date

1818 Dec. 24 Parl. Reform Bill
1818 Dec. 24

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue II

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

I Evils

31

12

Anti-Reformist: Act[?] Office-bearers[?]? Custom House officers, Excise men?

Corruptionists, as you call them, - the whole lists of them?

Reformist. O yes; even were they more than they are The case is – facts not words

are what I look to: realities not professions and make-believes: substance, not made

show. For all practical purposes, so long as they can not be so in reality, evils

which are so but in tendency, are no evils are thrown /I throw/ out of the account:

just as you would fractions of a farthing in a pecuniary account. Appeals to the

public at large out of the question even in the House itself, a minority, supposing

it to remain always a minority – a minority though it wanted but two to be a

majority, would produce no effect at all consequently no evil effect: it would be but

a fraction and that an inoperative one. In the case of the aggregate number of voters

in an Election District, a minority be it ever so large an one, is still more

palpably ineffective: it is but a minute fraction of that same inoperative fraction.

The whole tribe /list/ of these seemingly objectionable persons suppose them to

combine and a together and to be disposed to vote on the same side – not that this

could ever happen: how many seats would they be able to fill? Disposed as they would

be, probably not one. But suppose them to fill a dozen: what would that signify? Just

nothing. But they would not do any such thing. First, because they would not all

agree. Secondly because being so dispersed /dispersed as they/, they would produce no

considerable effect upon the poll any where. 3. Because it being made impossible for

any man to know which way they gave their votes, they would be altogether exempt from

the only sinister influence by which voters can be acted upon in the considerable

numbers in numbers capable of giving an effectual support to a general system of

misrule.
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    You see what I have done to humour you. At one stroke, struck out so many millions

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    Anti-Reformist. That by /thus[?] in/ being excluded, individuals may feel or at least

    fancy themselves to be sufferers, how much so ever the public may be a gainer by the

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    Anti-Reformist. The old story, { good[?] M r

    Lack-learning}, always snarling at your too learned brethren. Sadly sower in your

    eyes the grapes that adorn /shroud/ /shroud their clusters/ over the Courts of

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    Anti-Reformist. What? In the clouds again?

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