1818 Dec. r 31

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Evils and Remedies

Remedies

Miselection

Representatives situation

12

7

Anti-Reformist. Providence /Foresight/ {I see} in plenty: I wish I could say /see/

as much for delicacy. Providence /Foresight/ - I mean as employed against annoyance

in a physical shape in the House. But your stock of remedies against Miselection, is

it quite /already/ exhausted, am I to understand it is exhausted?

Reformist. Not altogether. There are certain instruments force and fraud I mean by

which (as you /we/ have seen Non-Election and Null Election are capable of being

produced: by force and fraud, whether applied to the situation of Representative or

to that of Elector. By those same instruments so may Mis-election. By a lying story,

by confinement applied to the individual or by obstruction applied to the roads

/avenues/, the Electors in any number may be prevented from giving their votes,

proposed Members or persons who should have been proposed may be prevented from

receiving or doing what was /would have been/ necessary to the receiving a /in/

sufficient number of votes. Practices of this sort may be obviated partly by {such}

penal arrangements such as those by which /defence[?] or

provided against/ the same instruments to whatsoever other mischievous purposes they

are applied, partly as you will see by precautionary arrangements in the face of

which nothing of a penal character is visible.

[marginal insertion:] By any /In /Of/ any such/ of these enormities the effect may be

to put an exclusion upon some individual by whom the seat would otherwise have been

filled, and in comparison of whom the one by whom it comes in consequence to be

filled is unfit: and this being supposed, miselection is the effect.