[p. 105]
|105| little depth of principles; glory and wealth make it superfluous to go back to the foundations of the existing rights, to which, among the peoples who feel the pressure of them, external distress and the need of reason awakened by it drive them.
We return to the more formal points of view which connect more immediately with the Reform Bill before us. A point of view of great importance, which is also emphasised by the opponents of the Bill, is that in Parliament the various great interests of the nation are to be represented, and what changes this representation would now undergo through the Bill before us.
The views on this seem to differ, in that the Duke of Wellington declares that, according to the Bill in question, the greater mass of the electors would consist of shopkeepers; thereby the commercial interest would seem to gain advantages; yet the view is general, and is made very much of in its favour, that landed property and the agricultural interest will not only lose nothing of their influence but, since the draft assigns from the hitherto existing franchises that are to be abolished only 25 members to the great towns or the commercial interest, but to the counties or landed property, including smaller towns, where also for the most part the influence of the landowner prevails, the remaining 81, will rather receive a relative extension. It is especially remarkable in this respect that a number of merchants, and indeed the first bankers of London, who stand in connection with the East India Company and the Bank of England, have declared themselves against the Bill, – and for the reason that this measure, while it intends to support the representation of the kingdom on the great basis of property and to extend this basis, would in its
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