date

1821 Oct. 31 + C To Toreno
1821 Oct. 31 + C

To Toreno

3 o

Letter VII Religion

1

Discard?

In regard to the priestly order, the part you have to act you must be still more acutely sensible of it than I can be, is an extremely difficult one. For the present your situation on this account /ground/ can now[?] not but be full of danger: nor can the danger easily be made to cease without giving place to {actual not to say fatal mischief} /a permanent and much more serious danger/. When on this occasion I speak of mischief, it is of mischief /this less immediate danger, the danger I meant is that/ to the subject many not to the rulers mischief to the people /subject many/ through the profit /subject many/ to their rulers.

The immediate danger is from their hostility to government: and in so far as the interest of the government coincides with the interest of the people, from their hostility to the people But in proportion as their hostility to government ceases, which it will do as the present incumbents die off, and others nominated by the Government take their places, and alliance of the priesthood with the Government takes place: and an alliance between an established and richly beneficed priesthood on the one part and the Government on the other is an alliance offensive and defensive against the people.

By /From/ no such alliance you will say can any mischief to the people be produced but in so far as the dispositions of the Government are hostile to the interests of the people. True: but the alliance circumstanced on the priestly order is, is of itself sufficient to place and keep the Government in a state of hostility to the people.
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  • Title: [1821 Oct. 27 To Toreno 3 o]
    Description: 1821 Oct. 27

    To Toreno

    3 o

    Letter VII Religion

    2

    In the case of the priestly order I mean always the beneficed and especially the richly beneficed part of it, the great danger is produced by their immoveability for its cause. In the Military, the naval, the Financial, the Diplomatic Establishment the functionaries being removable by the Ministers, and the Ministers by the King; and the King though not removable except in extreme cases being in various ways subject in a certain way only[?]to the Cortes the Members of which are appointed, and at short intervals by the simple process of unreelection removable by the subject many, hence it is that for any branch of duty towards the subject many, a remedy more or less immediate and effectual has place. But the Ecclesiastical orders are not removable but by one another: nor by one another, without a tedious process of which the office[?] is essentially precarious.

    In case of provable and proved delinquency, by offences of a certain description which remain to be described they may indeed be made, and by the proposed Code are proposed to be made, and probably /I suppose/ will be made removable upon conviction at the end of a judicial process. But in your country Sir forgive me the remark it is a continually necessary one, judicial processes do not easily ever come[?] as[?] easily come to an end Nor does it seem to me that after any this has been done which it is in the power of words to do towards giving such a of opposition made to government by discourse, in which religious language is employed mischievous discourse must /will/ to such an extent left unpunishable that from the quality of mischief flowing from this source no sensible defalcation will have been effected.
  • Title: [1821 Sept. 22 To Toreno 2 o]
    Description: 1821 Sept. 22

    To Toreno

    2 o

    Letter VII Religion

    §.5 Mischievous people

    priestly support to Government

    6

    6

    Take England, for example: Though what/which/ever effect is here produced by the application of the influence of the class of priesthood in question—the established priesthood—to the business of government is so much pure mischief, no part of that mischief has, since the extinction of the expelled dynasty been employed nor ever in future can be employed in opposition to government—in opposition to the other constituted authorities—but has the whole of it been, and at all times will be produced by support given by it to government—given by it to those same {constituted} authorities.

    The state of things in which the interest of the priesthood stands in opposition to the interest of the other constituted authorities as such, is therefore in its nature local only and temporary. On the contrary /other hand/ setting aside this local /casual/ and temporary state of things, the interest of the priesthood /this same code[?]/ is in a state of the most intimate alliance with that of the other Constituted authorities as such, which particular interest of those /their[?]/ same Constituted authorities is in a state of opposition and hostility to the interest of the greatest number so long as there remains any quantity of the of the substance of the people thus employed in opposition to their best interests, and in exact proportion to the quantity thus mischievously employed.

    These things considered, a government which, to the discernment, necessary to the perceiving the opposition of its own particular interest to the universal interest, should add the magnanimity necessary to the sacrifice of this same particular to the general interest, would, with much more lasting anxiety, make provision against the application made of the influence of the priestly order, so long as any part of its opulence power and factitious temporal dignity continues unabolished, to the giving support to government, thus against any application made of that same influence to the support /promotion/ of opposition to government. For, unless in the particular case just mentioned, to the employing its influence in opposition to a government with which it is in league /stands linked/ by a community of sinister interest it can not leave any the slightest tendency: while to the operating with all its influence in support of every such government, it will at all times have a strong propensity, a propensity the strength of which will be as the badness of the /that same/ government: as the magnitude of the sacrifice which it is […?] a making of the interest of the subject many to that of the ruling few. So much for what is conceivable. But as to what is probable, anywhere out of the Anglo-American United States, and scarcely say how little any such magnanimity is to be expected.
  • Title: [1821 Oct. 27 B ? ┴ To Toreno]
    Description: 1821 Oct. 27 B ? ┴

    To Toreno

    3 o

    Letter VII Religion

    § Positions on priestly influence

    Divide[?]? 1

    1

    On this subject /[…?]/ the subject of priestly influence having once touched upon it, and seen at the same time what is done in relation to it in the Constitutional and the proposed Penal Code /both Codes/, I know not how to avoid submitting to you some of my own notices in relation to this subject /it/, before I speak of those by which the arrangements I see in those several Codes in relation to this same subject My notions on this subject stand expressed in the following propositions

    1. In so far as either in the way /by means/ of punishment or by means of reward a government gives any support to priestly influence it produces the effect is preponderantly or rather purely mischievous.

    2. In so far for the support so given punishment is employed the character of the government is tyrannical.

    3. In so far as for the support so given reward is employed the government is predatory, wasteful corrupt and corruptive. In a representative government, the effect is to corrupt the peoples representatives: to engage them in a confederacy with the temporal rulers for the promotion of the particular interest of the confederacy to the sacrifice of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Of the matter of reward The whole mass is the fruit of depredation, the expenditure of it is so much waste, and this waste , with or without design on the part of those by whom it is thus employed, operates on the people’s representatives with a corruptive effect

    4. In alliance with government, receiving support from it and giving support to it priestly influence operates by the whole amout of it in opposition to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the people.

    5. If to an absolute Monarchy having an Ecclesiastical , a limited Monarchy limited by a Representative body be substituted, the priestly order will of course, so long as any chance of restoration for the old despotism appears be ardent in their endeavours to promote it, and will thereby be in a state of hostility with the new Government and the people.