[036.062]

1821 July 9

Codification Offer? or First Lines Constitutional.

'.9 Pay of Useless places

1. Useless official situations.

The whole of the establishment kept up for the service of the person of the Chief functionary in the state in a Monarchy: kept up, as the phrase is, for the support of his dignity: for the maintenance of the lustre, the splendour of his throne.

Proof of the uselessness of this office: the peaceful and flourishing condition of the Anglo-American United States, in which, in the federal state, the pay of the Chief functionary is no more than ,6,000 a year: and it is rather by imitation and prepossession, it should seem, than by any clear proof or view of a real and adequate demand to that amount, that, in that instance, the allowance of so large a sum was determined.

This Office is not merely useless: it is a great deal worse than useless. It is positively mischievous, and in a transcendent degree. Of the mass of the matter of wealth thus employed, the effects are corruption and delusion, corruption applying itself to public functionaries of all other shapes: delusion applying itself to them and to the subject many.

The delusion has for its effect, and object, the causing the several individuals on whom this lustre is stood to be regarded, contrary to the truth of the case, as being in moral as well as intellectual acquirements superior to the rest of the community - superior in the scale of [...?] benevolence, in that of wisdom, appropriate information, discernment and active talent. That this notion is opposite to the truth is matter of demonstration. For to his acquisition of all these endowments, self-denial in the shape of mental labour and other shapes is altogether indispensable: for self-denial is self-annoyance, and that which a man can obtain without self-annoyance, he will not expend self-annoyance on the obtainment of. By power, by money, by factitious dignity, a man is rendered an object of respect and even of affection to other men: especially to those whose place is below the level of his in those several scales: they are placed in a state of dependence with relation to him: he is exempt from dependence in relation to them. In respect of any services it may happen to him to be desirous of receiving at their hands, he is in so much a greater degree independent of his good behaviour in relation to them: of his good behaviour: i.e. of the degree in which he is in the habit of rendering to them services in both shapes, positive and negative: by negative service understand abstinence from inflicting annoyance in all its several shapes.