1822 July 4

Constitut. Code Rationale

Supreme Constitutive

Why in all

Thus it is that the existence, not only of gratification, but even of desire itself, depends /may depend/ upon a union with power. In France Washington /a Franklyn[?]/ might have been no more than a Bonaparte: in the Anglo-American United States Bonaparte might have been a Washington in France, a Washington might have been no more than a Bonaparte. In the breast of Washington, he being a man, it can not have been but that the desire of depredation or oppression or both to be exercised on the large scale must every now and then /at times/ have had place, and been more or less troublesome. Why? because the power of affording to a greater or lesser extent gratification to such desire could not have been wholly unaccompanied by hope. But, of by [...?] the greater number of those by whose suffrages Washington was located in the situation which gave him the power of being what he became, take any one at random, no probability of his having ever been actuated or even troubled by any such desire will be found in his instance. Why? because in his breast there can not have been any hope of being able to gratify /gratifying/ it