1819 Oct. 11

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons

§.4[?]

§.8

Art. Secresy.

Burdet

5

6

Whether it be the word wish or the word interest that is employed, what must be understood as being the object that the votes as such should have the faculty of pursuing according to his own judgment, is – that which is his wish, or that which is his interest independently of any particular interest of the moment which it might be in the power of the Candidate to create in the breast of the votes, by means destructive of his happiness. Get a man into your power, cause him to be assured that unless he consents to have his brains blown out he will be made to expire at the end of four and twenty hours passed in torture, you may make it /it may in this way be made/ his interest to have his brains blown out. Suppose that, according to the case supposed in the abovementioned Statute of George the second, suppose the hustings surrounded with a file of musqueteers determined to put to death every man who shall have given a vote for any other Candidate than one named by the Monarch, you might thus make it the interest of every /all the/ Elector in the kingdom to vote for a compleat set of Candidates named by the Monarch: and this you might do effectually under the system of universal suffrage as under the present.

This plan, it can not be denied might alike be carried into effect under the secret mode as well as under the open mode. For though it would not in the instance of any one voter, separately taken be known which way he had given his vote, yet the whole numbers on each side would be known: and if thus it were known that they had all of them been rebellious to the commands of his most gracious Majesty they might all of them be put to death.