date

31 Aug. 1812 Evidence Introd
31 Aug. 1812

Evidence Introd

Introd

Ch. 15 Preappointed

' Obstacles

False Musters

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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