1821. April 16

Codification Offer

'7 Foreigner why

Remains, the only case, in which, consistently with moral probability, a work of

this sort could have for its author a foreigner, acting under the direction and

impulse of a particular and sinister interest. This is the case where, in the

expectation and for the sake of a remuneration in one or more of the above

mentioned three shapes, viz. money, power, and factitious dignity, he has

offered himself for the work, to this or that leading native. But, in this case,

there must exist, on the one part, in the breast of an individual, in relation

to whom in countries foreign to his own, a sufficiently strong and extensive

persuasion of his appropriate aptitude in the shape of intellectual aptitude and

active talent, has place; on the other part, a desire to earn the remuneration

whatever it may be at the price of a labour of so vast a magnitude, /unexampled

a complexion,/ at the disposition of the ruler or rulers in question, a mass of

reward, sufficient to afford an adequate remuneration, not only for the labour

employed in such a work, howsoever executed, fut moreover for the disrepute and

self-reproach attached to the execution of it in a manner thus adverse to the

workmans own presumable principles. Under these circumstances, it will be seen

what probability there is that, by the hands of a foreigner, any intentional

sacrifice of the greatest happiness of the greatest number of the community in

question would come to be effectual, or so much as to have been proposed: and

therefore, that to any such person any such invitation, or to any offer, if made

by him, an acceptance, should be given. Oh yes, if being a foreigner he were not

known to be so. But by the supposition, as above, this case is excluded.