22 Aug 1809

Parl y Reform

Corruption

3. Electors

9

A trustee then is the character in which not only in the present state of things but in every state of things it would be proper that every /each/ parliamentary Elector should be considered: the electors each of them as a trustee for the others and for the whole community at large; the members each of them as a trustee in the first place for his electors, but beyond them /that/ also for the community at large: and that /this/ with only this difference, viz. that whereas, as to /towards/ the electors, the Members are /each Member is/ in virtue of the right and faculty which the /his/ Electors have on any ulterior occasion to re-elect or to forbear to re-elect them in that effective /efficient/ sense responsible, on the other hand with reference to the great body of the people the electors themselves are in no such determinate and efficient sense responsible : members, responsible in the political as well as moral sense of the word responsibility: electors responsible in the moral sense only.

But if such be the moral responsibility of the elector, who having /possessing/ one vote out of say four thousand accepts in return for that one vote that pecuniary recompense which /recompense /return/ in a pecuniary shape that/ is called a bribe, what shall we say to that /the moral responsibility/ of the Peer or richly endowed commoner who having by one means or other by the course of his single influence the faculty of placing in the House of Commons to the number say of ten Members (for greater numbers than this have been exemplified) places for the sake of some feather or feathers in his cap all these ten component /elementary/ parts of the sovereign body /power/ in a state of dependence on the Minister? If, responsibility of the political or say legal head being in both cases added (suppose) to the moral - if in this case a week's imprisonment would be competent to the offence committed by this possessor of a forty thousandth part of the power so possessed by the peer, would the whole life of the peer afford days enough in it for his punishment in this same shape?

[marginal insertion:] say for example to take a sum which has been said to have been exemplified to wit at Norwich half a guinea