30 July 1810

Parl. Reform Plan

Ch. Course to be taken

'.4. Means of conversion

3

Let them think moreover of Pistol. I mean the person - so called - the Antient - the Sure[?]. I mean not the thing, the engine. As with daggers, so let it be with pistols - whatsoever it happens to them /men/ to speak, {let them use none.} /no such things let them use./

In this field they may behold a parable: - another parable. Through compulsion he would not eat the leek: but fists were shewn to him and he eat it. The Antient (the Ensign we should call him now adays) was a metaphysician /logician/: he had two masters; Pride and Fear: and, notwithstanding the impossibility, the two Masters coming to terms, he served at the same time, he took his lesson at the same time from, these two masters. He eat the leek because after some argument he liked it: and when did he like it? /was it that he liked it?/ - It was after his seeing the Welchman's clenched fists and not before. Not that the fists, or the sight of them were the causes of his eating it: it was his liking to it that was the cause of his eating it: as to the fists, if any were the cause of any thing, they were the causes of his liking it. The liking of it, let it be admitted, came not till after the sight of the fists - no matter: - it was post hoc only, not propter hoc, that the eating came.

If hands /fists/ be shewn let them, at any rate in the first instance, be open and not clenched. If Locke's be the principle employed let it rather be not the Antient's instrument but the old woman's instrument: that instrument which was found so handy /efficient/ when employed in applying the application of Locke's principle to the breast of the unjust Judge.