JB_167_252.xml

Title: [[clxvii. 252] 1821 Aug. 6.]

Description: [clxvii. 252]

1821 Aug. 6.

Rid Yourselves

Lett. 5 Continued Submission impossible

4. Adopters justified.

4. The adopters of the Code every where justified. On no occasion could they have taken a better course: their choice was that or none. The foundations /roots/ were /are/ the best possible: in theory Fundamental /Radical/ theory - fundamental maxim - sole defensible end of government the greatest happiness of the greatest number: radical /correspondent/ arrangement: constitutive power - the root /basis/ of all operative power lodged in the hands of the greatest number: this power lodged in the /those/ hands by those by where obedience all operative power is comprized /constituted/ in the hands of those to the securing of whose greatest happiness the exercise of it ought to /should/ be directed. The foundations were /Those were/ the best possible: and on these foundations preserved no bad arrangements that should be inserted into the edifice - no arrangements adverse to that all-comprehensive end can be of long continuance. Not in the multitude of words only but in extent of import depends the extent of the effect produced by a discourse. In detail the Code swarms with imperfections: it could not have been otherwise: a sample, and no more than a sample has on this occasion been held up to view. But from these imperfections had they been still more numerous and still more important than they are, the whole taken together would not have been divested of its beneficial quality, /rendered either bad in itself/ or unfit to be adopted in Monarchical States /any Monarchical State/ seeking relief from despotism.

JB_167_253.xml

Title: [[clxvii. 253] 1821 Aug. 6.]

Description: [clxvii. 253]

1821 Aug. 6.

Rid Yourselves

Lett. 5. Adopters justified

In form otherwise than Monarchical the regenerated Government could not have been: /Democratical it could not have been in readiness/ for there were no hands in readiness in which the powers belonging to a democracy could have been placed: no hands already in possession of an adequate degree of public confidence. Democratical it could not /easily/ /scarcely/ have been for another reason for by democracy by any thing short of democracy the shock from popular prejudice would have been too great to be endured.

Not that in its present form it can remain uncharged. Mixt up of democracy on the one hand and Monarchy with /supported by/ an Official authority for its support on the other, it will either go on to /made up of such irreconcileable/ representative democracy, or fall back to despotism: fall back to despotism, that is to say in the first instance: for in democracy sooner of later, either directly or through the medium of depotism, the new lights, the sun abovementioned with all its vivifying power will make it end /cause it to terminate/. To the absurdity of Monarchy considered in the light of a means towards the greatest happiness of the greatest number - of any number greater than the ruling one, all eyes /every eye/ will be open. Goodness is - not as pretended - in the direct but in the inverse ratio of the power which a man has over others. By the absurdity of the contrary doctrine, by the immorality the insincerity and the baseness involved in every preachment of it, sooner or later every stomach will be sickened. Under a Monarchy the whole population is composed of sycophants and traitors: the sycophants again of deceivers and dupes: dupes then on whom the language of the idolatory passes for truth: deceivers those by whom the language of the idolatry passes for truth: deceives those by whom it is seen to be what it is. Obey the King is to say in other words assist him in exercising the power of oppression and depredation over the people. Absolute or limited the Monarch is every where a living idol: a God upon earth as He is Emmanuel, God with us. Such by the express declaration of Blackstone was the God by whom for this theology he was so richly rewarded.

In its very cradle from its very origin the force of the matter of corruptive influence (and by the practice of the hands in which it is lodged the whole mass of official emolument is converted as will soon be seen into the matter of corruptive influence the force of the makers of corruptive influence is at work urging /pressing/ it back on the road to pristine despotism /misery/, lodged in irremovable hands, this whole mass goes on accumulating and accumulating like an avalanche.

167_115.xml

Title: [[clxvii. 115] 1821. March 30.]

Description: [clxvii. 115]

1821. March 30.

Rid Yourselves

Spaniards! To account for such legislation as you have been seeing, one thing should never be out of sight /your remembrances/ From that time to this - from 1812 to 1820 and 1821, no act of legislation over Ultramaria or at least over any considerable part of it, has the Cortes ever had to exercise. Of the new state into which things would there be brought by so thorough a change - by a change from pure Monarchy to a Government which, at that vast distance from the centre of power more especially, would have so much of pure democracy in it, no conception can the Codifiers have had from particular experience, no conception do they seem to have been able to form to themselves from imagination guided by general experience: and with all the aid they had from their self-appointed Colleagues, the sham deputies from Ultramaria, any much clearer conception do they appear to have formed of themselves of the state of things in Ultramaria, in its thus projected condition than if, instead of Ultramaria, they had had the moon to deal with.