JB_128_450.xml

Title: [1819 Jan y 10 Dialogue Preliminary]

Description: 1819 Jan y 10

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

II. Remedies

Miselection

I. through seduction

1. Coercive } Will

2. Seductive }

3. Deceptive – Understanding

4

41

{

*32}

Anti-Reformist. Well – such was the armour you have provided for the heart of your

Electors. I shall be glad to find it proof. Now what have you done for their heads?

How do you guard them against deception?

Reformist. Alas! I wish that in every[?] case it was possible to provide for the

head any such effectual armour, as in this case I have made sure of providing for the

heart. If I do but succeed in providing for it the most effectual armour the nature

of the case admitts of, I trust /flatter myself/ you will be satisfied.

Anti-Reformist. I should be very unreasonable if I were not: always supposing that

the direction taken by the wills of the majority of the Electors in a majority of the

Election districts is the proper one.

Reformist. Well then, against general deception my remedies are two: 1. notoriety of

all relevant facts[?] and arguments /say in a word notoriety/. 2. shortness of the

time during which without fresh election the Representative continues in his seat,

say in two words annuality of election. The first a preventive remedy, the other a

healing one. The first, a remedy that prevents the disorder /for preventing the

mischief/; the other, for putting an end to it.

Be the field of /the portion of/ thought and action what it may, in the diffusion of

information I behold the patriots and philanthropists remedy: in the suppression of

it the tyrants remedy.

JB_128_461.xml

Title: [1819 Jan y 12 Parl Reform Bill]

Description: 1819 Jan y 12

Parl Reform Bill

Dialogue V

Preliminary View

Evils & Remed

Remedies

Corruptibility

Annuality

10

1

52

{33}

 This last under Miselection

Anti-Reformist. Well, you have got your set of Representatives all of them according

to you chosen by the most proper set of persons /Electors/, and the body of which

according to you the assembly composed of them will form a third part, is the

Parliament, the two other parts being, still according to you, the House of Lords and

the Monarch. Things being thus, still there will be a mass of patronage immense /more

or less vast/ in quantity and value and that patronage, all or most of it in the

hands of the Monarch, as at present.

Reformist. Assuredly that would be the case, at any rate at the outset, and for a

considerable length of time, ultimately what parts of it will of necessity remain in

these same royal hands, I am not of myself disposed at present to enquire, nor do I

suppose that you have any particular wish I should.

Anti-Reformist. Certainly not: its being so in /at/ the outset is quite sufficient

for me. In every human breast self regarding interest /affection is predominant/ in

one or other of its shapes – or in all of them put together is predominant. It

predominates over social or sympathetic affection in all its degree of extent and in

particular in that degree of extent in which it is coextensive with the country or

say the political state to which a man belongs. Well then, let the social or

sympathetic affection, the social affection having the interest of the mans country

for its object say what it may, there is the Monarch with his everlasting sinister

interest in his breast /bosom/, and his inexhaustible purse in his hand, with not

money only but power and factitious dignity, both sweetened with ease ad libitum, and

occasionally /upon occasion/ with vengeance ever ready to buy over your

Representatives to the support of that same sinister, and these same Representatives,

according to you, ever ready to be bought.

JB_128_434.xml

Title: [1819 Jan. y 3 Parl. Reform Bill]

Description: 1819 Jan. y 3

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

Remedies

Miselection

Electors

16

11

Anti-Reformist. Very ingenious, very acute very convincing: so much so, that I give

up at once /altogether/ my plan of reform, and there is an end of it. /there there is

an end of my plan/ Are you now satisfied? /Will that satisfy you?/

Reformist. Yes, if you will come over to mine. For mine is not encumbered with any

such /has no such/ difficulties.

Anti-Reformist. Not quite so lively. In /By/ giving up mine, I have only rid myself

of /given up/ delivered myself from/ an incumbrance. In one word /few words/ what I

mean to say is this: - upon your plan men without /having no/ property would so far

outnumber men having property, that they would join in dividing among one another

/weeding out of the hands of the present proprietors/ the whole property of the

present /country/ proprietors and for this purpose would choose for representatives,

which /as/ upon your plan of universal eligibility they would be enabled to do: and

for this purpose I have no need to trouble myself about any such fixation as that

with which you hampered me by /under the description/ a man without property I

include every sort of man from him who has nothing in the world but the cloathes on

his back, and those be[?] in a state of rags, and the man who though he has property

has not enough of it for his subsistence. Now then what I say is – that at present

/under the existing order of things/ there is no danger of any such ruinous

equalization and subversion: therefore it is that I am for the existing order of

things. For if once the existing order of things were to be departed from, and reform

entered upon, every plan would be found impracticable inconsistent and untenable and

therefore impracticable, till it came down to yours would be ruinous under the name

of remedy a /an immediately/ mortal disease substituted to a mild and tolerable one.

And moreover this same insuperable objection will be found to apply to every sort of

qualification that ever has been or ever can be proposed: and in particular to housholdership, and to taxableness.