JB_128_349.xml

Title: [1819 Jan y 11 Parl. Reform Bill]

Description: 1819 Jan y 11

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

II Remedies

Miselection

Mixture - Balance

4

16

4

To the Tories I think /if I misrecollect not/, belongs the glory of the mixture, to the Whigs that of the balance. The argument invented by each would equally /alike/ meet[?] the

purpose of the other. Both joining in /having/ one common interest, both have one

common object. This common object is that nothing be ever /shall ever be/ done.

Neither can bear to part with /put to hazard/ their seats; the Tories can not bear to

part with their possession, the Whigs with the expectancy, of still better things.

Think of the Saint’s day kept at Newcastle Road and read again Earl Grey, who in the

same breath as for reform[?], for a reform, and for a reform in which nothing shall

be done. Look at the Noble /serving[?]/ Lord who too modest to have principles of his

own, takes up with /as he declares, and gives his support to/ Charles Fox’s

principles: and with their speeches before his eyes in which the departed /hero no

more/ calls out for reform even to the very root of it, declares that he will have

none of it. But the Noble Earl was too well acquainted with the amiable and versatile

aristocrat to look to his speeches for his principles.

In /From/ the form given to /complexion of/ your question, and the smile upon your

countenance, plain enough was it to me /well did I so understand/ that you yourself

were neither accessory nor dupe either to the mixture or to the balance -: it was not

with any such instruments that you yourself have been searching now[?]. It was in

pleasantry, not in earnest that you put them to me. If you are fortunate enough to

number among your friends M r Thomas Little the Younger, what

think you of handing over to him all this matter, for his man to make a duet[?] or an

eclogue out of it? Lord Liverpool who in days of yore was I think the inventor[?] of

the mixture, and the Honourable Thomas Brand who borrowing the balance applied by

Blackstone and every body else to these[?] Lords and Commons applied it for the first

time to the contending interests in the Commons, might be the interlocutors.

JB_126_405.xml

Title: [21 Dec r 1809 Parl y Reform]

Description: 21 Dec r 1809

Parl y Reform

2 Influence

Ch.3. Dependence Modes?

3

7

To preserve so convenient a state of things from the attacks of the innovator, either of two systems serves.

One is, that of the optimist: in the language /words/ of Pope as applied to universals, whatever is is right: or in the language /words/ of Blackstone as applied to particulars - everything is as it should be.

The other is the system of the lacrymist or say of the pessimist - of the hypocondriac, or that other sort of man whose name begins with hypo. Bad indeed it is, most deplorably /lamentably/ bad: but it can't be otherwise: it is among the fruits of original sin, and comes of the unfortunate longing our /the/ universal grandmother was served with for the unwholesome apple.

Hint at /Speak of/ the plain an simple and old-accustomed and constitutional remedy: dependence of agents for their situation on their principals - dependence secured by annual elections /re-elections. Annual Parliaments yielded /conceded/ so often to manly subjects /our sturdy ancestors/ by too[?] conquering Kings. - Oh but those can[?] Jacobins anarchists French Revolutionists - enemies to social order and our holy religion: finds, begotten upon the Goddess of Reason by the father of lies . /tempter of Eve./

JB_126_339.xml

Title: [25 Dec r. 1809 + '.6 Parl y Reform]

Description: 25 Dec r. 1809 + '.6

Parl y Reform

Ch.6 l Corruption Members

'.7.1. Corruptor King

4. King's mind.

24

1

King's Chaplain[?] set[?] free[?] no difficulty[?] in composing[?] his concern And by this moral purity [...?] the effect he will be but the more strongly confirmed in the practice.

'.6. These /This/ however are but casual and impermanent /transient/ /transitory/ corruptors. There remains under or rather over the whole system of corruption, the perpetual corruptor-general, the King.

But to /in/ the purity of the royal mind it seems difficult to say what moral slime is likely /capable/ to be imprinted /infused/ by this mess /flood/ of corruption, how vast soever the tide in which it rolls.

What /The powers which/ his ancestors had, in the shape of prerogative flows gently into his hands in the shape of influence. This is what he reads in Blackstone - in the book in which he also finds it written that every thing is as it should be. That this is not encroachment, but restoration: he is in[?], as the lawyers say, by remitter[?]. When power was clad /cloathed/ /accoutred/ in the hobgoblin shape of prerogative every body, but the lawyers by whom it was dressed up in that shape complained of it: now habited in the dove like form /angelic character/ of influence nobody complains of it - or at least nobody whose complaints /in whose mouth complains/ are worth caring a thought for /about/. Men come of their own accord, and thrust their necks under the yoke: is it his part to repulse them? Populo dare jux[?] volente! Is not this the highest of all praise?

Be the /In the case of a mischievous/ practice ever so mischievous, and whatever be the mischief /mischievous/ of it, he by whom the greatest benefit is reaped from it will naturally be the last to find it out.