JB_127_301.xml

Title: [[Copyist's hand] 1818 July 28]

Description: [Copyist's hand]

1818 July 28

Parl Reform Bill

Reasons

II. Electors Who

Universality

Reading

Objection Complication

Reading better than hearing.

2

2 To the forming of a judgement of any kind by reading and thence from written discourse nothing more is necessary than the temporary possession of the paper in which it is contained. To the forming of any such judgment from conversation it is not easy to say that a multitude of conditions must have been fulfilled. 1. The learner must have been able to find and have found accordingly time sufficient for the receiving instruction in this shape: 2. He must have been fortunate enough to have within his reach a person not only competent in respect of talent to afford Instruction but in respect of other requisites able as well as willing to afford it.

By each man who is at once able and willing to receive this instruction how is such Instructor to be found? Are men thus created and preserved in pairs? Unless they are then in order to obtain any such Instruction, each man must be all along Member of a Society more or less numerous instituted and kept up for this purpose. This Society where shall it meet? Among the Lower Orders viz. in the great bulk of the population several circumstances concurr in preventing each man from receiving others in any such competent number at his own home: In no instance the apartment large enough: few instances the apartment such as it is sufficiently free from disturbance from Children and the various domestic arrangements: the dwellings, such as they are too remote from each other to admit of such {Ministers} /meeting/ the time that might have been employed in reading the whole perhaps of each man's thus disposable time and more will thus if meeting be necessary consumed in Journeys.

JB_127_303.xml

Title: [1818 July 28 Parl Reform Bill]

Description: 1818 July 28

Parl Reform Bill

Reasons

II. Electors Who

Universality

Reading

Objection Complication

Reading better than hearing.

4

Meantime, the sort of instruction thus obtainable /derived/ from conversation - what is it? From conversation in such societies? In comparison of that which from reading would by men of that same description in every other respect be obtainable. Take the worst that could be obtained from reading - compare /it/ with it the best that with any probability not to say that by any possibility be obtained from conversation, what a difference! how prodigious and palpable the inferiority in this latter case!

In the case of printed discourse, strong indeed are the interests the motive by which a man is restrained from the utterance of matter /all discourse/ that does not afford a /very considerable/ prospect more or less considerable of being found fraught if not with grave instruction at any rate with matter which in some shape or other on some account or other, is /shall prove/ more or less interesting. the expence of publishing is a /operates a/ penalty against all worthless publications: a penalty and that but the more efficacious, for the not needing or admitting the hand of law to be employed in laying it.

Bad /Insipid/ indeed must the matter of that pamphlet or flying sheet be which does not contain in it more useful instruction than on the same topic fresher[?] of the field of thought[?] and action would not if got by head afford more instruction than in nine and forty out of fifty such societies would be afforded by a quantity of discourse of the same length thought /composed/ as well as spoken extempore.

JB_127_308.xml

Title: [1818 July 30 Parl. Reform Bill]

Description: 1818 July 30

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons

II. Electors who

Universality

Reading

Reading better than hearing

The faculty of reading is not itself instruction. True: but it is the indispensable key to instruction: and by /with/ it, with the exception of such things as are no otherwise perceptible than by sense, he /it depends upon himself to/ acquires from time to time /acquires/ whatsoever in the way of instruction, he chooses /it pleases him/ to acquire. The key of the money chest is not itself money: but with it, and by it, a man /he/ who has it he and he alone, gets out of it at any time, whatsoever he desires to have of its contents.

It is not in every shape that instruction can /Instruction can not in every shape/ be acquired. It can not be thus acquired in that objector &c without inspection of visible /tangible/ objects He can learn to distinguish plant from plant, mineral from mineral, disease from disease:

But in /of the whole field of/ the art and science in question - in the art and science of government, there is not a particle of instruction to the communication of which this instrument is not compleatly competent.