30 Dec r 1809

Parl y. Reform

Ch. [...?]

Abbot

4

4

Secrecy[?] without apprenticeship

When confederating, when conspiracy, when plotting, as it might so legally be termed, to deliver the country from the tyranny of the Stuarts, Lord Russel, Lord Essex, Algernon Sydney did they not seek to "cover the nature of their transactions? But by this [...?] of their[?] did they either degrade or debase their characters? +

When by working at that sort of work of which the neighbourhood is most in want, and to which his skill and dexterity /natural faculties/ are best adapted, a man contravenes and violates the insecure[?] law, by which industry /labour/ when thus employed in the most beneficial manner was some 250 years ago converted into a crime does a man either degrade or debase his character? No: yet if he would save himself from the oppression of the [...?], whose industry /diligence/ /anxiety/ employs itself in spying out and punishing the skill which for the rivalling /equalling/ of which he wants either talent or industry to rival /are wanting to him/, must he not "cover the nature of his transactions?" - Yes he must keep under concealment if not the act of working, at any rate the non-existence of that ceremony /contract/ the existence of which has been rendered by that most foolish and oppressive law /of all laws/ necessary to save superior industry from being punished as a crime.

[Marginal note:] 1 Quaere whether to insert[?] J.B's offence against libel law? Suppose not, as not being conceald.