1822 Oct. 19

Tripoli. Securities against Musrule

Preliminary Explanations

Chance of Concession

Cautions

6. If the case admitts not of any other supposition than that the Monarch has been misled, let the supposition implied be that it has been by false statements as to matters of fact, than by unwise judgments and advice. The being misled by false reports /statements/ is a misfortune from which no degree of wisdom can always preserve any human being: on the part of the /a/ person thus misled no error in judgment, no intellectual weakness in any shape is implied in the supposition. Not so in the case of being misled by bad advice. Intellectual weakness in some shape or other is in this case necessarily implied. The opinion of another man is looked to by him as a ground for the opinion on which he is to act. Why looked to unless it be because he is not only incompetent to form an opinion of his own for the guidance of his own conduct, but so clearly so, as to be himself sensible /conscious/ of his own incompetance. Thus in the first place, by the consciousness of the weakness of his own judgment he is in a manner compelled to borrow a judgment from another man: in the next place when this judgment is lent to him, though by the supposition it is an erroneous one, his judgment has not enabled him to see in it what it is to discover the real character of it.