JB_160_202.xml

Title: [[clx. 202] 1821. April 19.]

Description: [clx. 202]

1821. April 19.

First Lines

Distributive Law.

A body thus transcendant was too

/Exercised/ /Made/ By subjects not commissioned for that purpose by their sovereign, capture thus made, would have given /gives/ to the act by which it was made, the denomination of an act of piracy, /and/ to the agents, the name of pirates. But, /as we have seen/ among the attributes which Blackstone's God upon Earth shares with that God which is in Heaven, is the incapacity of doing wrong. As, in the hands of Midas, dirt became gold, so, in the hands of this god, wrong becomes right. Committing to any extent those acts which, if committed by a subject, would render the agent a pirate, a King of England never is, never can be, a pirate. The profits of piracy may be his: but, when they are thus reaped, the legal guilt - let others say whether the moral guilt be - whether the religious guilt be - the legal guilt is nobody's.

Calling these his profits droits of Admiralty, the Arch-pirate by whom they were reaped - I mean he who, but for the poweer of converting wrong into right, would have been arch-pirate - giving to these his profits the name of droits of admiralty he gave them the colour of law, but what is certain is, he did not do away or lessen the suffering issuing from that same source whatsoever he may have done by the guilt attached to the production of it. Whether, in converting wrong into right, he converts sin into merit, must be left to the decision of that most excellent church of which he is the most gracious and religious head.

JB_164_081.xml

Title: [[clxiv. 81] 1820 May 29 Emancipation]

Description: [clxiv. 81]

1820 May 29

Emancipation Spanish

Nay (it may be said) but they have a common interest. It is the interest of all that all together, they should have /obtain//possess/ in their hands and enjoy these same instruments to as great an amount on the whole as possible.

It is therefore not only the interest of the subject many that they the subject many should obtain possess and enjoy these same instruments as possible, it is moreover the interest of their rulers /the ruling few/ that those their subjects should have possess and enjoy those same instruments to as great an amount as possible. They have therefore with them one common interest.

True: they have with them one common interest. But in which sense? and in what proportion? and to what effect? In the same sense, in the same proportion and to the same effect, as those who in any character or capacity exercise depredation have one common interest with those on whom they exercise it.

It is the interest of highwaymen that the quantity of wealth in the possession of the travellers who frequent the road on which those same highwaymen /punishable depredators/ exercise their profession should at all times be as great as possible. But by this interest those same professional men are nor precluded /barred/ from the exercise of such their profession but excited to it.

It is in the interest of lawyers that the quantity

JB_164_091.xml

Title: [[clxiv. 91] Emancipation Spanish]

Description: [clxiv. 91]

Emancipation Spanish

1820 May 4

. Rulers Arguments

Virtue no Security

1. Creoles obsequious

Ever since the death of that English Queen who was the wife of a Spanish Monarch, the same /like/ community of interests has been understood to have place /may be seen to have had place/ between the subjects of Spain in both worlds on the one part, and English pirates licenced and unlicenced on the other. So between the King of Spain and the King of England in his quality of King of Pirates, Most Excellent, most gracious and most religious, for all this he is by Act of Parliament plundering foreigners and his sub pirates taken together as by the hands of his Judges and their accomplices by means of the words Droits of Admiralty.

To a certain degree and in a certain sense, and to a certain degree, in all these and in all other cases the /a/ community of interests has place between the subjects or exaction on the one hand and the authors of it an the other. But with this exception the opposition is active.

In the course of the operations performed upon the subject many by the ruling few for the purpose of the exaction /extraction/, a regard may naturally be expected to this /one/ point, namely that the share left to the subject many in their own property be not so far reduced, that the share extracted out of that same property by and to the use of these the ruling few be reduced along with it. This being a point to which attention is continually called by experience and in practice is accordingly looked to with more or less attention in all taxes.

But attention is labour: and to accomplish its end required discernment. Accordingly the eagerness to produce encrease in the quantity extracted, decrease is no uncommon consequence. The case of the barber who in his haste to go to his dinner cut a finger of his own which to present the cheek the more promptly to the razor he had introduced into the mouth of a customer is not unknown /on record/. Thereupon in words better imagined than repeated comes the censure on lantern jaws. The profaneness of the operative will never be included by Mr. Vansittart. But the suffering has its claim upon his sympathy.