[xxxvi. 28]

1821. April 25.

First Lines

Constitutional Finance

But, in this instance /good/, another of good economy, in an additional shape, is found practicable and profitable. Inastead of no more than ten or twenty times the salary necessary for the maintenance of an individual of the productively labouring class, let two hundred or though it were but a hundred times that amount be allotted, individuals might, in the very highest rank, next to that of the Royal Family, be found - individuals in multitudes who, being in a state of constant appetancy for such a place and thence in a state of constant competition with each other, will thereby be placed in a state of equally constant and proportionably abject corrupt obsequiousness with relation to the corruptive influence exercised with or without his caring or thinking any thing about the matter by the Royal Proprietor of these consecrated quadrupeds. So many as there are of these competitors, so many men are there where votes, and, in so far as they have a faculty of speech, their speeches, are in readiness to do whatsoever is in their power to contribute /contribute/, to the fulfilment of the will, and the gratification of the corespondent appetite, of him whom it is their ambition to be entitled to denominate /designate/ by the appellation of their Royal Master. Thus much in that House which is stiled Right Honourable; but in some if not all these instances, what will have place moreover is that, to these several superlatively, although it be but psitively noble persons, may appertain, through the medium of this or that borough, or of this or that county, a seat or seats, to the number of from two to ten in that other House, so inferior in dignity, so superior in power, which, in style and title, is no more than simply honourable. And thus it is that, so far as regards that portion of salary which would have been found necessary for that manager of horses who could undertake for the management of horses but for nothing else, one and the same quantity of the matter of wealth thus employed in political waste, is employed, without addition, in two of the three purposes at once: viz. gratification to Royal appetite, and securing a corrupt obsequiousness by means of corruptive influence.

As