1820 May 20

Emancipation Spanish

Ult r

'.7. Rulers gainers

'.4. Rulers gainers

3. Services through [...?] not pecuniary

3. Profit in the shape of power, through the medium of indeterminate and nameless, but boundless services, at the hands of candidates /aspirants/ for subordinate official situations.

On the present occasion, it would be at one endless and needless and endless to expatiate on a topic which applies to power, and in proportion to the quantity of it under whatsoever government in whatsoever occasion, excersible. /Be the man in power who he may/ To the numbe of individuals whose endeavours are built upon the ingratiating themselves each have upon the recommending themselves to his favour, there are no bounds, nor as little to the different shapes in which they may at once be able and willing to render him their services, and put him in possession of all the acquirable /the receivable/ instruments of felicity in all imaginary shapes.

The shapes least costly to the aspirant himself will of course be the shape which other circumstances equal will be preferred by him: and of those no one is less costly than flattery in all its shapes: intimation given of the degree of appropriate aptitude in all its several shapes possessed by him will be it what it may, which is fortunate enough to have him for its occupier.

The parasite whose services are in the shape of flattery and whose [...?] reward, in the shape of the pleasures of the table, is among the subjects of the earliest [...?] that have come down to us. But if such be the power of a good meal once and then repeated, what must be the power of a provision for life /ever/ to such members, who might otherwise have been in want of one in the state of starvation or in the continual prospect of it?