date

1822 April 17 Rid Yourselves
1822 April 17

Rid Yourselves

Lett. 18. Relinquishment Plan

' 6. Case V. Subjection uncontested

2. Buyers foreigners

The same fruit the [...?] /[...?] the [...?] the [...?] it wide the

distinction between their [...?] former rulers more than others are [...?] to [...?]

give: and d o less.

The [...?] [...?] will for respect [...?]

Already /For example/ for example in Congress those who are near

enough to the spot to take /make/ a detailed survey of it, a suspicion, I am told has

arisen, that in the Senate they have a useless /sort of/ House of Lords: not as

elsewhere an implacable enemy and sure preventer of every thing that is not bad, but

a needless and useless delayer of many things that are good, and at any rate a

useless source of expence. /waste of time and money/ Of the balance between profit

and loss in that business I pretend not to form any judgement: I have no sufficient

means for it. But under /in/ that government in which the People are rulers over

their rulers if any alteration that in his eyes is a good one presents itself to any

man's conception, the probability of its obtaining acceptance is in his scale in the

direct rules of the utility /goodness/ of it: whereas /while/ in a government in

which there is a House of Lords, without anything /with nothing above it/ or with a

Monarch above it, as to acceptance for any thing good all probability is out of the

question, certainty of non-acceptance is entire.

If there be a difference under a Monarchy the improbability of adoption for any

thing conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number is rather less

without than with a House of Lords. By weakness or caprice, even in that station a

single man may be led thus to promote the happiness even by augmenting the ower, of

the many: of a multitude /number/ of men thus high in power, the greater part never

can.
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  • Title: [1822 Apr. 17 Rid Yourselves]
    Description: 1822 Apr. 17

    Rid Yourselves

    Lett. 18. Relinquisht. Plan

    ' 6. Case V. Subjection uncontested

    2. Buyers inhabitants.

    All democratic forms notwithstanding from all the accounts that have

    reached this country - and public and private together I have seen numbers - numbers

    more than you can have seen, in the least badly governed of those several states

    every thing that in the Anglo-American United States or even in this country is

    presented to the mind by the words good government is still in prospect only, at best

    in hope, not in experience. By Solomon the sluggard was sent to the anvil to learn

    industry: by every well-wisher every one of those

    effects from the over-grown polype need /should/ be recommended to betake themselves

    to those Anglo-American neighbours, and under them bind themselves as apprentices for

    a few years to learn self-government.

    Under these circumstances I see nothing in any degree extravagant

    /romantic/ or considerably wide in practice in the idea that Well then suppose that

    in pursuance of an invitation from your rulers, your as yet unemancipated kinsmen

    between the Mississippi and the Pacific were to come to an agreement with the

    Anglo-American Union, and for the present become members of it on terms the same in

    principle with those other States which from the dominion of your rulers have been

    added to it. In any such tripartite agreement what is there that can justly be

    charged with extravagance? what is there of which it can ever be said that it would

    stand considerably wide from /in/ practice.

    In this at present I see such an opportunity as if not now embraced

    never can so long as this orb turns round present itself anew /again/ a second time.

    As to whether under existing /their/ circumstances the people in question would be

    content to give any thing, and if any thing what on this head it would be altogether

    useless for a man in mine to set himself to conjecture.
  • Title: [1822 Apr. 15 Rid Yourselves]
    Description: 1822 Apr. 15

    Rid Yourselves

    Lett. 18. Relinquisht. mode

    ' 6. Case V. Subjection uncontested

    Buyers, foreigners.

    The Russian attempt to make conquests in the Pacific by an Ukase is an object of

    apprehension to nobody, of ridicule to everybody. For to whom can it be a secret that

    the distance of their ports in the Pacific from the capital and from every inhabited

    province condemns their military exertions to that quarter to an everlasting

    /irremediable/ debility, fortunate in so small degree to every other country.
  • Title: [1822 April 17 Rid Yourselves]
    Description: 1822 April 17

    Rid Yourselves

    Letter 18. Relinquish t

    ' 6. Case V. Subjection uncontested

    2. Buyers foreigners

    In the establishment of Columbia /separate/ there must have been

    force for separate advantage for the preceding vastness

    [...?] that surrenders itself and others on principle of pain and anxiety

    Once more, as to distance. Form distance of

    so many parts comes vastness of the whole: and from vastness in territory and

    population together, complication in the government,and in government complication

    over and above what is necessary is the root /a source/ of all evil: for it is a

    screen to all evil.

    True. But as in /of/ the government of the Anglo-American United

    States the facility of access to melioration is an essential character of melioration

    in all points, so of melioration in regard to extent of territory. With less

    difficulty than any other say rather without any difficulty if it be for the greater

    happiness of the greatest number, it may be and will be decomposed like a polype

    decomposed by itself and without pain not as the polype has been decomposed, by the

    operation of the torturing /an experimentalists tormenting //cruel// knife.

    Suppose it thus derided for example into four such governments, four such

    confederacies as the present: as one of the advantages possessed by the present which

    will (so it seems to me) be lost by the /in a/ separation made of it into these four

    parts. In every one of them the superior constitutive power will be in the hands of

    the many, who have nothing to gain and every thing to lose by war: therefore as

    between one and another of those confederacies there will never be any war. But, so

    as the neighbours are but on terms of peace and good will with it, it is the interest

    of the people in every state that others in general and in particular its next

    neighbours be in a state of the greatest prosperity possible: the more prosperous the

    more serviceable in the character of customers and helpers. In the eyes of each of

    these then, each man will see the invader of the prosperity of any one of these its

    /his/ neighbour the invader of his own. To all other states this will be sufficiently

    manifest: so manifest that to attack any one of them will be an enterprize too

    perilous in the eyes of the rulers of all other States to all enterprize too

    perilous