114-018v.xml

Title: [[114-018v] 1821. June 19. Codification]

Description: [114-018v]

1821. June 19.

Codification Offer

8 Foreigner why[?]

'.3.II Intellectual aptitude[?]

I Judgment /2. Knowledge/

Thus stands the matter in respect of appropriate knowledge and active talent. In respect of appropriate judgment, the advantages will be seen to lie on the side of the foreigner as such. Error in judgment has for its causes prejudice and original mental weakness. Prejudice is erroneous prepossession. According to the nature of its cause, erroneous prejudice is interest-begotten, authority-begotten, or habit-begotten prejudice. The native will have his prejudices, the foreigner will have his. But the native draughtsman will find in the first place those to whom his draught goes for acceptance, in the next place, those over whom, if adopted, it will legislate, and whose portion of felicity or infelicity will, if it be adopted, be determined by it, imbued with, and more or less misled by, the same prejudices: whereas, whatsoever may happen to be the prejudices of the foreigner, they will not, on the part of those to whom it belongs to make what use it is their pleasure to make of his draught, be partakers with him in any of those prejudices of his, by which his case differs from theirs: in their minds he will find arrayed against his own peculiar prejudices not only such adverse prejudices as belong to their situation, but those apposite reasons, which, in so far as the nature of the case furnishes them, they will be set in search of, by the antipathy which, in their minds, in a greater or less degree his prejudices will, by collision with theirs, be so apt to excite. In every situation this antipathy will, in certainty and intensity and extent, be greater than, on account of those who partake in it, could be wished: and, in the situation of those to whom his draught would have to present itself for acceptance, it would receive ulterior excitement, from the wound given to individual as well as national pride and vanity, by the intrusion of a foreign hand, as well as from the more substantial sinister interests natural to that situation, as above.

JB_113_035v.xml

Title: [[113-035v] 1821. June 20. Codification]

Description: [113-035v]

1821. June 20.

Codification Offer

'.7/8/ Foreigner why

'. Advantages of foreignership summed up

of these prejudices will those persons, from whom alone the Code of his framing can derive its binding force, have any share.

The national prejudices - the erroneous preconceived opinions - derived from nationality, whatever they may be, which may have exercised an influence, more or less prejudicial, on his work, will find, ready prepared for them, a check, composed of the prepossessions, reasonable and erroneous together, of those on whom the work will have to depend for the acceptance given to it: at their hands it will not fail to receive any alterations which, in the name of amendments, they may be pleased to make in it.

In the case where the draughtsman is a native, this check, useful as it can not be denied to be, has no place.

Upon the whole, the advantages promised by the choice of a foreigner on this occasion in preference to a native, may be thus summed up -

1. In its ultimate state, the Code will be less exposed to be vitiated by particular and thence sinister interests.

2. It will be less exposed to be vitiated by prejudices, appertaining to the country in relation to which it obtained the force of law: he being, by the supposition, no partaker in them.

3. The draughtsman being, with reference to that same country, a foreigner, whatsoever prejudices imbibed by him in his own country it may happen to him to be a partaker in, will not be likely to be adopted, and thus made to vitiate the Code: and thus it is that it will have the fairest chance possible of remaining as clear as possible of all pernicious prejudices.

4. So far as regards positive intellectual aptitude and active talent, a comparatively unapt hand will be less likely to have been employed than if it had been the hand of a native: the foreigner having neither recommendation nor support other than the reputation of appropriate aptitude.

5. After its supposed completion, as far as capable of being compleated by the foreign hand, it will be more jealously watched and searchingly scrutinized into than it would have been had it been the work of a native hand: and thus, whatsoever imperfections may have place in it, will be more likely to receive correction in such other hands as it will have to pass through.

JB_012_073v.xml

Title: [1821. April 2 Codification Offer]

Description: 1821. April 2

Codification Offer

'7 Foreigner why

As by sinister interest moral aptitude may be affected and deteriorated, so, by prejudices, interest-begotten or otherwise derived, may intellectual aptitude. In any prejudices peculiar to the country in question, the foreigner, by the supposition, has no share. From prejudices imbibed in his own foreign country, no danger to the one in question can arise. In none of these prejudices will those persons, from whom alone the Code of his framing can derive its binding force, have any share.

The national prejudices - the erroneous preconceived opinions derived from nationality,- whatever they may be, which may have exercised an influence more or less prejudicial on his work, will find ready prepared for them, a check, composed of the prepossessions, reasonable and erroneous together, of those on whom the work will have to depend for the acceptance given to it; at their hands it will not fail to receive any alterations which in the name of amendments they may be pleased to make in it.

In the case where the draughtsman is a native, this check, useful as it can not be denied to be, has no place.

(a) When Mill's History of British India first came out, it being advertised that

the author had never set foot on any part of the country of which he gave the

history - "What instruction can be got from this book by any of us who have

[...?] or lived there was a question generally [...?] It had long made its

appearance, before the acknowledgments became generally that no man who had ever

been there possessed so clear, correct, or extensive a conception of the state

and history of that country as the historian who had never set foot on any part

of it.