[129b-623]

9 March 1817

Plan Cat

2 o

Introd

*29

*29

Me

morandum?

Such being /are/ the sources, from which the population of the House is generally speaking derived – such the instruments by which it is injected: opulence the source, sham election, without suffrage, or without freedom of suffrage, in a word by spurious suffrages: of the possession taken of the seat, efficient cause in appearance and in appearance only the free will /and genuine will/ of the Electors, in reality no other will than that of the person /representative himself who is/ thus seated, the wills of the Electors having, in the requisite proportion of the whole number been subdued by the will of the seducer and moulded to his purpose. From this state of things follow divers consequences the existence of which is as unquestionable, as to the extent of that part of the population in the instance of which it has place to that extent, and thence to the great majority of the whole number of the Members it is compleatly and unquestionably destructive of all title to the reputation of appropriate probity. Instead of dependence as towards the people in the character of constituents, coupled with independence as toward every other authority, independence as towards all those same constituents dependence on the C – r General or on some other sinister interest.

Looking a little further in this conjunction of the almost universal absence of all due dependence with the incidental but generally […?] presence of undue dependence results one all comprehensive symptom of corruption and depravity in which a number a multitude of […?] ones will be seen to flow /have their origin/. This is the exclusion of all idea of obligation, political or moral as attached to the possession of the office with the power attached to it. Instead of being regarded as charged with obligation, and thereby converted into a trust the power is regarded as a subject of property, and as such, with as little scruple or danger of reproach as the land or the money by which it was arraied[?], capable of being applied to the personal use of the possessor /possessors/, in any shape at pleasure