1820 Feb. 16

Radicalism not dangerous

III.

II. Ireland

4

1

In so far as the foundation is sham, they who would have a superstructure of any sort /in any shape built upon it/ must content themselves with a sham superstructure. A people who content themselves with sham appropriate aptitude in all its shapes on the part of their rulers, will have for the necessary result sham felicity as the result: sham felicity for the ultimate effect with a correspondent choice of shams on the part of the intermediate cause. On the part of the Monarch /supreme executive Magistrate/ sham sham benevolence, sham beneficence sham precedence: on the part of that other set of functionaries who are where they are there because their forefathers were there before them guardians of an interest which is not so much as pretended not to be an interest peculiar to themselves distinct from one consequently constantly opposite to that of the people the same collection of sham virtues: on the part of the sham representatives of the people , a sham sence of responsibility to their alledged constituents coupled with a real responsibility on the part of those who are seated by patrons to those the authors of their political being /their political creators/: on the part of all together a sham solicitude for the felicity of the people a real solicitude for their own private felicity, accompanied with a conduct really conformable to that real solicitude: on the part of Judges a sham solicitude for the interests of the people in respect of justice, a real solicitude for that interest of their own which is promoted by the screwing up to the highest pitch the mass of emolument /advantage in all shapes/ extractable from their respective Offices: a sham desire /solicitude/ to reduce to their minimum the evils of delay, vexation and expence, a real solicitude and /with a/ correspondent endeavour to swell it and keep it swelled to its maximum for the sake of the profit derivable and derived from the expence: + a sham desire /solicitude/ to reduce to its minimum the quantity of the burthen borne in all shapes imposed /borne/ upon the people: a real solicitude and correspondent endeavour to swell to its utmost possible magnitude for the sake of the proportionable benefit which the authors have found means to derive from it.

Note

“+ See in Scotch Reform &c 28 distinct instances in which for this purpose by that same authority factitious vexation and expence have been and continue to be manufactured: as also the point of distinction between their natural system of judicial procedure which has justice for its object and that technical system which with fiction, i.e. wilful falshood for its object, has for these same purposes been created by these same hands. Of no part of the picture there drawn has any man /any lawyers wit/ with or without a gown ventured to deny /control/ the truth. But so successful have the architects been in the construction of the labyrinth of iniquity that no eye which is not strengthened and exerted[?] by a predisposition to the sinister interest can muster up strength enough to bestow the exertion necessary to obtain a clear conception of it.