1822 Sept. 27

Tripoli. Securities against Misrule

Preliminary Explanations

?.11. Collateral use

So much as to misrule, considered as applying its galling pressure to the feelings of assignable individuals. To the cases in which it applies to the members of the community no otherwise than in an aggregate mass, the remedy here in question has not (so at the outset it has been confessed) any direct and immediate application. In an indirect and unimmediate however, yet by no means inefficient way, the operation of it, supposing it but established, can not fail to have this additional salutary effect. It is indeed for the security of individuals in their separate capacity only that the bit applied to the jaws /mouth/ of absolute power has been constructed. But let it be but once lodged in the mouth, may be applied or rather will naturally and of course apply itself, on those more extensive occasions, on which the evil finds the whole mass of the community involved in it: as for instance, to war for conquest or depredation or vengeance: to war for robbing states of land, or individuals of moveable goods or personal liberty: for of all war and thence of all such war, depredation and forced service, in a military and other shapes are among the immediate accompaniments: vexations, the individual sufferers by which are, as the plague spread, but too clearly ascertained by deplorable experiences.