But though a common voter could only be ranged in an effectual constituency, and a common candidate only reach a constituency by obeying the orders of the political election-contrivers upon his side, certain voters and certain members would be quite independent of both.  There are organisations in this country which would soon make a set of constituencies for themselves.  Every chapel would be an office for vote-transferring before the plan had been known three months.  The Church would be much slower in learning it and much less handy in using it; but would learn.  At present the Dissenters are a most energetic and valuable component of the Liberal party; but under the voluntary plan they would not be a component—­they would be a separate, independent element.  We now propose to group boroughs; but then they would combine chapels.  There would be a member for the Baptist congregation of Tavistock, cum Totnes, cum, etc., etc.

The full force of this cannot be appreciated except by referring to the former proof that the mass of a Parliament ought to be men of moderate sentiments, or they will elect an immoderate Ministry, and enact violent laws.  But upon the plan suggested, the House would be made up of party politicians selected by a party committee, chained to that committee and pledged to party violence, and of characteristic, and therefore immoderate representatives, for every “ism” in all England.  Instead of a deliberate assembly of moderate and judicious men, we should have a various compound of all sorts of violence.

I may seem to be drawing a caricature, but I have not reached the worst.  Bad as these members would be, if they were left to themselves—­if, in a free Parliament, they were confronted with the perils of government, close responsibility might improve them and make them tolerable.  But they would not be left to themselves.  A voluntary constituency will nearly always be a despotic constituency.  Even in the best case, where a set of earnest men choose a member to expound their earnestness, they will look after him to see that he does expound it.  The members will be like the minister of a dissenting congregation.  That congregation is collected by a unity of sentiment in doctrine A, and the preacher is to preach doctrine A; if he does not, he is dismissed.  At present the member is free because the constituency is not in earnest; no constituency has an acute, accurate doctrinal creed in politics.  The law made the constituencies by geographical divisions; and they are not bound together by close unity of belief.  They have vague preferences for particular doctrines; and that is all.  But a voluntary constituency would be a church with tenets; it would make its representative the messenger of its mandates, and the delegate of its determinations.  As in the case of a dissenting congregation, one great minister sometimes rules it, while ninety-nine ministers in the hundred are ruled by it, so here one noted man would rule his electors, but the electors would rule all the others.