1819 May 18

Disfranchisement

§.5. Evil 4. Encreasing Country Members

6

2

Reformist. Yes /True/: in the main what you say /bring to my view/ of this notion of mine is correct. But on the present occasion I must present you with two /a/ modifications /and a remark/

1. In the first place on the part of no other class of men, nor of all other classes put together does there exist any sinister interest the prevalence is by a vast deal so extensive as that which is shared in common by this class. Consider of whom it is composed /the subdivisions contained/. In the first place that whole body of the Peerage: which to the part it has in the power of the Lower House adds the whole of the power of the other House which the individuals its Members are continually on their knees to the Monarch for more

2. In the next place all those proprietors great and small the principal part of whose substance /income/ is derived from the rent of land.

Taken together the two divisions form a compact body the numbers of which have one common interest distinct from and opposite to all other particular interests, are continually brought together the principal part of them in a variety of places and in particular in the two Houses, and at the Sessions of the Peace are made known to one another by a variety of public documents such as County Maps and County Histories know how to find one another out upon all occasions and finding every instrument and every facility for combining with one another for the purpose of strengthening and extending /giving strengths and extensions to/ oppression in every imaginable shape in which it is useful to them, have provided dungeons for the bodies /persons/ and musket shot bayonets and quartering knives as the case may require for the bowels {of all such persons as in /by/ pursuit of any efficient plan of reform shall without their consent and encouragement presume to meet one another for the purpose of affording protection to one another against those fruits of the matchless Constitution in its present state.} /of all such partakers in the universal interest as shall presume to seek in the society of one another any efficient protection against the oppression under which they are held by that partial and particular and thence sinister interest./