date

23. Aug. 1812 Evidence Introd
23. Aug. 1812

Evidence Introd

Introd

Ch. 15 Preappointed Offices

'. Obstacles

False Muster

[...?] or far as to a man in his [...?] any thing other than undistorted repose can be an object

'. Swindling how sanctioned in military officers by lawyer-led legislators - False musters

Among military men it continues still a point of honour if not to abstain from lying, at any rate not to endure the imputation of it. To the man of law, not speak of the priest it was no small object, to corrupt the morals of the military man and plant in his mind if possible the love of falshood, at any rate an indifference to truth.

In the military profession [...?] of the point of honour, a practice and craft of applying falshood in the character of an instrument for the extraction of sinister profit. Money was received on false pretences the pretence was the existence of a certain number of men in a body of troops in which no such men were to be found. False musters were the denomination by which depredation in this shape had come to be designated

In the purpose of a cloak as usual, some of the money thus diverted had been applied to a public purpose. The purpose having been found useful, advantage was taken of this circumstance by the lovers of fraud, and instead of employing honest means they lent the sanction of government to these dishonest ones: as if government had no better means of getting money than by encouraging one set of its servants to turn swindlers tell lies, and in this way pilfer it from another. from their public servants in another office by setting one part of its servants to steal it from another.

A sanction was accordingly given to it, by the hand of the legislator? in what form? considering by what sort of hands the legislator is in this country habitually and unavoidably led, the form may be imagined.

The sanction was applied - not to the form /purpose/ only but to the instrument. the fraud itself was legalised.

Extracts from [...?] Index to the Statutes, with Soldiers

44. Penalties on persons making false certificates to excuse from Musters

IV G.3.C.3. '.10.

45. And [...?] Offices making false musters, IV G.3.C.3. '.11, 21.

48. Fictitious names where allowed in a muster, G.3.c.3 C.3. '.12 This was the Mutiny Act of the year in which this Index was printed Mutiny Act and Index.
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    In his endeavours to protect high-seated fraud not only from punishment but from shame, the man of law finds an ever ready coadjutor in the Sinecurist. A Sinecurist is an obtainer of public money on false pretences: on the pretence of rendering services which he neither renders nor ever means to render. He differs from the swindler so called as the unpunishable depredator differs from the punishable one

    The same spirit that effected the giving the sanction of law to false musters, proposed on a late occasion to give the same sanction to sinecures. Instead of pensions, they were to be given as reward to be employed in the character of rewards for real services: a man who had rendered a real service was not to receive what was his due, unless he would become a sinecurist: unless he would enlist himself in the fraternity of high-seated and unpunishable swindlers: to the real service rendered to the public at large was thus superadded the obligation of rendering to this fraternity the sort of service that is rendered to depredation in high places, by furnishing to it, in as perfect a state as possible, the cloak which it stands in need of the most effectual cloak with which it can be furnished.
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    There is not a more effectual recipe for introducing confusion, and giving facility to fraud than the connivance at falshood in accounts notorious to one set of men falsehood is a secret to another: notorious to those who have the means of taking advantage of it and applying it to some fraudulent purpose to their own benefit, it is a secret to others whose duty it would be to prevent it, and in the much greater number of those whose interest it is that it should be prevented though without the power to prevent it. In this case what is generally to a certain degree notorious is among the true statements there are false ones: what is not know is, what the false ones are nor to what amount. While those that are false are regarded as true, others that are true are regarded as false: and by that means they are rendered less serviceable to any good purpose for which they may have been designed to distinguish the one from the other becomes matter of difficulty, and the opportunity of making the distinction is confined to a few. A sort of false science is thus formed; labour is thrown away in learning it: and while labouring to detect existing falshood men learn how to fabricate more falsehood and apply it to their own cases.