1818 March 29

Parl. Ref. Bill

Reasons

II. Electors Who

Reading Qualification

Reasons

10

From a summing up made with careful industry the number of persons convicted within the year of criminal offences in England within a given period has been stated+ as being more than ten times as great /greater/ in England as in Scotland. In some eyes the difference (and how prodigious /vast/ a difference it is!) is produced by the difference between the religion of the Established Church of Scotland and the religion of the Established Church of England: in others by the greater number of those who are able to read in Scotland as compared with the number of persons thus gifted in England: in some eyes partly to the one cause partly to the other. But in every eye in which the indisputable advantage on the side of Scotland in respect of morality as thus demonstrated has for its cause the greater extent superior magnitude of the extent in which this faculty is possessed, the b importance of the collateral mind are thus proposed to be derived from the proposed political institution /arrangement/ can not but be acknowledged /recognized/ to be of no mean importance.

The art and faculty of reading is the basis of and indispensable inlet to every other considerable branch of art and science. The greater the number of those who are in possession of it, the greater the number of those by each of whom the [...?] means of obtaining a chance for giving ulterior advancement of /to/ art and science by transcendent talents and genius is obtained. To one /except to him/ to whom every prospect of new discoveries in art and science, and of new degrees of perfection in the practice of what is already discovered is an object of indifference, can this collateral use of the proposed institution be a matter of indifference.

[Marginal note:] Church of Englands n[?] examined p.