[lxxxiv. 124]

1822 Jany 24

Codification Offer

ult¼o

?.5. Admission Universal

Great has been the evil produced by this weakness: but the evil excluded by it has been still /much/ greater. Much /Constant/ has been the operation of security as against punishable murderers: but a gain of security nowhere else exemplified /in existence/ has been gained as against unpunishable ones.

Of the rabidness with which in the situation in question the appetite for power ought to be /should be/ expected to rage a more instructive example can not be seen /scarcely be conceived/ than that which while the pen is now moving is exhibited in and by the Spanish Cortes. The nation /people/ still suffering /smarting/ under the attacks of the partisans of the head of the government, and still the chosen five out of the Deputies of the people occupied in the endeavour to established a system of penal law such as the Duke of Alva might with confidence of approbation have offered to Philip the second to produce the establishment of: /might have been proud to establish /boasted to Philip the second// all faculty of discussion and interchange of opinion on the subject on which the difference between happiness and misery depends endeavoured to be torn from the people: all faculty of endeavouring to render their condition better /less miserable/ in any respect than that in which it strives to plunge them, endeavoured to be torn from them and /kept/ for ever interdicted to them /out of their reach/: death appointed for the portion /the appointed portion of/ all those by whom any such endeavours for their own security shall be made /used/ in any conversation held /discourse interchanged/ concerning the means: to secure the accomplishment of these designs, words of such unbounded generality employed that by every one of those Judges whose cooperation these same designs can not but be occupied in securing any man may upon the strength of them be put to death for any thing.

The proposed Code or any thing like it /approach to it/ established should the province by which /intrepid Citizens by whom/ admittance to the Kings appointed Governors have been refused give admission to this Penal Code they will submitt /yield their necks/ to an everlasting tyranny after having refused them to a temporary one.