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[clx. 376]
1822 July 22
Constitut. Code Rationale
Securites Counterforce
5 Moral responsibility
Public Opinion Tribunal
Evidednce
There are two ways /two correspondent and opposite modes/ of laying claim to the exercise of the blockading system /power/ on the ground of alledged or assumed superiority in intellectual aptitude: the one consists in magnifying the alledged aptitude of the governors; the other in parvifying the alledged inaptitude of the governed. Each of them is employed as occasion serves. The parvifying mode may be used in all situations as occasion serves: it gives no offence to the reader or hearer if he be of the ruling or otherwise influential class: in a word, unless, in his own conception he belongs to that inferior class at the expence of which the pretension is set up. The magnifying mode, being in fact the self-magnifying mode can not without giving offence be employed in any other situation other than those in which custom has thrown its veil over arrogance impudence and insolence: namely the situation of those by whom the power of surmounting contradiction by punishment is possessed and exercised.
It is curious to see with what undeviating constancy how in certain authoritative discourses the possession of the maximum of appropriate official aptitude in all its branches [...?] and in particular intellectual aptitude in the degree indicated by the romantic appellative wisdom is predicated of themselves - by the very scum of the population: by a set of men in comparison of whom the most vitious of those whom they consign to death or punishment which ends not but with life are virtuous - by a body composed of the principals and instruments of misrule depredation and oppression all upon the largest /an all-comprehensive/ scale: of corruptors and corrupted: of selfish and empty-headed /[...?] and [...?]/ loungers, present at the scene of action when brought /led/ thither by some general or particular sinister interest, absent at all other times led by a few venal utterers of vague generalities and common-place fallacies and other vague generalities: men whose minds being imbecillitated /debilitated/ by that worse than useless education which under a system of corrupt and corruptive establishments overgrown opulence affords /secures/ /bestows/, know not an unapt argument from an apt one, a relevant argument from an irrelevant one, possessing neither inclination nor ability nor inclination to discern the difference.
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Title: [1819 Jan. y 4 Parl. Reform Bill]Description: 1819 Jan. y 4 Parl. Reform Bill Dialogues Preliminary View 56 Conclusion Reformist. May I not now indulge some hope of your approbation for my plan? Anti-Reformist. I will consider of it. Reformist. This is all I ask, and as much as for the present I can expect. Anti-Reformist. Thus much I am prepared already to say to you, that if in any part of it there be any gross absurdity, it is more than I have been able to discern[?]. As to your motives ... Reformist. Oh, let us not talk /think/ of motives. Ascribe to the author what motives you please /Man shall be what you please/, the work /plan/ will be neither the better nor the worse. Think your objections over again – look at them one by one – one and all you will find them one and all the result – not of thought, but of want of thought. Vague generalities such as their apt denominations – such their common character: current language, commonly received and never[?] examined conceptions – such is their source.
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Title: [[lxxxiv. 79] 1821 Decr 25 Codification]Description: [lxxxiv. 79] 1821 Decr 25 Codification Proposal ?.5. Admission Universal III Aptitude and Inaptitude Napoleon Of those /men/ by whom on a throne or elsewhere great power was /has been/ exercised, no one perhaps was with relation to the work of legislation more compleatly destitute of /lower in the scale of/ appropriate moral aptitude than Napoleon Bonaparte. Yet in virtue of the appropriate intellectual aptitude which with relation to that work he possessed, he has by means of that body of law of his called the Cinq Codes rendered to France not only very /a prodigiously/ great service, but greater service by far than was ever rendered by any of those Monarchs whose disposition was least adverse to the happiness of their fellow citizens, a Lewis the 16th for example or an Alexander the first. Lewis in his simplicity never thought of giving them a tangible and an all©comprehensive rule of action: Alexander at one time tried at it, and as will presently be seen failed. Napoleon had in his hand the plan of an all comprehensive body of law having for its end in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number with a rationale. Tallyrand had the merit of putting that plan into his hand His appropriate intellectual aptitude made him applaud it: c'est un ouvrage de genie were his words. His want of appropriate moral aptitude made him put it aside. It would have suited the purposes of those over whom he ruled: but it would not have suited his individual /own/ purposes. The hands he looked for were hands to /such as could and would and could/ frame a body of law that should suit his individual purposes: and no difficulty of course could he find in meeting with such hands. Hence, instead of the clear and steady light he might have had, in the shape of an interwoven rationale, deduced all along from the principle of utility, from the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he had on each occasion in the shape of a detached dissertation or set of detached dissertations, an ”ignis fatuus•, composed of vague generalities consisting of vague©generality gas, twinkling aloft in a region or regions of unmeasurable altitude
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Title: [[clx. 437] 1822 July 22 Constitut]Description: [clx. 437] 1822 July 22 Constitut Code Exposition In a word, in all its forms the matter of corruption in all its forms, that is to say the matter of wealth, and in a word the matter of prosperity in all its forms in so far as it presents itself to the sense of mankind: for the association the so deplorably delusive association of a connection between wealth, power and factitious dignity on the one part, and general worth and official aptitude, moral, intellectual and active on the other part being so generally and firmly established the consequence is that in proportion as prosperity /wealth prosperity or splendour/ is seen, worth moral and intellectual are regarded as having place. Rationale To the purpose of divesting the elements of prosperity of their delusive influence what does the nature of the case admitt of?
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