date

1818 Dec. 21. Parl Reform Bill
1818 Dec. 21.

Parl Reform Bill

Dialogue II

{Preliminary View}

II. Dialogue 2.

23

4

Inserendumne?[?]

Anti-Reformist. Who are these that you have in view?

Reformist. Ah! more than you would have patience to hear of. Take Locke for one.

According to him nothing is done but by uneasiness. So long as a man is in a state of

activity /action/ /in action/, so long is he in a state of uneasiness: and if

uneasiness be not evil – I mean positive evil, and not merely negative evil, the mere

absence of greater good, I know not what else is. By Uneasiness is meant not only

absence of enjoyment, but presence of sufferance.

If this were true, a man who is sitting down to a good dinner with a good appetite

to a good dinner with the partner of his bed opposite to him, is in a /uneasy/ state

of un not only all dinner time, but from thence until bed-time, or he would not go to

bed at all.

According to D r Johnsons notice of the matter, all the time

between breakfast and dinner what a man thinks most of is his dinner. Supposing this

to be the case, do you think he is in a state of uneasiness all that time.

Anti-Reformist. I should be sorry if it were so.

Reformist. There was moreover a French Philosopher named Maupestrier[?], who, thus

deluded by a set of words /made melancholy by a set of words/ proved to demonstration

that from the beginning of his life to the end every man was miserable. which being

supposed the only wise thing a man could do would be to hang himself: unless so it

were, that a being of infinite benevolence created man for the purpose of making his

being continually miserable in this life, on pain of being everlastingly so in […?];

which if true would require, at least, to be well proved. For my own part, in

whatsoever shape the pleasures presented themselves, while I was in the enjoyment of

one pleasure, I never felt the pleasure converted into pain so much as tinged with

uneasiness, by my having in prospect a still greater pleasure which I was doing my

endeavour to get possession of.

For
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    Desire has for its object either pleasure or pain, or what is commonly the case a mixture of both, in ever varying and unascertainable proportions.

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    368