date

1819 Oct. 3 Parl. Reform Bill
1819 Oct. 3

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons ult o

§.8. Election how

Art. Secrecy

3

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.
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    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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    Whenever the suffrage – the direction taken by the vote – fails of being thus compleatly secret, it is liable to be and very likely to be spurious: to be the expression not of the uninfluenced and unbiased will or wish of the votes in question, but of some other individual by the knowledge or supposition of whose will and wish he is influenced and biased. Viewed /Look/ thus far and no further, the state of things in question does not appear to have much of evil in it: look one step further, you will see that in this way one single man, whether Elector or no, may in the choice of the persons filling /occupying/ this branch of the government, possess and exercise a share as /greater than those possessed and exercised by/ hundreds and thousands of Electors put together. Accordingly in fact instances have been known where out of the 658 seats a single individual has been able, by the influence exercised by him over the wills and wishes of Electors, whereby they have been induced to sacrifice their wishes to his, to fill as many as from 8 or 9 to a dozen seats.

    The service which the Commons House is said to render to the universal interest – the service which if any it would render to that interest is the operating as a check upon the power of the Monarch. But in proportion as individuals are seen who each of them thus possess in the whole number of seats a share of influence exceeding by any such vast amount their equal share – {the share of those whose share would not large enough to be worth purchasing by the Crown if it could be purchased – } the Monarch and his Ministers thus acquire the power, as it always is their /his/ interest to purchase at the expence of the universal purse the whole tenor of their parliamentary services and thus engage them to join in a perpetually operating sacrifice of the universal interest to that particular and because opposite to the universal, sinister interest.
  • Title: [1819 Oct. 3 Parl. Reform Bill]
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    Be the mode of election pursued what it may, no man who has ever professed to approve of it, has ever professed to approve of it any further than in as far as the votes, by which, in the several instances, the Election has been determined, have been the genuine expression of the wishes of the several persons by whom they have been respectively delivered. No one has ever denied but that in so far as any vote has failed of being the genuine expression of the wish declared by it, evil has had place. Though an evil but in tendency still it is an evil: or neither Miselection to any extent, nor Misgovernment to any extent, are evils.

    In the rude and inexperienced state of the public mind in early times, the open mode of voting, as being the most obvious, was the mode pursued. For secresy there no inducement presented itself, until by experience proof sufficiently conclusive had been afforded that under the open mode to an extent beyond all power of measurement the direction to /declared by/ men’s votes had by external causes been rendered opposite to that to which their wishes pointed: that in a word they had given their votes in favour of a Candidate, whose success was not among the objects of their wishes.