1821 Feb. 21

Rid Yourselves

'.1. Interests concerned

III. Public Creditors. While to any

individual belonging to the class thus denominated, so much as a maravedo that

remains due - due whether on the score of money or money's worth originally advanced,

due or on the score of intervening interest, remains imposed, if any thing that,

without prejudice to justice as above explained, could be defalcated from the

provision made in all shapes for the two just-mentioned classes, remains unapplied to

the satisfaction of this third class, it seems not easy to say how the giving of any

thing that continues to be given to those can be reconcialiable to justice. What is

more - it seems not altogether easy to see how, even in respect of which has above

been stated as due to those on the score of fixt and authorised expectation any thng

more can be required by /requisite on the score of/ justice than their being admitted

to come in as creditors, and being paid in the same times and proportions. True it is

that, the greatest happiness os the greatest number being the all-comprehensive and

only alternative end - justice itself no more than a means

with relation to that end rather than that end should be contravened, under the

pressure of necessity, if it be a real and absolute necessity, not a mere nominal and

relative necessity, the demands of justice, as on other occasions so on this, may and

might to be, left, as long as the necessity continues, unsatisfied. But to produce

any such extreme pressure, which is requisite? Nothing less than the state of things

thus expressed, namely, if such is the [...?] at the same time such is the

disposition of this - two domineering classes of creditors, that, if they remain

unsatisfied they will, one or both of them excite insurrection: in such sort as to

overthrow the Constitution and thus restore the excruciating tyranny; or at the least

produce more mischief than would have been produced by the continuance of the

injustice. Yet, even in this case, there remains something to be considered on the

other side: and that is whether by the corruption and

delusion which are among the inevitably resulting effects of so vast a mass of wealth

in such hands, the disastrous consequences just mentioned, though not so [...?] are

not the less certain not to say still more certain, than any of the mischiefs likely

to be produced by those same hands in the shape of that civil warfare, of which the

country has already obtained but too much knowledge, from recent perhaps from not yet

terminated experience.

Unhappily, wheresoever remains [...?] in a less matured state of

society has left them stationed, the Monarch, the Monarch with the body of those

dependents, of those who have access to him form a choice of [...?]: another,

naturally ever attached to the former and inferior the Clergy, another: Public

creditors. In Spain and every where else a rope of sand.

In Spain, as elsewhere, the class of Public Creditors being destitue

of power, destitue of all means of defending themselves, all classes, who being

possessed of power regard themselves, all classes, who being possessed of power

regard themselves as exposed to retrenchment, fall of course upon this class, and

join hands in the plunderage of it. It is accordingly at the expence fo this helpless

class, that so long as possible, all retrenchmetn is made.

For the eventual refusal of whatever below or is due by time either

to the Monarch or to the Clergy, reasons, which how far so ever from being

conclusive, are not the less entitled to that /the/ appellations, of reasons are supplied by the nature of the case.

Spaniards in yours as in every other Monarchy, whatsoever labour is

employed in defraying the person expenditure of a Monarch, upon any the smallest

scale, in which that expenditure has place is employed in a manner much worse than

useless. Physical fixes, intimidation, corruption and delusion, are the great

instruments of misrule. Exactly in proportion to the quantity of wealth employed in

defraying the personal expences of the Monarch, is the quantity of corruption, and

the quantity and degree of delusion produced by it: produced by it, even without any

exertion, much more if with and by exertion directed to that end, as it no where

fails to be. If, instead of being thus employed the labour were employed in the

building of pyramids or in casting the stones into the sea, it would be beyond

comparison better employed than it is at present any where.

So in regard to the Clergy. Not only has the wealth enjoyed by this class been in

every country, among the instruments of temporal misrule, in the hands of the

temporal Monarch, or in a spiritual Monarch, or both, but, as above, an instrument of

spiritual mischief, operating in opposition to the great spiritual end for the

accomplishment of which as pretended it has every where by a mixture of fraud[?] and

force, been lodged in such ill-suited hands.