8 Oct r 1809

Parl y Reform

1 Necessity

Ch. Occasional inadequate

§.1. Changes how produced

2

2

Intervention better than nothing at all. Blackst. IV. C.11. p.147

Interventions[?] were constantly recurring[?]: then[?] not.

The sort of faculty which in this respect they possess is certainly better than none

at all: since on the part of the body any the least facility for giving expression to

the sentiments of the people is better than none at all. But that, in the character

of a security /preservative/ against misrule or so much as in the character of a

security against arbitrary power, this faculty of occasional interposition is far

from being /approaching to the nature of/ an equivalent to a regularly-recurring

interposition on the part of the same authority, will /is a proposition /are truths/

that will I trust/ be the more clearly perceptible the more closely the subject is

considered.

It is nothing like a sufficient /altogether insufficient and inefficient in the

character of a/ security against habitual misrule /it will be seen to be altogether

insufficient and even inefficient/: and being so, it would not be enough, though it

were sufficient in the character of a security against a /the/ compleat overthrow of

the constitution by arbitrary power: which it will also be seen not to be.

Three or four times in a century this /such/ interposition or the apprehension of it

may have the effect of producing a change in administration: which change may be for

the better or the worse.

But for the sake of clear conceptions let us admitt /it be admitted/ that a change

of this sort will by this cause be produced ten times in the course of a century:

upon an average once in every ten years: and that upon each occasion an

administration which though, as proved by its continuance in office, acceptable to

the King, will have been justly odious /odious, and justly so/ to the people, will

have given place to another administration either popular or less unpopular.