require material alteration; but if we set out with a system loosely and unfairly constructed, we begin with that which is already condemned, and has advanced some steps towards its end.
A defect in all geographical or territorial systems, from that of the Duke of Richmond downwards,—greater in its practical consequences than all the other inconveniences which attend them, great as some of the latter are—is that they, in their result, separate every part of the kingdom into two main divisions, one somewhat more, and the other somewhat less numerous; and they not only do not provide for, but they absolutely Exclude from the Legislature, the representation of the opinions, feelings, or desires, of the less numerous of these divisions. It destroys the minorities, and in so doing seriously weakens and deteriorates the representation, even of the majorities. "Un système électoral qui, d'avance, annulerait, quant à la formation de l'assemblée délibérante, l'influence et la participation de la minorité, détruirait le gouvernement représentatif, et serait aussi fatal à la majorité elle-même qu'une loi qui, dans l'assemblée délibérante, condamnerait la minorité à se taire."[1]
In the establishment of what may be called a sliding or self-acting scale,—by which the additions to population that constantly occur, and the new communities that grow up, silently enter and take their place in the constitution, and for whose admission the communities that are stationary or decay, as silently make room, by a general and fundamental law, operating without any jerk or effort, preserving all parts without repletion and without void,—we are instructed by the experience of the United States, a people from whose institutions we have much to learn, both for example and for warning. It is that one part of their system which has never failed to work harmoniously and well.
If the American constitution had not fixed, as a funda-
- ↑ Guizot, Gouv. Rep., vol. ii., p.260.
