1819 June 18 + I C

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 7. Whigs Anti Reformists

§ 2. Pos. I. desire impossible

N o of self-sacrifice?

4

1

What we see as thro’ a glass darkly, they saw face to face

Plan Cat cccxiv

II. Number and proportion /Proportionable number/ of the persons by whom, to be effectual the sacrifice would require to be made.

Take from M r Oldfield’s Recapitulation in the last edition of his History of Boroughs the following numbers

Returned by nomination 487

Independent of nomination 171

658

But of these last the greater part are /County/ Members for Counties: and in all those instances terrorism whether applied to Electors or to Competitors being the instrument by which they are seated, these are among the persons by whom it is impossible to say in what proportion probably by much the largest the sacrifice would be to be made.

Of all men in this predicament the situation would be in the most desperate case /These are the persons in whose case the sacrifice would be in the highest degree improbable/. For pocket boroughs as in the case of Ireland compensation might be made. But for loss of English County seats no compensation could ever be so much as be proposed to be made.

The case in which the seats appear to be in the greatest degree open to competition, and therefore under the present plan the possession of them least assured, are those Borough Seats in which the numbers of the voters being from 17,000 down to 400 the expence of a contest is upon a first view least formidable, and thence terrorism least surely effective. So it would really be if the right was confined to residents: but voters may be /are/ importable from all parts of the kingdom to the globe: so that in a large proportion of this small number (seats 61) the first conception would be delusive.

Vain on this occasion would be any objection to the accuracy of that work. So vast is the number of those by whom on the most unfavourable /adverse/ calculation the sacrifice would have to be made, that errors to the amount of the half of the whole or more /all of them too/ on one side might be admitted, and still the practical inference not varied.