ational councils. Rotten or pocket
boroughs were not only nurseries of professional statesmanship, but a
back door through which interests, whose direct representation was
impossible, found access to Parliament. The West Indian interest, the
East India Company, and the statesmen trained in its service, with their
special knowledge and zealous care for the welfare of our Oriental
empire, could secure a hearing for views to which no English
constituency would listen. Under such a system our Australian Colonies,
the great Dominion of Canada, the English minority which sustains the
Imperial cause in South Africa, would never have complained, as now,
that their voice was unheard, their feelings unreflected, in an assembly
which is no longer merely the Parliament of Great Britain, but the
Senate of an Empire greater than that of Rome.

The working classes were represented through those numerous
constituencies in which the scot and lot franchise prevailed. It was
imperative that the abuses of the system should be redressed; that the
new communities which had grown up since the Restoration should be
directly represented; that the borough proprietors and the great
families should be deprived of their excessive weight in Parliament;
that the middle class should acquire a power more adequate to its new
social and political importance; that Scotland, again, should be really
and directly represented. But in Mr. Bagehot's view universal and varied
representation was of more consequence than arithmetical proportion. No
class, no interest, represented in the House of Commons, was likely to
be grossly wronged, none could be neglected or unheard. No class
intelligent enough to understand its own grievances, to have distinct
ideas and desires of its own, would have failed, under a reform
retaining the principle of the old system, to command attention and
secure redress. Had Pitt been able to carry out his well-known and
thoroughly sincere scheme of practical reform, or had Canning and his
followers sided with the Whigs upon this as upon almost every other
question, reform might have anticipated revolution. It was the weakness,
rather than the will, of the Whigs that compelled them to go not only
farther and faster, but in another direction, than their actual opinions
and traditional inclinations would have carried them. They were
compelled to present a scheme broad, simple, and extreme enough, to
attract irresistible support.

When once