131a-016.xml

Title: [[131a-016] 1818 March 22 +]

Description: [131a-016]

1818 March 22 +

Parl Reform. Answer to Antiballotists.

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Under these circumstances, how small, under the secret mode, is the temptation, on the part either of Candidate or Agent, commissioned or uncommissioned, to engage in the practice of this tyranny! No advantage can he perceive from it but in proportion to the number of persons on whom he not only attempts to practice it, but actually practises it with success. But, in no instance, without the attempt, can he practice it with success. In no instance can he make the attempt but he exposes himself to the stigma. In no instance, making the attempt can he have any tolerable assurance of its being successful. For, in every instance in which the insincerity in question is practised, the attempt is defeated: and it being so compleatly proved as above that the evil of the insincerity or the perfidy – that this moral evil will be less than the evil which in this case would have place without it, and this being visible to every body, let it be judged from hence[?] what assurance in respect of any attempt to practise this tyranny, any such would-be tyrant could ever have of success.

131a-009.xml

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.

131a-011.xml

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

Description: [131a-011]

1818 March 22 +

Parl Reform Answer to Antiballotists

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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.