ne part of the United Kingdom ought, or
has a claim, to have the same institutions as every other part rests on
a confusion of ideas, and is a false deduction from democratic
principles. It is founded on the feeling which has caused half the
errors of democracy, that a fraction of a nation has a right to speak
with the authority of the whole, and that the right of each portion of
the people to make its wishes heard involves the right to have them
granted. This delusion has once and again made Paris the ruler of
France, and the Parisian mob the master of Paris. The sound principle of
democratic government--and England must, under the present state of
things, be ruled on democratic principles--is, that all parts of the
country must be governed in the way which the whole of the State as
represented by the majority thereof deems expedient for each part, and
that while every part should be allowed a voice to make known its wants,
the decision how these wants are to be met must be given by the whole
State, that is (in the particular instance) by the majority of the
electors of Great Britain and Ireland. From this principle it does not
follow either that every part of the kingdom should have those
institutions which that part prefers, (though in so far as this end can
be attained its attainment is desirable,) or, still less, that every
part of the kingdom should have the same institutions as every other
part. That this is so everybody in a general way admits. No one supposes
that because the people of Leicester abominate vaccination the
Vaccination Acts are not to be extended to that borough, or that the
wish of the people of Birmingham in favour of free schools is decisive
in favour of making education in Birmingham gratuitous. The will of a
locality is admitted not to be the expression of the will of the nation.
No one, again, fancies that the legal institutions of England ought of
necessity to be extended to Scotland, or the law of Scotland to England.
In Ireland recent legislation has, and with general approval,
established institutions which no one alleges must, because they exist
in Ireland, be applied of necessity or as a matter of justice to
England. English tenants might in many cases, it is likely enough, think
the provisions of the Irish Land Acts a boon, but no one would listen to
the argument that simply because under the special circumstances of
Ireland special privileges are given to Irish tenants, similar
privil