[clxvii. 93]

1821 March 26

Rid Yourselves

' Anti

'.7. Anti constitutional Evil 2

2. Corruptive influence

Persons of other descriptions there are who stand excluded with equal rigour. Per Article 95 Secretaries of State, Counsellors of State persons possessing offices in the Royal Household.

Good. But persons possessed of pensions held during the Royal pleasure - are they included in the list of exclusions? /in the exclusion list?/ Not they indeed: they were forgotten to be inserted shall we say? or they were remembered not to be inserted.

Spaniards if on this subject of corruptive influence it be your destiny to receive true and useful information and instruction it must be from some man who can have no hope of profit from the correspondent corrupt obsequiousness It must be from a foreigner: and a foreigner so situated[?] as to see all paths /behold the whole field/ of political ambition under his feet.

Fortunately for you it is without his being either a Member of the Cortes or a Citizen of your country that it is in your power to receive this service at his hands.
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    Spaniards! H Your Constitutional Code is a mixt mass: a compound of sugar and arsenic it may be stiled. From the nourishment Would you distinguish the poison? would you rid your body politic of it? It is to a foreign hand, you see that if you receive it you must be indebted for /not disdain/ this service.

    Will you sacrifice - will you sit still and see your rulers sacrifice - every substantial interest to the fantastic interest that has its root in /of/ national pride? Will you sit still, and hear it said - there sits that foreigner who had more regard for, and took more care for /took more care for/ the Spanish rulers and the Spanish people and the Spanish rulers than they did /had/ for one another or themselves?

    H On this or some subsequent occasion?
  • Title: [[clxvii. 95] 1821 March 23]
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    For the particular purpose at present in hand, all that seems necessary here to be added, is - that if restoration of misrule and misery is worth avoiding, corruptive influence and corrupt obsequiousness are worth excluding; and therefore /with them/ and for that purpose every addition made to the quantity of that matter by the operation of which these effects are produced, is worth avoiding and excluding; and that the whole mass of patronage corresponding t the mass of pecuniary profit, power and factitious dignity that would be to be employed in the endeavour to maintain this claim constitute the mass of the matter of corruptive influence and corrupt obsequiousness by which you would be continually pressed down pressed back again towards that gulph of misery from which you have so lately emerged.

    You have seen according to the best approximation that could be given to you by a foreigner (it belongs to your Rulers to give you a better) of the proportion which this so easily extirpable /extrudible/ part of the poisonous mass bears to the remainder. H

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  • Title: [[clxvii. 91] 1821 March 26]
    Description: [clxvii. 91]

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    In Confessionary[?]

    Well then. A year has elapsed: and at the end of it the Member is loaded with pensions and covered with ribbons The load and the covering will they prevent him from sitting in any succeeding Cortes? Not they indeed. /No such thing./ What is the consequence? that under this Constitution - this unamendable Constitution in a few years you may not have a Deputy in the Cortes the Cortes may not have so much as a single Member that is not a King's pensioner during pleasure, slave to /instrument of/ the very power to which /it is the pretended object of/ his function is pretended to apply a check.

    Great is the care taken /Anxious is the solicitude/ to keep excluded from the Sovereign Assembly all persons characterized by the marks which had presented themselves as conclusive evidences of inaptitude to the wisdom of the scribe: Article 91 the /a man's/ not being a Citizen in the exercise of his rights, he not being so much as twenty five years old /of age/ his not being born in the province, or settled therein by a residence of at least seven years, his not having an annual income of his own property to a certain amount, in conclusion his being a foreigner: and so formidable is this taint, negative as it is that it is not in the power of any letters of Citizenship though granted by the Cortes to wash it out. Art. 96.

    Let but any one of these repulsive marks be on the mans forehead, no service that it may be in his power to render the country is the country to have the benefit of. In the opinion of The Electors to whom the individual /he/ is known, he /the individual/ is in a preeminent degree fit: no matter? in the opinion of the scribe to whom the individual is altogether unknown, it is not possible he should be fit: wisdom, with a sufficiency not to be controverted /above dispute/ supplies the place of knowledge.