1823 Feb 17

Greece Superseded?

J.B.'s Articles and Reasons

3 Executive

The will of the immediate Delegates of the people must not in any part of the system be exposed to the danger of experiencing any efficient resistance. Reason. If any such resistance can be applied, it must be by the will and action of some one or some one or sets of men: to which men accordingly appertains the power of efficient resistance. But, being in possession of this power, they will be able and as surely as able, willing, to make use /application/ of it to their own private advantage: to procure for themselves some advantage /good/ which can not be possessed and enjoyed by them, but at the expence of the felicity of the greatest number © that is to say by loading them with evil to an amount more than equivalent to the good so, as above enjoyed.

To produce and secure the existence of this state of things the sway of the supreme legislative over the supreme Executive in all its grades must be most absolute. To the power /Office/ of the supreme legislative must belong the power of displacing the President at a moments warning: to the President, that of dismissing in like manner the several Secretaries of State including the Minister of Justice: as also the several functionaries subordinate to them in their respective departments © the several functionaries in all their grades. No functionary however ought to have it in his power thus to displace any functionary subordinate to him without the concurrence of the President unless[?] perhaps the Minister of Justice: because in the opposite case, the intermediate functionary might by the displacing of his immediate subordinate frustrate the will and thence the designs of the President and thereby of the Supreme Legislative.

In proportion as this system of universal subordination is strict and efficient, and the sway thereby produced absolute, freedom in the only sense in which it is subordinate /subservient/ to general utility that is to the greatest happiness of the greatest number, may with truth be said to be perfect: if any thing be out of the reach of its absolute power /withdrawn from under the sway/, whatever is so becomes so much despotism in disguise.