131-329.xml

Title: [[mainly in copyist’s hand] 1819 Nov]

Description: [mainly in copyist’s hand]

1819 Nov 9 + +

Benthams

§.1. Seats & districts

3

By this means, while on the one hand subjects of importance, being thus shoved off to the close of the Session, fail of receiving a degree of discussion adequate to their importance; on the other hand others there commonly are, which, by the operation of the samecause stand compleatly excluded.

In England, even supposing the present plan adopted, it might be a considerable time before the inconvenience here in question had swelled to any sensible pitch: the higher, that is to say the most opulent classes, are those, by whom, even under the system of secresy and universality of suffrage the House could not fail of being principally filled; and among them, until the stimulus thus applied had had time to give birth to a better race, the station of the mind in the scale of appropriate aptitude would, in comparison of what it is in America, have to remain at a proportionably low ebb: the seats, in so far as they are filled by the class of persons called Country Gentlemen being in so large a proportion filled by a set of empty headed and scornful idlers, who, coming out with nothing but their votes, add no more to the length of the debates, than at the opera, they do to the length of the acts. But, under the proposed plan, the number of those, who, under such a system of Election, would feel themselvesqualified to open their mouths, would, of course, even from the first be in some proportion more considerable than at present: nor would many years elapse, before the quantity of appropriate aptitude, with the relative inconvenience thus shewn to be attached to this advantage, would have risen to a pitch, equal to any that it has ever reached as yet in the United States.

For the matter of fact here in question – I mean the effect of superabundance of speakers in producing delay of measures – I am indebted to an official person of the first distinction in the American Union, who, upon receiving from me some information of the present plan, was kindly eager to furnish me with the information, observing that the fact was of a sort to which a man could scarcely be expected to be led by general reasoning.

131-332.xml

Title: [[mainly in copyist’s hand] 1819 Nov]

Description: [mainly in copyist’s hand]

1819 Nov 9.

Benthams

§.1. Seats & Districts

{1. Seats & Districts}

Over number Remedies

3

6

Under any efficient obligation of attendance, to many a man, whose services might be of prime use, the nausea, produced by stale arguments, served up in a bas manner, would suffice to render the function intolerable, affords a most powerful cause for non-attendance, and even in some degree an excuse for it.

But where, as in a British House of Commons, with the exception of those men of all work who are hired for it, any such obligation as that of attendance is no more felt than at an opera, every man feels the remedy and that a compleat one, in his hands.

As to the desks, an implement necessary to the remedy employed in the Congress House, in England the size and form of the House, convenient as it is in other respects, would of itself suffice perhaps to put an exclusion upon it. But a French Assembly might in this particular see in the English House of Commons what to avoid, in the Congress House of Representatives what to imitate.

The Book of Fallacies – a work commenced about nine years ago and still in an unfinished state, is, in an illustrious hand, in a course of preparation for the press. A Table, exhibiting an arrangement, and a list of these poisoned weapons, accompanies the present work. The proposed names alone being here given and not the things denominated – those names unavoidably grotesque, and given without explanation – some readers may, in the mean time, find amusement in them in the character of riddles: and another pastime might be – the calculating what proportion, of the aggregate mass of parliamentary oratory, might fly off in vapour, if subjected to the test afforded by these denominations.

131-327.xml

Title: [[mainly in copyist’s hand] 1819 Sept]

Description: [mainly in copyist’s hand]

1819 Sept. + +

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons

§.1. Seats and Districts

1

Note to p. 3

658. Why propose 658 for the number of the seats.

Reasons.

1. Avoidance of unnecessary change.

This is at present the number of the seats. Suppose a different number proposed, some specific reasons would require to be given in support of such different number: reasons tending to prove that any less number would be too small; any greater, too great. No such particular and preferably apt number has ever presented itself. No proposal, proposing as preferably apt, with or without particular reasons, any other particular number, has ever been observed.

Thus much as to the total number. But as to the proportions as between Great Britain and Ireland see §.9. Election Districts &c.

Follows however lower down, certain reasons why at present the number in question ought by no means to be encreased; and why, moreover, at some succeeding period, it might be found advisable to diminish it.

II. Convenience in respect of accommodation room, and facility of reciprocal view and hearing.

It is a matter of prime and undeniable importance that each Member should be provided, in as simple a manner as possible, with the means of delivering his sentiments to every possible advantage: and for that purpose it were evidently desirable, that, if practicable, he should be provided with {a small Desk or table, on which without obstruction to the view of his Colleagues, he might keep before him any such Papers as he might on the day in question have occasion to refer to in the course of his Speech. Accommodation of this Sort is seldom refused to the boys in an ordinary Schoolroom – at Washington, in the chamber occupied by the Assembly of Representatives in Congress it is afforded to every Member – See Fearon 315 –} /an accommodation such as will be seen mentioned below./

Whether {this} /the/ accommodation were afforded or not, suppose the number of seats in any considerable degree greater, than as above, so extensive would be the space necessary for the containing of them, the consequence would probably be that, in a large proportion of the whole number of seats, a voice of ordinary strength would to a great degree fail of making itself heard and understood, in a larger proportion of the seats most distant from it; much more a voice below the ordinary strength.