[...?...?] 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Ch. False Ends. Judge

' 5. This & bribery

''.5. Comparison between corruption in this form and bribery.

 Introduction Cont.

I say in the form and attraction[?] of a bribe. Yet in respect of the degree of force, there is no comparison. In the shape of a bribe, received in that form from a determinate individual, nothing can be received by any man official person, in the station of Judge or any other /man in this station or any other/, without his putting himself completely into the power of the giver of the bribe: exposing himself thus to utter ruin, not only by /from/ the voluntary hostility of the bribe-giver but from his indiscretion as well as a variety of other accidents. In the shape of fees, received, as of right for business really done, whatever is received, especially by a hand thus contracted in power is received in perfect safety.

Under a system of this kind, it may happen, that no bribes are ever taken. Be it so, and what then? the pear /fruit/ has no specks in it: True: yet what is it worth: when it is /if it be/ rotten at the core?

Bribery is a distinct mischief, and an account of the want of confidence the general alarm it would be productive of, if common, might be still worse: but the remedies against it are so effectual, that in comparison of the other deeper-seated principle of corruption is scarce worth thinking of.

If a Judge be discovered to have received a bribe, nobody, not even he himself, has anything to say in his defence: whereas of a system thus rotten in the core, one of the bad effects, is as will be seen is that the more corrupt it is, the less it is thought to be. Shares in the sinister profit of the system being possessed by or hoped for by all who are in a condition to acquire any tolerable insight into it, the more corrupt it is, the more [...?] it is [...?]: the injuries[?] of those who suffer from it, are drowned by the acclamations of those who profit by it. Even the patient who knows so well what he suffers, knows not from what cause. Deceived by theories as industriously circulated as they are false, the poison really administered by the physician is referred by him to the disease. Seeing no individual living on whom blame can fasten itself, he concludes there is none any where. And thence the whole community is divided into two classes: the one composed of imposters, the other of dupes: the imposters, of whom none are so fit for being so duped by others converting others into dupes, as those who have succeeded best in their endeavour to become dupes to be such themselves.