1
results found in
22 ms
Page 1
of 1
1819 May 18
Disfranchisement
§.5. Evil 4 Encrease Country Members
15
11
7
Now then /On the other hand/ in this same […?] of appropriate probity see how the case stands in the instance of a man of any other class; suppose of the mercantile class.
Like the Country Gentleman, and every other man, his dispos /propensity/ will be to seek to advance his own personal interest though it were at the expence of all other interests put together. But to this propensity to this noxious propensity of his, he is not as the Country Gentleman is, able to give effect. The Country Gentleman is /Country Gentleman is a link in a chain of iron:/ a member of an impregnable and irresistible body united by one common interest: an interest to which it is not in the power of the most stupid among them not to be /to avoid being/ fully sensible. The mercantile man {belongs to no such body: he is one grain} in a rope of sand. Mercantile /Commercial/ men in different lines /branches/ of commerce have not to any efficient[?] extent any common interest, in the same line each individual has with relation to every other an opposite interest.
Every man having with relation to every other a common interest and an opposite interest every man is with relation to every other a friend and an enemy. In his quality of an enemy were it not for the reasons that (a) by which he is witholden he would become one /an/ oppressor. But in proportion as the state of the law and especially it Constitutional present[?]/ is good these ties are strong, in proportion as it is bad they are weak. In /Under/ the Democratic Constitution of the American United States, the law and especially the Constitutional branch is strong, and oppression is unknown. Most men would oppress all others that come in their way if they were able but no man or knot of men is able. Under the English Monarchy as it stands, or rather rules, the constitutional branch and with it all the other branches are rotten. Having one common sinister interest the ruling few composed of the Monarch and the Aristocracy have it in their power in every way to oppress the subject many, oppression in a thousand ways is the consequence
(a) namely the different sanctions: concerning which see +
+ ☞ to which may now be added the sympathetic and the retributive.
Similar Items
-
Title: [2 June 1819 Disfranchising]Description: 2 June 1819 Disfranchising §.5. Evil 4 Multiplying Country Members 6 §.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members. 49. With relation to every other each man has a common and an opposite interest. In virtue of his opposition but for the various sanctions he would be an oppressor. In proportion as they and particularly the legal, and in that the Constitutional are good and strong he is withheld from being so: in proper time as they are had on weak, left unrestrained or helped. In U.S. Constitutional Law is good and strong: oppression unknown: Anglice[?] d o. weak and rotten: oppressed by Monarch and Aristocracy triumphant and unchecked. 50. Between Country Gentlemen and others, there is probity: now as to intellectual aptitude and active talent. 51. In the Country Gentleman see probable cause of either quality in any degree. By no deficiency in either need Lord be prevented from putting a ten of his in a seat. 52. In no such weak state can the mind of the mercantile man be: in him activity is kept up by personal stronger and steadier than any public interest His is a habit of activity with a fund of practical knowledge acquired by experience and observation. Knowledge, judgment and activity compose a Capital transferable from one business to another. 53. Anti Reformist. Would you exclude Country Gentlemen? 54. Reformist No more than you. My wish is that 1. As to probity, finding themselves unable to sacrifice universal to peculiar personal interest, they sh d. confine their aim to the advancement of their share in the universal interest: as to intellectual that the rich father excluded from his competition by intellectual inaptitude may by appropriate education stock with the requisite matter the vanities in his son’s mind. 55. The worst I wish is in that class which in virtue of its property would if possessed of adequate appropriate aptitude would by the influence of understanding without d o. of will secure its present share of power to substitute to individuals possessing it in every shape. 56. (General rules have exceptions. Here whoever chooses to make himself an exception, is so.) –
-
