date

1823 Feb 18 Greece Beginning
1823 Feb 18

Greece

Beginning

It being indispensably necessary to the attainment of this end that the persons chosen by the greatest number to frame the governing arrangements be persons by whom it is most likely that the will of the greatest number will be conformed to /done/, it is no less so that this same disposition and endeavour should have place in equal degree on the part of all other persons employed in the business of government in the management of the common concerns

As the greatest number can not themselves find time for carrying on in detail the business of government, but are on that account under the necessity of conveying that task to some other persons of their choice, so is it still with the /any/ minor assemblage of persons who for that purpose will have been the objects of their choice. The delegates of the people can no more find time for carrying on the business of government in its utmost detail than the people themselves. Hence comes the need of another set of functionaries whose function will consist in giving execution and effect to the will of the delegates of the people as the function of the delegates of the people consists in the giving execution and effect to the general will of the people by whom they have been chosen for that purpose.

The people at large the whole body of the members of the community taken in the aggregate call them then the supreme constitutive power: constitutive viz of the body on whose will as manifested in detail shall at all times depend the manner in which the business of government in detail is carried on: say the supreme operative

But the supreme operative can not of /by/ itself give execution and effect to the emanations of its own will: it requires the assistance another person or set of persons for this purpose: call this set of persons the Supreme Executive power
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  • Title: [1823 Feb. 19 Greece Beginning]
    Description: 1823 Feb. 19

    Greece

    Beginning

    On this occasion, the proper object of all arrangements taken for the enabling the people thus to act by delegation is the production of such arrangements as it may be presumed would be taken by the people themselves had they respectively sufficient time for the making them an additon to sufficient time for qualifying themselves for the making of them by means of appropriate information in all its various shapes.

    Of the mode of election best adjusted to this end mention will be made a little further on in its place

    At present suppose for argument sake this best mode found and carried into practice.

    Here then we have already two distinguishable bodies of men in the government. 1. The people at large by whom for the taking of these arrangements of detail by which their greatest happiness is to be provided for a set of functionaries have been provided: functionaries placed by the choice or election made of them for that purpose: substitutes delegates functionaries who in point of physical possibility might be chosen out of any assemblage of men but who most naturally and as to the greater portion at any rate most beneficially will have chosen by them from among themselves. In these immediate delegates of the people is supposed /conceived/ as yet to reside the whole of the power just©mentioned: call it the ”Operative power•: in /to/ the people at large remains and resides the power of determining at all times in what individuals that same operative power shall have place: in a word to constitute them what with relation to that function they are: call it the ”Constitutive power•.
  • Title: [1823 Feb. 19 Greece Beginning]
    Description: 1823 Feb. 19

    Greece

    Beginning

    Of the delegation thus made by the people of operative power the sole use and object being by the supposition the doing /giving effect/ by means of those substitutes to that which would be their will had they time for forming it, it follows that for this purpose the dependence of the conduct of those substitutes to the will of those same principles in so far as they have time and means of forming one /it/ can not be too absolute and entire.

    So much for the set of substitutes chosen in the first place. But by the same cause, namely want of time and appropriate information included, by which it has been rendered impossible for the delegates constituted as above in an /a direct and/ immediate way by the choice and appointment made of them by the people in their quality of possessors of the relative constitutive power, the physical possibility of going through in its entirety the whole of the business so allotted to the abovementioned possessors of the operative power stands in like manner excluded: detail of the arrangements which require to be made for defence of the people against external adversaries by land and water details of the arrangements for defence against internal adversaries in the character of criminals © details of the arrangements necessary to be made for the exaction and distribution of the pecuniary supplies necessary for the purchase of the materials employed in the business of /things and persons applied to the purposes of/ such national defence by these brief indicators thus /briefly/ given proofs sufficient of the impossibility in question are already brought to view. In addition to the necessity of clearing the hands of the people at large of the whole of the operative part of the business of government thus causes the necessity of clearing of large portions of it the hands in which at the first step the whole of the operative part was lodged or conceived of /regarded/ as if lodged
  • Title: [1823 Feb 18 Greece Beginning]
    Description: 1823 Feb 18

    Greece

    Beginning

    The government is perfect that is the right and proper end of government is likely to be accomplished, in a degree proportioned to that in which the conduct of the supreme operative is conformable to the will of the supreme constitutive

    So again in proportion as the conduct of the supreme Executive is conformable to the will of the supreme Operative, or as it may be /is/ termed when the business of the executive is considered as detached from its functions © the supreme legislative.

    The more strictly conformable the conduct of the Executive is to the will of the legislative the more strictly conformable will it be to the will of the supreme Constitutive

    Thus it is that the degree of subserviency of each set of functionaries of the government to the [...?] acknowledged end of government will depend upon the strictness of its conformity to the will of its immediate superior in the scale

    In other words In every part of the scale of subordination as between one set of functionaries and another the depend of each upon its immediate superior ought to be as absolute as possible: the sway of each superior over its immediate subordinate as absolute as possible: having no other limit than that which is set by the dependence which such superior has on the will of its own immediate superior.