The working classes were represented through those numerous constituencies in which the scot and lot franchise prevailed. It was imperative that the abuses of the system should be redressed; that the new communities which had grown up since the Restoration should be directly represented; that the borough proprietors and the great families should be deprived of their excessive weight in Parliament; that the middle class should acquire a power more adequate to its new social and political importance; that Scotland, again, should be really and directly represented. But in Mr. Bagehot's view universal and varied representation was of more consequence than arithmetical proportion. No class, no interest, represented in the House of Commons, was likely to be grossly wronged, none could be neglected or unheard. No class intelligent enough to understand its own grievances, to have distinct ideas and desires of its own, would have failed, under a reform retaining the principle of the old system, to command attention and secure redress. Had Pitt been able to carry out his well-known and thoroughly sincere scheme of practical reform, or had Canning and his followers sided with the Whigs upon this as upon almost every other question, reform might have anticipated revolution. It was the weakness, rather than the will, of the Whigs that compelled them to go not only farther and faster, but in another direction, than their actual opinions and traditional inclinations would have carried them. They were compelled to present a scheme broad, simple, and extreme enough, to attract irresistible support.