date

16 May 1808 I. Reasons Ch.V
16 May 1808

I. Reasons

Ch.V. Advantages

§.9./8./ Fiction ousted.

to worship vice and absurdity under the name of wisdom[?]

To the public understanding again, by contributing its part in the composition of the matter of false science: by contributing its part towards rendering the rule of action unintelligible, and to cause man to acquiesce in its being so, to produce this acquiescence not only on the part of the uninformed and powerless multitude, but on the part even of the select few, to whose office it belongs to concurr in the formation of the laws the extension, correction and improvement of that rule of action which by this and other hundred artifices[?] thus has been rendered unintelligible even to themselves.

To the public understanding again, by familiarizing it with absurdity: absurdity of the very grossest kind conceivable, such as if uttered by any man not protected from censure by irresistible power, would expose him to universal scorn, familiarizing men with it, and deluding them so far [as] engaging them to regard it not merely with indifference but with veneration, as part and parcel of the matter of arduous and peculiar science, whereas the science is nothing but what any man of the lowest vulgar[?] may equal and display at pleasure, who without making it the instrument of iniquity, will be satisfied with talking nonsense.
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    In such a state of things, superior reason would go unthanked and unregarded: or if regarded at all, regarded with a degree of jealousy and ill-will proportioned to its superiority: absurdity and nonsense are venerated because self-exempted from all scrutiny: exempted by their very incomprehensibility, a treasure which receives a fresh addition, from every particle of absurdity and nonsense that comes to be added to the heap.

    In the indulgences sold at one time by the spiritual Court of Rome, the Protestant beholds a licence for the practice of sin, and because he has been bred a Protestant, disapproves of it. But no vast[?] indulgence was ever more decidedly and incontestably a licence for the practice of spiritual sin, than the principle and practice of nullification is a licence to the Judge for the practice of judicial injustice. Yet by the suitor - and not only in the rank of day-labourer, but in the office of legislator, the possession and exercise of this licence is regarded not merely with indifference, but with admiration and applause with an eye of veneration seconded by a tongue of eulogy. Why? because peer as well as peasant have been bred under a creed, an article of which is that "the law is the perfection of reason", another that "every thing is as it should be."
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    Another is, that under the name of learning and science, these English instruments, besides their inaptitude with reference to the ends of justice, are enveloped with /masked in/ so immense and monstrous a mass of absurdity and immorality, that the acceptance of it by /on the part of/ a nation in which any speck[?] of regard for reason or morality is to be found, is altogether out of the course of nature. They would be /have/ to receive in the first place a rule of action widely different from that which they have been accustomed to, and probably upon the whole not so good; in the next place that rule of action defiled by a mass of fettle[?] moral[?] and intitlement[?], such as men may be reconciled to by that by which men are reconciled to every thing, viz. habit - but by nothing else.

    By /Under the influence of/ habit, the impurities of a man's own body are regarded by him with indifference: but his faith must have been exalted to a pitch equal to that of the vottaries of the Grand Lama, or[?] he could endure to be [...?] by the like impurities imported from abroad.
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    and by being placed above the reach of observation and censure[?], fixed in the vigour of everlasting praise

    From such a quarter with what shadow of reason was greater regard for justice be ever expected? What body of men with any colour of reason can any expectation be entertained, that they should take the ax in hand to cut down from under their own feet the basis of their own home? To what quarter should they look for this inducement? when at no other expence than that of pronouncing a word or two appropriated to the purpose the people with such undisturbed complacency are content to see them in possession of such a multitude of forms of words by the utterance of which it is in their power to do justice or injustice as they please, to do whatsoever is most agreable to them, justice or injustice.

    To what more eligible condition can man in any time of life aspire than that of an acknowledged incapacity to do wrong, coupled with an experienced power of doing as he pleases? in which not only power and emolument, but homage and veneration is attached not to conduct but to situation, and in which the praise of virtue is an estate entailed upon the practice of vice?

    All these advantages are a reward for the industry that has been exerted in putting the rule of action into such a condition that there is no hardship which those to whom it belongs to put it into any better state[?] would not rather endure, than set themselves to examine into it.