date

1819 July 4 Defence | | ag st Edinb
1819 July 4

Defence | | ag st Edinb gh Review

II Indirect attacks

4 Appropriate aptitude

1

4. Appropriate aptitude – its branches 1. appropriate probity 2. appropriate intellectual aptitude appropriate active talent

Before the course of my enquiries had led me to any such inquiry as that into the pretensions of the Whigs, I had found /seen/ /felt/ the necessity of fixing my own conceptions respecting the mental endowments or qualifications necessary to the due discharge of the functions belonging to this most important of all offices for the purpose of the enquiry by what means the possession of them might be most effectually secured, and the means of judging to /in/ what degree they were secured at present, and if not sufficiently by what new means they might be more effectually secured.

In /Out of/ the aggregate of these several qualities I thereby formed a sort of test whereby the pretensions of any man or description of man to the confidence of the people, and thence to the possession of the situation in question might be tried and indicated.

Unfortunately the pretensions of the Whigs would not abide /will not stand/ this test: the indication afforded by their application to the test is not favourable to the pretensions of the Whigs. Of their claim to confidence the foundation is composed of opu preeminent opulence – preeminent opulence in the shape of rent of land preeminent opulence in the shape of an anti-legal and anavowed[?] property in parliamentary seat conferring so many shares in the supreme power of the State: factitious dignity and reputation made out of ribbons and other gewgaws preeminent opulence produced by the merits or demerits of other people who lived in other times.

Now
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    Now in the first place it was clear that these outward and visible signs /manifestations/ of the favour[?] of Fortune were /are/ not any one of them themselves either appropriate probity, appropriate intellectual aptitude, or appropriate talent. In the next place neither did it or does it seem to me that by the possession of these spurious titles to public confidence a man is rendered the more likely to be possessed of those exclusively genuine ones: on the contrary it seemed to me that in proportion as the quantity of these spurious pledges possessed by a man encreased, the quantity of the genuine ones which he possessed was more likely to be diminished

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