1821 Aug. 23

Codification Offer

'.9. Draughtsman single

What limitations have place are applied by the hands of a sub-ruling few who

thereby are admitted into a proportionable share of the power of government: the

exercise of which has of course their own greatest happiness for its sole object

If, in what is above as applied to an absolute Monarchy, there be any truth, no

less is there if applied to a limited Monarchy: in an absolute monarchy the sole

actual end of government is the greatest happiness of the ruling one: in a

limited Monarchy the sole end of government is the greatest happiness of the

ruling one in conjunction with that of the sub-ruling few namely those few, by

whom, and consequently for the sake of whose happiness the application of the

limitations has been and continues to be made. Such at any rate is the case in

every limited Monarchy as yet fully established in particular in the English:

which is as much as to say in that Monarchy in which the limitations, intended

for the benefit of the sub-ruling few, have hitherto, in a higher degree than in

any other Monarchy been in their consequences conducive to the greatest

happiness of the greatest number.

Note concluded from another page

Remains, as the only form of government under which the subject many are not, in

the breasts of the ruling few, objects of dissocial affection in any shape - are

not objects either of hatred - nor contempt, but on the contrary of love and

respect, Representative Democracy: in particular that which for these forty

years has stood established in the Anglo-American United States: original number

thirteen: now August 1821 encreased to twenty three. Of this felicity the cause

is - that while the whole of the operative power of the government is in the

hands of a comparatively small number, the whole of the constitutive power with

reference to that same operative power is in the hands of many: those by whom

the several branches of the operative power are exercised being, with or without

intermediate agency, not only appointed, but with certainty and promptitude

removable by those by whom the abovementioned constitutive power is exercised:

for it is of such power of appointment and removal that that same constitutive

power is composed. Thus it is that as, in an absolute Monarchy, on the part of

the rulers that inaptitude which is the opposite of appropriate moral aptitude

is consummate, so in a representative democracy, framed on the principle of

virtually universal suffrage, appropriate moral aptitude itself is consummate.

Under a limited Monarchy, according to the extent of the limitations and the

situation of the hand by which they are applied, the degree of moral inaptitude

may admitt of some depression: but at the very best in so far as in the case of

the rulers competition has place, the happiness of the subject many will still

with certainty and constancy be sacrificed to that of the ruling one in

conjunction with that of the sub-ruling few.