JB/109/069/001

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1819 May 19.

Parl Reform or Disfranchising

Edinburgh Review
Ballot
13
Objection III Secrecy
would extinguish the
love of liberty.

Lastly, If secret suffrage were to be permanently practised by
all voters, it would deprive election of all its popular qualities, and
of many of its beneficial effects. The great object of popular elections, is,
to inspire and strengthen the love of liberty. On the strength of that sentiment
freedom wholly depends, not only for its security against the
power of time and of enemies, but for its efficiency and reality while
it lasts. If we could suppose a people perfectly indifferent to political
measures, and without any disposition to take a part in public
affairs, the most perfect forms and Institutions of liberty would be among
them a dead letter. The most elaborate machinery would stand still
for want of a moving power. In proportion as a people sinks more near
to that slavish apathy, their Constitution becomes so far vain, and
their best laws important. Institutions are carried into effect by men
and men are moved to action by their feelings. A system of liberty
can be expected only by men who love liberty. With the spirit of liberty,
very unpromising forms grow into an excellent Government.
Without it, the most specious can not last, and are not worth preserving.
The Institutions of a free state are safest and most effective,
when numerous bodies of men exercise their political rights with pleasure
and pride; consequently with zeal and boldness:- when these rights
are endeared to them by tradition, and by habit, as well as by conviction
and feeling of their inestimable value. - and when the mode of
exercising privileges is such as to excite the sympathy of all who
view it, and to spread through the whole society a jealous love of popular
right, and a proneness to repel with indignation every encroachment
on it.

Popular elections contribute to these objects, partly by the character
of the majority of the Electors, and partly by the mode in
which they give their suffrage. Assemblies of the people of great
Cities, are indeed very ill qualified to exercise authority; but, without
their occasions; use, it can never be strongly curbed. Numbers are
nowhere else to be collected. On numbers alone, much of their power
depends. In numerous Meetings, every man catches animation from
the feelings of his Neighbour, and gathers courage from the strength
of a multitude. Such assemblies, and they alone, with all their defects
an errors, have the privilege of inspiring many human beings with
a perfect, however transient, disinterestedness, and rendering the most
ordinary men capable of foregoing interest+ and forgetting self + say self-regarding
interest
in the enthusiasm of zeal for a common cause. Their vices

Identifier: | JB/109/069/001"JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 109.
Date_1	1819-05-19	Marginal Summary Numbering	13-14
Box	109	Main Headings	Parliamentary Reform
Folio number	069	Info in main headings field	Parl. Reform or Disfranchising
Image	001	Titles
Category	Copy/fair copy sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	C4 / E4
Penner		Watermarks
Marginals	Jeremy Bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections	Jeremy Bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	35724
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