[lxxxiv. 125]

1822 Jany 22

Codification Offer

Ult0

?.5. Admission Universal

How [?] this [?] does to the Spanish mind

Next to the throwing open the door to original draughts, Next to the unlimited call for original draughts by unofficial hands is the like call for observations on one original draught © on the one /sole/ original draught prepared by official ones.

official ones. Of an invitation of this sort one example and it is the first or [...?] has been /is that/ given in Spain by the Legislative Committee. In this measure, the praise of popular affection and deference /respect/ to the judgment of the tribunal of public opinion was not unequivocally courted. But as to public affection as to real regard for the greatest happiness of the greatest number: to /in/ what degree any such generous affection had place may be more instructively seen in the Proposed Code itself than in any such collateral manifestations: in the Code itself, and for /towards/ a judgment on this hand some assistance may perhaps be found in the /my/ observations of mine of which that composition is the subject.

In the character of a precedent that invitation may at any rate have its value, whatsoever may have been the designs and motives in which it originated.

But how inconsiderable the effect of any and [...?] such tardy invitation is in comparison of the /an/ original one, must have already been perceptible. Be the character of it in the aggregate ever so plainly hostile to the greatest happiness of the greatest number The source from which it emanes it is seen to emane suffices of itself to cut off /exclude/ all hope of of seeing it receive the opposite or any materially different character upon /on/ the whole If the groundwork be bad all that in this case can be done by amendment is to give the work a sort of polish /smoothness/, and thus afflict the people with a yoke from which otherwise their [...?] might have started which otherwise might at once [?] by universal cry have been pronounced unendurable [?].