a very recent date, which places the landed proprietors and rural population in supposed hostility to each other. In truth, the antagonism is perfectly imaginary. By giving health and activity to all the fibres which grow out of interests in land, and which stretch their roots deeply and widely, and take more or less hold on every class in society, the proprietors of land will always find that their true interests and just rights are too firm to be shaken. It may, indeed, be possible for the great proprietors of land to insist upon upholding a system which will sever all these multitudinous ties, and leave them isolated and exposed.
It may well be hoped that when our representative institutions shall come under revision, there will be found in their places in both houses of Parliament some at least of the hereditary leaders of the yeomanry of the kingdom, demanding for them, as county inhabitants, individually and collectively, the same measure of political justice as shall be given to the inhabitants of the towns.
The fidelity and adequacy of the county representation is one of the chief points on which every one who may take a part in the business of parliamentary reform, with a single-minded view to the establishment of a system universally just and true, ought resolutely to insist. The title of the county inhabitants to an equal representation to those of the towns, according to their numbers, measured by the same rule, is alike indefeasible and undeniable. Cheshire, with its 16,000 electors, increased by the extension of the suffrage perhaps to 20,000, would unquestionably be entitled to return ten members, if every constituency of 2000, on the average, returned one member. Yorkshire, with its 56,000 electors, increased to 70,000 by the extension of the franchise, would, on the same rule, be entitled to thirty-five members; and so
is the distinction between the landed and mercantile interests!"—Oldfield's Representative History, vol. i., p. 163. London, 1816.
