1819 Oct. 3

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons ult o

§.8. Election how

Art. Secrecy

3

Whose the influence by which the direction given to a vote is produced is the influence of understanding on understanding and that only, the person of whose wish the vote is declared to be the expression is without fail the person of whose wish it is the expression. Of /By/ the person by the influence of whose understanding the wish and thence the vote is produced it may be that no wish on the subject has ever been expressed or so much as entertained: it may be that person has been for centuries in his grave. By Locke’s book on government of how many thousands of votes must not the direction have been determined?

Under /By/ the influence of will on will not of the vote of one voter alone but of the effect of the votes of many thousands of voters has this or that man been all along been in the possession and exercise. But though of this state of things the existence is universally notorious – too compleatly so to be denied by any man how compleatly so ever divested of all sense of shame, yet no man dare directly confess it, because no man feels in himself the capacity of saying any thing which even in the most prejudiced eyes can appear to justify it. In this point of view on this point What is said of any thing /is said/ in favour of the system of suffrage consists in some vague and unintelligible phrase to which all men are called upon to give acceptance, because he by whom it is employed feels himself unable to substitute to it any precise and intelligible one.