1819 Jan. y 3

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

Remedies

Miselection

Electors

16

11

Anti-Reformist. Very ingenious, very acute very convincing: so much so, that I give

up at once /altogether/ my plan of reform, and there is an end of it. /there there is

an end of my plan/ Are you now satisfied? /Will that satisfy you?/

Reformist. Yes, if you will come over to mine. For mine is not encumbered with any

such /has no such/ difficulties.

Anti-Reformist. Not quite so lively. In /By/ giving up mine, I have only rid myself

of /given up/ delivered myself from/ an incumbrance. In one word /few words/ what I

mean to say is this: - upon your plan men without /having no/ property would so far

outnumber men having property, that they would join in dividing among one another

/weeding out of the hands of the present proprietors/ the whole property of the

present /country/ proprietors and for this purpose would choose for representatives,

which /as/ upon your plan of universal eligibility they would be enabled to do: and

for this purpose I have no need to trouble myself about any such fixation as that

with which you hampered me by /under the description/ a man without property I

include every sort of man from him who has nothing in the world but the cloathes on

his back, and those be[?] in a state of rags, and the man who though he has property

has not enough of it for his subsistence. Now then what I say is – that at present

/under the existing order of things/ there is no danger of any such ruinous

equalization and subversion: therefore it is that I am for the existing order of

things. For if once the existing order of things were to be departed from, and reform

entered upon, every plan would be found impracticable inconsistent and untenable and

therefore impracticable, till it came down to yours would be ruinous under the name

of remedy a /an immediately/ mortal disease substituted to a mild and tolerable one.

And moreover this same insuperable objection will be found to apply to every sort of

qualification that ever has been or ever can be proposed: and in particular to housholdership, and to taxableness.