[clxiv. 86]

1820 May 29

Emancipation Spanish

Thus stands the case as to pure representative democracy. But your form of government my friend yours is not /as yet at least/ a pure representative democracy. It is a mixt Monarchy: a mixt Monarchy composed of Monarchy and Democracy with little or no /but a slight tincture/ of Aristocracy. The official power in the hands of the Monarch and his advisers: the elective power in appearance and to a greater or less degree in reality, in the hands of the otherwise subject multitude.

Now then see what sort of a thing a Mixt Monarchy is.

Punch, the sort of beverage which originated in England, and was for some time peculiar to England - Punch, according to the doctrine put by the jest-book into the mouth of a Frenchman, is the liquor of contradiction: there is the brandy to make it strong, there is the water to make it weak, there is the lemon to make it sower, there is the sugar to make it sweet.

With at least equal truth and to somewhat greater use, a mixt monarchy may be said to be the constitution of contradictions money power and factitious dignity. There is the elective power in the hands of the subject many to make /secure on the part of/ the sharers of the legislative branch of the efficient /operative/ power the due fulfilment of that duty /brief/ there is the administrative branch of the efficient /or operative/ power the aggregate mass of the external instruments of felicity and objects of universal desire, in the character of the matter of corruptive influence in all its shapes and in the whole of its amount to secure on the part of those same trustees the violation of their trust.