1819 July 26 +

To Erskine

Lett. 5. E.’s Reform

§.3. E’s earnests pernicious

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§. | | Proposed disfranchisements and transferences of seats, bad in themselves and bad as earnests.

On the subject of this plan of partial and gradual disfranchisement, and transference of seats taken by itself /considered in itself/, I shall not attempt to detain your Lordship much longer: these letters being intended to be almost immediately followed by a little work in which that plan /measure/ will be particularly if not exclusively considered: /at present/ all I shall do at present is to state the positions, of which in so far as it is /they are/ not in my former work, the proofs will I hope be found in it.

1. In so far as the disfranchising system is proceeded with /made to take place/, the seats taken from the existing boroughs will be given either to the[?] contiguous Country Districts, or else to populous and at present unrepresented towns.

2. In so far as the transference is made to Country Districts, the change is more likely to be productive of difference than service to the universal interest: the class of men into whose hands the seats will then be thrown viz. the great landholders partly Peers and partly Country Gentlemen being /naturally/ in all those points of appropriate aptitude naturally under the present system of representation naturally and generally inferior to those by whom the seats in question are at present filled: meaning by appropriate aptitude {– meaning thereby} here as elsewhere appropriate probity, appropriate intellectual aptitude, and appropriate active talent.

N.B. In this it is assumed that the Election would in every instance be in the open mode as at present, and not in the secret mode namely by ballot

3. Of the transference of the seats to populous towns there seems little probability. But even supposing this plan adopted, I see more harm /evil/ than good in it. A pecuniary qualification would of course be made requisite: and at whatever sum it were placed, and whether any such qualification were appointed or no, the voter would for want of secresy, be placed at the command of those, whose interest is more or less likely to be in a state of opposition to the universal interest, though not so decidedly so as in the other case.