Title: [1819 May 18 Disfranchisement]Description: 1819 May 18 Disfranchisement §.5. Evil 4 Encreasing Country Members 8 4 In the House of Commons it was not long ago fairly put to them whether they would divest /disarm/ themselves of or continue armed with so sure a means of cheating one another as well as the rest of mankind with impunity. The votes will shew their answer to be in the negative. It was by Romilly that the proposition was made: it was thereby discovered that he was an Utopian, an Atheist a Jacobin, an enemy to English Institutions. So sure as any thing is proposed by a man in favour of moral /common/ honesty, of this sort is the answer made to him. English institutions being in a large proportion of this stamp, and especially those of which the lawyers have been the founders, scarcely can there be a surer sign of a man’s being an enemy to common honesty than his using of /employing/ this phrase in the number of those insinuations and other fallacies by which in default of relevant arguments every thing that tends to the advancement of the universal interest is so sure to be opposed /encountered/ So long as this abomination continues unremoved let any man of common honesty and common discernment lay his hand to his breast and say whether there be any thing incorrect in the notion by which the class of denominated Country Gentlemen is that of which a superior propensity and eventual desire of becoming a swindler, the power of doing so with impunity and profit being known to him to be secured to him by law from the distinctive character. That no such general rule can with propriety be received without exceptions[?] in abundance is almost too obvious to need mentioning. But the practical result may be thus expressed. If, the individuals being in both cases entirely unknown to me, a man of any other class and a country gentleman were proposed to me, especially if the gentleman were moreover a peer, and I were obliged to lend a given[?] sum of money to the one or the other of them, without further enquiry, and the option were given to me, my answer would be – the other man be he what class he may, not the Country Gentleman: the other man may or may not have been bred up in dishonest principles: but your Country Gentleman has I am sure. in inferring from the character of his class and that he has got rid of them is what no man can be warranted Give us the Utopian the theorist the Atheist, the metaphysician the Jacobin or give us if you please all in one: he has not as such been bred up in dishonest principles: but the Country Gentleman has:
-
Title: [2 June 1819 Disfranchising]Description: 2 June 1819 Disfranchising Disfranchising §.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members 5 §.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members. 38 But from this cause. In this case unless he pays Debtor can not continue among his associates without encountering the reproachful visage of Creditors on all others. Debtors position is on the outside of an inexorable door closed by factitious delay vexation and expence, by the same men of law in league as above with the high-stationed swindlers in whose interest he has given himself a share: one | | of low taxes and low fees. 39. True: gaming not peculiar to | | opulence: | | to all opulence conjoined with idleness. But of that the largest and highest part is | |: and that it is which | | it is conjoined with the vices gnawing out of the abuse made of dogs and horses. 40. Anti Reformist. Benevolence and beneficence abound in higher orders. Reformist yes: beneficence which dealing out pence, covers the veracity that swallows pounds. §.5. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members 41. Fruits of the beneficence see in the donations recorded in the books of philanthropic societies and trumpeted in periodicals. 42. Fond of the veracity[?] see and measures on public debt and emoluments of official Establishm t. add, were it possible the same fetched by the swindling system and denial of justice by taxes and fees with the delay &c for making pretence for the fees. 43. Add the fruit of the regulations: favouring higher at the expence of the lower orders, so thickly sown in the statute Book: kept for this & other purposes in an almost boundless state, as is Judge-made law in a state perfectly boundless burthens from which France is free. 44. By such to help compose the Monarch’s tax[?], the coats of so many bands of elders are so daubed with Gold as almost to hide the scarlet, while starving laboures are calling for banishment as a relief from death. §.6. Evil 4. Multiplying Country Members. 45. Hunting and Gaming common to Monarchs, Aristocrats and Savages. 46. By theory and experience thus proved that the interests of the permanent aristocracy are in permanent hostility with d o. of the universal interest. Proportioned to the force of that hostility is the mischief and danger to the universal interest. 47. To add to that force is the effect and object of anti reform, which cloaths it self under the name of Reform, under pretence of extirpating rotten boroughs. 48. With this compace the commercial class, like every other man’s his propensity is to advance personal at the expence of every other interest. But he has no such means. Country Gentlemen a link in a chain of Iron: Mercantile men in a rope of sand. To no considerable extent have mercantile men a common interest. Each has with relation to every other an opposite interest.
1
results found.
Page 1
of 1