1819 June 19

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 7. Whigs AntiReformists

§ 2. Pos. I. Desire impossible

Number of self-sacrifices?

6

3

But then this number 204 is it to /can it with truth/ be looked upon as the number of the seats in the instance /case/ of which a reform giving the faculty of filling them to the people at large would not be /have been/ regarded by the existing occupants as an arrangement having /the/ for its probable effect the depriving them of those seats? No: out of the 204 persons so circumstanced perhaps not a third perhaps not a fourth, perhaps not a fifth would in the event of such a charge regarded themselves as not in the way in question prejudiced /made sufferers/ by it. For in this number are included all those which though in the list in question are not spoken of as being filled by influence were not in fact /truth/ no less filled by influence; to wit partly by money employed in trucking[?] and fetching up distant voters, and thence by competition-excluding terrorism, partly by intimidation of voters, and thence by vote-compelling terrorism. In those case was all the County seats but the /17/ very few to wit 17, mentioned in that text: in that all but the 61 borough seats mentioned in M r Oldfields work as being open to competition in respect of the largeness of the numbers of the voters, which numbers he accordingly gives: and among these there are those (Barnstaple for example) which have since been proved to be seats of close boroughs, closed against candidates at large and opened only to purchasing Candidates by the golden key of bribery.

It is in this state of things that for the purpose /in the view/ of persuading us to believe on the part of Your Lordship the wish and at the same time the expectation of reconciling /of seeing reconciled/ to the idea of an efficient change a number of proprietors and occupiers of seats sufficient to produce it /for the production/, gives it to them as Your Lordships conviction p. 28 that a “very considerable extension of the system of representation would produce less change in the returns of Members than is generally imagined.” But by the sort of comfort thus administered so much as a single convert to reform in any efficient shape will ever be made or was ever expected to be made, is more than if I strained ever so, it would be in my power to make myself believe. ‡