JB_111_238.xml

Title: [1819 Dec. 4 After Bentham’s Radical]

Description: 1819 Dec. 4

After Bentham’s Radical &c

Prelim

II Necessity

2

In this way there would not be produced any part of that evil which may mean if they mean any thing when they give utterance to such words as revolution, convulsions[?], subversion, destruction, ruin.

The same quantity of the fruits of the people’s labour would be wasted /expended and consumed/ in the endeavour to satiate the insatiable appetite of one man and his fam[?] as at present. But the quantities of suffering produced by the oppression necessary to the effecting the depredation the fruits of which were /would be/ thus employed would bear no comparison to the quantity of suffering produced by the most compleatly successful and promptly terminating insurrection and civil war necessary to the production of this effect.

The existence of a Monarch is /ever has been and is now/ a great evil, the existence of a House of Lords ever has been and is now a great evil. But these great evils put together are still beyond comparison less evils than the least evil that could be produced by the least pernicious civil war.

True it is that by the Revolution of 1688 no considerable mass of evil was produced. But in the present state of things there are no such circumstances favourable to an innoxious Revolution as at present. By No portion of the opulent and influential few is /can/ any apprehension be entertained of being bereft of the faculty of professing /continuing to profess/ the religion in which they have been bred. By no portion of them is any apprehension entertained of becoming sufferers by unlimited depredation exercised at their expence by the single will of the Monarch: on the contrary their hopes in the character of accomplice outweigh /surpass/ these fears in the character of victims not of losing the faculty of pampering their children and other kinsmen at the expence of the people in pretence of filling them with the Holy Ghost.

JB_111_236.xml

Title: [1819 Dec r 4 Bentham’s Radical &c]

Description: 1819 Dec r 4

Bentham’s Radical &c

Prelim

II. Necessity

6 - 2 those which oppose obstructions to the operations of the ruling few in their endeavours to wrest from the people the small number of sources[?] of security still remaining in their possession.

JB_111_241.xml

Title: [1819 Dec. 4 Bentham’s Radical &c]

Description: 1819 Dec. 4

Bentham’s Radical &c

Prelim

II Necessity

2 Means

5

Thus much as to the end - namely Democratic ascendancy

Now on to the means. The means by which if it depended on me I would wish to see it effected are those very means which after having in Ireland been employed with success as far as they were imposed, from 1778 to 1783 inclusive, were in 1794 evidently by M r Gray[?] referred to and recommended to the people of Great Britain namely by Revolution of the people meeting in bodies and acting on the prudence of the House.

But the House, that is the ruling few do well choose to have their prudence acted upon in any such manner: no portion of the people can for any such purpose meet and act together without being destroyed.

The consequence is, that as matters now stand the people know no other than this one option: either to suffer this country to sink through the condition of Germany into the condition of Spain, or to act upon the prudence of the Honourable House in a mode correspondent to that in which Honourable House &c acted upon their prudence so much to the satisfaction of M r Peele and so many other prudent men, upon the occasion of the Manchester tragedy: to copy /follow/ the example so set - to copy it with no other difference than that which will /in their eyes/ appear to them to be necessitated by the difference of position: to operate in detail instead of operating on them by wholesale.