date

11 Aug 1809 + Parl y Reform
11 Aug 1809 +

Parl y Reform

B.III Duration

Ch. 4. 2. Populace incapable

9

1

Ch. Objection 2. Incapacity of the people to comprehend /form a right judgement in/ their own interest.

To this objection, the short answer is that it is an objection to the Constitution itse lf as distinguished from absolute monarchy: and therefore can not without self-contradiction be urged by any persons who as the persons in question do, profess themselves adherents to and /admirers as well as/ defenders of the constitution as it stands.

Every time when upon an acceptance made of an office by which a seat of the House is vacated a new election takes place an appeal is actually made to that part of the people of which the Electors Constituents by whom a Member is placed in that seat is composed, an appeal to the people calling for their judgment on the conduct of public affairs in general in so far as that particular Member bore /can be seen to have borne/ a part in it.

Every time when a new Parliament has place - when the process of election comes to be repeated in relation to every such seat /the whole number of such seats/, an appeal of the same sort is virtually made to the whole body of the Electors to the particular bodies of Electors respectively corresponding to each and every seat: and though no such special /particular/ appeal is made in form, the change taking place in virtue of an arrangement preestablished by law, yet the operations performed by the people are exactly the same as if an appeal to that effect were actually made.

Every time a dissolution of Parliament has place such special appeal is virtually made.

The very last time that a dissolution of Parliament did take place, such appeal was in the words of the King's Speech declaredly made in terminis.
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    Every thing /feature of the constitution/ that men either do or profess to set a peculiar value upon being thus founded on the contrary supposition - on the supposition that the people do all labour under - an irremediable incapacity of forming a right judgment in their own interest, and it being even by the most determined adversaries of Parliamentary Reform admitted that appeals to the people are not improper, and shaken by necessary consequence[?] that the people are not absolutely incapable of forming and entertaining a right conception of their own interest, the question seems reducible to these two points.

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