1819 July 15

To Erskine: or Defence of Ballot

Lett. 5. Es Reform

or

Lett. 7. Whigs AntiReformists

3

Suppose the seats transferred, as has been proposed to populous towns and at present unrepresented towns: Birmingham and Manchester for example. Here the number of the votes might easily be rendered so great, that the danger of bribery might effectually be excluded. But of the secret reasons by the force of which this mode of transfer has already been excluded, the force would in this case be multiplied /prodigiously reinforced /augmented//.

Assured of the rejection of the most unexceptionable mode, and that the strenuousness of the opposition made to it would not be in the proportion of the strength of /to the assurance of/ any conviction entertained of its dangerousness but in the proportion of the strength of the conviction entertained of its undangerousness and usefulness, I will not on the present occasion at any rate, expend time and paper on the proposition of any other more extensively operating and therefore more intensely unendurable degrees of application.