 With Mill’s encouragement, Bentham returned to his earlier manuscripts on political reform and refined and significantly expanded his critique to encompass the forms of “influence” at work in British political institutions. The drafts he wrote in 1809–10 provided the outlines for his first public statement in support of representative democracy in Plan of Parliamentary Reform in the Form of a Catechism with Reasons for Each Article (1817). Based on the arithmetic of interests, aimed at limiting the sinister interests of those in positions of power while promoting the interests of those without power, Bentham advocated a comprehensive set of reforms. These included: the elimination of royal patronage, a substantial extension of the franchise, annual elections by secret ballot, the election of intellectually qualified and independent members of parliament with a system of fines to ensure regular attendance, and the accurate and regular publication of parliamentary debates. Without these reforms Bentham believed Britain risked revolution. From this point on, he became widely recognised as the foremost philosophical voice of political radicalism.