1819 Jan. y 12

Parl. Reform Bill

Preliminary View

Evils & Remedies

Remedies

Miselection

Electors

Qualifications

3 Scholarship

10

51

Anti Reformist. Ah now – here are you running riot again. You have forgot your list

of qualifications. Are you come to the end of them?

Refromist. Not quite: there remains one more. With your leave to save words, I will

call it in one word Scholarship.

Anti-Reformist. Scholarship, quotha? and so your voters are to be all Scholars: and

none but such as are Scholars are to have votes. Well – one comfort is – that the

multitude which I confess I have always been so much afraid of will be somewhat

thinned.

Reformist. Not so much as you seem to imagine. All the scholarship I require is

contained in a man’s being able to read the bible in his mother tongue, and to trace

out in any legible manner the small number of characters of which his name is

composed.

Anti-Reformist. And of those who do not /would not otherwise/ possess it how many do

you expect and in your expectation put themselves in possession of this qualification

/it/. How many are there that would find means? how many are there that would find

motives?

Reformist. As for what regards means, the point /matter/ has been pretty well

settled already: settled by an experiment made in a scale of such extent, and under

such disadvantages, as suffices already to throw the /all/ idea of difficulty out of

the case.

Anti-Reformist. What is this you are talking of ? /have in view?/ {you are so

sanguine about? What new and curious invention have you got here?}