[Wrapper enfolding clxvii 277-81]

Rid Yourselves

August 1821

Letter 25 Aversion Causes

Cause 9. Loss by fortunes made in Ultramaria by Spaniards out of Ultramarian Offices and on retreat from Office carried out of Ultramaria to Spain.

[clxvii. 277]

1821 July 3 d

Rid Yourselves

4 Supposable resource 4

Emolument from Ultramarian Offices

Strange as it may appear these your distant kinsmen have not quite so blind a partiality for you or your rulers as your rulers reckon upon your having for yourselves. This exportation - this continual exportation - of money or moneys worth, always without an equivalent, and this to an amount so considerable as to be regarded as a national resource - /a resource/ worth contending for, and at such an expence - the inhabitants of the country at whose expence it is to be saved up and sent away - what will they say to it? Vain to this purpose would here be all reference to the abjured despotism. Under that pressure, nothing did they dare say against any thing: nor therefore against this. But, under the new system - the system of equal enjoyment and equal rights - the system of economy and good government - a system under which by Article 368 they would "have liberty to write, print, and publish these and all their other political ideas without harm" &c what would they say of it? They would say - that neither in the one country nor in the others, consistently with the fundamental principle of the Constitutional Code - (Art. 4. 13) namely the greatest happiness of the greatest number can there be any such making of fortunes: that the whole amount of fortunes made in any country out of official emolument, whether spent on it or exported out of it, constitutes a part, though no more than a part, of the booty made by unpunishable because leglalized depredation: that in the Anglo-American United States, it is a principle that no such booty shall ever be made, and that accordingly in that only existing and etablished sort of good government no such booty is ever made:

How should it? when if you except the substitute to a Monarch, with his ,6000 a year Civil list, when in the whole Official Establishment there is no such thing as a lot of Official emolument out of which, were the men to live all the time upon air, any thing that in England could be called a fortune could be made. True (they would say): if by the example of English rulers depredation, only because unpunishable, is capable of being justified, justifications you may have in plenty. But, wheresoever else and under whatsoever /other/ system of law, the example of England may afford a justification for unpunishable depredation, in Spain or any where under the Spanish Constitutional Code it can do no such thing.