[129b-468]

27 Jan 1817

Plan Cat

Introd

**6

In the case of the East India Directors salary has been added to salary. But that example does it prove that so much as a halfpenny of salary was in that situation necessary? not it indeed: no more than that /yes: if/ the £38,000, and the £23,000 a year sinecures were necessary – and that the noble[?] proprietors who never so much as pretended /professed/ to do any service either, of this for his salary, served all the better for it. When

What then does the East India example prove? It proves that as in the universal monarchy by the matter of corruptive influences the corrupter general engages and keeps[?] the agents of the people in the constant habit of betraying their trust and sacrificing the universal interest to his and their separate interest – or in one word /two words/ to betray and cheat their principals, so in that great subordinate aristocracy by the quantity of the matter of wealth existing in the shape of matter of patronage and employed or employing itself in the character of matter of corruption, a majority of the comparatively small proportion of their principals who in respect of labour think it worth their while, and in respect of appropriate intellectual aptitude can have regarded themselves as competent to give their attendances at the small number of meetings which in the course of the year are held, have by the possession or the hope of a more than equivalent profit to themselves alone been engaged in the constant habit of thus cheating themselves and their co-proprietors together, cheating that whole concern of /in/ which their own shares formed a part