date

2 Sept 1809 Parl y Reform B
2 Sept 1809

Parl y Reform

B. I. Necessity

Ch.18. Mischief of Idol-worship

§.3. King’s interest. 2. power[?]

Elogiums mischievous

8

6

6

6

1. […?] depends 1. on appurtenances[?] of punishment 2. on opinion of utility

& necessity

2. If this were the case the laws[?] would be contained[?] under an unpopular King

which is not the case.

Let not be said that howsoever well or howsoever ill-merited by this or that

individual praise thus bestowed respect and affection thus evidenced, are beneficial

and necessary to good government, being necessary to conciliate and secure on the

part of the people that constant disposition to obedience and submission to the laws

on which not only the goodness but the very existence of government depends.

Submission to the laws depends /is built/ upon a basis of a much stronger /firmer/

texture than either affection or respect for this or that individual wheresoever /on

how high soever a situation/ seated.
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    be sure to find will still less bear contradictions than this good one.
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    In the character of evidence of desert what can be the value of praise when at the

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    But these elogiums, not to speak of their bearing so frequently on the part of the

    object not any determinate ground, nor on the part of the eulogist any generous

    /really social/ and honest motive, such is the constant tendency – such is very

    frequently their effect, that against their influence a man whose social affections

    are capable of extending themselves beyond the garment which wraps up the individual

    – a man in whose bosom the constitution and the people whose all[?] depends upon it

    are in any degree the objects of regard /affection/ can not be too much upon his

    guard against its sinister influence.

    Under an absolute monarchy such exercises may be not only innocent but beneficial:

    be he what he may /ever so mischievous/ their tendency is in some measure to sooth

    and soften the character of the Monarch, at any rate to reconcile the people to their

    fate.

    But under the British Constitution /English government/, the very existence of the

    constitution depends upon jealousy, and upon the unceasing alertness of that

    jealousy: the unfitness the radiant and irremediable unfitness of the King, as King,

    to govern to govern in any thing the few exceptions as above alone exempted[?] is the

    fundamental principle of it.

    So good a King! can we do better than to be governed by him? to be governed by him

    in every thing? So excellent a King, can any man be more fit – can any man be so fit

    as he for the so difficult task of government? for a task for which the purest[?]

    probity is not more than necessary

    The King so good, and the country therefore to be governed by him? No: if he /the

    King/ have but so much as the wish to govern, this wish, to the extent in which he

    suffers himself to indulge in it, is itself a proof of his not being, of his not

    being to the only purpose here in question to the most material of all purposes, a

    good one.