23 April 1805

Evidence

Ch Providence[?] [...?]

Four causes psychological causes must have assisted in the production of the imperfections which we shall have to witness /that are about to pass under our review/: artifice, indolence, prejudice, imbecility. To determine in what proportion they have respectively contributed to the production of each part of the work in which these perfections manifest themselves, will be extremely difficult /be impracticable as most say not to say impossible/ to determine: in what proportions they have contributed in the instance of each workman plainly impossible /will be impracticable in almost all cases./

[...?...?] and there are instances, seeing an arrangement pregnant /full of/ with mischief and absurdity, you see at the same time this or that individual as concerned in giving birth to it, and moreover into the protest of that same individual in [...?] profit flowing from it - There, without which danger of injustice you may refer the arrangement with its mischief to the influence exercised by sinister interest in the bosom of that individual - to in a word to [...?] on his part of a yield. to the influence of sinister interest be impropriety as to the imminent cause. In other instances where no such evidence of that action of sinister interest presents itself, it is to imbecility - to the perfective state of the mans understanding that the mischief is to be ascribed.

In a case like this the question between probity and intelligence - between the state of the volitional facility and that of the intellectual is but the question between the remote cause and the immediate. Of the radical corruption of the system of its repugnancy to every end of justice. In the production of whatever /what/ is amiss in the system, of every feature[?] of the system - which is almost as much as to say the whole of it, improbiety and imbecility (of obsequiousness to sinister interest is improbiety) improbiety and imbecility have all along contributed in proportion of instances /frequently/ indistinguishable. Improbiety and imbecility. The qualities are in themselves distinct: but whence came the imbecility? from the improbiety: from the influence of the sinister interest. What is the result? That sinister interest has operated partly by its own immediate agency, partly through the medium of imbecility to which it has given birth.