“I believe all you say, Josepha, and our people, the rich and the poor, both believe it. They hev given the government ivery blessed chance to do fairly by them. Now, if it does so, well and good. If it does not do so, the people are full ready to make them do it. I can tell you that.”
“I am so tired of it all,” said Annie wearily. “Why do poor, uneducated men want to meddle with elections for parliament? I can understand and feel with them in their fight about their looms--it means their daily bread; but why should they care about the men who make our laws and that sort of business?”
“I’ll tell thee why. They hev to do it or else go on being poor and ignorant and of no account among men. Our laws are made to please the men who have a vote or a say-so in any election. The laboring men of England hev no vote at all. They can’t say a word about their rights in the country for through the course of centuries the nobles and the rich men hev got all the votes in their awn pockets.”
“Maybe there is something right in that arrangement, Antony. They are better educated.”
“Suppose that argument stood, Annie; still a poor man might like one rich man better than another, and he ought to be able to hev his chance for electing his choice; but that, however, is only the tag-end of the question.”
“This:--In the course of centuries, places once of some account hev disappeared, as really as Babylon or Nineveh, and little villages hev grown to be big cities. There is no town of Sarum now, not a vestige, but the Chatham family represent it in parliament to-day or they sell the position or give it away. The member for the borough of Ludgershall is himself the only voter in the borough and he is now in parliament on his _awn_ nomination. Another place has two members and only seven voters; and what do you think a foreigner visiting England would say when told that a green mound without a house on it sent two members to Parliament, or that a certain green park without an inhabitant also sent two members to Parliament? Then suppose him taken to Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield, and other great manufacturing cities, and told they had _no_ representative in Parliament; what do you suppose he would think and say?”