date

[131a-004] 1818 March 22 +
[131a-004]

1818 March 22 +

Parl Reform Answer to Antiballot Observations

2 o

3

3

{1. You don’t get /can have no assurance of getting/ the real wishes: you get spurious ones

2. The spurious ones you get by a breach of trust

3 The breach of trust you produce[?] by compulsion, compulsion employed to produce sacrifice of personal interest as well as of the universal interest, such compulsion[?] is arranged[?]}

As to the moral acts stated by the antiballotists as attached to the secret mode, they will not afford matter of conclusive objection any otherwise than in as far as they are preponderant over the evils attached to the opposite, viz. to the open mode. This consideration renders it necessary to begin with bringing to view these last mentioned evils.

1. The grand evil is that which may be distinguished by the name of the political evil: the radical and all embracing political evil. I mean the substituting, to an extent beyond the power of calculation, to the elections produced by the wishes of the majority of the people elections produced by the wishes of a comparatively minute minority. Such an effect, in so far as it has place, I can but place in my own mind to the account of evil. Why? because, in my view of the matter as given in my book, the wishes of the majority of the people would be produced by the conceptions entertained by that same majority in relation to their own interests, and those conceptions would, to the purpose of procuring those same interests and thus accomplishing those same wishes be sufficiently correct; whereas on the other hand the wishes of the small minority in question would be produced by the conception entertained by that same small minority in relation to the interests of that same small minority; while the interests of that same small minority are in a state of constant and irremediable opposition to the interests of the majority, and their conception of this their particular and sinister interest, would to the purpose of promoting that same sinister interest and accomplishing those same sinister wishes be sufficiently correct.
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