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1818 Sept. 5
Parl. Reform Bill
Reasons ult o
'.2. Electors Who
Universality
Money qualifications
2
Answer 2. Because the possession of property be the amount of it great or small has no direct tendency to /immediate operation towards/ the securing of appropriate aptitude in either of the two shapes in question: to wit appropriate probity or appropriate intellectual aptitude. Money /Property/ is not itself probity: money is not itself either knowledge or sound judgement.
As to appropriate probity, under the system of virtually universal suffrage, under the system of secret and free suffrage the vast majority of the whole number of Electors find, as hath been already shewn, for their effectual possession of this endowment such a security as leaves not any demand for any other. Were they all /every/ of them} without exception which is plainly impossible in possession each of them of a degree of opulence sufficient to confer independence this security would not from this circumstance receive any augmentation. /encrease./ Taken /Considered/ separately from any extra portion of the matter of wealth that it might happen to receive any change which it could happen to his aptitude in this shape to experience would if it amounted to any thing, be on the side of diminution: for of extra opulence one /a natural/ effect is to give to a man in this or that shape a particular interest hostile to the universal interest: a prospect of being a gainer by war, by a encrease of burthens /given to the burthen/ on dependencies, by judicial opposition by judicial oppression by rule or denial of justice, by a job in this or that other of its /one or other of its various/ shapes.
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Title: [1818 Sept. 5 Parl. Reform Bill]Description: 1818 Sept. 5 Parl. Reform Bill Reasons ult o '.2. Electors Who Universality Money Qualification Reading 3 If {in any way at all opulence has any tendency towards securing,} /As to appropriate aptitude in the intellectual shape, if/ under the system of virtually universal and free suffrage, opulence has in any property to any amount, great or small, has any tendency at all towards securing it in this shape, it is only in so far as it has a tendency to cause a man to be endowed with the faculty of reading. He therefore whose desire it is that by the Electors in question by the persons in question considered in the character of Electors appropriate aptitude in this shape should to the greatest possible extent possible be possessed - it is the faculty /possession/ of reading that he will wish to see established in the character of a necessary qualification for the exercise of the right in question, not the possession of property to this or that amount. Answer 3. The fact of a man's possessing at any given time the faculty of reading is one simple fact, one and at the same at all times, not susceptible of degrees. As to affluence it is susceptible of an infinity of degrees: and at no one degree /part of the scale/ to the exclusion of any other can any point ever be found at which it is proper to draw the line. Answer 4. Possessed at one time, the faculty of reading is possessed at all times. If property be the qualification, today the man has property, and it is at or above the mark: tomorrow it may be below the mark, or it may the whole of it have vanished.
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Title: [1818 July 5 Parl. Ref. Bill]Description: 1818 July 5 Parl. Ref. Bill Reasons II. Electors Who Universality People after them rulers 5 37 Add. 7 Aug[?] 18. Appropriate /necessary/ instruction lies within a very narrow compass. Then this. In this state of things With what colours[?] of reason by the ruling supporters of the system of non-Reform can any deficiency in the element of appropriate intellectual aptitude on the part of the bulk of the people be alledged in support of the exclusionary system? {In any direct way nothing is more notorious nothing more condemnable, any encrease in respect of this /this article/.} By any direct proof no superiority in respect of this element /article/ of appropriate aptitude is so much as attempted or professed to be proved: of its existence in this instance no direct evidence is ever attempted to be produced. Yet evidence of a certain sort is not only produced but most confidently relied on. And this sort of evidence what is it? circumstantial evidence mere circumstantial evidence - and that of a [...?] weak and inconclusive as can easily be conceived. This evidence of what is the matter of it composed? Of the matter of wealth /opulence/. In the matter of wealth they behold the grand efficient cause of the only two elements of appropriate aptitude that come here in question, viz. appropriate probity and appropriate intellectual aptitude. In their account /reasoning/ this pretious matter is the pretended efficient cause and the real substitute for every thing that can be desired. Exactly in proportion to the quantity of money or money's worth that a man has contrived to get into possession of is he not only the better man, but the wiser.
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Title: [1818 Sept. 5. +.2. Parl. Reform Bill]Description: 1818 Sept. 5. +.2. Parl. Reform Bill Reasons ult o '.2. Electors Who 2 Householdership 1 1 Question Why not {seek to} establish Householdership in the character of a necessary qualification. Answer 1. Because in addition to the security afforded as above under virtual universality and compleat secrecy of suffrage by the impossibility of giving effect to any particular and sinister interest no other security is needed. Answer 2: Because in the case in question on the part of a proposed Voter it is not in the nature of Householdership, any more than of possession, any more than of the possession of property to afford any security for appropriate aptitude in any shape on the part of the Voter nor therefore for the right direction of his vote. True it is that, supposing the faculty of reading established in the character of a necessary qualification, so far as regards the fact of a man's being in possession of this faculty, householdership is if not an indispensable, at any rate, a highly useful security for its existence. For if upon the bare assertion by which the fact of a man's possessing the faculty in question he were admitted whether he were or were not a householder a person who whether for want of the faculty or for want of being competent in respect of age and sex were admitted to vote the want of a fixt residence might in case of falshood suffice to render him unpunishable. But under the proposed system for the substantiating of this fact the written evidence of no fewer than three other persons, each of them a Householder is made requisite. Thus it is that under this system all the case[?] capable of being made of householdership is actually made of it.
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