1819 Jan y 16

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

II Remedies

Miselection

Election

Qualification

3 Scholarship

12

Anti-Reformist. Well – to be sure /Doubtless/, Scholarship – I mean in the same

degree of it which you have in view is a very /mighty/ good thing: it is what on all

sides of the question we are all so anxious to give the utmost possible extension to.

But are you aware how you are thus departing from your principles thus adding

exclusion to exclusion? Is there no inconsistency in thus shutting the door not only

against so many Non-Adults to whom it might have been left /thrown/ open, but even to

Adults in countless numbers? Among your professed[?] principles has been that of

excluding as far as possible, all sensible evil – if not all discontent, that being

impossible, all discontent founded on just cause. Will not discontent and according

to you just /well grounded/ discontent be let in, by shutting out Adults, and in such

vast /incalculable/ numbers.

Reformist. No inconsistency – no well-grounded discontent – if I do not greatly

miscalculate, if I do not greatly deceive myself in misjudgement of the men I have to

deal with, no discontent well or ill grounded. Consider how plain[?] it can not but

be to every one of these, how sincerely not only the general good /benefit/ but his

own individual benefit is aimed at by the condition thus imposed: how surely and

compleatly it will be in his power to fulfill it, and with no more trouble than so

many thousands have already submitted to take upon themselves, and without any such

then unthought of reward as is now for the first time offered to his hands:

Long