[129b-603]

6 July 1815

{Parl. Reform} Plan Cat {or Influence or Necessity}

Introd

§ Absentation

Abdication

21

21

Attendance – Original Contract, Political power or Trust

Non-Attendance on the part of the great Majority of the Members.

According to the principles recognized and enforced by English Lawyers – as constantly and universally as any of their principles – as any constitutional principle which it would be in the power of any of them to name – misconduct in this single shape would be sufficient to prove the whole frame of government as carried on at present, and perhaps ever since the Restoration, an usurpation, and every act done by and under it a void act.

Taken by itself No such extravagant proposition is here meant to be maintained: constructive forfeiture, nullity – all the use made of either of these words is irreconciliable if any thing be irreconciliable with the plainest /fundamental/ and most incontestable principle of utility and rational justice.

All that is /on this occasion is/ meant to be maintained is –

1. That any order of things of which an habitual state of non-attendance on the part of the majority of the Members has been, and can not but continue to be the result, is incompatible with good government, and with those principles on which the elogiums so lavishly bestowed on the excellence of the system of government carried on upon the footing on which it stands at present is grounded.