Here I was informed that the residents had little
or nothing to do with it. I was told, though I did not quite
believe what I heard, that there were no residents. The voters
however, at any rate the influential voters, never pass a night
there, and combine their city franchise with franchises elsewhere.
I then went through two enormous boroughs, one so old as to have a
great political history of its own, and the other so new as to have
none. It did strike me as odd that there should be a new borough,
with new voters, and new franchises, not yet ten years old, in the
midst of this city of London. But when I came to Brentford,
everything was changed. I was not in a town at all though I was
surrounded on all sides by houses. Everything around me was grim
and dirty enough, but I am supposed to have reached, politically,
the rustic beauties of the country. Those around me, who had votes,
voted for the County of Middlesex. On the other side of the
invisible border I had just past the poor wretch with 3s. a day who
lived in a grimy lodging or a half-built hut, but who at any rate
possessed the political privilege. Now I had suddenly emerged among
the aristocrats, and quite another state of things prevailed. Is
that a reasonable manipulation of the votes of the people? Does
that arrangement give to any man an equal share in his country? And
yet I fancy that the thing is so little thought of that few among
you are aware that in this way the largest class of British labour
is excluded from the franchise in a country which boasts of equal
representation.
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