[160-455v]

1821 Nov r 13

Codification Offer

'8. Foreigner best

'.8. Foreigners work a bond of sympathy

To form a distinct conception of the advantage suppose a work of the sort in question drawn by the hand of a foreigner, and then another of the same sort as far as may be drawn by the hand of a native. Take first the work of the foreigner. In this unless forced into it by the native legislators after its coming into 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-humiliation in any shape. In he instance of each ulterior nation, by the amount of the obstacles of this sort thus excluded, will the chance which the Code has of obtaining adoption be encrease.

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 exclusion of those 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 those 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, amy be affirmed with full assurance: and that is, that, by a work, produced under the influence of particular and thence sinister interest and prejudices, national as well as individual, and this without the benefit of any check or correction applied by any impartial hand - by a work so circumstanced the utmost confidence that can be inspired can never be equal to that which naturally falls to the share of a work in the composition of which the operation of all those causes of inaptitude had been so effectually excluded, as in the case of the foreigner than would be seen to be.

Having been drawn, the original draught it is true must have had a hand to draw it: and by the supposition that hand is a hand who with reference to the ulterior nation in question is the hand of a foreigner. But by the supposition so would it in the other case.