1820 July 25

Emancipation Spanish

Summary

Corruptive influence

The torrent of rapacity and corruption being thus continually rolling

on and like an avalanche ever encreasing as it rolls, every form of government but

one is doomed sooner or later to destruction /self-destruction/: that form of

government is a representative democracy: formed on the combined principles of

secrecy (whence alone genuineness) virtual universality, virtual /practical/ equality

and virtual annuality of suffrage.

True it is - that In /Under/ a representative Democracy, as under

every other human government the same predominance of self-regarding over social

interest has place. In the breast of every public functionary the same endeavour has

accordingly /has/ place or rather if it saw any prospect of success would have place

- the same endeavour to make sacrifice of the universal interest, to any extent, to

personal interest in every imaginable shape. But under a representative democracy

constituted as above no such prospect of success ever does present itself to any eye

or eyes capable of taking any chance for realizing it. For, whereas, under every

other government, there are situations in which one and the same man or set of men

can by his own hands or those of others conbining plundering, oppressing and

corrupting as occasion calls without end, under a representative government as above,

there never is any such person: every member of the corporation of the ruling few

being not only removable but appointed, immediately or intermediately, by the subject

many