[131a-009]

1818 March 22 +

Parl Reform Answer to Antiballot Observations

2 o

8

8

Now as to the moral evils:- in any[?] view of the matter they will not be far to seek.

1. In the first place, if there be any such thing as an evil, the exercise of tyranny – the exercise of power to a bad end – is an evil: and, where the power is all-comprehensive, it is the sum and substance of all evils, not political only but moral likewise

2. In the next place, comes the opposite but correspondent and necessarily concomitant evil, the evil of servility: the exercise of obsequiousness to a bad end.

3. In the third place comes the falshood, the imposture. As often as, on this occasion, and in this way, a man gives[?] as and for his own wish, that which in truth is not his own wish but the wish of another man; – a wish, which, though contrary to his own, he gives as and for his own, – an act of imposture is committed. The Election- tyrant commands the imposture: the Election slave obeys and executes it.

The first mentioned and chief of the effects imputed by the antiballotists, in the character of moral evils, to the secret mode, is insincerity. But if on the part of the Election slave, as above defined, insincerity has not place, I must confess myself at a loss where else to look for it.

The antiballotists whose moral sense is so much hurt by the insincerity which in their view would be produced by any law made for relief against Election tyranny, how comes it that they are so insensible to the insincerity which can not but be produced by the Election tyranny, in every instance in which it operates with its effect?

As to the tyranny, unquestionably it has its limits: in respect of the suffering produced by it, it is not to be put in comparison with any such tyranny, to the exercise of which the tyrant causes innocent men to expire in torture. But to the extent of it, and as far as it goes, the one of these two modes of exercising power is with no less propriety termed tyranny than the other. And so as to the slavery.