date

1819 May 15 I Disfranchising II Boroughmongers
1819 May 15

I Disfranchising II Boroughmongers Apology.

Disfranchisement

§.2[?] […?]disfranchised

3

1. As to the mode /that one to which it confines itself of the two modes/ in which the sinister influence may be and is applied. Such I say is the effect of this inadequate application, that the evil thus complained of is[?] the only one might be thus compleatly eradicated removed and the state of the representation and the condition of the county in consequence instead of being bettered rendered so much the worse

Suppose all Borough-rights /Elections/ extinguished: and for example the faculty of filling the seats transferred to the Hundreds or other Territorial districts in any degree larger, in which those Boroughs are respectively situated. In this case either terrorism would be compleatly substituted to bribery, or in addition to terrorism, bribery to an unlimited amount perhaps to a greater one than Crassus[?] could continue the persons[?] of the individuals by whom the bribes were received being to an extent more or less considerable changed – together with the amount of the money given to each in the way of bribe. As to the power therefore no change would be produced other than a change for the worst.

2 Even admitting that terrorism is not more mischievous than bribery or even that of the two modes of producing unfree and spurious votes, namely terrorism and bribery, bribery is the only one that is pernicious, – even admitting that for the purpose of the argument, still the effect of the term[?] Borough-mongering would be /is/ to produce deception, since it does not place the alledged evil on its true ground.

For the seats in question suppose none of them ever sold: whether possible or no, suppose for the purpose of the argument the matter so arranged, that it were become visible /manifest/ to all men that no seat could ever be sold. Where would be the benefit? Not any. The seats would pass from possessor to possessor like entailed Estates. They would continue in the same families with a degree of permanence equal to that with which landed property at large does so: for I suppose it would not be proposed by any body to give to the /this/ continuance any greater degree of permanence.
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    Thus then[?] it appears to me that the exclusive use of this term in the case in question has been shewn to be deceptitious This being supposed it remains to be shewn to what causes its prevention is /ought/ to be ascribed

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    circumstances. In this state of things, that /if in /by/ the existence of/ the additional circumstance in question, to wit that in the property thus held in common there are some shares that are in the habit of being sold, and some others that might be capable of being sold, no considerable addition if any is made to the mischievousness of the system no change for the worse made but rather a change for the better made in it, still the main mischief remains to wit the existence of this sort of property itself: if a in the shape and with the effects of property the sort of power in question – a sort of power thus divided into shares did not exist, no such shares could be sold: in a word if there were no Borough-holders there could be no Borough-mongers: always remembered that it is in the holding of those Boroughs that is of the seats belonging to them that the real mischief consists: in the holding and not in the mongering of them: and that if, supposing it possible, the mongering could be done away /abolished/, the holding still continuing, the effect of such abolition would be rather to encrease the evil than to diminish it.
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    {Dependence on the people, independence as against the Corruptor General – on the part of Representatives – in these qualities together with efficient /effected/ obligation to constancy of attendance consists in so far as regards the representatives themselves the essence of Parliamentary reform To all these does radical reform direct itself: to none of them that system which likes /likewise/ calls itself reform, and to which for distinction sake the epithet moderate is attached.}

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    {But unless it were the system of arrangements by which the expence of Election would be reduced, and (if this be now to be considered as belonging to the moderate system) extending to taxpaying Housholders though it be in the Town Electoral Districts alone […?] the right of suffrage difficult would it be to find in moderate reform any […?] that were not pregnant with positive mischief, and that in a deferential shape, while nothing could be more indeterminate or uncertain than the good which in such kinds might /could/ be hoped for from the mere precedent of change.}

    1 Encrease of the number of Country Seats what would it be but encrease of terrorism? 2. Division of County Electoral districts into lesser Electoral districts what again would that be but encrease of terrorism? 3. Extension of Electoral Districts from the dimension of a Borough town to that of a Hundred, in a County what would it be but encrease given to a mixture comprised[?] of terrorism and bribery? 4. Purchase proprietary seats and pocket-borough seats what it would be but loading the country with determinate mischief in the shape of addition to taxes, and without any assurance of determinate good in any shape. For when seats were taken out of this one bad shape what could be done with them but the putting them into one or other of those two other bad shapes?

    [marginal insertion:] and those such only as according to those schemes in question would be new ones