[clx. 139]

1822 July 13

Constitut. Code Rationale

Supreme Operative

I. Monarch

Let /Be/ this the be the general rule /acted upon in all cases/ - whatsoever institution or arrangement is adverse to the universal interest is the result of the /of the rulers/ particular and thence sinister interest of the /in the hands of the/ ruling class. In few instances indeed if in any will the position be wrong in theory - where it is wrong the error will not be productive of any evil consequence in practice. Not so, if the cause being sinister interest the effect is ascribed to a mere error of the understanding to a disorder /derangement/ in the intellectual part of the machinery. In this case it is to the curing men of their error that all your exertions will be directed: to the changing into converts the opponents you have to deal with. Full of this conception You will keep labouring and labouring till you are tired: while you are labouring, the adversary is laughing at you in his sleeve.

Another bad consequence. So much for the /your/ adversary - the corruptionist. Now for the bystander, before whom in the character of members of the Public Opinion Tribunal ? Seeing that even in your opinion, all its hostility notwithstanding, the fault if any is in the understanding of your adversary not in his will in the intellectual part of your adversarys frame not in the moral, they in their impartial situation can not think less favorably of him than in you /do/ in your hostilely partial situation: along with you, in their expectation of his [...?] they will keep looking for the time when by /in consequence of/ the rectification of his judgment, his conduct will be rectified, which time the cause of the wrong not being in that place will never come. All this while Had the real seat of the wrong been known to them they might have acted accordingly. Seeing the adversary in his true colours, they might have joined with you in acting upon him in the only quarter in which from this time to doomsday /to the end of time/ he can be acted upon with effect: they would /might/ have acted on his fears.

? See further on Ch ?.