date

1822 March 24 Rid Yourselves
1822 March 24

Rid Yourselves

Part 1

Letter 2 Interests

Corruptionists' Arguments

When the waste, depredation and oppression of which England Scotland and Ireland are

the theatres is complained of eyes and ears are shut and /to overpower the cry of

particular complaint a cry of general a cry of eulogy is set up. Matchless

Constitution! Envy and Admiration of its world! Matchless indeed in waste and

corruption, and in that almost hopeless /[...?] is [...?] [...?] which without the

aid of corruption and delusion it could never have been in the power of force and

intimidation to produce.

While this is writing, the employment of corruption are a means of government and

the determination to continue the employment of it has just been avowedly a function

/[...?] functionary/ by government writing and speaking by authority is the name and

by the authority of the highest department of governments only instead of corruptive

influence is the word employed meaning avowedly the influence of many in possession

or expectancy is the representatives of the people looking for it to the removable

[...?] of the Monarch.

Antecedently to the establishment of the Government of the Anglo- American United

States the English was indeed the best or to speak more properly the least bad of all

known goverments. Thus much therefore there it always has been and continues to be in

the eloquence[?] that have been bestowed upon it. But the bad the least good or is

but too incontrovertible.

[...?] what is bad and what is good in it nothing can be pleasure than the

destruction. That whatever bad in it is that which it has in common with all other

Monarchies. That which it has good in it is this /the like/ which it has now in

common with the Anglo American United States.
Similar Items
  • Title: [1823. Feb. 28. Greece. J.B. Observations]
    Description: 1823. Feb. 28.

    Greece. J.B. Observations on particular Articles

    It will suffice of itself to prove the impossibility, that in the English form of government the power exercised by the King, or the power exercised by the House of Lords should ever have had for the end of its creation the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or so much as the happiness of any individual other than the several sorts of person, by whom those powers have been and are exercised, and their several connections. It will rid the country of both these sources of misrule and misery, so soon as the eyes of the greatest number are sufficiently open to the only sound principles of the art and science of government; that is to say if the supreme constitutive power be lodged in the hands of all who are capable of bearing a part in the exercise of it, instead of being engrossed by a minute fraction of that number almost all of them listed in the service of misrule by a community of corrupt and sinister interest.

    It will render similar service to France, in the eyes of all Frenchmen who can endure to listen at it.

    It will rid the Spanish constitution of its King: and of that vast reservoir and fountain of the matter of corruption the Council of State with its forty members, all of them creatures of the Monarch.

    It will render similar service to Portugal.

    It will render service even to the Constitution of the Anglo-American United States, matchless as it is as yet, and little short of the summit of absolute perfection as it is. It will clear it of its Senate: a mass of useless, and thence worse than useless complication introduced by a natural and not illaudable timidity, at a time when principles were as yet unsettled, and no sufficient stock of experience as yet obtained: established in imitation of that parent government, which, not without reason was universally regarded as the best, or to speak more properly the least bad government that, till the Anglo-American Government had had time to manifest itself, had ever been exemplified.
  • Title: [[lxxxiv. 120] 1822 Jany 24]
    Description: [lxxxiv. 120]

    1822 Jany 24

    Codification Offer

    ult¼o

    ?.5 Admission Universal

    and what contributes to fix it is © that how bad soever as compared with a /the only/ government which has ever had for its actual end in view /object of endeavour/ the greatest happiness of the greatest number namely that of the Anglo American United States, it has been owing to its continual comparative weakness, eminently and incontestably good in comparison of every other government that has ever been in existence: and thus has not only been less bad than any other but by that appetite for distant dependencies which has been a main spring /source/ of that waste and corruption in which it has found its profit has under favourable circumstances this bad government given birth to that only good one.

    At this time the quantity of aliment thus converted as above into poison seems to have reached its maximum, and to be even threatened with a decline. But in conjunction with the momentary sinister interest of the ruling few, the ultimate interest of the subject many seems rather to require that it should not decline: but that the endeavours to give encrease to it should continue on the encrease: that to that purpose the correspondent endeavour to give encrease to the force of government should continue on the encrease, until by the strain the whole fabric should burst and fall to pieces, in which case the only good one now so extensively understood would take its place of course

    A little more, and no more victims will be thrown into jail because all jails will be filled: no prosecutions before Juries will be instituted because no Juries will convict for any thing /offence against Government/. The readiness of those by whom the abolition of that instrument of salutary weakness has been threatened the readiness to employ the law in execution of that threat is not to be /can not be/ doubted as little can the readiness of the Judges to give to the law execution and effect to the utmost power.
  • Title: [1822 May 24 Economy etc. Hence]
    Description: 1822 May 24

    Economy etc.

    Hence comes all that boasting which in the mouth and pen the admirers

    real or pretended of the English Constitution is so undefatigable. Through the

    particular channel never is the matter of corruption received by the functionaries in

    the superior grades of the department. Why? because through other channels they are

    saturated with it, in so far as by the matter of greed man is capable of being

    saturated - through other channels they are thus saturated with it, and through this

    particular channel it is altogether out of their power to obtain it.

    In the Anglo-American United States, the Members of the Judicial

    Establishment if in any degree at all corrupt, are not so in any degree worth

    considering in comparison of what is above But, though in a degree of enormity much

    less than in England factitious misdecision, delay, expence and vexation, have place

    in their system of substantive law and in their system of indictive law otherwise

    called Law of Judicial Procedure, it being derived from that same corrupt and

    corruptive English source. From all this corruption The profit whatsoever it be which

    is thus derived, it is by the professional retinues of the law by such of the lawyer

    tribe as are enlisted in the service of individual suitors that it is reaped: these

    men the receivers of the corrupt profit, and the men belonging to the legislative

    department in the several states as well as in the central state and by whose

    connivance and inaction it is continued to be reaped, these are the men whom they

    have for their accomplices

    Of corruption in this form which with the addition of that in which

    it has place in the case of Slaveholding and Slave buying and Slave holding is /may

    be stated as [...?]/ the only form in which any thing to which the name of corruption

    can with truth and justice be attributed has place in that political state, the

    efficient cause is the predominant influence of the lawyer tribe in the legislatures

    of these several states. In the Codification Proposal the baleful magnitude of this

    sinister influence has on that as yet matchless seat of good government been brought

    to view