5 June 1805

Evidence

Ch. False Ends. Judge

' 3. Corruption. Cause

Moreover in the infancy of government, an example of the disease /no such disease nor any thing like it/ having occurred, it was altogether impossible for human workmen to pursue it. In the days of Brutus and [...?], or [...?] [...?], or Alfred or William the Conqueror what prophet could have disclosed to himself any such labyrinth as that of Roman, or French or English procedure? Bribery, the corruption of rude ages, he might have seen in plenty, which way soever he cast his eyes: corruption, this crept[?] /covered/ up, as an abcess, with the complicated system of inverted[?] organisation that was the fruit of it, was a disease altogether undiscoverable by any other light than that of experience.

Intelligence therefore, no less than power, intelligence and therefore even inclination[?] was wanting, necessarily wanting, to the production of the only effectual remedy.

Increase like the smallpox was thus intended upon mankind, generation after generation smarting under it, before the remedy of fixed salaries, like vaccination, could be called in, to [...?] the [...?], and effect a cure. But should a cure ever be effected, what a prodigious mass of peccant matter to be discharged!