date

1823. Feb. 28. Greece. J.B. Observations
1823. Feb. 28.

Greece. J.B. Observations on particular Articles

It will suffice of itself to prove the impossibility, that in the English form of government the power exercised by the King, or the power exercised by the House of Lords should ever have had for the end of its creation the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or so much as the happiness of any individual other than the several sorts of person, by whom those powers have been and are exercised, and their several connections. It will rid the country of both these sources of misrule and misery, so soon as the eyes of the greatest number are sufficiently open to the only sound principles of the art and science of government; that is to say if the supreme constitutive power be lodged in the hands of all who are capable of bearing a part in the exercise of it, instead of being engrossed by a minute fraction of that number almost all of them listed in the service of misrule by a community of corrupt and sinister interest.

It will render similar service to France, in the eyes of all Frenchmen who can endure to listen at it.

It will rid the Spanish constitution of its King: and of that vast reservoir and fountain of the matter of corruption the Council of State with its forty members, all of them creatures of the Monarch.

It will render similar service to Portugal.

It will render service even to the Constitution of the Anglo-American United States, matchless as it is as yet, and little short of the summit of absolute perfection as it is. It will clear it of its Senate: a mass of useless, and thence worse than useless complication introduced by a natural and not illaudable timidity, at a time when principles were as yet unsettled, and no sufficient stock of experience as yet obtained: established in imitation of that parent government, which, not without reason was universally regarded as the best, or to speak more properly the least bad government that, till the Anglo-American Government had had time to manifest itself, had ever been exemplified.
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    ?.3. III Grecian points unapt

    Be these rules what they may, I proceed to shew why in the first place this body is in my view of the matter useless.

    1. It is itself composed of five Members. By these five (per Article 20) are to be appointed eight other functionaries, under the name of Ministers. Number of functionaries thus belonging to the Executive Department, adding the two grades together, 13. To these same five belongs moreover (per Article 21) the power of placing functionaries in all the other employments of government, to which by Article 67 is added the power of displacing them.

    Now of these thirteen, eight at least are I say altogether useless. For proof I appeal as above to particular experience: the experience afforded by the only Constitution that ever really had for its object or end in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number: I mean the Constitution of the Anglo-American United States. Here at the head of the Executive Department you have a single person the President of the United States. To him alone belongs the direction of the whole business of that Department. To him belongs the direction to be given to, the command over, the whole Military force of the Country by Sea and Land. + To him belongs the placing and at his pleasure the displacing of the four Ministers stiled Secretaries by whom in subordination to the President and the Legislative Assembly stiled the Congress the whole civil power of the confederacy is exercised: namely 1 Secretary of State, 2. Secretary of War, 3. Secretary of Navy, 4. Secretary of Finance. If the business of the Greek Nation is but carried on with a degree of aptitude and success not very much below that with which it is carried on in that Confederated Commonwealth, the Grecian will be a happy people. Nothing approaching to it has yet been seen any where else; nor /no: nor/ ever will be, on any other condition than that of imitating it: Now then, supposing my advice on the subject asked for, it would be this. Take some one individual, for example the President of that same Executive Council give him the power possessed in the Anglo-American Commonwealth by the functionary whose title is President of the United States.

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    As to the number of these Ministers, it is as above mentioned no less than 8. In

    the Anglo©American United States it is no more than 4. 1. Secretary of State. 2.

    Secretary of War. 3. Secretary of the Navy. 4. Secretary of the Treasury among

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