If therefore a reform bill, disfranchising small constituent bodies and giving additional members to large constituent bodies, had become law soon after the Revolution, there can be little doubt that a decided majority of the House of Commons would have consisted of rustic baronets and squires, high Churchmen, high Tories, and half Jacobites.

With such a House of Commons it is almost certain that there would have been a persecution of the Dissenters; it is not easy to understand how there could have been an union with Scotland; and it is not improbable that there would have been a restoration of the Stuarts.

Those parts of our constitution therefore which, in recent times, politicians of the liberal school have generally considered as blemishes, were, five generations ago, regarded with complacency by the men who were most zealous for civil and religious freedom.
But, while Whigs and Tories agreed in wishing to maintain the existing rights of election, both Whigs and Tories were forced to admit that the relation between the elector and the representative was not what it ought to be.

Before the civil wars the House of Commons had enjoyed the fullest confidence of the nation.

A House of Commons, distrusted, despised, hated by the Commons, was a thing unknown.