At top of sheet, Bentham has noted: ‘Satyrist 1 June 1810. N o 33 p. 570.

‘1. Broughham’s knowledge of the House – his opinion of it. Like L. James[?] Brookes[?] obliged to assume the appearance of frivolity that he might not frighten his Judges or like the professed wit called fool obliged to put on the Cap & Bells.’

‘Looking at the House of Commons with these views’ (says a writer on the subject of parliamentary reform) ‘my object would be to find out its chief defects, and to attempt the remedy of these, one by one. To propose no system, no great project, nothing which pretended even to the name of a plan, but to introduce in a temperate and conciliating manner .... one or two separate Bills....’ c

c

This was Brougham: the time about June 1810. Reference is made to the Government periodical called the Satyrist, (by Manners), June 1810. N o 33. p. 570. But that wretched performance is now pretty well forgotten.

Quere whether to insert this here, or under Graduality-preacher's fallacy?

In this strain were they proposed to be addressed, these men, A o 1810. by M r Brougham in this same strain were they addressed A o 1819 by Sir James Mackintosh, in moving for a Committee on the penal laws. To give a man any chance of doing any thing with them in this same way they have ever been addressed, and must ever be addressed, till by radical reform (for it can not be by any thing less) the House shall have been purged of a class of men of whom the most compleat inaptitude in respect of every element of appropriate aptitude, is an effectual characteristic. In the scale of appropriate probity, in the scale of appropriate intellectual aptitude, to find their level a man must descend below that of the very dregs of the people. Oh what a portrait is here drawn of them, and by so experienced a hand! How cutting, yet how unquestionably just, the perhaps-unintended perhaps intended satyre! To avoid awakening the real terrors of some, the sham-terrors of others, all consistency all comprehensive acquaintance with the field of action must be abjured. When with idolatry in all shapes shall have become extinct, and the word wise-ancestors no longer an instrument of deception but a bye-word, with what scorn will not ancestors such as these be looked back upon by their posterity!