date

1819 Oct. 3 Parl Reform Bill
1819 Oct. 3

Parl Reform Bill

Reasons penult

§.5. Election Apparatus

§ Election how

Art | | Secrecy

1

Question Suffrages why secret?

Reasons

I. Avoidance of Miselection.

By every vote given, a wish is declared: a wish on the part of him who gives it. By every vote given on the Election of a Member of Parliament, the wish declared is – a wish that the person in whose favour it is given, may be the occupant of the seat that is to be filled. In all discussions on this subject, the supposition proceeded upon – is – that the wish so declared is, by the person by whom it is declared really entertained:

{Only on this supposition can the plan /system/ of Election whatever be the occasion, be justified: only on this supposition has it ever, it is believed been attempted to be justified.}

If, in the declared opinion of any person, the person by whom the vote is given is not the person by whose wish, independently of such external influence, the direction given to the vote ought to be determined, it rests in each instance with such person to say what other person is the person by whose wish the vote, ought in his opinion to be determined.
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    Those, who approve or profess to approve, of Election in any case as beneficial to the universal interest, do so on the supposition that the votes given are expressions of so many wishes on the part of those who give them. Were any one to deny this, it would then be upon him to say /name/ in the instance of each vote the person of whose wish it ought to be the expression, and for what reason it ought: and if it ought, then the person of whose wish the vote ought to be the expression, he it is that ought to give the vote.

    When it is said that each mans vote ought to be the expression of his own wishes, what is meant is – that each mans vote ought to be the expression of such wish as he has formed independently of any influence exercised on the occasion upon his will by the will /wish/ of any other person. For, suppose that, having a wish of his own on the subject, another person comes having an opposite wish, and by the force /influence/ of his will causes the voter to substitute to his own wish this other which is opposite to it, then is it by the /this/ stranger that the power meant to be given by the right of voting is exercised: by some other person, and not by the voter himself. This being the case there come the several questions as before.
  • Title: [1819 Oct. 3 Parl. Reform Bill]
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    Whose the influence by which the direction given to a vote is produced is the influence of understanding on understanding and that only, the person of whose wish the vote is declared to be the expression is without fail the person of whose wish it is the expression. Of /By/ the person by the influence of whose understanding the wish and thence the vote is produced it may be that no wish on the subject has ever been expressed or so much as entertained: it may be that person has been for centuries in his grave. By Locke’s book on government of how many thousands of votes must not the direction have been determined?

    Under /By/ the influence of will on will not of the vote of one voter alone but of the effect of the votes of many thousands of voters has this or that man been all along been in the possession and exercise. But though of this state of things the existence is universally notorious – too compleatly so to be denied by any man how compleatly so ever divested of all sense of shame, yet no man dare directly confess it, because no man feels in himself the capacity of saying any thing which even in the most prejudiced eyes can appear to justify it. In this point of view on this point What is said of any thing /is said/ in favour of the system of suffrage consists in some vague and unintelligible phrase to which all men are called upon to give acceptance, because he by whom it is employed feels himself unable to substitute to it any precise and intelligible one.
  • Title: [1819 Sept. 18 Parl. Reform Bill]
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    Now as to the evil liable to be produced for /on the occasion in question by/ want of secresy of /in/ suffrage

    1 In the first place, in many instances the wish which by the supposition ought in every instance to take effect this wish /does/ in many instances to a vast extent in an incalculable proportion fails of taking effect: instead of the wish guided by the interest of the individual by whom the vote is given the wish which takes effect is the wish of some other individual by the influence of whose will the voter is induced to sacrifice what would otherwise have been a wish: here then is an evil which is such to the public which is such with reference to the universal interest: the interest served an interest different /which differs/ from the universal interest, and to which the universal interest is sacrificed.

    When inquiry comes to be made whose /of what person it is/ the foreign wish, and thence the interest, which by the sacrifice thus made of the wish and interest in question is in the instance of the vote given by any individual voter served it comes /turns/ /is found/ out to be some rich and powerful person to whose single wish and interest the wishes and interests of some vast number of voters say two thousand are thus sacrificed: by this means except that he is saved from the trouble of giving them this one rich and powerful individual is put into the same condition as if to that same individual were given those same two thousand votes.