JB_111_099.xml

Title: [1818. Sept. 6. Things as they are]

Description: 1818. Sept. 6.

Things as they are

§. Best why last

2

In the course of this contest, the party which within the arch of the confederacy feels /finds/ itself weakest, will ever and anon by the sense of this weakness be led to look for support from without: a sort of appeal may thus come to be made to the body of the people. But vain would /will/ be the hope of gaining support from the people unaccompanied unless more or less is done towards giving satisfaction to the people. Hence[?] this same mitigation may arise to the rigour with which of course the power would otherwise be exercised.

Without contention, […?] was concluded by war and conquest anarchy can never have been converted /made to give way /place// into Monarchy. This Monarchy is at first the power exercised by a /an irresponsible/ Captain General over the army /Commander over Soldiers/ under his command. While /So long/ as the army is in the field in the presence of an enemy the necessity of an obedience /obsequiousness/ without reserve, of an authority without limitation is presently felt: all bodies of men in which an arrangement thus simple has failed of taking place must have mouldered away before they have ripened into Monarchies. The warfare, and the land the most substantial and durable fruit of it divided, the members of the embattled lust was of course dispersed, each subordinate chieftain settling with his followers upon the spot which fell to his share. By mere dispersion the habit of constant and universal obedience to one and the same chief, was now of necessity made to cease. In an age of letters /of printing/ such as the present, local distance be it ever so wide is no bar to dependence: to universal habitual, constant and ever continued dependence. A prosperous[?] soldier was the first of Kings.

Le premier qui fut Roi fut un soldat heureux, says the French Poet: instructive truth could not be better expressed in words.

JB_160_046.xml

Title: [1822 Feb. 18 Thoughts on Official]

Description: 1822 Feb. 18

Thoughts on Official Economy

The Crown. The expression serves as an instrument of

delusion and for eluding of responsibility.

Of every Office so circumstanced that the holder of it - the

functionary the interest is in a state of opposition to the interest thence of the

happiness of the greatest number the existence is a grievance.

Offices worse than useless - Offices positively and purely pernicious

are 1. the Kingly or say Monarchical Office: 2. every Aristocratical Office - every

Office the holder of which as such possesses a share in Legislative, Administrative

or Judicial power without being displaceable immediately or unimmediately by the

suffrages of the people

1. Proof of perniciousness, interest opposite to that of the greatest

number

2. Disproof of the presumptive evidence of usefulness afforded by

custom - beginning in remote i.e. in early times. Take earliness of date for evidence

of ability to get in every instance to a state of things of which the existing

examples are to be seen in New South Wales etc

3. Monarchy pure Monarchy the original because the simplest form of

government. It had its origin in the necessity men were under of putting themselves

under the command of a single chief in the wars between one savage or barbarian tribe

and another. Thus arose on one part the habit of obedience, on the other part the

habit of command, and by the frequency of actual war and the constancy of preparation

for a state of war the habit of obedience and command was preserved from

interruption.

The children and next relations of the Monarch being naturally most

frequently in his society /company/ and in the largest proportion sharers in his

confidence, hence it is that the elective Monarchy naturally passed into a hereditary

one

But though this was the natural and in the first instance /in early

times/ the inevitable state of things, it follows not that it was the state of things

in the highest degree contributory to the greatest happiness of the greatest

number.

JB_116_196_001.xml

Title: [6 July 1802 2 N. S. Wales laws. As]

Description: 6 July 1802 2 N. S. Wales

laws. As

violently as ever dead Nature was thought to abhor the idea

of a vacuum, living Nature abhors the absence of all law. Reason

revolts from the thing itself: imagination

recoils from the very idea

of it. To conceive space absolutely without matter, the abstractive

powers even of a Newton were insufficient. Imagination created an aether

for him to supply the plan of it. Imagination, the chief and only constant

guide of the man of law

in this fabrication weaving spinning out of that

species of law which has been so aptly defined "a the

competition of opposite analogies" (I say the only constant guide —

for the principle of ability is but the occasional — is to

have

the constant guide of the legitimate legislator is to

his bastard relative but the occasional one) imagination

repells the idea if any the inconvenient fashion

of governable space, unfilled by law.

Thus it is that wherever a void opens in law belongs displays

itself, lawyers are [so] ready supply fill the vacuum by denying

its existence. Thus it is that wherever there is a an ab a want

a negation an absence of genuine law, (the expression of

the will of a real legislator or set of legislators to whose will in

the behalf in question the bulk of the community are by the requisite

habits and opinions prepared to pay obedience) lawyers of all classes are

so ready to agree in forging one. Hence the Law of Nature Law of

Nations, Common Law and so forth.

In