1820 July 30

Emancipation Spanish

Summary

Corruptive influence

To shew, in the detail that would be necessary to a perfectly clear

conception, in what precise forms it is that in a mixt monarchy with a representative

democracy under it, the poison steals into every vein of the body politic, converting

into an instrument of misrule that power which should be and is pretended to be a

check upon it, would require more room than can here be spared.

One momento however must not be omitted. Of all the modes /shapes/ in which the

corruptive influence acts, bribery - direct bribery - is the least pernicious: for

this can scarcely have place without a punishable offence by which the giver and the

taker of the bribe are each of them put in the power of the other. But by the

prospect of a situation in the official establishment for either self or relative,

whether in that part of the establishment which has been brought into existence by

the dominion in question, or in any other part - neither the expected receiver nor

the expected giver will be placed in the power of the other. When you see a man loud

in his outcries against corruptive influence in a punishable shape while he is

equally loud in his outcries against the only sort of arrangement by which this same

pestilential influence can be checked, make sure that it is to the perpetuation and

exercise not to the removal of the evil that his real wishes and endeavours are

directed.