is bill has a tendency to
increase the power and consideration of the electors, not lessen
corruptibility, I do most readily allow: so far it is desirable. This is
what it has: I will tell you now what it has not. 1st. It has no sort of
tendency to increase their integrity and public spirit, unless an
increase of power has an operation upon voters in elections, that it has
in no other situation in the world, and upon no other part of mankind.
2nd. This bill has no tendency to limit the quantity of influence in the
crown, to render its operation more difficult, or to counteract that
operation which it cannot prevent in any way whatsoever. It has its full
weight, its full range, and its uncontrolled operation on the electors
exactly as it had before. 3rd. Nor, thirdly, does it abate the interest
or inclination of ministers to apply that influence to the electors: on
the contrary, it renders it much more necessary to them, if they seek to
have a majority in Parliament, to increase the means of that influence,
and redouble their diligence, and to sharpen dexterity in the
application. The whole effect of the bill is, therefore, the removing
the application of some part of the influence from the elected to the
electors, and further to strengthen and extend a court interest already
great and powerful in boroughs: here to fix their magazines and places
of arms, and thus to make them the principal, not the secondary, theatre
of their manoeuvres for securing a determined majority in Parliament.

I believe nobody will deny that the electors are corruptible. They are
men,--it is saying nothing worse of them; many of them are but ill
informed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easily
overreached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruption
are the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible and
hypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there is
already no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blind
fury and interested faction among the electors in many parts of this
kingdom!--nor is it surprising, or at all blamable, in that class of
private men, when they see their neighbors aggrandized, and themselves
poor and virtuous without that _eclat_ or dignity which attends men in
higher situations.

But admit it were true that the great mass of the electors were too vast
an object for court influence to grasp or extend to, and that in despair
they must aban