1821. Novr. 28th.

Codification Offer

'.8. Foreigner best.

their hands, no particular and thence sinister national interest or affections,

no national prejudices to be truckled to: no homage from nation to nation to be

paid: no national self-limitation in any shape. In the instance of each │ │

nation, by the amount of the obstacles of this sort thus excluded, will the

chance which the Code has of obtaining adoption be encreased.

Take now the work of the native. In this, it is true, here as before, we must

suppose the end throughout pursued, the all-comprehensive and only defensible

end - the greatest happiness of the greatest number - so often mentioned. In

this case, too, as in those others, we must suppose the existence of that

exclusively efficient security for aptitude on the part of the work - a

perpetually interwoven rationale. Still, however, after every thing which by the

obligation of giving admission to this security can have been done towards the

existence of these efficient causes of inaptitude has been done, still to an

amount more or less considerable, they will actually have been left to operate

upon the work, and in the texture of it will have given birth to these

pernicious effects. But, to the present purpose, the question, is - not merely

of those same pernicious effects, what portion will actually have been produced

in the work, but by the other nation what portion of them will naturally be

supposed to have been produced in the work, and to have place in it accordingly.

To this question, the nature of it considered, it will in any instance not be

possible to find any precise answer. But that which to the present purpose is

sufficient, may be affirmed with full assurance: and that is, that by a work,

produced under the influence of particular and thence sinister interests and

prejudices, national as well as individual, and this without the benefit of any

check or corrective applied by any one in any shape.