[129b-619]

12 March 1817

Plan Cat

2 o

Introd

§.9. Freedom of suffrage

X. Abolish bribery laws &c.

2

27

27

But seats which by the power of terrorism are vested in the hands of great landholders may for any length of time continue in the hands of persons who during that whole time been in a state of pecuniary pressure in his instance a lucrative situation may be a matter /an object/ of urgent concupiscence whether to enable him to pay interest or principal of a mortgage lying on his Estate, or to make provision for sons or other dependent relatives, of the male sex, or to buy husbands for daughters or other dependent relatives of the female sex not to speak of other dependants at large whose interest is connected with his by some tie not unless by accident as that which is constituted by genealogical relationship.

Be this as it may, no imaginable sufficient reason can be assigned why the man by whom at an open market a seat is purchased, though it were as a drove of cattle + are purchased should be more surely engaged in the habit of undue obsequiousness as towards C – r General and C o than the man by whom a seat is obtained in the way in which it is most commonly obtained when not obtained by bribery, viz. by terrorism whether it be vote-compelling or competition excluding or –subduing terrorism in farms of a landholder or his nominee

+ Quote the specter[?]