[129b-484]

21 Feb. 1817 C

Plan Cat

2 o

Introd

§ Interests adverse

III. Course taken

19

5

III Woodfull – Fox p. 317

In the state of interests may be found /behold/ the only clue /explanation/ to a phaenomenon which otherwise might remain inexplicable. Look to the tories look to the Whigs terrorism was to both a sheet anchor: to secrecy of suffrage the only remedy against it but that a most incontestably effectual one they had /felt/ a sort of instant aversion /horror/: finding it forced upon his attention from somebody without /persons without, persons whose goodwill /with whom/ he saw a necessity of endeavouring to keep on terms of concord/ the Duke of Richmond found it […?]able to forbear the mention of it. /impracticable to pass this proposed arrangement altogether without notice./ Well – mention it /take it hand/ he does, but exactly as a man would handle /take in hand/ a burning coal just shot out of the fire /a man takes it in hand to save the carpet from the blaze/: away with it he can not bear the truth of it. Something in the guise of a reason he was forced to give – but how irrelevant how weak an one: out of the mouth of weak man a weaker surely must come. The Duke of Richmond throws it down and sets his feet upon it. Charles Fox shuts his eyes against it. What? is it for a moment to be believed that to the hand of Charles Fox to such a mind as Charles Fox’s it could ever have been absent? To Charles Fox, cousin[?] to and familiar with the Duke of Richmond the plan of the Duke of Richmond with the notice[?] taken by him in it of secrecy of suffrage and the negative put upon it the irrational the groundless and almost pretenceless negative

To the author of the rejected East India Bill could it have been out of mind that there was such a house as the East India House? could it have been out of mind – the mode in which in assemblies of Proprietors the votes are collected in that House? that that mode was Ballot, and that by that mode the professedly intended secresy was actually and constantly accomplished? that secresy, and thence that freedom of suffrage in the supposed impracticableness of which he found the only argum consideration which prevented his acceding to the principle of universal suffrage?