1821 July 10

Codification Offer

'.9 /Factitious Dignity [...?]/

2. Factitious mischievous

III. Factitious dignity

Factitious dignity is the factitious cause of factitious respect.

The respect of which it is productive has for its more remote cause a confused and indeterminate mass of opinions or conceptions - a mass of which, severally or in a greater or less number collectively, the following seem to be the ingredients.

1. Opinion of the existence of preeminent power on the part of the dignitary.

2. Opinion of the existence of preeminent opulence on the part of the dignitary.

3. Opinion of the dignitary's being in the habits of personal converse with other persons possessed of the same of equal and even inferior /superior/ dignities and thence or otherwise of equal end even superior masses of power and opulence.

4. Opinion of the dignitary's having a place in the esteem or affection or both, of the patron of the dignity - thence of his having a chance more or less considerable of obtaining for other persons those /such/ benefits as it is in the power of such patron to bestow.

5. Opinion of his being in a preeminent degree in possession of qualities extremely useful - of qualities such as while they afford him the power or means conferr on him the disposition to render his exertions /endeavour/faculties/ conducive to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. All but the last three opinions are in a degree more or less considerable sure to be well-founded. Only in the instance of the last is it ill founded, the opposite being the opinion that, as above, has truth on its side.