[129b-419]

13 Feb. 1817

Plan Cat

{2 o} 1 o

Introd

§. Moderate Reform

Interests adverse

II. Uselessness

6

{Dependence on the people, independence as against the Corruptor General – on the part of Representatives – in these qualities together with efficient /effected/ obligation to constancy of attendance consists in so far as regards the representatives themselves the essence of Parliamentary reform To all these does radical reform direct itself: to none of them that system which likes /likewise/ calls itself reform, and to which for distinction sake the epithet moderate is attached.}

{Two species of good – two and no more than two – would /could/ the sharpest eye {be able to} discern, viz. the recognition of the necessity of reform, and the setting up the precedent of a change. Considering it in that universe[?] a scheme of moderate reform set up, were it ever so sufficient I should be tempted to give my vote for it, if I had one}

{But unless it were the system of arrangements by which the expence of Election would be reduced, and (if this be now to be considered as belonging to the moderate system) extending to taxpaying Housholders though it be in the Town Electoral Districts alone […?] the right of suffrage difficult would it be to find in moderate reform any […?] that were not pregnant with positive mischief, and that in a deferential shape, while nothing could be more indeterminate or uncertain than the good which in such kinds might /could/ be hoped for from the mere precedent of change.}

1 Encrease of the number of Country Seats what would it be but encrease of terrorism? 2. Division of County Electoral districts into lesser Electoral districts what again would that be but encrease of terrorism? 3. Extension of Electoral Districts from the dimension of a Borough town to that of a Hundred, in a County what would it be but encrease given to a mixture comprised[?] of terrorism and bribery? 4. Purchase proprietary seats and pocket-borough seats what it would be but loading the country with determinate mischief in the shape of addition to taxes, and without any assurance of determinate good in any shape. For when seats were taken out of this one bad shape what could be done with them but the putting them into one or other of those two other bad shapes?

[marginal insertion:] and those such only as according to those schemes in question would be new ones