[clxiv. 157]

1820 June 18

Emancipation Spanish

?. Corruptive [...?...?]

He who in ordinary times saves himself from payment to any of the taxes imposed on the consumption of goods imported, injures the fair trader in these articles - the trader who if he pays the tax while others /his competitors/ evade the paying of it, can derive no profit nor any thing better than loss from his trade. He who in ordinary times thus saves himself from the burthens to which he ought to subject himself, does in so far /both respects/ an immoral act, produces mischief in both shapes in both ways /forms/ does an immoral act violates the obligations of morality. He who in times of corruption and misrule carried to such a pitch as just described thus saves himself from expence still injures the fair trader, and in that respect and to that amount does mischief. But were he not /in so far as he omitts/ thus save himself he would by the amount of his payments contribute to the depredation, to the murder committed upon the largest scale, to the force of the system of corruption and despotism by which the maximum of those enormities is created and preserved: he thus renders himself the author of mischief, and of mischief to a still greater amount than that which in the opposite case is the result of the injury to the fair trader. In this case if it be the duty to prevent as far as may be the greater mischief duty concurrs with self-regarding interest in recommending to him that what in the ordinary state of things would in a /the/ moral as well as a /in the/ legal sense be a crime.