1818 Oct. 28

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons

'.2. Electors Who

Universality

III Females

7

2

Against all /the/ claim of females to the exercise of monarchical power how many and how strong the reasons none of which have any application to the exercise of this remote and almost imperceptible fraction!

What a contrast between the vigour belonging to the public and political and the weakness belonging /inherent/ in the private and sexual character!

Whatever be her condition in respect of marriage - maiden wife or widow how prodigious a surface does not a female monarch present to the shafts of ridicule.

1. If a virgin, strong as so that character the /her/ chaste bashfulness of her Majesty her aversion will of course be to a connection with the other sex, by most powerful her own predominant her ever predominant affection - her love for her dear subjects /people/ she will be forced to overcome it. The important choice by whom then shall it be made? By her Privy Council? by her Cabinet Council? by any one but herself? If so, in respect of this most important of all choices /functions/ she would be inferior in felicity and power /in power and means of felicity be inferior/ to the meanest of her subjects. Well then by her own royal self must the choice be made? Now then sounds the trumpet of invitation[?] all over Europe. Her Majesty is in want of a husband. /Wanted by and for her Majesty, a male partner to her bed./ Not to speak of subject for little less unnatural than union with another species would be confusion of monarchical with subject blood. Not to speak of subjects in flock a crowd /an army/ of wooers from all the /every/ Courts in Europe. The ceremony of the handkerchief is now reversed: male the head at which the implement is tossed: female and maiden the hand by which it is tossed.

[Marginal note:] The counterpart of Mahometanism is acted by Christianity.