1819 July 7

Defence | | ag st Edinb gh Review

Horne Tooke

7

2

5. Extreme criminality – Here are the usual /too customary/ /too frequently exemplified/ oversights: 1. /One is – the/ Supposing that a distinct line is drawn between two species of human beings, by the cluster of accidents that while it has caused certain species of acts to have been aggregated by force of law to the class of crimes extreme crimes, and therefore some men to have been proved in form of law to have committed /performed/ /exercised/ certain individual acts thus aggregated to those same species of acts, has left other acts and individual agents not included /comprehended/ within the boundary lane thus /so/ marked out.

2 The other is the not seeing that unless of the whole number of the persons comprehended under these and all other supposed ill qualified classes /denominations put together is sufficient to give determine the aggregate /ultimate/ result of the polling process and determine it on the wrong side, no evil in any shape is produced. As to criminals put them aside: for be the species of crime what it may, for one that has been legally made known you have in that time not been legally made known. Take persons insane, those that are so are /have/ without many exceptions been made known. To act /Acting/ as patron of a seat – to act as the one person by whose sole power a seat is filled. Yes: if this were done by a maniac there might be real inconvenience. Even in this case a maniac /madman/ is hardly so improper a person as a lord: for the nominee of a lord will be almost sure to be a man predetermined to give his support to a narrow interest opposite /hostile/ to the universal interest, whereas the nominee of a maniac might be any one person as well /likely/ as any other. But acting[?] as one out some thousand as though it were but hundreds of persons each of them contributing in equal and no more than equal proportion to the ultimate and aggregate at ultimate result of the polling process, what matters it whether the utmost possible number of men of the obnoxious /reprobated/ description of men in question be or be not admitted? Not that on my plan they /any/ would be able to reach the polling place. But suppose they all did. The effect would be no other than that of determining so many votes by chance instead of choice.