[xxxvi. 105]

1822 June 28

Constitut. Code Rationale

Supreme Operative

Monarch absolute and

limited

1. Morals

As in their own Monarch all subjects have an enemy so have they in every other.

Monarchs it may be said are apt to go to war with each other: and when with any two Monarchs this happens to case, the subjects of each should in that Monarch who is the enemy of their Monarch, that is of their natural enemy have a friend. But in practice this is not the case. The war one Monarch carries on with another Monarch is a war of rivalry but it is not a war of enmity: every Monarch is to every other Monarch an object of respect: and where there is respect on both sides, no rooted no decided enmity can be said to have place on either side. Between Monarch and Monarch war is upon the largest scale that which between professed pugilist and professed pugilist it is upon the smallest scale. By one another they are stiled brothers; and in that on occasion they are sincere. They have a common interest: and that interest is paramount to every other interest. Many a Monarch has given up to a brother Monarch, and freely too, domains he might have kept if he had pleased. No Monarch ever gave up freely to his own subjects an atom of power which in his eyes could be retained with safety. War is a game: a game of chess /of backgammon/. Between two players at the game of war there is no more enmity than between two players at backgammon On the part /breasts/ of the players at war there is no more feeling for the men of war /of flesh and blood/, than at /during/ the game at backgammon there is on the part of the men of wood there is for one another or themselves.

While to one another all Monarchs are objects of sympathy: to all Monarchs all subjects are objects of antipathy of a sort of compound sentiment, composed /made up/ of fear, and hatred and contempt: On the part of all Monarchs there exists something like that which women and children are apt to feel for a toad. In the breasts of all Monarchs there accordingly exists at all times a natural alliance, defensive and offensive against all subjects.

As between injurers and injured, the man on whose part antipathy toward the other can soonest cease /is most apt to cease/ is he who has been injured /by whom the injury has been sustained/: the one on whose part it ceases with greatest difficulty if it ever ceases at all is he by whom the injury has been inflicted.

Betwixt every Monarch and every other there exists a powerful cause of sympathy: in no instance ever could or ever can that cause have failed to be more or less productive of effect. On the same principle /In the instance of all of them/ on one and the same principle /set of principles/ is grounded that obedience by which their power is constituted, and in proportion to which it has place disposition the effect of habit: habit the effect of force, fear, corruption, delusion: and sinister interest, interest-begotten and authority-begotten prejudice By every other throne he sees shaking, if the shock be from without he feels the shock communicated to his own.