date

1819 July 3 Defence of Ballot & Universality
1819 July 3

Defence of Ballot & Universality ag st Edinburgh Review

II Indirect attacks

6

2. Seduction alluring and intimidative – alias by corruption and by terrorism

Another distinction this which to all practical purposes is indispensably necessary to be kept in mind: the distinction itself, and consequently some forms of words by which it shall have been expressed /expression shall have been given to it/

But, in their capacity of seatholders and in perpetual prospect and expectancy Office-holders, {it is the interest of the Whigs as well as Tories} depending for their possessions and their prospects upon the successful exercise and success of sinister and seductive influence in both these shapes, and more especially in that of intimidative or terrific influence, in which shape it is most efficient, and therefore most pernicious it is the interest of Whigs no less than that of Tories, that in both those shapes it should be as much as possible out of sight and mind /escape observation/, but more particularly in that in which as above it is most efficient /effective/.

Now under the language in the state in which I found it, so it is /has happened/ that whatsoever disapprobation men have been in the habit of bestowing on another influence in any shape has been almost exclusively confined to that in which the words corruption and bribery are wont to be employed in the designation of it: time it is that it has been their interest that whatsoever disapprobation shall unavoidably continue to be bestowed on sinister influence shall as far as possible be confined to this its least efficient and mischievous shape: and therefore that if possible no such ideas as those for the expression of which I have employed the words intimidative influence and terrorism should ever present themselves to the generality of mens minds.

But if my view of the matter is correct, sinister and seductive influence in that shape in which it has a name by which the whole of the public indignation is in a manner confined to that least mischievous species, is when compared to the other which I found without a name to such a degree innoxious, that if in that shape it were compleatly extirpated, the other species being introduced in the same proportion introduced in the room of it, the state of the representative instead of being all the better would be all the worse.
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