1831 Aug. 10
Colonization Society
Ch.IV Means of Effectuation
Inducements to
§.3. Settlers with capital
§3. Settlers with capital in hand - their inducements
1. To each such Settler advances limited to £500 to be made to an amount not exceeding that of which he himself has proved himself to be in possession and has actually in the shape of stock [...?] in the Colony.
2. Assurance of the existence of a quantity of stock in the Warehouses of the Colony or the Metropole, composed of the instruments of husbandry
3. So of all other articles regarded as necessary
4. Of all these several articles, lists should be printed with a specification of the several quantities of each
4. Of the outgoings and in-comings of each sort of article a regular account, open to all inspectors, should be kept in an Office for this purpose in the Colony.
5. Against engrossing, adequate precautions should be carefully taken. In the Mother Country, enactments for this purpose are generally speaking [...?] and pernicious. Not so in a Colony, at the distance of a four months Voyage ... Buying up the whole stock of this or that article, an astute capitalist might be able to screw up the price to a most oppressive amount
6. Moreover, by false reports, if not obviated, the requisite supply might be kept back from being sent by traders at large from the Mother Country: and by this means, in the Colony the scarcity might be kept up and encreased.
[xxxvi. 1]
1821 April 20
First Lines
Preface
Not usd by me. R. Doane Apr l. 1840
A summary view or outline of a work may be taken /sketched out/ and given either before or after completion: in the first /former/ case it is a view by anticipation, in the latter case an abridgement.
In comparison of the abridgement, great are the disadvantages under which a view by anticipation, has to labour: clearness, correctness, completeness, conciseness - on all these essential points, it cannot but be to an indefinite degree inferior and deficient.
If such be the disadvantage in the case of a work on any ordinary subject, how much greater it cannot but be in the case of a work without example on a subject of a nature at once so extensive and so important may be left to imagination to conceive.
Then why set about to compose it and if composed why publish it?
Answer. The greater the extent and dificulty of the work at large the greater the uncertainty whether, especially at his time of life, the author, would be able to render it in his own eyes, with reference to the design by which he was guided in the course of it, any thing like complete: In any part of that course, supposing him stopt by death and infirmity, but for such all-comprehensive howsoever imperfect[?] sketch the design would remain uncompleted, the remainder unconjecturable.
[xxxvi. 2]
1821. April 20.
First Lines
Preface
As a standard /In the character of an object or/ of reference, the work at large, if compleated, may be found of use, in the whole or in part, to one or other of three purposes - adoption, avoidance, or amendment.
To these same purposes may even this imperfect and inadequate sketch be found of use according to the extent of it, and according to the measure of its aptitude.
By this or that readr, some of the topics will be found too copiously treated of; others, too scantily: some that will have been looked for will not be found.
In regard to such of the topics as have been treated of in the Author's former works, published and unpublished together, whatever facility may have been afforded, much perplexity was mixed with it: what to notice, what to leave unnoticed: of that which is noticed, what to notice by reference only, what by quotation, what by abridgement: where views have altered what to amend, what to leave unamended.
To this or that reader, where details have been omitted, the general matter may thus have been rendered incomprehensible or at least obscure. Had these details been given, the sketch would, instead of being a sketch by anticipation, have been so far the work at large.
A passage which, to the bulk of readers, may have appeared /appear/ incomprehensible or obscure, may, to one or other of the three purposes abovementioned, be found serviceable /of use/ by him who shall sit down to the perusal of it with the eye of a legislator. This, if it has any, will be in its principal use.
Of the vast field over the whole of which it was necessary that, for the purpose of this sketch, the eye of the author should for this purpose carry itself, some parts there are /may be found/ to which it had not till now applied itself. In regard to these, how much greater the degree of imperfection will naturally be is obvious.
1821. April 20.
First Lines
Preface.
Neither in the work at large, nor in this skeleton of it, can any degree of imperfection present an adequate reason for the suppression of it. In either /each/ case, publication has its justifying cause if on this same subject no other work of the sort has ever yet appeared, or no other work less important has yet appeared.
[xxxvi. 4]
1821 April 26
Constitut Code
First Lines
First Principles
Appropriate Aptitude
Aptitude is inversely as altitude
Sympathy of affection (1.) and of conception
[...?] per copies
\PS\ With relation to political function, aptitude is not directly but inversely, as altitude in the conjunct scale of power, opulence and factitious dignity - of political prosperity - of political influence.
