1819 Jan. 6

Parl. Reform Bill

Dialogue

Preliminary View

Electors

Qualification

3

32

27

Reformist continued. Well there as to the avoiding the giving the {people}

uneasiness. You will find, I am apt /inclined/ to think, these opiates

/qualifications/ of yours will not be found very well adapted to the purpose.

Anti-Reformist. How so.

Reformist. Because, if I do not much mistake by the same opiate by which one set of

men would be soothed, another set would be irritated by which /whereby/ uneasiness

would /might/ be lessened in sense in one set of men it would be created in another.

Another thing is that I fear I am surer of the production of the uneasiness in the

one case than of the diminution of it in the other: and moreover that in those who

will be exasperated will be more in number than those who are soothed. that the

exasperation will find more to partake in it /partakers/ than the soothing will.

Anti-Reformist. Well, come, let us see how the matter stands

Reformist. I am ready. First then as to proprietorship. Make proprietorship a

necessary qualification be it in quality shape and quantity what it may you put an

exclusion upon all non proprietors.

In quality and quantity make /be/ your qualification what it may from no human

breast is uneasiness removed, and it is excited in every breast that feels[?] itself

excluded it is excited.

See then the dilemma you are in. You more you leave unexcluded, the greater the

unrelieved unmitigated uneasiness you leave to the antireformist and the moderate

reformist exclusionist. The more you exclude the greater the uneasiness you produce

in the breasts of the universal-suffrage men /radical reformist/; the greater the

uneasiness, and the grater the number of the breasts that share in it. /feel it./ in

which it is felt.