1823 Feb. 19

Greece

Beginning

Maximize people's will's efficiency viz

2. by delegation, possible and proper

Insert here inaptitude of the ”one• and the ”many•

What remains to be seen is © in what degree and by what means the maximum of efficiency can in the nature of the case be given to the will of the people

1. That which it is not physically speaking in their power to do in any political community large enough to maintain its independence © and in particular in any such political community as that of Greece is to take any part in the individual arrangements by which its /their/ own greatest happiness is to be produced which have for their objects the production of such their greatest happiness.

The obstacles to their taking any such part are manifest and altogether insuperable. Unless the necessary means of subsistence be produced, all arrangements taken for the security of it from /against/ invasion would be fruitless and absurd. But with the continuity of the labours necessary to the production of the means of subsistence any thing like an equal continuity in the labour of giving existence to the political arrangements necessary to the security of this when produced is on the part of the greatest number altogether /in point of physical possibility absolutely/ incompatible.

2. If all could find time, no place would hold all or more than a minute part of all while occupied conjunctly occupied in the formation of the general will.

It being therefore physical impossible that the /to the/ body of the people should in their own persons respectively seek /endeavour/ to give efficiency to their respective wills in the production of the arrangements which have for their object the production of their greatest happiness, the utmost that remains within the field of physical possibility as capable of being done for this purpose, is that this endeavour of theirs be made by them by proxy: that is to say that in the greatest number possible, they should concurr in the choice of substitutes or say delegates for that purpose being for this purpose distributed into groupes, each groupe concurring in the choice of one such delegate.