[clxiv. 89]

1820 May 29

Emancipation Spanish

/ZA/ Quere whether to insert this page?

Taken as it is /stands at present/ your Constitution I have said is that of a mixt Monarchy: and of that sort for which its principal and sole efficient ingredients has Monarchy and /with/ representative democracy.

As to the English I know not very well what to call it. If it be a mixt Monarchy /setting aside a little contraband and ever precarious liberty of the press/ it is a mixt Monarchy with /so far as concerns the subject many/ the effect of a pure despotism. That along with the Monarchy there is no effective representative democracy - no no representative democracy capable of temporizing the acerbity of it is but too certain. If it be a mixture it is with some of the forms of representative democracy, a mixture of Monarchy with Aristocracy: the Monarchical or the Aristocratical branch predominating according to the ever changeable /mental/ character of individuals on both sides, the sport of the people being at all times divided between them in proportionally /correspondently/ changing proportions: but by any check which the rapacity of the aristocracy may oppose to the rapacity of the advisers of the Monarch, no diminution applied to the loss no assuageant applied to the sufferings of the people, only variation made in the proportion in which the matter /[...?]//fruits/ of plunderage are divided among the sharers.

At one tine the appearance of what was termed the representatives of the people having more or less of ground with reality in it the mixture of Monarchy and Aristocracy had a further mixture of representative democracy in it. But for a long time some time past the mixture of democracy has had no place, otherwise than in form and pretence: the elective power of the democracy has been absorbed into the aristocracy; and the aristocracy, as such not having the immediate command over any part of the public money, to the advisers of the Monarch, constantly sells its power to the sharers in the administrative branch of the efficient power, to the Monarch and his advisers, the price varying each and every day according to the state of the market: according to the strengths of negative wills on both sides.