1819 Jan y 12

Parl Reform Bill

Dialogue V

Preliminary View

Evils & Remed

Remedies

Corruptibility

Annuality

10

1

52

{33}

 This last under Miselection

Anti-Reformist. Well, you have got your set of Representatives all of them according

to you chosen by the most proper set of persons /Electors/, and the body of which

according to you the assembly composed of them will form a third part, is the

Parliament, the two other parts being, still according to you, the House of Lords and

the Monarch. Things being thus, still there will be a mass of patronage immense /more

or less vast/ in quantity and value and that patronage, all or most of it in the

hands of the Monarch, as at present.

Reformist. Assuredly that would be the case, at any rate at the outset, and for a

considerable length of time, ultimately what parts of it will of necessity remain in

these same royal hands, I am not of myself disposed at present to enquire, nor do I

suppose that you have any particular wish I should.

Anti-Reformist. Certainly not: its being so in /at/ the outset is quite sufficient

for me. In every human breast self regarding interest /affection is predominant/ in

one or other of its shapes – or in all of them put together is predominant. It

predominates over social or sympathetic affection in all its degree of extent and in

particular in that degree of extent in which it is coextensive with the country or

say the political state to which a man belongs. Well then, let the social or

sympathetic affection, the social affection having the interest of the mans country

for its object say what it may, there is the Monarch with his everlasting sinister

interest in his breast /bosom/, and his inexhaustible purse in his hand, with not

money only but power and factitious dignity, both sweetened with ease ad libitum, and

occasionally /upon occasion/ with vengeance ever ready to buy over your

Representatives to the support of that same sinister, and these same Representatives,

according to you, ever ready to be bought.