date

[129b-480] 4 April 1817 Plan
[129b-480]

4 April 1817

Plan Cat

2 o

Introd

§. Interests adverse

III. Course taken ?

2

16

2

In general terms, the answer which may without much dissembly be hazarded is this. On this as on other and similar occasions, some there will have been, to whom /in whose eyes/, the universal interest being comparatively or even absolutely a matter of indifference, reform in any shape was in no other hope was set up, than in that of its serving as a ladder to the coveted /looked for/ power: others in whose eyes /by whom/ while reform parliamentary reform {has} presented itself in the character of a good of an instrument of good – an instrument capable of being and designed to be rendered subservient to the advancement of the universal interest, the term moderate presented the idea of those modifications which would be necessary to the prevention of those confusions – those never distinctly conceived and therefore but the more terrific confusions – those hideously yawning phantoms by which if not excluded the expected good might be swallowed up, and a torrent of evil pure unmixt evil – vomited up and poured over the land instead of it.

Here we have /Behold here/ the two extreme points of the two corresponding and contrasted yet combined scales – viz. discernment without appropriate probity, and appropriate probity without discernment. In both scales in each of the two scales are degrees in abundance, in which respectively so many places might be found for all the infinite /several/ diversifications of which alone considered in this point of view, the mind of man may be seen to be perceptible.
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