1818 Aug. 25

Things as they are: or First lines &c.

§.2. Misrule 2. Effects

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4. Money being one object of desire and thence of competition and contention, to all, can not in any large quantity be either obtained or preserved for use, but by means of power. Money is a real being: power is but a fictitious one: but in this as in so many other instruments for the purposes of discourse it is necessary to speak of a fictitious being as if it were a real one.

5. By the same universal and unchangeable desire by which a Monarch is engaged to be continually upon the endeavour /occasion/ to get and except in so far as the parting with it is /appears/ necessary to procure happiness to retain as much money as he can, he is engaged to be in like manner upon the […?] to keep and to get as much power as he can.

7. In the hands of every government the grand instrument of power is a standing /permanent/ army. On the part of the people at large by the disposition to obsequiousness ever so moderate and well established, the occasions for manifesting it are comparatively but few, and consequently the existence of it proportionally precarious /uncertain/, and to the possessor of the corresponding power unknown and not to be depended upon. Moreover to obey /for paying apt obedience to/ those commands by which power is most effectually exercised requires not inclination merely, but likewise skill and that a sort and degree of skill not to be acquired but by long and uninterrupted practice: in a standing army and that alone {all} these requisites are combined.

In every Monarchy therefore an other main and constant aim of the Monarch is to have at his command /obtain and keep on foot/ as large a standing army as possible.

Money can not be employed without being in a large proportion parted with: power may be and is employed without being in any proportion parted with.