On the English Reform Bill

[p. 111]

|111| to offer, in that it of itself arouses the desire and the demand for a more general conferring of it. According to experience, however, the exercise of the right of voting does not show itself so attractive as to occasion powerful claims and movements arising from them. There seems rather to prevail among those entitled to vote a great indifference towards it, notwithstanding the interest of bribery bound up with it; from the numerous class of those who lose it in particular through the raising of the electoral census, or for whom it is very much weakened in that their votes are thrown into the general mass of those entitled in the county, no petitions have yet come forth against the Bill so disadvantageous to them. The objections to it have been raised, on the other hand, by those for whom the certainty or probability of obtaining a seat in Parliament is diminished or wholly lost. By an Act of Parliament a year ago, through the raising of the rent required for the right of voting in Ireland, a number of 200,000 individuals had their right of election taken from them, without their having raised a complaint about this loss of their vocation to take part in the affairs of state and government. According to all circumstances the electors see in their right a quality which benefits chiefly those who wish to be elected to Parliament, and in whose favour, for their own discretion, arbitrary will and interest, everything that lies in that right of co-governing and co-legislating is renounced. – The main business at an election, for which the candidates engage agents who are acquainted with the localities and personalities as well as with the manner of treating them, is the seeking out and bringing in of those entitled to vote, just as much as determining them in favour of their patrons, in particular by bribery; the great landowners have the crowds of their tenants, a part of whom, as remarked before, have just been travestied into momentary holders of the requisite ground rent,

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