JB_129_200.xml

Title: [1818 March 25 Parl. Reform Bill]

Description: 1818 March 25

Parl. Reform Bill

Heads proposed.

I. Election Deposits

1. Number

2. Formation of

+ 2.

II. Electors

1. Who?

+ 2. Mode of previous ascertainment.

III. Candidates

1. Who.

IV. Elections

1. Time

2. Freedom – securities for

+ 3. Mode of voting

4. Mode of making known the result.

V. Sessions regular

1. Commencement

2. Duration

VI. Sessions incidental. viz. in case of dissolution

II. Electors. 1 Who

I Qualification 1. Antecedent residence in quo. 2. Reading 3. Writing

II. Mode of ascertainment. 1. Churchwardens stamp Householders name in docs[?] of

Voters residence. 2. Certifica certificate of reading. 3. Voters writing on the

certificate. 4. Duplicate of certificate registered in time.

Accidents and Abuses – how to obviate

1. Election Districts – overloading of by ambulatory Electors: viz. to the diminution

of the value of their one vote and those of fellow-Electors.

Soldiers and Sailors how previously to ascertain in districts in which they shall be

entitled to vote.

{Ascertain previously who shall be bound to vote orally who may vote

epistorately[?]}

{ Birthplace the place each man shall be entitled to vote

for: not place of settlement.}

{Of Those whose birthplaces can not be entertained, the votes to be distributed

among those districts which have least populations.}

{The reading and writing qualification a good preventative remedy here In the

certificate of sufficiency state the place of residence if fixt by householdership:} {or in case of non-householdership the

birth place, according to belief.}

{Residence of father Mother Grandfather Grandmother Uncle Aunt Nephew or Niece,

Grandson or Grandaughter, if the actual residence at the time for a month past may be

taken for the place of residence, and save the need of recurrence to Birth places}

{In every Election District Sub-Districts for taking the Votes all on the same day:

object of this concerns[?] of the[?] members[?] preventing exclusion and disturbance

by crowding Parishes the parish join or divide them, as occasion enters.

Qualification certificate to be authenticated by the signatures of 6 or 12

Housholders of the same district, hearing the man read, and seeing him write at the

same time. Minister, Clerk Apothecary or Publican recommended to be and[?] might[?]

be a […?] resident in the Parish […?] an adjoining Parish.}

{ Epistolary Votes not to be reckoned but in case the

number is sufficient reverse the decision given by the Oral

votes.}

{Inequalities and exclusions producible by accident only, and not by any anxiously

prevented.}

Penal Securities for freedom of suffrage and genuineness of Election.

Election Offences –

1. Election tyranny: in 1. exaction of promises. 2. asking how the vote was given.

2. Election servility – complicity with Election Tyranny

3. Election forgery: viz. of Voter’s qualification signature

4. Election imposture: false certificate of Qualification by reading

5. Election personation or imposture by personation.

Prefatoria.

Maxime

1. Inequalities resulting from mere accident, and not producible by design, not

material.

2. Inequalities producable by design, not material, if not rising to such an amount

as to be capable of affecting the general result.

Why the public functionaries appointed for furnishing or joining in the Certificate.

Reasons

1. Not to consume the time of such persons for the service of persons to whom as

being no […?] to them they will not be willing to render such service

2. Not to put it in the power of any particular person or persons, by negligence or

refusal, to deprive the would-be voter of his right.

Annuality

Mem. m On use of it prevents Election collusion[?] and other

lies[?]: viz. by the strictness[?] of the advantage conspires with the lasting[?]

punishment[?] in the shape of appropriate infamy

Splendor of the Crown.

See Lansdowne and other in Lords of the 15 th Morn g Chron. April 16 th.

Hodghkins Letter 6.

March 4. “The Georgianum a free School for Noblemen exclusive which was established

and endowed by Imperial Majesty.”

Prefatoria.

Ends to be aimed at

1. Avoidance of needless complication

2. Efficiency: avoidance of causes by which the system or any part of it may be

prevented from coming into occasion

N.B. Every person whose concurrence is rendered or suffered to be necessary to the

plan taking effect in the whole or any part has it in his power to prevent it from

taking effect: to prevent it, viz. by non concurrence.

A great cause of implication[?] in the entrance of imaginary[?] dangers /ideas/.

From Population Returns 1811

Great Britain Persons including Army &c 12,596,803

– Houses inhabited 2,544,215

– – building 18,548

– – uninhabited 62,349.

Army Navy Marines

and

Seamen on registered Vessels

(deducted from the total 0,640,500.)

