1818 Sept. 5

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons ult o

'.2. Electors Who

Universality

Money qualifications

2

Answer 2. Because the possession of property be the amount of it great or small has no direct tendency to /immediate operation towards/ the securing of appropriate aptitude in either of the two shapes in question: to wit appropriate probity or appropriate intellectual aptitude. Money /Property/ is not itself probity: money is not itself either knowledge or sound judgement.

As to appropriate probity, under the system of virtually universal suffrage, under the system of secret and free suffrage the vast majority of the whole number of Electors find, as hath been already shewn, for their effectual possession of this endowment such a security as leaves not any demand for any other. Were they all /every/ of them} without exception which is plainly impossible in possession each of them of a degree of opulence sufficient to confer independence this security would not from this circumstance receive any augmentation. /encrease./ Taken /Considered/ separately from any extra portion of the matter of wealth that it might happen to receive any change which it could happen to his aptitude in this shape to experience would if it amounted to any thing, be on the side of diminution: for of extra opulence one /a natural/ effect is to give to a man in this or that shape a particular interest hostile to the universal interest: a prospect of being a gainer by war, by a encrease of burthens /given to the burthen/ on dependencies, by judicial opposition by judicial oppression by rule or denial of justice, by a job in this or that other of its /one or other of its various/ shapes.