[xxxvi. 115]

1822 June 30

Constitut. Code

Supreme Operative

I. Monarch

2. Intellectuals

If where the Monarch is a madman, the people are not worse afflicted than they are seen to be it is because in the name of the Madman it is not by the Madman himself that the determinations are taken by which the operations of government are directed but by a knot of Courtiers whom accident has thrown in his way in such sort as to have become chosen by him to be made the instruments of his will in the several departments; or rather and what is more simple some one of them who has had the good fortune to persuade him to produce in his mind the notion that by the choice of that one instrument his desires are likely to receive a more extensive gratification than by the choice of any other individual: among those several desires, the desire of ease acting always with predominant influence: acting as President as it were as President of the Council of Desires - which person /individual/ is then Prime Minister exercising the powers of the Monarch, and easing him of the whole detail of the cares of government. Certain subject matters there are about /on/ which the nominal /titular/ Monarch and the operative Sub-Monarch are always /at all times and in all places/ agreed of course: the accumulating in the hands of the Monarch of the external instruments of felicity in as large a mass as possible in particular power, money and means of vengeance: at whose ever expence on each occasion the accession is to be made: whether at the expence of his own subjects, or the members of a foreign State, or of both together, as so far as war is the occasion can not but be the case. In this they /Master and Servant in this/ behold the common end; and to the Servant it belongs to provide the means to provide labour in the shape and in the quantity necessary and sufficient for the purpose.