1821. Aug. 6

Lett 2. Interests concerned

is employed in a manner much worse than useless. Consider whether it

be not so upon any the smallest scale, on which expenditure made on any such account

can have place. Physical force, intimation, corruptive and delusive influence - behold in these the four great instruments of misrule

force and intimation, necessary to every rule: corruption

and delusive influence, peculiar to misrule. Exactly in

proportion to the quantity of wealth employed in defraying the personal expence of

the Monarch, is the quantity of corruption, and the quantity and degree of delusion,

produced by it: produced by it, even without any exertion, much more if with and by

exertion directed to that end, as it nowhere fails to be. If, instead of being thus

employed, the labour were employed in the building of pyramids, or in casting the

stones into the sea, it would be beyond comparison better employed than it is at

present any where.

So in regard to the Clergy. Not only has

the wealth enjoyed by this class been in every country among the instruments of

temporal misrule, in the hands of the temporal Monarch, or of a spiritual Monarch, or

both,- but, as above, an instrument of spiritual mischief, operating in oppositon to

the great spiritual end, for the accomplishment of which, as pretended, it has evey

where, by a mixture of fraud and force, been lodged in such ill-suited hands.

How different is the case of whatever is, by contract, due to Public

Creditors! If so it be, that by service - special and indubitable service -

rendered to the public, a man is constituted a public functionary, Public

Creditors are in effect Public functionaries. But, though not commonly so

stiled, yet in effect, so far as service and claims upon justice are considered, men

thus circumstanced, have several titles to regard, by which they are placed - not

merely upon the same level with, but upon a much higher level than, any men on which

that title has commonly been bestowed. Of the aggregate capable of being, with

propriety, included under the denomination of Public

Creditors, by far the largest section in England and France at least, is

composed of those by whom Annuities payable by Government have been purchased. Of the

whole mass of the money due by the Government of a country to individuals, so large a

proportion is in this case, that, saving all due regard to particular exceptions, the

proprietors of such part of it are are in this case, may be considered as

representatives of the whole. See now then the titles of the peculiar regard due to

Public Creditors.

1. Neither as to the fact /fact/ of service to the public by them, or

by those whose claims they have purchased, nor as to the quantum of that service, can there, in any instance, be any the smallest doubt.

To