JB_113_035v.xml

Title: [[113-035v] 1821. June 20. Codification]

Description: [113-035v]

1821. June 20.

Codification Offer

'.7/8/ Foreigner why

'. Advantages of foreignership summed up

of these prejudices will those persons, from whom alone the Code of his framing can derive its binding force, have any share.

The national prejudices - the erroneous preconceived opinions - derived from nationality, whatever they may be, which may have exercised an influence, more or less prejudicial, on his work, will find, ready prepared for them, a check, composed of the prepossessions, reasonable and erroneous together, of those on whom the work will have to depend for the acceptance given to it: at their hands it will not fail to receive any alterations which, in the name of amendments, they may be pleased to make in it.

In the case where the draughtsman is a native, this check, useful as it can not be denied to be, has no place.

Upon the whole, the advantages promised by the choice of a foreigner on this occasion in preference to a native, may be thus summed up -

1. In its ultimate state, the Code will be less exposed to be vitiated by particular and thence sinister interests.

2. It will be less exposed to be vitiated by prejudices, appertaining to the country in relation to which it obtained the force of law: he being, by the supposition, no partaker in them.

3. The draughtsman being, with reference to that same country, a foreigner, whatsoever prejudices imbibed by him in his own country it may happen to him to be a partaker in, will not be likely to be adopted, and thus made to vitiate the Code: and thus it is that it will have the fairest chance possible of remaining as clear as possible of all pernicious prejudices.

4. So far as regards positive intellectual aptitude and active talent, a comparatively unapt hand will be less likely to have been employed than if it had been the hand of a native: the foreigner having neither recommendation nor support other than the reputation of appropriate aptitude.

5. After its supposed completion, as far as capable of being compleated by the foreign hand, it will be more jealously watched and searchingly scrutinized into than it would have been had it been the work of a native hand: and thus, whatsoever imperfections may have place in it, will be more likely to receive correction in such other hands as it will have to pass through.

JB_113_034v.xml

Title: [1821. June 20. Codification Offer]

Description: 1821. June 20.

Codification Offer

'.7 /8/ Foreigner why

'.4. In moral aptitude he is far superior

A foreigner, howsoever, in other circumstances, he might have had the desire, can

not, unless gained over by the rulers of that country to their interest as

above, entertain any such hope, nor consequently be occupied in any such

endeavour.

Remains, the only case, in which, consistently with moral probability, a work of

this sort could have for its author a foreigner, acting under the direction and

impulse of a particular and sinister interest. This is the case where, in the

expectation and for the sake of a remuneration, in one or more of the

abovementioned three shapes, viz. money, power, and factitious dignity, he has

offered himself for the work, to this or that leading native. But, in this case,

there must exist, on the one part, in the breast of an individual, in relation

to whom, in countries foreign to his own, a sufficiently strong and extensive

persuasion of his appropriate aptitude in the shape of intellectual aptitude and

active talent, has place: on the other part, a desire to earn the remuneration,

whatever it may be, at the price of a labour of so unexampled a complexion, of

so vast a magnitude, at the disposition of the ruler or rulers in question, a

mass of reward, sufficient to afford an adequate remuneration, not only for the

labour employed in such a work, howsoever executed, but moreover for the

disrepute and self-reproach attached to the execution of it in a manner thus

adverse to the workman's own presumable principle. Under these circumstances, it

will be seen what probability there is that, by the hands of a foreigner, any

intentional sacrifice of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the

community in question should come to be effectual, or so much as to have been

proposed: and, therefore, that to any such person any such invitation, or to any

offer, if made by him, any acceptance should be given. Oh yes, if, being a

foreigner, he were not known to be so. But, by the supposition, as above, this

case is excluded.

As, by sinister interest, moral aptitude may be affected and deteriorated, so, by

prejudices, interest-begotten, or otherwise derived, may intellectual aptitude.

In any prejudices peculiar to the country in question, the foreigner, by the

supposition, has no share. From prejudices imbibed in his own foreign country,

no danger to the one in question can arise. In none

of

036_200V.xml

Title: [[036-200v] 1821 July 5 Codification]

Description: [036-200v]

1821 July 5

Codification Offer

'.9. Draughtsman gratuitous

Under such a government therefore, from a stipendiary as well as from a gratuitous draughtsman, might not universally be expected, a work exempt from all deterioration, in so far as sinister interest generated by corruptive influence is the only source from which it can flow: and the hands of a Draughtsman appointed by a Committee of the legislative body being in this case the hands of a single individual, would for the reason above maintained /given/ even though he were a native be more competent /apt/ than the hands of the Committee itself.

Still however this Draughtsman, if a native would /still this native draughtsman single as he is will/ not in respect of aptitude in one shape aptitude in other shapes equal be upon a level with a foreigner. For though in this case error having sinister interest for its cause is not to be apprehended: their remain those errors which have prejudice - local prejudice - for their cause. To the /any/ prejudices of the natives draughtsman or no draughtsman there would be no check: to the /any/ prejudices of the foreigner there would be an assured check: a check composed of such native prejudices as well as of such native reason as have place in the breasts of the natives.