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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow SECTION IV.: MEANS CONDUCIVE TO APTITUDE IN MEMBERS: I. PLACEMEN NOT TO VOTE, NOR TO BE SEATED BY ELECTION. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3

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SECTION IV.: MEANS CONDUCIVE TO APTITUDE IN MEMBERS: I. PLACEMEN NOT TO VOTE, NOR TO BE SEATED BY ELECTION. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 3.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION IV.

MEANS CONDUCIVE TO APTITUDE IN MEMBERS: I. PLACEMEN NOT TO VOTE, NOR TO BE SEATED BY ELECTION.

Question 12. The exclusion proposed to be put upon the votes of placemen,—to which of the above ends does it promise to be conducive?

Answer. To probity,—appropriate probity.

Question 13. In what way?

Answer. In this way. By keeping the right of voting out of the hands of persons possessing other situations, to which,—in the shape of money, power, reputation, and in other shapes,—advantage in large masses is attached,—together with expectation of further and further advantage, in the same and other shapes,—all liable to be taken from them, without reason assigned, and at the king’s pleasure:—persons thereby so situated, that, speaking of the generality of them, it is not in the nature of man that they should not, on all ordinary occasions, be in the habit of sacrificing, and continue disposed to sacrifice, in so far as depends upon each man’s vote, the general interest of the empire and their public duty in every shape, to the desire of preserving such advantageous situations: to that desire, and thence to the desire and necessity of conforming themselves to the will of the person or persons, be they who they may, on whom their continuance in such situations depends.

Nor should any such disposition appear wonderful, when it is considered, that even the worst king and the worst minister having, on many points, the same interest with the body of the people, it is not in the nature of man, that they should harbour any such intention, or any such wish, as that of doing, on any occasion any act, that may be in any degree productive of injury to the general interest, except in so far as it may happen to this or that particular interest of their own to be served by such act: and that,—so long as they content themselves with doing no other sort of mischief than what has been commonly done already,—they stand assured of support, not only from each other, but from the multitude of those, in whose eyes the standard of right and wrong is composed of nothing more than the practice of “great characters,” that is, of any characters whatsoever, in “high situations.”