date

1821. June 20. Codification Offer
1821. June 20.

Codification Offer

'.7 /8/ Foreigner why

'.4. In moral aptitude he is far superior

A foreigner, howsoever, in other circumstances, he might have had the desire, can

not, unless gained over by the rulers of that country to their interest as

above, entertain any such hope, nor consequently be occupied in any such

endeavour.

Remains, the only case, in which, consistently with moral probability, a work of

this sort could have for its author a foreigner, acting under the direction and

impulse of a particular and sinister interest. This is the case where, in the

expectation and for the sake of a remuneration, in one or more of the

abovementioned three shapes, viz. money, power, and factitious dignity, he has

offered himself for the work, to this or that leading native. But, in this case,

there must exist, on the one part, in the breast of an individual, in relation

to whom, in countries foreign to his own, a sufficiently strong and extensive

persuasion of his appropriate aptitude in the shape of intellectual aptitude and

active talent, has place: on the other part, a desire to earn the remuneration,

whatever it may be, at the price of a labour of so unexampled a complexion, of

so vast a magnitude, at the disposition of the ruler or rulers in question, a

mass of reward, sufficient to afford an adequate remuneration, not only for the

labour employed in such a work, howsoever executed, but moreover for the

disrepute and self-reproach attached to the execution of it in a manner thus

adverse to the workman's own presumable principle. Under these circumstances, it

will be seen what probability there is that, by the hands of a foreigner, any

intentional sacrifice of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the

community in question should come to be effectual, or so much as to have been

proposed: and, therefore, that to any such person any such invitation, or to any

offer, if made by him, any acceptance should be given. Oh yes, if, being a

foreigner, he were not known to be so. But, by the supposition, as above, this

case is excluded.

As, by sinister interest, moral aptitude may be affected and deteriorated, so, by

prejudices, interest-begotten, or otherwise derived, may intellectual aptitude.

In any prejudices peculiar to the country in question, the foreigner, by the

supposition, has no share. From prejudices imbibed in his own foreign country,

no danger to the one in question can arise. In none

of
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