date

[129b-575] 22 Jan y 1817 Plan
[129b-575]

22 Jan y 1817

Plan Cat

Introd

{Postscript}

§. Absentation

Aptitude excluded

Absentation

4

{On this maxim /fallacy/ is grounded the demand for encrease of official pay until the whole produce actual and possible of taxation is swallowed up in the gulph} Probity intellectual aptitude active talent all these elements of official[?] aptitude are as the quantity /encrease and decrease in the exact proportion/ of money given for the hire of them. Can you have too much of them? Can you even have enough of them? No never: thereafter so long as you have a halfpenny more to give, you have not given pay enough.}

For neglect of duty thus committed without shame triennuality leaves two years at least leaves in a word three years: if the lounger wishes for a second lounge if so it be that by the son /lounger/ of pampered indolence a second lounge is desired, his third year given to occasional attendance, will be received as a proof of repentance and a growing taste for business: but if so it be that a three years possession of power without obligation will satisfy him, then will triennuality have been without excitement to attendance other than what the casual desire of affording protection to some privilege may produce.

By annuality of re-election the house would be cleared of these nuisances: some would be converted and to the /that/ security whatsoever /for appropriate aptitude – whatsoever if any/ it may be which is afforded by opulence, add the more intelligible security afforded by attention and experience: by these would abide the task: the worthless would sink under it, and by their sinking and giving place to those who will /can/ abide it the country will be saved.
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    year the ministerial hustings[?] in whose instance by the condition of their engagement /dependence/ attendance as often as /whenever/ required is can[?] compose[?] with or without a number more or less considerable of those who with /engaged on the side of/ Ministry which for this purpose is called /so abominably miscalled/ Government, by the fear of anarchy and to save the trouble of thinking, carry the question to a certainty – and that in a case so gross that all the ignorance and imbecillity[?] which is the result indolence would not suffice to prevent these habitual absentees from rejecting it – were they but present.

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