date

24 Dec r 1809 Parl y Ref m
24 Dec r 1809

Parl y Ref m

Ch.15 Electors Contin

'.1. Mischief to the State

6

8

8

Such is the supposition of an equal chance as between a King's slave and a free man /member/ - such viz. 50 per cent would be the gain to independence and real parliamentary virtue, by the substituting to what in the language /interpretation/ of some men might be meant by "the legitimate rights of influence" what in the language /interpretation of the same man might be meant by "dry and sordid gain". The clause in favour of independence /parliamentary virtue/ would it be greater than an equal chance? is it more likely that the successful briber should be /{prove}/ an independent Member than a Court dependent? the more the chances thus exceed an equal chance, the greater then would be the advantage given to parliamentary virtue.

Is it that independence and parliamentary virtue have not in this case an equal chance - and is it then that the gain to them by the substitution of gross and dry bribery to legitimate rights of influence would not rise so high as 50 per Cent? Then so it is that so fast the chains of corrupt dependence bound upon the neck of parliament and that of the country, that taking the House throughout, the odds are in favour of corrupt dependence: that there are habitually more members in that state than in a state of freedom and purity: in a word /other words/ that the King is absolute: rendered absolute, not as formerly he now and then was by the precarious /odious and precarious resistible and continually resisted/ instrument of prerogation, but by the rare and irresistible and unresisted instrument of influence.

[Marginal note:] 10 June 1809. p.167.
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    Now, instead of being so many pocket votes - votes already purchased - suppose all these to be so many free votes - free to choose, yes and add disposed to choose a purchaser - each of them, at all times - a purchaser. Yes, and disposed to take for that purchaser the best bidder.

    As it is /On the former supposition/ so many sets of them, so many secret dependents in those who ought to be constitutionally and openly dependent upon them - so many corrupt judges, stationed /seated/ in the most important seats of judicature.

    On the present supposition, being at /to take/ the very worst /case/, disposed all of them to sell themselves to the best bidder, on each election, that best bidder is in the instance of each seat just as likely to be, in relation to the corrupter[?]-general, in a free and independent as in a dependent state.

    In the case where every thing was as it should be where there was no bribery no corruption - nothing for any man to find fault with, it was all sure loss in the article of independence. In the present case it is all corruption all bribery - corruption in the grossest of all its forms - "dry and sordid" bribery /gain/. + Yet, compared with that pure and unexceptionable case, here is gain - no less than 50 per Cent gain to independence.

    + Speaker's Speech

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    Little character. Good heavens, how unfortunate! Could I have thought it! {Oh that I had been a hundred miles distance!} Oh yes, sure enough: The Devil created those colchicums, at that very instant, for that very purpose. I will write to Linnæus this very instant to blot out the whole tribe of them. That I should have been such a Marplot! Yet who could have thought it? I shall never see a colchicum again without bestowing a curse upon it. - Oh the cursed colchicums!

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