ABSTRACT
In 1821 he published a Statement on the question of parliamentary reform which argued against a theory of class-representation advocated by Sir James Mackintosh in the Edinburgh Review. The Essentials of Parliamentary Reform was published in 1831 at the request of James Mill. The sense put upon these words, indeed, is neither uniform nor well-defined: but all the fluctuations in their meaning appear reducible to two leading distinctions, which I propose successively to examine. A representative system including one million of voters, properly distributed and protected, would be that "almost all" in Parliamentary Reform which a distinguished orator unworthily predicated of the proposal to admit members from three or four great towns. Secrecy is good or bad according as it conduces to a good or a bad end: and in the case of voting, it may be proved to be essential to the most beneficent of all ends.
