1820 Feb. 17

Radicalism not dangerous

III. Experience

II. Ireland

Radicalism origin of

* 7

If sincerity be a branch of moral worth and good sense a branch of intellectual worth, only at the expence of intellectual and moral worth on the part of the people in their character of subject can either /regard either to/ Monarchy or aristocracy have place.

In a Monarch according to the truth of things the Monarch is not morally[?] no better /no better a character/ than the day labourer but almost to a certainty a much less good - and in truth a positively bad one. Yet in a Monarchy what is the universal talk and even the almost universal notion? This notion does a man really embrace it? it is at the expence of his good sense, in so far as he embraces it, his good sense leaves him. The notion really entertained by him in relation to it does it fall short in any degree of that which is presented by his discourse? in proportion to the deficiency his sincerity leaves him. A peoples Monarchy can not have existence. Be the nation what it will so long as it has any such characters in it as a Monarch it is a nation composed /it is composed/ - composed though in infinitely diversified and unascertainable proportions it is a nation of dupes and sycophants.

The youth whose object is in Gods own good time to sell himself /his services/ at as dear a rate as he can, in the first place to the malefactor or the prosecutor /injurer or the injured/ which comes first /whichever is first to have been/ then to the Monarch and his Ministers - the high bred University youth reads Tacitus {with or without his tutor} because of his own accord filled with contempt by the servility of a Roman […?] to a Roman Emperor, and with horror unless his Tutor has been neglectful, at the blasphemy of those /the miscreants/ by whom he was raised to the dignity of the Godhead to be a rival of the triune and only God.