1821 July 9

Codification Offer

'.9.

Factitious mischievous

IV. Encouragement of Fine Arts

IV. Encouragement of the Fine Arts.

Under the denomination of the Fine Arts are comprized those arts by which amusement is afforded and nothing else. If in this amusement the greatest number were partakers and at the same time the amusement could not be obtained by them otherwise than by forced contribution, imposed on all, something might be said if not in justification in apology for the power exercised by the exaction of forced contribution, of money from unwilling contributors for this purpose. But in these /the enjoyment derived from these/ amusements it may be said without any exception that the greatest number are not partakers. The individuals and the only individuals that are partakers of them are individuals that belong to the class of those who are in affluent or at the least in easy circumstances: who in a word belong to the class of the ruling and influential few. In many an instance out of the taxes money has been employed for the defraying the expence of some source of an amusement in which not one individual in a hundred not one individual in a thousand are partakers.

Money thus employed is money taken /obtained/ in the way of robbery from the poor by the rich for their own use, obtained by false pretences: obtained by the false pretence of employing it for the service of all or at any rate of the greatest number when in truth it is only to the use of the smaller number, almost in every instance an extremely small number /proportion/ that it is applied: in the way of robbery taken from the defenceless by the class of the pretended wise and good /of those by whom a superiority in the scale of wisdom and goodness is assumed./