[clxiv. 173]

1820 June 22

Emancipation Spanish

Interests opposite

King worst not best

This splendor is necessary - most indispensably necessary: more so by far than to the subject many the small quantity of the cheapest sustenance necessary to keep them from lingering but certain death. Necessary? and to what purpose? to the causing them to believe that the attribute of excellence is constantly to be found in a place which is the very last in which common sense undeluded by imposture would expect ever to find it.

And to what immediate purpose is all this pain taken to cause men to believe this attribute constantly present in a subject so essentially capable of receiving it? To what purpose? - to the purpose of obtaining submission upon false pretence: submission, and with it in the first place money - money in vast and continually encreasing masses, whether those from whom for this purpose it must continually be forced have or have not a sufficiency left for the continuation of their existence

To the apotheosis - to the ceremony by which a Roman tyrant was created a Heathen God - is substituted in this pretendedly wise and honest nation, a /the/ Coronation: a ceremony by which a man, who on his knees has under the direction of a priest been confessing himself a "miserable sinner" is created a God-upon-earth after the order of Sir William Blackstone. To be deceived to their ruin, not only women but men crowd, under an enormous pressure of expence and inconvenience in every shape, as moths crowd into the fatal flame of a lighted candle If by an earthquake actors and spectators were swallowed up together, and if by such a catastrophe the mixture of absurdity and impiety could be saved for ever from repetition, scarcely would the price be too great a price for the benefit.