[lxxxiv. 29]

1821 Decr 8.

?.5

Monarchy and Aristocracy

Means of conciliation

Means of conciliation

By the very nature of the conflict indication plain enough is given of the means © the effectual and exclusively effectual means of conciliation.

As to ”money•, the larger the share afforded /allotted and given up/ to the Aristocracy by the Monarch to the Aristocracy, the larger the quantity they will be content to see him take

The same observation applies to power, and without any difference worth remarking

The same observation again applies to factitious dignity without any observations or exceptions other than as above In all these particulars, Much more valuable in their eyes will naturally be the sinister interest which they share with the Monarch, than their share in the universal interest.

By the nature of men /the human mind/ on the occasion of every bargain of this sort the Aristocracy are disposed to accept of terms highly /more or less/ disadvantageous to themselves. Offices with the emolument and power attached to them with or without the addition of factitious dignity come all in a lump: taxes creep on gradually: and at the outset no man sees the amount to which they are destined to swell. Whatsoever be the real value of each man's chance, his own good opinion of himself, together with the confidence most men have in their own good fortune © that confidence by which lotteries are filled suffices for rendering it in his eyes greater than it is in reality /swelling to excess the value of it in his eyes/.

As to power, by every atom /portion/ he concurrs in giving to the Monarch the Aristocrat gives up a correspondent portion of his own security: of his own security against abuses of that same power: abuses of a power which never has been nor ever can be used without being abused. He augments the degree of humiliation to which it may be necessary to him to subject himself. But whether advantageous or not in reality, few are those in whose eyes a bargain of this sort does not appear to be so: those as towards whom it is necessary for him to be obsequious and humble are the few, perhaps the very few: whereas those on whom his power imposes the necessity of being or the disposition to be humble and obsequious as towards him, are a countless multitude © and thus it is that many a man who would not have been corrupted by avarice is corrupted by pride and vanity.