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 over-reached, 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
neighbours aggrandised, and themselves poor and virtuous, without
that eclat or dignity which attends men in higher stations.