1821 Sept. 30 + D ┴

2 o or 3 o

Letter VII Religion

Religion

Priesthoods opposition to God

19

7

1

An observation I had occasion to make above is that it is not without some limitation that the effects of the opposition made to the existing temporal Government by the priesthood in the present state of things are purely mischievous. In the present state of things I see resulting from it a portion of good to the quantity of which I know not how to attach any precise limit. The good I have to view is that which is done by reducing the strength of that part of existing government which is in the hands of the Representatives of the people, reducing it in such sort as to strengthen their dependence on that whole body of the subject many in which their constituents are included. The case is this.

Whatever may have been the design, the tendency of the Constitution as established by the Code is—to establish not a government consulting the interest /having for its object the greatest happiness/ of the greatest number but a government having for its object the greatest happiness of that portion of the community amongst whom is shared the whole of the operative power /branch/ of the government: to substitute to the monarchical despotism, a despotism by which the power with the fruits of it instead of being engrossed by a Monarch shall be shared by a Monarchy and an Aristocracy, the people being […?] and gained by the firm share of a supreme constitutive power lodged in appearance in their hands but which by a mixture of corruptive influence in the hands of the Monarch and the Aristocracy and a corrupt judicature applied to Election cases, all is reduced to a show, being divested of real influence.