JB_036_027_001.xml

Title: [1821. April 25. First Lines.]

Description: 1821. April 25.

First Lines.

Constitutional

Finance

(5.)

Look, for example, to the situation of the Monarch.

In the procuring to him, for example, that sort of qualification which

is afforded by quick motion, together with prompt conveyance

at all times to the several different places at which a promise

is afforded of successive gratification to his several other appetites,

horses, in vest multitudes, each in respect of its capacity of affording

gratification to those by whom it is used and abused, brought, by a

long and expensive course of trainers, to the most exquisite degree of

perception possible — the labour of men in correspondent multitudes

having been exclusively consecrated to this one purpose a proportionable

quantity of money has necessarily been employed. But

for an establishment of this kind, goes

management, so far as regards aptitude for the service, is really

desired. In the hands of an individual, and not in those of a

Board is thus branch of the public service accordingly lodged. For

were it in the hands of a Board, each member, in reality

as well as in name and pretence bearing a his part in the business,

what is sufficiently understood is that there never would

be a horse fit for service: each member would appoint to the management

of one of the sacred horses some dependent of his who

had never had any thing to do with horses. Constituting a necessary

exception to the general rule this branch of the public service

therefore of necessity have found itself in individual hands. For

the performing in the best possible manner this important service,

were this the whole of the service thought fit to be required at

the hands of the individual, an extremely moderate annual

salary, not more than ten or twenty times the expenditure of

an individual whose severe and bodily labour is employed in the production of

these four-footed and preeminently favoured subjects of a monarchy, would be sufficient.

But

036_028.xml

Title: [[xxxvi. 28] 1821. April 25.]

Description: [xxxvi. 28]

1821. April 25.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance

But, in this instance /good/, another of good economy, in an additional shape, is found practicable and profitable. Inastead of no more than ten or twenty times the salary necessary for the maintenance of an individual of the productively labouring class, let two hundred or though it were but a hundred times that amount be allotted, individuals might, in the very highest rank, next to that of the Royal Family, be found - individuals in multitudes who, being in a state of constant appetancy for such a place and thence in a state of constant competition with each other, will thereby be placed in a state of equally constant and proportionably abject corrupt obsequiousness with relation to the corruptive influence exercised with or without his caring or thinking any thing about the matter by the Royal Proprietor of these consecrated quadrupeds. So many as there are of these competitors, so many men are there where votes, and, in so far as they have a faculty of speech, their speeches, are in readiness to do whatsoever is in their power to contribute /contribute/, to the fulfilment of the will, and the gratification of the corespondent appetite, of him whom it is their ambition to be entitled to denominate /designate/ by the appellation of their Royal Master. Thus much in that House which is stiled Right Honourable; but in some if not all these instances, what will have place moreover is that, to these several superlatively, although it be but psitively noble persons, may appertain, through the medium of this or that borough, or of this or that county, a seat or seats, to the number of from two to ten in that other House, so inferior in dignity, so superior in power, which, in style and title, is no more than simply honourable. And thus it is that, so far as regards that portion of salary which would have been found necessary for that manager of horses who could undertake for the management of horses but for nothing else, one and the same quantity of the matter of wealth thus employed in political waste, is employed, without addition, in two of the three purposes at once: viz. gratification to Royal appetite, and securing a corrupt obsequiousness by means of corruptive influence.

As

036_029.xml

Title: [[xxxvi. 29] 1821. April 25.]

Description: [xxxvi. 29]

1821. April 25.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance.

Gratification to Monarch's pride.

Master of the Horse knows nothing about Horses but employs those who do.

As to the remainder of the most noble servant's salary, the good economy with which it is employed is not manifests itself in a different shape.

Of the appetite to which, in the case of the Monarch, gratification is sought to be afforded, one, nor that the least voracious, is - that appetite for /or/ desire of esteem, respect, love, or at least the exterior evidences, true or false, of the existence of those inward sentiments - those accompaniments and securities for general obsequiousness - that desire which, notwithstanding the complicatedness of its object, is in one word commonly designated by the appellation of pride. Proportioned to the depth to which the humiliation of the individual at whose expense this gratification is afforded descends, is the intensity of the humiliation. But, proportioned to the antecedent elevation of this individual in the scale of dignity, natural or factitious or both together is the relative depth of the humiliation to which, on any given occasion, for any particular purpose, he is capable of lowering himself. By the holding the bridle of a favourite horse while the Royal Master is in the act of munting - by this or any other act done /performed/ in the execution of his office, the utmost length of the descent capable of being made by the man the magnitude of whose salary was determined by no higher mark of value than that which corresponded to the skill possessed and exercised by him in the field of this particular office and profession, would /could/ not at the utmost be any greater than that which corresponds to the difference between the salary /pay/ of this official functionary and the pay of an ordinary groom: say a quantity of a pay equal to ten times the amount of the pay of the groom, and the quantity of pay exactly equal to the amount of that lowest pay. But the amount of the salary /pay/ which, in consideration of the exalted station occupied by the titled and most noble though unskilled attendant upon horses, is ten times the amount of the salary /pay/ which it would be convenient and advisable to give /good management /economy/ would require to be given/ to the untitled but well-skilled functionary, and thereby a hundred times the amount of that which good economy would require to be given to the untitled and unskilled attendant.