[129b-457]

25 April 1817

Plan Cat

Conclud g Note

Introd

§.18

3

I speak of the practice: /exercise:/ for as to the use of it – that is gone already. For any use they can now be of Petitions may as well be sent to Kamchatka or Botany Bay as to Honourable House. By Petitions the people of every part of the country might and /could and did/ without danger converse with every other: now all that converse is at an end.

From the Chair but t’other day a proposal of measure of economy – a grand measure of economy having for its subject the Voter, the excessive and useless voluminousness of which had become evident /manifest/ to every Honourable eye. Proposition acceded to force and from both sides of the House. Of this measure of economy what was the object let any one say that please. Behold here one of the effects. Of Petitions for reform in any shape the existence mentioned: of the lines of the purport not a syllable. Till now Petitions for reform had if received been printed at length: and at so reasonable a price as that of preserving the forms of respect & Petition for any purpose might have been made receivable. Now if to the people in the character of Petitioners what were the minds of the state of which through such a channel any useful intelligence /information/ could be obtained The mind of Honourable House: no: what that has been is and will be is abundantly known without the being declared but the minds of one another. Through that channel though still as it were in a whisper they could thus communicate one with another without much danger from the Habeas Corpus suspension, and without any danger at all from libel-law