25 Dec r. 1809 + '.6

Parl y Reform

Ch.6 l Corruption Members

'.7.1. Corruptor King

4. King's mind.

24

1

King's Chaplain[?] set[?] free[?] no difficulty[?] in composing[?] his concern And by this moral purity [...?] the effect he will be but the more strongly confirmed in the practice.

'.6. These /This/ however are but casual and impermanent /transient/ /transitory/ corruptors. There remains under or rather over the whole system of corruption, the perpetual corruptor-general, the King.

But to /in/ the purity of the royal mind it seems difficult to say what moral slime is likely /capable/ to be imprinted /infused/ by this mess /flood/ of corruption, how vast soever the tide in which it rolls.

What /The powers which/ his ancestors had, in the shape of prerogative flows gently into his hands in the shape of influence. This is what he reads in Blackstone - in the book in which he also finds it written that every thing is as it should be. That this is not encroachment, but restoration: he is in[?], as the lawyers say, by remitter[?]. When power was clad /cloathed/ /accoutred/ in the hobgoblin shape of prerogative every body, but the lawyers by whom it was dressed up in that shape complained of it: now habited in the dove like form /angelic character/ of influence nobody complains of it - or at least nobody whose complaints /in whose mouth complains/ are worth caring a thought for /about/. Men come of their own accord, and thrust their necks under the yoke: is it his part to repulse them? Populo dare jux[?] volente! Is not this the highest of all praise?

Be the /In the case of a mischievous/ practice ever so mischievous, and whatever be the mischief /mischievous/ of it, he by whom the greatest benefit is reaped from it will naturally be the last to find it out.