JB/137/443/001

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1820 Apr. 7
Radicalism not dangerous

+ III Experience II Ireland
(1) 1 § Reforms indispensable

☞ 11 Apr. 1820. This scarcely belongs to Ireland.
Circumstances on which the possibility of reform depends.

1
Would it have been
better had Convention
stood up against Parliament?
Scarcely an
answer, other than
hypothetical be given

The result of the conflict between the real repres and
the nominal representatives of the Irish people the termination
of democratic ascendency, the restoration of Monarchico-
aristocratical ascendency — with which of two opposite emotions
will it be viewed by an enlightened lover of mankind?
The answer, if a considerate one can scarcely be
a categorical one — can scarcely be other than an hypothetical
one, depending on suppositions the reasonableness
of which must ever remain problematical and indeterminate.

2
Had the aristocrat
leaders been as pretended
the friends of the people
they would have supported
people's cause with effect
Convention would have
been authoritative. Behaviour
continued obsequious

Had the members of the Aristocracy under the whose command
or direction the great body of the Associates had placed
themselves, had they been at least what they professed to be the real friends
of the people by whom they had been chosen, they would then
have supported in the two Houses the cause of the people, and
would have supported it with effect. Instead of the Convention
it is by the Parliament that the part of obsequiousness
and concession would have been continued acted. |

3
Sole intelligible use
and meaning of the Bill
of Rights clause acknowledging
the right of having
arms for self-defence,
do for natural self-defence,
do for eventual self-defence
against government. By real
friends of the people their
having been 5 years in
possession and enjoyment
of that right, would not
have been alledged as to
sufficient reason for the
abrogation of it

That the people at
large were in that defensible-fancible state possession of that physical faculty of self-defence in which it was the
object of the Bill of Rights which by one
of its article the Bill of Rights if it meant any thing meant
to secure to them by legal declaration and enactment — that
that the great body of the people were in this condition
would not at the end of five years of enjoyment been
made taken for a subject of condemnation than down to that very
moment it had been during the whole course of that same
period. The pr In the eyes of the professed guardians of the
people's rights, there the fact of the people's being actually in the
possession and encrease of that right without which all others are
no no better than nugatory and unavailing, would not have been held up to view
as
as a sufficient reason
for the abrogation of it

Identifier: | JB/137/443/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 137.
Date_1	1820-04-07	Marginal Summary Numbering	1-3
Box	137	Main Headings	radicalism not dangerous
Folio number	443	Info in main headings field	radicalism not dangerous
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	c1 / e1
Penner	jeremy bentham	Watermarks
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	47160
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