JB_037_044_001.xml

Title: [1821. April 28. First Lines]

Description: 1821. April 28.

First Lines

Constitutional

If, at the moment in question, it be more agreeable to him to violate the oath than to keep it, he will take a distinction: all proper oaths he will assure you are sacred and inviolable, and as such ought to be fulfilled: all improper oaths are in their own nature null and void, and as such ought not to be fulfilled.

Make your way into the capital some dark night, steal into the Presidents bed chamber through one of the windows, drag him out through it and convey him into the hut or boat you have provided for the purpose, then see what you can make of him: what power you can get possession of by this exploit: what money, what arsenals, what fortresses you can get possession of: what change you can by this means make in the constitution. to Of that pest to all legitimate and regular Government. But no: whoever you are, you will do no such thing: if you are a thief, you will ransack his pockets, the man you will not meddle with, for no use whatever could you make of him. his free negro, if you could lay hold of him, might be of some use to you: for him you could convert into a slave.

Under a Monarchy, accept the invitation of the wife of the Chief Magistrate, you beget a future possessor of the throne, taking your change for keeping your head or losing it: in a Representative Democracy, accept the like invitation from the wife of a Chief Magistrate, you beget a future possessor of a farm of a Counting house; your head is not in danger: your purse is or is not, according to the circumstances.

037_043.xml

Title: [1821. April 27. First Lines]

Description: 1821. April 27.

First Lines

Constitutional

Distributive

Under a Representative Democracy, scarcely for offences of this class it has been seen can so much as a place be found. On the one hand stand offences of individuals against individuals: on the other hand, acts of hostility by enemies against enemies. Rulers being individuals - rulers and subjects at the same time, for persons reputation, property and condition in life rulers receive the same protection as subjects, and of no other protection have they or can they conceive themselves to have any need. Under a Monarchy by sudden death inflicted upon the chief of the government, changes, to the importance of which no limit can be assigned, may be produced. By an operation to the same effect upon the person of a chief Magistrate in a Representative Democracy, no such effect - scarce any such effect as would in any sinister estimate be worth producing, would ever be produced: another as good as he and no better nor of any better would there be any need would, as soon as the election had run its course, step into his place.

In a Monarchy, especially if absolute, take possession of the Chief Magistrate you take possession of an immense part if not the whole of the power which is in his hands. He signs what laws and orders you give him to sign, he utters whatever speeches you give him to utter - he takes whatever oaths you give him to take: reserving to the first moment, after he is out of your hands, the signing of repealing laws and counter orders, the utterance of counter speeches, the declaration that the former oaths were null and void, and the taking of as many counter oaths, if any, as shall oresent themselves in his eyes afford a promise of being contributory to the purpose of the moment, whatsoever that purpose be. Whatsoever engagement he have /has/ taken with this ceremony for a sanction to it. Whatever course of conduct he has given a promise to pursue, with this ceremony, or sanction to the promise, if at any moment being called upon to pursue a different course, it be more agreeable to him to persevere in the original course, he will assure you that oaths, all oaths, are things sacred and inviolable.

036_013.xml

Title: [[xxxvi. 13] 1821. April 26.]

Description: [xxxvi. 13]

1821. April 26.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance?

To support the dignity of the Crown, to add splendour to the Crown, to add lustre to the Crown, so many phrases upon the strength of which money wrung from a starving people by scarcely supportible taxation, is day by day by the creatures and dependents of the Monarch called for without measure and without shame: called for and granted accordingly, with what effect? With the effect of labouring in vain to fill overfull the ever leaky cup of his personal gratification, of giving any encreasing force or perpetual encrease to the delusion by which the seat of necessary depravity, is converted into the seat of imaginary and fabled excellence, and in making every day fresh and fresh advances towards the accomplishment of the constant object of all endeavours the conversion of a scarce disguised, into the more simple and convenient form of an undisguised, and openly avowed, despotism.

It has been seen to what inevitable necessity by the original and unchangeable nature of man, an irremovable Chief Magistrate call him Duke call him Consul, call him King, call him Emperor, cal him what you will, is an enemy to all that are subject to his rule, with the exception of those who are sharers with him in the sinister profit - and that enemy an implacable one.

What at the same time is no less manifest is that by every step by which any advance can be made towards dissolving the disastrous association by which the instruments of vice and misery are palmed upon mankind as the necessary instruments of security and universal happiness, or real service and that a most important one vice will be rendered