Factitious dignity, opulence, - of these will external instruments of human felicity, in themselves /their nature/ separate, but in various proportions naturally intermixed, is composed a sort of medium or atmosphere in which the favorites of fortune live, move, and have their being. Each having the faculty /property/ of introducing its possessor into the possession of the two others, they will on some occasions and to some persons, require to be considered and combined while on other occasions & to other purposes, they will require to be considered as separate. The quantities of these sweets, absorbed by different individuals rise one above another in a scale, the highest point or degree of which is occupied by the position absorbed by a despot of ancient or modern time - an Emperor of China, an Emperor of Rome an Emperor of Russia: the lowest point or Degree by the portion absorbed by an individual of the labouring class, whose labour affords him nothing beyond /above/ the means of bare subsistence, but that subsistence assured.
When degrees of appropriate aptitude are considered with relation to the possession and exercise of the powers of government, a conception commonly entertained appears to be, is that the height of a man's place in the scale of such appropriate aptitude, is as the height of his place in that scale of external felicity - in other words as the quantity possessed by him of that compound of the external elements of felicity - directly,
Upon a nearer inspection /closer scrutiny/ it will be found that how natural soever this conception is erroneous and that the reverse of it is the true one: that the proportions may in the main hold good, but that the ratio is not the direct but the reverse.
First let it be seen, that the appropriate aptitusde in question is not directly but inversely as the heighth of the place occupied by the individual in gorgeous scale: next where it is that the opposite corruption has come to be so generally entertained: in the influence exercised by the matter of wealth operating as an instrument of delusion, the cause it will be seen is to be found.
[xxxvi. 5]
1821. April 26.
Constitut. Code
Constitutional Finance?
1. As to appropriate moral aptitude. If, in the breast of the individual in question,
instead of appropriate aptitude in this shape, the opposite inaptitude be found /have
place/, be the degree of appropriate intellectual aptitude and active talent ever so
great, so it is that, /the result will be/ by any extraordinary degree of appropriate
intellectual aptitude and appropriate active talent, the aggregate quantity of
apprpriate aptitude, so far from being augmented, will be diminished. Appropriate moral
aptitude consists, on this occasion, in the disposition to promote, to the utmost, the
greatest happiness of the greatest number: the inaptitude, correspondent and opposite to
this branch of appropriate aptitude, is - the disposition to promote the particular
happiness /interest/ of the individual in question and his particular connections, at
the expence, and by the sacrifice, of a portion, to any amount larger, of that other and
more extensive interest and happiness. But, the greater the degree of appropriate
intellectual aptitude and correspondent active talent the individual possesses, the
greater is the degree of facility he will possess with respect to the carrying into
effect that disposition of his which, by the supposition, has place: viz. the
disposition to make sacrifice of the greatest good of the greatest number to his own
private interest according to the conception that happens to be entertained by him in
relation to it.
The higher a man's place is in the scale of external felicity, the lower, not the
higher, will naturally, not to say necessarily, be his place in the scale of appropriate
moral aptitude as here explained.
1. Sympathy
[xxxvi. 6]
1821. April 26.
First Lines
Constitutional Finance?
1. Sympathy being for the moment laid out of the question, the greater and more constant the need a man feels himself to have of the spontaneous or otherwise volutary good offices and services of other men, the greater /stronger and more constant and more effective/ in proportion as his conduct is directed by a correct view of his own interest, will be his disposition to render good offices to and have a regard to the feelings of, those other men. But, the higher a man's place is in that gorgeous scale, the less is the need he feels of any such spontaneous or otherwise voluntary good offices and services: by force and intimidation, the man who has a certain degree of power is enabled to extract, and does extract, from the millions to whom he is an object of well-grounded abhorrence, services much greater /beyond comparison/ in quantity and value than, by any good offices or manifestation of sympathy on his part, he could extract from any to whom he is an object of sympathy and love. In a word, in proportion as a man's place in that same scale is high, the quantity of the extrenal means of felicity possessed by him will be independent of good behaviour on his part: of good behaviour in relation to others: in the same proportion, his behaviour as towards others will, on this account, be naturally the reverse of good. Thus it is that the conduct of the most celebrated tyrants in all countries and in all ages is seen to be the natural, to which may be added in a certain degree the necessary, result of the place respectively occupied by them in this gorgeous scale.
[xxxvi. 7]
1821. April 26.
First Lines
Constitutional Finance?
