date

1819 May 18 C Disfranchising
1819 May 18 C

Disfranchising

Disfranchising

§.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members

17

13

9

{4}

they must expect to be ript[?] open if they talk as they do

Anti-Reformist – And if you had the power, would it then be your wish and your endeavour to exclude Country Gentlemen /the class of those in question/ from the House?

Reformist Not more than it would be yours. In regard to men of that class, as in regard to men of all classes my wish is {and my endeavour would be so to order matters} that finding themselves under an inability to sacrifice the universal interest to their personal and other partial interests, they should confine their endeavours to the advancement of that interest of theirs which consists in each mans share in the universal interest. So much as to probity: and that, finding himself by the merits of those whose studies and occupations had been directed to the qualifying themselves for the due /their intellectual faculties for the apt/ discharge of the duties of their situation excluded from that share of power which his property might otherwise have enabled him to attain the ignorant and inapt father should by appropriate /an apt/ course of instruction /education/ to make provision for stocking with appropriate and useful matter the vacuities which experience had rendered him sensible of in his own mind. So much for intellectual aptitude.

In a word the worst that /all that/ I wish is – leaving the class itself in possession of that share of power which by the mere influence of understanding on understanding would without any of that sinister influence which is exercised by will on will, adhere /cleave[?]/ to it so long as the property itself adhered to it – in this same class of men to individuals uniting the possessing appropriate aptitude in no shape to substitute other or even the same individuals possessing that same appropriate aptitude in every shape.

General propositions have, as such, their exceptions. In this case, whoever chooses to make himself an exception, is so.
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    §.5. Evil 4 Multiplying Country Members

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    §.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members.

    49.

    With relation to every other each man has a common and an opposite interest. In

    virtue of his opposition but for the various sanctions he would be an oppressor. In

    proportion as they and particularly the legal, and in that the Constitutional are

    good and strong he is withheld from being so: in proper time as they are had on weak,

    left unrestrained or helped. In U.S. Constitutional Law is good and strong:

    oppression unknown: Anglice[?] d o. weak and rotten: oppressed by

    Monarch and Aristocracy triumphant and unchecked.

    50.

    Between Country Gentlemen and others, there is probity: now as to intellectual

    aptitude and active talent.

    51.

    In the Country Gentleman see probable cause of either quality in any degree. By no

    deficiency in either need Lord be prevented from putting a ten of his in a seat.

    52.

    In no such weak state can the mind of the mercantile man be: in him activity is kept

    up by personal stronger and steadier than any public interest His is a habit of

    activity with a fund of practical knowledge acquired by experience and observation.

    Knowledge, judgment and activity compose a Capital transferable from one business to

    another.

    53.

    Anti Reformist. Would you exclude Country Gentlemen?

    54.

    Reformist No more than you. My wish is that 1. As to

    probity, finding themselves unable to sacrifice universal to peculiar personal

    interest, they sh d. confine their aim to the advancement of their

    share in the universal interest: as to intellectual that the rich father excluded

    from his competition by intellectual inaptitude may by appropriate education stock

    with the requisite matter the vanities in his son’s mind.

    55.

    The worst I wish is in that class which in virtue of its property would if possessed

    of adequate appropriate aptitude would by the influence of understanding without d o. of will secure its present share of power to substitute to

    individuals possessing it in every shape.

    56.

    (General rules have exceptions. Here whoever chooses to make himself an exception, is

    so.) –
  • Title: [1819 May 18 + B Disfranchising]
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    1

    Anti Reformist And is /exists/ there any other class of men in whose instance you expect to find /in/ any larger dose of your appropriate aptitude, you who not expect to find it any where

    Reformist As to what concerns appropriate probity under the present state of the Representative, unless it be by mere accident, I do not expect to find it any where, except in the seats filled by the Westminster Election District and those others if any such there be, in which the number of votes is so great as to afford to the /be capable at least of affording to the aggregate virtue[?] of/ voters adequate protection against the assaults of seductive and sinister influence in both its opposite shapes.

    But as to appropriate intellectual aptitude, there exists not as it seems to me any other class of men in whose instance so bad a promise is afforded of it, as in the instance of this class.

    Anti-Reformist But if you have not said already I am /you are/ here prepared to say that without appropriate probity, appropriate intellectual aptitude had better be absent than present, insomuch as it enables a man but so much the better to give effect to those sinister wishes designs and endeavours which in proportion to his deficiency in the article of appropriate probity he can not but harbour /his breast can not but be the seat and the source/.
  • Title: [1820 Feb. 18 Radicalism not dangerous]
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    In such a state of things, no Elector having it in his hands[?] /power/ either by himself or by any representative in the election of whom he had a share to give effect to his own personal interest at the expence of all or any other interests, such Elector would have no other power than that of contributing to the best of his judgment to the advancement of his share in the universal[?] /universal/ interest, in that interest, which is no more his than it is that of all the other members of the community, or at the least of the majority /major part/ of that same number.

    As to the points of appropriate aptitude, in so far as concerns appropriate probity, the disposition to pursue /advance/ to the utmost that which in his eyes, as above, is his own personal interest - is all at once that can reasonably be expected, and at the same time all that is requisite: as to what concerns appropriate intellectual aptitude, I look upon this class of men as possessing with the benefit of such advice as they will respectively look for all that is necessary, and as much as would be to be found in any narrower or other class of men, with the exception of those, in whom /whose instance/ in so far as any superior degree of intellectual aptitude were possessed by them, it would be sure /it could not fail/ to be employed, as in experience it is every where employed in the advancement not of the universal, but of their own particular interest - that interest which, in as much as it is particular, can not fail to be in a state of continual opposition to the universal interest.