1819 May 18

Disfranchisement

§.5. Evil 4 Encrease Country Members

15

11

7

Now then /On the other hand/ in this same […?] of appropriate probity see how the case stands in the instance of a man of any other class; suppose of the mercantile class.

Like the Country Gentleman, and every other man, his dispos /propensity/ will be to seek to advance his own personal interest though it were at the expence of all other interests put together. But to this propensity to this noxious propensity of his, he is not as the Country Gentleman is, able to give effect. The Country Gentleman is /Country Gentleman is a link in a chain of iron:/ a member of an impregnable and irresistible body united by one common interest: an interest to which it is not in the power of the most stupid among them not to be /to avoid being/ fully sensible. The mercantile man {belongs to no such body: he is one grain} in a rope of sand. Mercantile /Commercial/ men in different lines /branches/ of commerce have not to any efficient[?] extent any common interest, in the same line each individual has with relation to every other an opposite interest.

Every man having with relation to every other a common interest and an opposite interest every man is with relation to every other a friend and an enemy. In his quality of an enemy were it not for the reasons that (a) by which he is witholden he would become one /an/ oppressor. But in proportion as the state of the law and especially it Constitutional present[?]/ is good these ties are strong, in proportion as it is bad they are weak. In /Under/ the Democratic Constitution of the American United States, the law and especially the Constitutional branch is strong, and oppression is unknown. Most men would oppress all others that come in their way if they were able but no man or knot of men is able. Under the English Monarchy as it stands, or rather rules, the constitutional branch and with it all the other branches are rotten. Having one common sinister interest the ruling few composed of the Monarch and the Aristocracy have it in their power in every way to oppress the subject many, oppression in a thousand ways is the consequence

(a) namely the different sanctions: concerning which see +

+ ☞ to which may now be added the sympathetic and the retributive.