date

14 Dec 1801 Maximum 1
14 Dec 1801

Maximum

1

A maximum law would be in possession of one good property at least – it would

have the affections of the great body of the people for its support: all eyes

would be open to any violation of the law: all tongues ready to convey

/communicate/ intelligence of it Could the law but be so adjusted as to give an

compleat indemnity, though it were but a bare /mere/ indemnity for the necessary

expence of prosecution, reward over and above such indemnity would be scarcely

necessary to the engaging men to stand forth /lend their assistance/ in the

capacity of prosecutors and informers.

This would be no inconsiderable advantage. The ignominy /infamy/ /reproach/ which

vulgar /unthinking/ minds that /which/ is most minds, are so eager to fix upon

the character of him who lends his services to the public in the character of an

informer, would with at least equal reason be heaped upon him who lends his

services to the same law in the character of judge. If the being paid /receiving

payment/ for this service were a just cause of infamy, the judge should be the

more infamous of the two, as being the best paid as receiving the highest price.

That because a man will tell /speak the/ truth for a given sum, he will speak

falshood, he will committ perjury, and by so doing heap /that sort of perjury by

which/ punishment /is made to fall/ upon the head of the innocent – for the same

sum, is a proposition as absurd in a logical view as it is in a moral view it is

scandalous and injurious. Perjury for saving of the Guilty is but too abundant:

of perjury for the condemnation of the innocent, a fair example would scarcely

to be found. The informer is never in fault – never deserves otherwise than well

of his country howsoever the legislator his employer may deserve ill of it. Yet

among men in other respects
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    respects not altogether void of rationality, nor decidedly desirous of seeing the

    bonds of society burst asunder or dissolved – those bonds which for their hold

    /binding force/ depend altogether as much upon the prosecutor and informer as

    upon the Judge, the character /denomination/ /term/ of the informer, is to the

    disgrace of the age, still a denomination of disgrace. It is a blessing for

    mankind wherever as here the kingdom of senseless and mischievous prejudice is

    divided against itself: by this means the wretch called an informer, who in

    another case would not be endurable may obtain a sort of toleration, in

    consideration of the use he is of in bringing down the public vengeance

    /directing the slander[?]/ upon the head of the still worse /more obnoxious/

    wretch, the seller of corn at a high price.
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    The mention of the article of money as one among the falsely supposed cases in

    point against the limitation of the price of corn /a maximum for corn/, brings

    to mind an incident which at the time was matter of some amusement to me. In

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    forth as an advocate for a maximum, finding himself incommoded, as it should

    seem, by some reference that had been made to the Defence of Usury. Having thus

    been brought into disgrace with the self-appointed diurnal Censor, this harmless

    production innocent certainly of any such crimes as were attempted /thus

    imputed/ to be fastened upon it, was to be tied about the ancles of the monsters

    /harpies/ who were seen praying upon the country in the shape of farmers and

    corndealers, and with them consigned to the pit of infamy. Abhorrence with its

    consequences was to be the doom of those to whom we are indebted for the

    necessaries of life, contempt was to be the portion of the “specious economist”

    in despite of whose theoretical reveries about money Judges had continued all

    along to do their duty. Little did he think than in this ebullition[?] of his

    zeal to destroy an imagined adversary, he had been aiming so cruel /desperate/ a

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    Reasons against libel laws

    4. If such things were allowed, no honest no honourable no honest man no man who

    had any regard for his honour for his reputation, would be found to take upon

    himself any such situation: and the consequence is that all such situations

    would fall into the hands of men who had neither honour nor honesty, and thus

    the country would be involved in certain and compleat destruction. So says the

    argument

    But of all this the contrary has been shewn already. Honest or dishonest,

    honourable or dishonourable, every man will be ready to take upon himself any

    /and to continue to occupy and to maintain himself a/ situation the evil of

    which is outweighed by the good. In England to a vast extent so prodigious is

    this preponderance, that to obtain these situations there is nothing so

    dishonourable that to obtain them men of all ranks from the highest to the

    lowest are not ready and eager to do, and do accordingly and are not the less

    stiled not only honest but honourable. Falshood solemn and deliberate falshood

    has been shewn to be a necessary step, perjury – perjury acknowledged by

    themselves to be such a commonly employed step /among the most frequent steps/

    to the most richly endowed, the most powerful and most highly dignified

    situations in the Ecclesiastical and self-stiled religious establishment. In

    England no situation is in want of candidates: numerous and eager candidates: of

    whom in the instance of each such situation one /in each vacancy/ is succesful

    and when thus admitted ask any one of them, whether with a few accidental

    exceptions, of which his case does not form one, they are not, all of them

    honest and honourable. But in England though no such things as the things in

    question have ever been allowed allowed by law, yet such in that part of the law

    is the happy and useful weakness, so happily applied in that instance is the

    anarchy or the mixture of anarchy and tyranny of which so large a portion of the

    whole mass of law in that country is composed that the reputations of men in

    office are little less exposed to the sort of impuations of the sort in question

    than if they were allowed: and accordingly, and in the highest and most richly

    endowed and most powerful situations men may be seen wallowing and triumphing in

    profligacy, […?] in infamy, and yet as fondly attached to and as firmly fixt in

    their respective situations as if virtue in them were consummate.

    Commanders of torture spectators of torture encouragers and promoters of torture

    by refusing to hear and preventing the disclosure of it

    Commanders of the murder of the innocent rewarders of the murder of the innocent,

    commanders of torture, spectators of torture, forgers /fabricators/ of rules of

    pretended law to justify the murder of the innocent