Such a Parliament could not be composed of moderate men. The electoral districts would be, some of them, in purely agricultural places, and in these the parson and the squire would have almost unlimited power. They would be able to drive or send to the poll an entire labouring population. These districts would return an unmixed squirearchy. The scattered small towns which now send so many members to Parliament, would be lost in the clownish mass; their votes would send to Parliament no distinct members. The agricultural part of England would choose its representatives from quarter-sessions exclusively. On the other hand a large part of the constituencies would be town districts, and these would send up persons representing the beliefs or unbeliefs of the lowest classes in their towns. They would, perhaps, be divided between the genuine representatives of the artisans⁠—not possibly of the best of the artisans, who are a select and intellectual class, but of the common order of workpeople⁠—and the merely pretended members for that class whom I may call the members for the public-houses. In all big towns in which there is electioneering these houses are the centres of illicit corruption and illicit management.