2 June 1819

Disfranchising

§.5. Evil 4 Multiplying Country Members

6

§.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members.

49.

With relation to every other each man has a common and an opposite interest. In

virtue of his opposition but for the various sanctions he would be an oppressor. In

proportion as they and particularly the legal, and in that the Constitutional are

good and strong he is withheld from being so: in proper time as they are had on weak,

left unrestrained or helped. In U.S. Constitutional Law is good and strong:

oppression unknown: Anglice[?] d o. weak and rotten: oppressed by

Monarch and Aristocracy triumphant and unchecked.

50.

Between Country Gentlemen and others, there is probity: now as to intellectual

aptitude and active talent.

51.

In the Country Gentleman see probable cause of either quality in any degree. By no

deficiency in either need Lord be prevented from putting a ten of his in a seat.

52.

In no such weak state can the mind of the mercantile man be: in him activity is kept

up by personal stronger and steadier than any public interest His is a habit of

activity with a fund of practical knowledge acquired by experience and observation.

Knowledge, judgment and activity compose a Capital transferable from one business to

another.

53.

Anti Reformist. Would you exclude Country Gentlemen?

54.

Reformist No more than you. My wish is that 1. As to

probity, finding themselves unable to sacrifice universal to peculiar personal

interest, they sh d. confine their aim to the advancement of their

share in the universal interest: as to intellectual that the rich father excluded

from his competition by intellectual inaptitude may by appropriate education stock

with the requisite matter the vanities in his son’s mind.

55.

The worst I wish is in that class which in virtue of its property would if possessed

of adequate appropriate aptitude would by the influence of understanding without d o. of will secure its present share of power to substitute to

individuals possessing it in every shape.

56.

(General rules have exceptions. Here whoever chooses to make himself an exception, is

so.) –