1822 July 4.

Constitut. Code Rationale

Supreme Constitutive

Why in all

In the breast /instance/ of each individual member of that same community, whatever it be, this same sinister desire, the desire of making to the profit of his own happiness, the sinister sacrifice, has place: but in the instance of no such individual has the power any place: to his purpose the incorporeal instruments /requisites/ are wanting: and these being wanting, the corporeal instruments are so too. In his endeavours to secure himself against depredation and oppression, each man finds all others in general disposed to become co-operators and supporters: for against depredation and oppression to /at/ his own prejudice /expence/, no man /one of them/ can find any means of security that will /but such as can not but/ afford the like security to other individuals in general. Accordingly in this case the power being added to the desire the corresponding good effect has place. But in any endeavours he might use to exercise depredation and oppression at the expence of others in large multitudes no man, who, not having the incorporeal instruments, has not at his command the corporeal ones, will find co-operators and supporters in number and force adequate to the purpose: accordingly in this case, the power not being added to the desire, the corresponding evil effect does not take place.

Though in all men /breasts/ these same propensities must be acknowledged to have place, and in all men the correspondent desires have place accordingly, and upon occasion to a greater or less extent go on into act /become productive of correspondent acts/ yet the difference between the strength of the desire in the one situation and the strength of the desire in the other situation is prodigious. In the case of those desires which have for their object corporeal gratification or exemption from corporeal suffering, the force of the desire is not taken away or lessened by the absence of hope, or say by the absence of expectation of the power of of gratifying them: witness the desires of hunger and thirst. But in the case of those desires which have for their object any such complex good as is denoted by the appellations of power, or money, in the quantities attached to political situations, the absence of the corresponding expectation is capable of keeping the desire in a state in which it is altogether void of efficiency compleatly inefficient, and even to the individual himself, for want of attention to what passes in his own mind, imperceptible.