Parishes including parts of d o England 10,674

Scotland 921

Persons England & Wales 10,488,000

Scotland 1,865,000

From p.509

Great Britain Families

1. Agricultural 895,998

2 Miscellaneous 519,168

1,415,166

Trade, manufactures or handicraft 1,129,045.

Encrease from the years 1811 and 1818 both exclusive viz. 6 years at 1/ | |

th per year.

Universal Suffrage

Heads of Argument for

1. As to intellectual aptitude present means of information[?] superior to those of

our Ancestors who transmitted to us the existing Constitution

2. Undangerousness of democratic ascendancy proved by d o in U.S.

where there is no standing army to check sudden disorders. Apter men /Statesmen/ are

chosen there in greater abundance than here.

3. / 2/ So in the days of our Ancestors no such security against

sudden disorders.

4. / 3/ The existing means of appropriate information are

susceptible of an indefinite encrease.

Maty[?] Committee

5. / 5/ Thus any deficiency in intellectual aptitude is

susceptible of unbound and indefinitely encreasing supply.

6. / 6/ On the other hand the want /deficiency/ of appropriate

probity by reason of sinister interest in the ruling few opposite to that of the

subject many, then the universal interest is sent in obstruction[?] to the aggregate

of appropriate aptitude as is in its nature everlasting and unsurmountable.

7. / 4/ No tendency has ever been shewn to the choice of violent

and ignorant and low bred men for Members in any one instance: they might exist in

considerable numbers and still without being productive of any ultimate practical and

sensible evil mischief or inconvenience

8. A greater proportion of members then is likely to be drawn even under Universal

Suffrage from the unopulent classes is highly desirable. It presents on every

occasion of supply measure the quantity of demand from their own habits: so also of

the supply: hence the waste of public money on objects deduced for the pleasure of

the few: and where relief is afforded, the superfluity of such relief.

9. The instances if collected would prove that upon principle as well[?] in practice

the interests of the many is invariably[?] sacrificed to that of the few and that by

this means government is converted into a system of […?] and irresistible

pillage.

JB_127_527.xml

Title: [1818 April 8 Parl. Reform Bill]

Description: 1818 April 8

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons

III. Electors Who

Vote conferring Qualification

2. Intellectuality

6

6

{Now then} as matters stand at present it can not surely be /a position which assuredly could not/ seriously /be/ maintained by any person is - that so far as concerns mere appropriate intellectual aptitude merely appropriate probity out of the question the average intellectual aptitude under the proposed system would at this time be equal or nearly equal to the average intellectual aptitude as it stands under the existing system.

But by this superiority in respect of appropriate intellectual aptitude are the possessors of power under the existing system rendered proportionably superior in respect of the aggregate of appropriate aptitude? - No: on the contrary they are by the whole amount of that partial superiority rendered inferior in respect of the aggregate /the aggregate account inferior/. Why? because /because if for want of appropriate probity/ what superiority they possess {or rather the whole amount of what they possess} in the shape of intellectual aptitude is applied to the giving to the measure of government a direction conducive to the universal interest is applied to the giving to them a direction opposite to the universal interest: to the giving to them a direction conducive to that aggregate of particular and sinister interest, to which the universal interest being opposite, is sacrificed - constantly and irremediably sacrificed.

{Hence it is that {the burthen[?]} of taxation has been scrued /already been screwed/ up to that highest pitch above which no power that can be applied can force[?] it a pitch corresponding to the utmost ability in respect of payment on the part of those on whom the taxes are imposed.}

131-584.xml

Title: [1819 Oct. 3 Parl. Reform Bill]

Description: 1819 Oct. 3

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons ult o

§.8. Election how

Art. Secrecy

3

Whose the influence by which the direction given to a vote is produced is the influence of understanding on understanding and that only, the person of whose wish the vote is declared to be the expression is without fail the person of whose wish it is the expression. Of /By/ the person by the influence of whose understanding the wish and thence the vote is produced it may be that no wish on the subject has ever been expressed or so much as entertained: it may be that person has been for centuries in his grave. By Locke’s book on government of how many thousands of votes must not the direction have been determined?

Under /By/ the influence of will on will not of the vote of one voter alone but of the effect of the votes of many thousands of voters has this or that man been all along been in the possession and exercise. But though of this state of things the existence is universally notorious – too compleatly so to be denied by any man how compleatly so ever divested of all sense of shame, yet no man dare directly confess it, because no man feels in himself the capacity of saying any thing which even in the most prejudiced eyes can appear to justify it. In this point of view on this point What is said of any thing /is said/ in favour of the system of suffrage consists in some vague and unintelligible phrase to which all men are called upon to give acceptance, because he by whom it is employed feels himself unable to substitute to it any precise and intelligible one.