date

[131a-011] 1818 March 22 +
[131a-011]

1818 March 22 +

Parl Reform Answer to Antiballotists

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10

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But this insincerity, such as it has been /is/ shewn to be, the argument assumes that it will be habitually committed. If I do not misconcur[?] the matter habitually is here put for extensively. By it is meant – not, or not merely, that the insincerity will be frequently committed by the same person, but that, with more or less frequency, it will be committed by each one of a great number of persons. For this sense, it seems to me it is, that the train of the argument requires.

Now, will it be committed thus extensively? No: in my view of the matter { that} it will not. It will not be committed, to an extent, approaching to any thing like equality, to that to which as above it would be committed under the open mode.

In regard to the extent, note this much in the first place. The insincerity can not have place – for there will be no motive for it – any further than the law proves inefficacious: – the law, which, by the supposition, will have for its object, and sole object, the prevention of the combination of tyranny, servility, and imposture as above described.

Now it does not appear to me, that a law for this purpose, framed as I should propose to frame it, would be in any danger of proving inefficacious.

The insincerity can not have place, but in so far as there exists a human tyrant, or would-be tyrant, of whom it is known, that, having it in his power to do evil to the voter for the purpose of compelling the voter to practice the imposture in question, he is prepared and determined, in the event of the voters not practising it,, to do to him such evil accordingly: in the event of the voters not practicing it: – add – and being, by the tyrant known not to have practised it: for unless either this is known, or he punishes without knowing why, no motive will he have for punishing.
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  • Title: [[131a-009] 1818 March 22 +]
    Description: [131a-009]

    1818 March 22 +

    Parl Reform Answer to Antiballot Observations

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    Now as to the moral evils:- in any[?] view of the matter they will not be far to seek.

    1. In the first place, if there be any such thing as an evil, the exercise of tyranny – the exercise of power to a bad end – is an evil: and, where the power is all-comprehensive, it is the sum and substance of all evils, not political only but moral likewise

    2. In the next place, comes the opposite but correspondent and necessarily concomitant evil, the evil of servility: the exercise of obsequiousness to a bad end.

    3. In the third place comes the falshood, the imposture. As often as, on this occasion, and in this way, a man gives[?] as and for his own wish, that which in truth is not his own wish but the wish of another man; – a wish, which, though contrary to his own, he gives as and for his own, – an act of imposture is committed. The Election- tyrant commands the imposture: the Election slave obeys and executes it.

    The first mentioned and chief of the effects imputed by the antiballotists, in the character of moral evils, to the secret mode, is insincerity. But if on the part of the Election slave, as above defined, insincerity has not place, I must confess myself at a loss where else to look for it.

    The antiballotists whose moral sense is so much hurt by the insincerity which in their view would be produced by any law made for relief against Election tyranny, how comes it that they are so insensible to the insincerity which can not but be produced by the Election tyranny, in every instance in which it operates with its effect?

    As to the tyranny, unquestionably it has its limits: in respect of the suffering produced by it, it is not to be put in comparison with any such tyranny, to the exercise of which the tyrant causes innocent men to expire in torture. But to the extent of it, and as far as it goes, the one of these two modes of exercising power is with no less propriety termed tyranny than the other. And so as to the slavery.
  • Title: [[131a-015] 1818 March 22 +]
    Description: [131a-015]

    1818 March 22 +

    Parl Reform Answer to Antiballotists

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    Now then, whatsoever be the insincerity add, if the Antiballotists please, the perfidy – apprehended to be attached to the secret mode, it can not have place but in so far as there exists a determinate person known and seen to be engaged in the endeavour to exercise the tyranny. But, while the insincerity can not have place, in any number of instances, greater than that of those in which the tyrant is by the person on whom he acts seen and known to act, it will not assuredly have place in the whole number of those same instances. No such false declarations will be made in any other instance, than those in which they are either expressly called for or plainly shewn to be expected. Under the apprehension of the above proposed system, they are not likely to be very explicitly or frequently called for: and when not pretty explicitly called for, the person whose suffrage it is thus endeavoured to enslave will not be very forward to make them: he will not, so long as he thinks it is possible otherwise to escape the apprehended evil, purchase his escape at the price of the necessary insincerity, although at that price the escape would be perfectly secure.
  • Title: [1819 Sept. 17 Parl. Reform Bill]
    Description: 1819 Sept. 17

    Parl. Reform Bill

    Reasons

    §.9 Election Process

    Suffrage Secret why

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    This being the case, {what follows is that} he who in the case in question advocates the system of open suffrage, advocates a system of fraud and imposture, a system of fraud analogous to ordinary forgery, but consideration had of the extent to which it operates, beyond comparison more pernicious than any forgery that ever was committed. His conduct in so doing is tainted with an insincerity altogether incontestable, which it is his professed desire to see each voter give a vote expressive of a wish of his own uninfluenced by any other will, his endeavour is to cause voters in a countless multitude to deliver each of them a vote expressive of a wish which is not his own: expressive of a wish which in the several instances is the wish of this or that individual of whom the advocate knows nothing except that the power he thus possesses contributes to /is part and parcel/ the system by which the evil effects above-mentioned are produced.

    {The pretence is /fact as pretended is/ /pretended state of the case is/ that in the choice /in the Election/ of the aggregate number of the Members by whom the aggregate number of the seats are respectively filled, the Election is the result of the real and genuine wishes of the majority of the Electors voting to each seat /towards the filling of the several seats/}

    {The real state of the case is that on that same reason[?] the Election is the result of the wishes not of those same Electors but of persons not declared nor ever exactly known, but of whom these[?] much is universally known namely that it ought not to be the result of their wishes and that in so far as it is so the Constitution is radically different from what it is pretended to be, and at the same time incontestably

    ☞ Add some allusions for illustration}