167_086.xml

Title: [[clxvii. 86] 1821 March 22]

Description: [clxvii. 86]

1821 March 22

Rid Yourselves

Anti Constitut.

Corruptive influence

Public Credit has mitigated despotism: but promotes the establishment of it by corruption

In a word in every Government in which in addition to a set of functionaries dependent on the people, there is another set not dependent on but independent of the people, the power of the people over those Agents who were originally their dependents will be nullified /overpowered/ /overborne/ by that power which is out of their dependence

A government thus mixt of this mixt kind has therefore within its texture the seeds of certain dissolution. Pure Monarchy and pure representative democracy, these are the only forms of government which in their texture and barring accidents are capable of maintaining /continuing/ their existence to the end of time: pure monarchy if the light of [...?] /[...?] improvement/ be effectually excluded from it: pure representative democracy under and by the virtue of such light.

Spaniards the government which in virtue of the auspicious change is yours is still of the mixt kind: and, purification apart, is doomed to perish, and to perish by the means of corruptive influence.

I shall not on the present occasion enter into those details which would be necessary to the giving /presenting/ to you /bringing to your view/ a compleat as well as correct and clear account of the nature and irresistible force of this same political poison corruptive influence. On the present occasion this topic comes in only as it were by a side wind: since the effect of the Ultramarian claim is - not to give existence to this political poison, but only to give encrease /addition/ to the quantity and efficiency of it, and acceleration to the destructive effect of it.

167_061.xml

Title: [[clxvii. 61] 1821 March 22]

Description: [clxvii. 61]

1821 March 22

Rid Yourselves

' Anti-Constitution

1. Vitiating Cortes Constitution

True it is - as in the body natural so in the body politic so it may be that of one poison the effect is counteracted and more or less done away by another. If so it be that the effect of the claim in the way of corruptive influence is as you say to place the members of the legislative body /chosen by the people/ in a state of corrupt subjection of those of the Executive department not chosen by the people, on the Ultramarian Members will this same influence be exercised as well as on the Peninsular Members.

Admitted. But for this supposed antidote the people in the peninsular what will they /their position/ be the better? In nothing: the effect will be [to] place them under the dominion of an /a domestic/ interest still more constantly interfering with their own and counteracting and overbearing it than foreign and distant interest can be. You will still be under the government of men by the amount of the effective force of corruptive influence inclinated by a particular interest opposite to your share in the universal interest.

132-140.xml

Title: [1819 Mar. 27 + § 2. ┴ To Erskine]

Description: 1819 Mar. 27 + § 2. ┴

To Erskine

Lett. 6. E. Anti reform labour

§.2. Corruption confessed

{1}

2

11

1

§. 2. Corruption, of Parliament confessed by Lord Erskine.

{{When a man} /He who/ makes open profession of insincerity {he} has a right to be taken at his word. Whether in the following passages when compared with one another, a profession of /to/ this sort was not meant is a question my answer to which waits for such information as Your Lordship may be pleased to give me. /it may be Your Lordship’s pleasure to honour me with.}

1. In p. 27. what I find is, that in Your Lordship’s opinion, “imperfections and abuses .... which degrade the character of Parliament” are actually in existence. This is not merely asserted; what is much more it is assumed: assertion supposes the want of certainty: assumption the abundance of it. (a) The “ removal” of these same imperfections and abuses is on that /this/ same occasion spoken of as an object /subject/ for the “ consideration” of which it is your Lordship’s declared wish that “a motive”, and “encouragement” should be found.

2. In p. 28. I find Your Lordship returning to the subject, and speaking of in so many words “the imperfections and corruptions inseparable from its present structure”, and in the next line of its “ dignity” as a thing /lost sheep/, of the “ recovery” of which the demand /need/ is certain and present, the hope is remote and hypothetical as any one /man/ need desire, as an /a remote/ event, which in Your Lordships own words “may appear visionary, or rather as a kind of delirium.”

Note

(a) Speaking of the danger of a sanguinary resolution &c “and that” (Your Lordship adds) “ought to be a motive with, and encouragement to, the more intelligent part of the public to consider in what manner, and to what extent, unquestionable imperfections and abuses might be removed which degrade the character of Parliament, and become the most powerful weapons in the hands of wicked men to expose the legislature and government of this country to dangerous disaffection and contempt.”

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