specimen of punning Latinity ? It is , then , abundantly obvious that the division of the ratepayers into six classes , and the exclusion from the town council of five of those classes , so as to create a municipal oligarch y of the highest-rated , was not meant simply to keep out poor individuals . The aim was to proscribe the natural representatives of the middle and lower classes . In many cases , this arrangement would
reduce the election to a mere form , or rather a disgusting farce . In all cases , it annihilates freedom of choice : it excludes those oii whom civic burdens fall most heavily , and whose activity , stimulated by the direct interests of their class , would be ot the best service . They are not the highest payers who have the deepest interest in parochial or town government . No class , except the very lowest , has generally so little motive or so little aptitude fo ' f civic business ; but they would serve as a barrier against * * the
democratic principle . ' They and the life-holders together would do admirable duty in keeping out responsibility ana representation . They would preserve the harmony of oligarchical govern * ment , from the top to the bottom of society , till the great mass of the community should have nothing it could call its own , except payment and submission , and the chance of now and then one of its members slipping out of the ranks of the bees into those of the drones ; a chance so often boasted of as the glory of our country and Constitution , by which ' the son of a cotton-spinner *
may become Prime Minister . Aptly does the restriction of ( elective ) office to the wealthiest harmonize with the preservation of the franchise to the most wretchedly poor and notoriously corrupt . No comrtient is necessary on this barefaced patronage of vendibility . The conduct of the freemen has left but two courses open for an honest Legislature to pursue ; either to disfranchise them altogether , or to swamp their votes by making the suffrage universal . The last
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The House of Lord *—Reform br Abolition ? 507
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1835, page 567, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2649/page/3/
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