no addition whatever, though between the year 1613 and the present the borough interest has received an addition of sixty-eight members, which is more than double the whole county representation.
"The great division on this subject is cities or boroughs, where the grant was to burgesses and freemen indefinite, or to a limited number of burgesses, seldom exceeding twelve, in whom the right of election was confined. The former are boroughs intended to be free; the latter intended to be otherwise. The number of the former I apprehend to be above forty, and when they have become what we understand to be intended by the word ' close boroughs ' they have departed from the intention of the grant, and ought, pursuant to the meaning of that grant, to be opened. The other class, which I apprehend to be above forty, are in their origin vicious, and it is a monopoly like any of the other monopolies of James I.—a grant in its nature criminal.[1] Most of the forty boroughs created by James I. were so. It appears from the grants themselves that they were intended to be private property. They were granted as a personal reward for doing some specified transaction." "Thus, there are these two descriptions of boroughs: the one intended
- ↑ Referring to the enfranchisement of close boroughs, Mr. Grattan in 1797 thus expressed himself in the House of Commons: "Thus by far the greater number of your boroughs, and near one half your representation, is not your ancient Constitution, but a gross and flagrant encroachment, and a violent usurpation of the worst family that ever trampled on the independency and fabric of representation."—"Irish Debates," vol. xvii. p. 563.
