7 Aug 1809.

Parl. Reform

Ch. Necessity Hume

Humes concession

2

24

To bring the propositions /ideas in question each of them/ to a precise point.

To give correctness to the expressions, and perhaps to the ideas, some alteration /change/ will require to be made in some of the expressions: for David Hume, though a man of genius was seldom a close reasoner /had not the faculty of close reasoning/: a deficiency of which his general habit of scepticism was a consequence and a proof.

1. Amendment 1. After the word gift, add with the power of taking it away at pleasure. By power of reward howsoever arbitrary power of reward for example by appointment to lucrative offices neither absolute power nor any thing approaching to absolute power, unless power of punishment, for example by power of inaction[?] in relation to those same offices, be conjoined with it. Witness the Kings of Poland who had always good things to give and in plenty, but without power of taking them away: not to speak of patent places here with us.

2. Amendment the 2 d. Add more, or if any, yet not so much, but that the taking away of the quantity of property attached to the office / their respective offices/ would produce in their respective bosoms /respectively/ a sense of privation operating in the occasion in question in the

character of a motive with a force too great to experience on that same occasion from the motives acting on the other side any effectual resistance.

Without an amendment to this effect the supposition he makes would be a nugatory and useless one, not being altogether incapable of finding its exemplification any where. For in what possible state of things would /could/ the House of Commons now a days be composed any part of it of a set of men, each of whom on being dismissed from Office would feel his coat stripped off his back. Yes, if you go a few centuries back, viz. to the times when /back to the reign of Henry the 7 th, when/ under the name of liveries the retainers of the King or of a Baron wore uniforms and when the subsistence of many a brave gentleman depended on the overplus grass of a common for his cattle, or of the overplus meat in his Majesty's or his Lordship's kitchens, for the more immediate source of his sustenance.