[clxiv. 258]

1820 Aug. 9

Emancipation Spanish

Summary

Corruptive influence

Ask them [...?] to what use to what end is this compound of folly and imposture and folly? If they say any thing that is to the purpose it will be this - namely that imposture - imposture in general, and this imposture in particular - are /is/ indispensably necessary to good government. Imposture necessary to good government! Look to America! look to the United States! Is not this a government? is not that government a good one? if that be not a good government what other government ever was so, is so or ever can be? In that government then in this shape or any is there any thing of imposture? Answer. No: in the Constitutional part of the field of law. No: none whatever: for that the people who are governed by it have made for themselves. In the other parts - the non-penal /distributive/ and penal law /branches/ alas! yes: for the phantom of law by which real laws are in these parts of the field of law [...?] - to this phantom they imported with them from England, and have the weakness still to trust every thing else: not only this phantom they have imported from England but every year /year by year/ they continue to import its pernicious perjury, led as they continue to be by the man of law, who keep the oracle in their own custody, giving as its responses the answers which their /his/ own sinister interest dictates, feeling /beholding/ a mine of wealth /gold/ in the darkness and uncertainty which its monstrous form /their monstrous forms/ perpetuates