[131a-016]

1818 March 22 +

Parl Reform. Answer to Antiballotists.

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15

Under these circumstances, how small, under the secret mode, is the temptation, on the part either of Candidate or Agent, commissioned or uncommissioned, to engage in the practice of this tyranny! No advantage can he perceive from it but in proportion to the number of persons on whom he not only attempts to practice it, but actually practises it with success. But, in no instance, without the attempt, can he practice it with success. In no instance can he make the attempt but he exposes himself to the stigma. In no instance, making the attempt can he have any tolerable assurance of its being successful. For, in every instance in which the insincerity in question is practised, the attempt is defeated: and it being so compleatly proved as above that the evil of the insincerity or the perfidy – that this moral evil will be less than the evil which in this case would have place without it, and this being visible to every body, let it be judged from hence[?] what assurance in respect of any attempt to practise this tyranny, any such would-be tyrant could ever have of success.