[clxiv. 266]

1820. Aug. 22

Emancipation Spanish?

Summary?

?.5. Corruptive influence

Means of reducing

15. Every man who in virtue of his office has not the means of maintenance in a manner suitable to the situation in which he is placed by that same /such his/ office will be disposed /inclined/ to committ peculation for the purpose of supplying himself with the means. True: and so will every man who has those means.

If ever there was a man whose official /functionary who in virtue of his office had the/ means of maintaining himself in a manner suitable to the situation in which he was placed by such his office, it was George the third. In the course of his sixty years reign nine times was this functionary guilty of peculation: ? the proof of it is in those Acts of Parliament under and by virtue of which at the expence of the people whom the peculation plundered the debts were paid by the authority of those who had shared in the plunderage. By Act of Parliament every King of England is the Most Excellent of men: and a title commonly given to that man was that of the best of Kings.

For attaching vast masses of pecuniary emolument to official situations, which by many individuals possessing no less appropriate aptitude than those by whom the largest mass of factitious reward would be required the common pretence is the securing the functionary against peculation in the case in which it is supposed to be necessitated by the want of a sufficiency of pecuniary emolument attached to it. Thus is peculation committed in the first instance on pretence of preventing peculation which never would have been committed.

?H. of C. Debates, 1820