3 Feb. 1817 +

Plan Cat

Note (a)

Introd

III

§.5. Virtual Universality

[…?] Votes of Electors

32?

1

?32

Inserendumne?

N.B. This was first entituled Principles of Election under which it may perhaps be

spied in the Marginal

☞ This comes after the mention of Terrorism.

The principle on which the utility of popular election is grounded is this

Active talent, being here out of the question remains as applying to the office of

Parliamentary Elector the two other elements of appropriate official aptitude, viz.

appropriate probity and appropriate intellectual aptitude.

On the present occasion appropriate probity consists in the disposition to

contribute so far as depends upon the Electors {to the seating /m[?]/ in the seat in

question} to the inviting with the trust in question that one of the candidates who

in the judgment of the Electors is in all the points of intellectual aptitude taken

together the fittest for it. Laying out of the question all partial interest

operating in a direction adverse to that of this[?] universal interest to the

producing and keeping on foot this disposition, the share which each man has in the

universal interest, be it[?] minute as it is – yet wherever it finds nothing to

oppose it – even this minute interest – may reasonably be expected to suffice. In the

case of the vast majority of the whole people if not of any country at any rate in

such a country as this, the disposition then described may surely be regarded as a

constant one.