[clxiv. 161]

1820 June 18

Emancipation Spanish

? Corruptive influence

If the King by whose orders men are put to death /consigned to destruction/ every year by myriads of men is not a murderer and who by such deaths places in his power millions of money which otherwise he would not receive is not a murderer, then who is? If the Chancellor whose Votes and Speeches are year by year employed in giving support, effect and execution to such orders is not a murderer, thence how is it that the man by whom a single ball is lodged in a single heart is a murderer? I mean /Understand/ always of course in the moral sense only not the legal.

If the man who on pretence of rendering in a certain official-situation service to the Community in a certain shape, receives and puts into his pocket 27/23/,000 every year, not doing any thing in consequence, or not doing /not so much as supposing himself to be doing in consequence/ any thing by which any useful service is rendered or any thing /rendering any service/ which might not be rendered with equally good effect by a hundredth part of the money is not a swindler in effect - If the man who on pretence of saving or doing something towards saving men from everlasting torment after their deaths continues year after year to receive 4,000 a year doing nothing towards that end unless the calling himself and suffering himself to be called Mr Dean is doing something towards that end is not a swindler if he is not such as far as concerns the inward state of his mind a swindler, although in consideration of the power by which the wealth was procured not denominated as such nor punished as such by Judges is not such a /this/ man in so far as concerns the state and character /texture and complexion/ of his mind as well as the means whereby the money is put into his pocket is he not as truly a swindler as the man who for seven and twenty shillings once for all received is sent to Botany Bay? Let the avowed advocate of Sinecures - let Lord Erskine - let the indefatigable self-bepraiser who while in head or heart a friend to reform keeps pouring out the whole stores /stock in trade/ of his eloquence - his phrases laudative and vituperative to prevent it - let Lord Erskine answer if he dare.