1818 Sept. 4.

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons ult o

'.2. Electors Who

Universality

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6

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1. On the part even of the least instructed classes, adequate assurance of an adequate /a competent/ quantity of attention to the essential points of government: to wit of that branch of art and science, of which government is the subject.

Of this branch of art and science the proper object is the {avoidance or} exclusion of those evils which are liable to be produced by misconduct on the part of those by whom a constantly active part is latent in the business of government: in one /a/ word, the exclusion of the evils of misrule.

Here the radical point to be comprehended /attended to/ is the universal and constant tendency towards misrule in what those hands whatsoever they be, in /by/ which the rule is lodged, the powers indicated /expressed/ by the word rule are possessed. The cause of this tendency is the {universal and necessary predominance} of self-regarding interest over social in every human breast. Of this predominance the existence may be /is/ seen to be necessary to the very existence of the species. When once clearly /plainly/ pointed out, wilful blindness alone will be able to avoid seeing it, folly alone will so much as think of repining at it. In this predominance then may be seen the general and universally operating cause of misrule. For the counteracting it in such sort as to exclude, in so far as it is capable of being excluded the disastrous and ever impending effect, in the hands of those whose interests taken together either compose either the whole of the universal interest, or at any rate such a mass of aggregate interest as does not materially fall short of the whole a /an occasional/ power of placing and displacing the hands by which the constantly acting powers of government are exercised may be seen and shewn to present the only corrective - against the ever-threatening /impending/ evil /disorder/, the only remedy.

{Here then we have the general nature of the disorder - the general cause of it - and the only remedy which the nature of the disorder admitts of.}