Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
page 18 of 659 (02%)
which my honourable friend has mentioned, no more prove that, by
the ancient constitution of the realm, this House ought to be a
tool of the king and of the aristocracy, than the Benevolences
and the Shipmoney prove their own legality, or than those
unjustifiable arrests which took place long after the
ratification of the great Charter and even after the Petition of
Right, prove that the subject was not anciently entitled to his
personal liberty. We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors: and
in one respect at least they were wiser than we. They legislated
for their own times. They looked at the England which was before
them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as many
Members to York as they gave to London, because York had been the
capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus; and they
would have been amazed indeed if they had foreseen, that a city
of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants would be left without
Representatives in the nineteenth century, merely because it
stood on ground which in the thirteenth century had been occupied
by a few huts. They framed a representative system, which,
though not without defects and irregularities, was well adapted
to the state of England in their time. But a great revolution
took place. The character of the old corporations changed. New
forms of property came into existence. New portions of society
rose into importance. There were in our rural districts rich
cultivators, who were not freeholders. There were in our capital
rich traders, who were not liverymen. Towns shrank into
villages. Villages swelled into cities larger than the London of
the Plantagenets. Unhappily while the natural growth of society
went on, the artificial polity continued unchanged. The ancient
form of the representation remained; and precisely because the
form remained, the spirit departed. Then came that pressure
DigitalOcean Referral Badge