[clxvii. 85]

1821 March 22

Rid Yourselves

Anti Constitut. Evil 2

2. Corruptive influence

In whatever political state /Wherever/, in addition to a body of functionaries invested with supreme legislative power, but at the same time chosen /elected/, and by frequency of election, removable by the people, there exists another functionary or set of functionaries who not being so elected or removable nor yet by any exercise of the power of the people punishable have at their disposal any considerable mass of money or other of the sweets of government, the /those/ functionaries /members of the supreme/ who as above are more or less dependent on the people, will by the possession or prospect of shares in those same sweets be placed in such a state of dependence on the distribution of those same sweets as to /will/ cause them to concurr in the promoting of the particular and sinister interest of this independent set of functionaries, to the prejudice and by the sacrifice and to the prejudice of the universal interest. To be in this way and by the operation of this cause induced thus to make sacrifice of the universal to the particular and sinister interest is to be obsequious /yield/ to the force of corruptive influence. Correspondent correlative and proportioned to the efficiency of corruptive influence on the one part is corrupt obsequiousness on the other.

Of this corruptive influence the efficiency will from the beginning of things bating some special interposition on the part of the people be continually on the increase, till it has converted these originally removable agents of the people, into so many instruments of a virtual despotism of a government in which, as /not less/ compleatly than under a despotism governing by force, the universal interest will be made a complete sacrifice of to that knot of particular and sinister interests, and the people subjected to an all-comprehensive course /system/ of depredation and oppression, exercised over them by these their rulers: the amount of the plundering having no other limit than that which is set to it by the solvency of the subject many: by the quantity of the mass of wealth which the subject many are able to give up to their rulers, without perishing themselves for want of it.