[xxxvi. 10]

1821. April 26.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance?

But as, with the power of granting, the power of refusing receives correspondent encrease, so with that love which produces gratitude will encrease that fear which produces respect: not more than in the hands of the opulent, with the negative power of refusing favour to those who have not been, and those who have ceased to be, the objects of their regard is conjoined, in no inconsiderable degree, the power of doing positive evil to those who were the objects of their positive aversion. By the operation of all these causes taken together, thus intimate is the connection between the idea presented by the word rich, and the idea presented by the word respectable. Of the effect produced by this association on conduct, discourse and, to no inconsiderable degree, on opinion and affection, an exemplification may be seen in the picture of the parasite as drawn by the earliest of the Dramatists whose works have reached us.

If such and so great as the ordinary influence and effect of this matter of wealth in hands of individuals distributed in parcels of an ordinary bulk each, what must it be accumulated in an immense mass in company with supreme power and the highest lot of factitious dignity, togeher with the manufactory in which all inferior lots are fabricated - these instruments of influence all placed in the same hand. If such be the influence /even were wealth the whole/ of wealth when reckoned by thousands, what must it not be when reckoned by millions?

As long as wealth and government have had existence, the powers of poetry and oratory have been employed in singing the praises of the powerful, the dignified and the wealthy. While the effusions of praise have thus had free scope with reward in every shape to pay for them, those of censure have all along and every where been suppressed by every restraint which it was in the power of punishment to apply.