On the English Reform Bill

[p. 106]

|106| practical effect close main avenues by means of which the monetary, commercial, shipping and colonial interests, together with all other interests in the whole country and in all foreign possessions to the most distant points, were hitherto represented in Parliament.

These main avenues are the boroughs and small towns in which a seat in Parliament is directly to be bought. Hitherto it could be provided for with certainty, by way of the ordinary trade in seats in Parliament, that bank directors, likewise directors of the East India Company, were to be found in Parliament, just as the great plantation owners in the West Indian islands and other merchants who dominate such great branches of trade likewise provide themselves with such places, in order to look after their own interests and those of their association, which are at the same time, to be sure, so important for the general interest of England. From the last Parliament the bank director Manning, who had sat in it for many years, was excluded for the reason that his competitor proved the use of bribery at his election. That the various great interests of the nation should be represented in its great council is a point of view peculiar to England, which in its own way also lay at the foundation of the constitution of the older estates of the Empire and of the realm in all the monarchies of Europe, and which still forms, for example in the Swedish constitution, the basis of the deputation to the Diet. It is opposed to the modern principle according to which only the abstract will of individuals as such is to be represented, and although in England too the subjective arbitrary will of the barons and of the others privileged to vote makes up the basis of the filling of the places, and the representation of the interests themselves is thereby left to chance, it nevertheless counts as so important a moment that the most respected bankers are not ashamed to enter into the corruption of the sale of seats in Parliament

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