1818 Sept. 5

Parl. Reform Bill

Reasons ult o

'.2. Electors Who

Universality

Money Qualification

Reading

3

If {in any way at all opulence has any tendency towards securing,} /As to appropriate aptitude in the intellectual shape, if/ under the system of virtually universal and free suffrage, opulence has in any property to any amount, great or small, has any tendency at all towards securing it in this shape, it is only in so far as it has a tendency to cause a man to be endowed with the faculty of reading. He therefore whose desire it is that by the Electors in question by the persons in question considered in the character of Electors appropriate aptitude in this shape should to the greatest possible extent possible be possessed - it is the faculty /possession/ of reading that he will wish to see established in the character of a necessary qualification for the exercise of the right in question, not the possession of property to this or that amount.

Answer 3. The fact of a man's possessing at any given time the faculty of reading is one simple fact, one and at the same at all times, not susceptible of degrees. As to affluence it is susceptible of an infinity of degrees: and at no one degree /part of the scale/ to the exclusion of any other can any point ever be found at which it is proper to draw the line.

Answer 4. Possessed at one time, the faculty of reading is possessed at all times. If property be the qualification, today the man has property, and it is at or above the mark: tomorrow it may be below the mark, or it may the whole of it have vanished.