[129b-401]

16 March 1817 +

Plan Cat

2 o

Introd

§.10. Bribery & Forgery

3

18

{There it is; they see it is: and to what sort of exertions the hope of securing any part in it is confined, they know but too well: they know as well as he or any body could tell them: Causes such how is it with effects? On the situation of the dependent throng, universal obsequiousness: a compilation of obsequiousness As to the master of the maypole – the potentate – in his situation. Not so much as the semble of issuing commands need he have: conjecture anticipates them; /keeps itself on the look-out, and anticipates them: and, in the anticipation, stretches beyond the utmost extension which in the everlastingly parallel lines of waste, war, taxation and oppression he himself would have given to them: and while, in the course of the scramble, the idolatrous throng are covering themselves with the mud of corruption, aloft sits the object of their idolatry, presenting to all eyes the image of unsullied purity.}

{Insensibly, from the case of the private, the pen has slid into the case of the public and universal seductionist. But the digression may be altogether not without its use. Of the seductive influence in this lastmentioned case the /scarcely as yet do the/ circumstances appear to have ever been sufficiently brought to view, nor consequently any adequate conception commonly entertained of the immensity, the hope-extinguishing irresistibility of its force }