[lxxxiv. 172]

1822 Feb 14

Codification Offer.

?.5

V

2

The course taken by the matter of corruption while occupied in the production of this evil and sinister effect may be thus delineated. /conceived./

The hands in which as above it is lodged may be the hands either of a single individual © a Monarch; or those of a number of individuals © an Aristocracy¼(¼a¼): or in any proportion it may be divided between both For simplicity /facility/ of conception take the simplest case, and let the hands be those of a Monarch.

Considered in themselves the objects of general desire thus lying at his disposal are comprisable under one or other of three denominations namely money, power, and factitious dignity, money say as being shorter and more familiar instead of the matter of wealth in all its shapes.

Considered in respect of the occasions on which or the form in which they are disposed of thence they may to this purpose be comprehended under the denomination of /are either/ Offices Commissions Pensions /Donations/ or Dignities. Of an Office the value and influence is composed either of the power, or of the money, possessed by /conferred by it on/ the official person /individual/ placed in it © a Commission is a name to Offices in certain departments and to offices the existence of which is short and transient in any department. A dignity is a sort of evidence and token of a certain degree of favour and estimation in which the dignitary is held by the Monarch: and the favour of the Monarch being the immediate source of all the good things as above which are at his disposal, it operates in the eyes of the subject many in particularly as an earnest of the matter of good in all its other shapes.

Note ¼(¼a¼)

In the original Greek Aristocracy is the power of the best: for so /such/ they would of course be stiled: stiled by themselves and by all who looked for favour at their hands. In fact they are every where and necessarily the worst: to render them such this very power of contributing towards the sinister sacrifice © accompanied as such power can never fail to be be with the correspondent desire and the act is amply sufficient: if in any community they are in any degree better than the worst /than a distinguishable and considerably extensive proportion of the whole/ it must be in virtue of that intellectual culture by the want of which alone those who are destitute of any share of operative power can be made /rendered/ worse in a moral sense than those who respectively have a share in it.