19 June 1811

Abdication

Blackstone applied

2

38

12

Of any such individual offence as that of taking on an individual occasion any thing that could with propriety come /grammatical propriety be brought/ under the denomination of a bribe, is what I must confess, in what I should not expect to see /capable of being/ established /substantiated/ in /on/ any individual instance that ever took place /had place/, on the part of any such portion as that above described, of the population of the Honourable House - i.e. of the ‘number of voters’ of which on the day hour and minute in question its population was composed.

But of corruption bribery is but one mode, and that beyond all comparison the least mischievous mode.

In this shape, whether it be considered on the part of the giver or the receiver, on the part of the corrupter or the corrupted, corruption is the act but of the moment; corruption in another shape is a habit, and if it be termed an act - the act of a whole life.

In that office as in every other, the mischief of a state of habitual dependence which in other words if not exactly is the same thing with a state of habitual corruption /bribery/, or still worse the mischief of a state of habitual dependence and through habitual dependence of habitual corruption is to that of any such single act of corruption as infinity to one, as the number of acts exercised by a man /during a man’s continuance in the office/ in subjection to the influence of will over will by which the dependence is connected[?] to the mischief of one such act.