1819 Oct. 3

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons penult

§.5. Election Apparatus

§.8. Election how

Art | | Secrecy

2

vote is gained by

Miselection may be said to have place as often as any person less fit occupies a seat which had every thing been as it should be would have been occupied by a person more fit. Of the Election process employed, the design ought to be, and always is professed to be, the producing the good effect of which the evil thus denominated is the opposite. To a certain degree every Vote, by the direction given to it contributes either to the good or to the evil effect. Miselection being the bad effect tendency towards the production of it, is it is true, all the evil which in this shape can be produced by a single vote. But as often as, in an adequate number, votes having the same comparatively evil direction are given in favour of the same person, the tendency is then refined into act. Deny that an evil direction, given to a vote in the Election in question, though it be but a single vote, is an evil, you deny that Miselection is an evil: deny that Miselection is an evil, you deny that Misgovernment is an evil. For in the case of a seat clothed with such powers, suppose Miselection to have place, in the instance of a certain number of seats, and suppose that in the several instances unfitness to a certain degree has place, Misgovernment is a certain consequence, That the consequence /nor, without the aid of such unfitness can misgovernment in any degree have place. That no consequence of this sort has been the result of the cause/ in question, has unhappily been too amply proved by experience.