success of this proposal.1 The friends of Universal or of Limited Suffrage, of Annual or Triennial Parliaments, ought to settle these subjects on which they disagree, when it is known whether the nation desires that measure on which they are all agreed. It is trivial to discuss what species of Reform shall have place, when it yet remains a question whether there will be any Reform or no. Meanwhile, nothing remains for me but' to state explicitly my sentiments on this subject of Reform. The statement is indeed quite foreign to the merits of the Proposal in itself, and I should have suppressed it until called upon to subscribe such a requisition as I have suggested, if the question which it is natural to ask, as to what are the sentiments of the person who originates the scheme, could have received in any other manner a more simple and direct reply. It appears to me that Annual Parliaments ought to be adopted as an immediate measure, as one which strongly tends to preserve the liberty and happiness of the nation; it would enable men to cultivate those energies on which the performance of the political duties belonging to the citizen of a free state as the rightful guardian of its prosperity, essentially de Here follow in the MS. two rejected beginnings, namely (1) The advocates of annual Parlia ments and Universal Suffrage... (2) It requires some sacrifice of the selfish the envious... 2 Cancelled MS. reading, certain that for known whether. 3 This was to have read wills any Reform; but any Re was cancelled before the second word was completed; and the MS. reads wills that measure, &c. The word desires must have been substituted when the proof was revised. * Cancelled readings,-it will be asked w [hether], and I am bound. 5 This passage, from The statement to direct reply, does not occur in the MS., where, at this point, there are two rejected openings, I am and Annual Parliaments appear 6 In the MS. the original reading was, by enabling men to cultivate energies which have. This is struck out and a new sentence begun, It would, &c. pends; it would familiarize men with liberty by disciplining them to an habitual acquaintance with its forms. 'Political institution is undoubtedly susceptible of such improvements as no rational person can consider possible, so long as the present degraded condition to which the vital imperfections in the existing system of government has reduced the vast multitude of men, shall subsist. The securest method of arriving at such beneficial innovations, is to proceed gradually and with caution; or in the place of that order and freedom which the Friends of Reform assert' to be violated now, anarchy and despotism will follow. Annual Parliaments have my entire assent. I will not state those general reasonings in their favour, which Mr. Cobbett and other writers have already made familiar to the public mind." With respect to Universal Suffrage, I confess I consider its adoption, in the present unprepared state of public knowledge and feeling, a measure fraught with peril. I think that none but those who register their names as paying a certain small sum in direct taxes ought, at present, to sends Members to Parliament. The conse quences of the immediate extension of the elective franchise to every male adult, would be to place power" in the hands of men who have been rendered brutal and torpid and ferocious by ages of slavery. It is to suppose I Cancelled MS. opening, It would render innovations. The word as is here cancelled in the MS. 3 In the MS. we read here in the present degraded condition, &c.; and the sentence closes at men. Shelley began to write complain here but substituted assert before he had finished the word. 5 Cancelled reading, which Mr. Cobbett has placed already beyond the reach... 6 The words cannot but are here struck out. 7 Cancelled reading, those who pay. 8 Cancelled reading in the MS., to poss [ess?]. ness. Cancelled reading, the happi 96 A PROPOSAL FOR PUTTING REFORM TO THE VOTE. that the qualities belonging to a demagogue are such as are sufficient to endow a legislator. I allow Major Cartwright's arguments to be unanswerable; abstractedly it is the right of every human being to have a share in the government. But Mr. Paine's arguments are also unanswerable; a pure republic may be shewn, by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine eminence of man. Yet, nothing can less consist with reason, or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue, than the plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical branches of our constitution, before the public mind, through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived at the maturity which can disregard these symbols of its childhood." [The time at which the second Marlow pamphlet was written is ascertainable within a very few days. The Princess Charlotte died at 2.30 A.M. on the 6th of November, 1817: on the following day the executions which so roused Shelley took place. On the 12th Shelley wrote from Mabledon Place (Hunt's residence) an unpublished letter to Mr. Ollier, enclosing what he had "written of a pamphlet on the subject of our conversation of the other evening", -to be "sent to press without an hour's delay"; and he promised to send the rest of the MS. "before evening." He added "the subject tho' treated boldly is treated delicately." The reference is clearly to the Address, of which the title-page is given opposite as far as we know what it originally was. I am not aware of a copy of the original issue being extant; but there is an early reprint bearing at the back of the title the words Reprinted for Thomas Rodd, 2, Great Newport Street. From this reprint the pamphlet is here given. It is an 8vo. tract of two half-sheets "stabbed" together: it consists of titlepage and pages 3 to 16 of text, in eleven numbered paragraphs as here given. It is printed in large type set closely, without head-lines, and having the pages numbered centrally. It would be rash to assume the reprint to be a fac simile of the original; but it has too much character, almost, to be a bad representation of it.-H. B. F.] |