2. To the quantum of the sacrifice which, by the influence of self-regarding interest, in proportion to the height of his situation in this scale is at the same time, incited and enabled to make of the greatest happiness of the greatest number to his own private interest according to the connection he entertains of it, social affection, sympathy, supposing it to have place, might, with an effective force proportioned to its intensity, apply a limitative check. But, in the universe, and not in this same scale, will be the intensity and efficiency of this efficient cause of, and security for, good behaviour. The sympathy here in question is sympathy of affection: that faculty in virtue of which, from /by/ the sight of others exhibiting marks of sorrow /suffering/, he himself is effected by suffering; from the sight of others exhibiting marks of enjoyment, he himself reaps enjoyment.
But this sympathy of affection has, for its indispensable accompaniment or precursor, a correspondent sympathy of conception: only in consequence of, and in proportion to, the conception a man entertains of the suffering experienced by another, can he be made by it to experience suffering in any shape, howsoever assured of its existence. A man who has never, in any painful degree, known by his experience what hunger is, can never be made to feel any considerable uneasiness by any such information as that at the very time /moment/ at which the information reaches his ears other men, be the multitude of them ever so great, are experiencing that same sort of pain in a degree ever so intense.
Sympathy of conception may never have place where sympathy of affection is altogether absent /has not place in any degree/: a man who, by /from/ his own experience, has derived the most perfect conception of the pains of burning may, without imbibing any uneasiness from the sight, behold others while in a state of suffering produced by that excrutiative operation: so far from suffering, enjoyment has, in so many and such notorious instances by that same cause: but without correspondent sympathy of conception sympathy of affection is impossible.
[xxxvi. 8]
1821. Aril 26.
First Lines
Constitutional Finance?
3. Where, at the first commencement of the habit of witnessing, with or without the habit of producing, sufferance, sympathetic suffering has ben produced by the sight of it, the continuance of the habit will, sooner or later, extinguish the sympathy. It is thus extinguished, for example as abovementioned, in the surgeon, or he would not be fit for the exercise of his beneficent art. It is thus nearly if not altogether extinguished, supposing it originally to have had place, in the breast of the military conqueror, or he would not be fit for the exercise of his maleficent art. The mother, who has lately lost a son in battle, has some conception of what the miseries of war are, and feels and grieves accordingly for those who are partakers of them. Under a monarchy, absolute or limited, among the functionaries in the higher ranks, commencing with the monarch, so confirmed is the habit of hearing of men by thousands, and tens of thousands slaughtered or reduced from happiness to misery by the operations, by the orders given by these their rulers for the purpose of giving further and further extension to their own power, factitious dignity, and opulence no greater portion of sympathetic suffering is prduced in such breasts by the tidings of any such catastrophe than has place in the breast of a gardener while he is setting his foot on a swarm of caterpillars. The same monarch in whose breast the sight of a favourite, suffering from a hurt experienced in the course of a floric /frolic/, had in early youth produced an almost equal pain of sympathy will, as ambition encreases and sympathetic sensibility decreases, receive with indifference the news of a limb lost by that same favourite in company with thousands of limbs and as many lives lost by others in the course of a battle from which the power of the wholesale manufacturer of human misery is thought as receiving /regarded as receiving/ encrease.
As it is with the universal superor, so it is with the subordinates: quantities and degrees being proportioned to the place occupied by them respectively in the gorgeous scale.
1821. April 26.
First Lines
Constitutional Finance?
II. Remains to be shown how it is, and whence it is, that the state of moral appropriate aptitude with relation to the functions in question being in the exalted situations in question such as has been described, the conception, commonly entertained in relation to it, has commonly been so opposite to the state of things as thus describeds and thereby so incorrect and opposite to truth. The cause of this delusion may be seen in the influence exercised by the high alliance - by the confederacy of power, factitious dignity, and excessive opulence partly through the medium of corruption, partly through the medium of force and intimidation on those discourses, written as well as oral, particularly those presenting themselves constantly to view in the written form by which information is conveyed, respecting this quarter of the field of thought and action, - in which instruction is sought, and by which opinion and affections are moulded.
Take, in the first place, opulence even in that minor degree of force with which it operates when the field of its operation is confined to private life. Proportioned to the quantity of the matter of opulence which a man has at his command will be the quantity in which those who are in habits with him, or entertain a prospect of being in habits with him, may expect to share. Proportioned to the intensity of their respective appetites for such share will naturally be their endeavour to procure for those appetites their appropriate gratification according to all such means /actions and discourse together/ safe and not disreputable as they see within their reach. Proportioned to the success of such their endeavours will their own self-satisfaction and that gratiude as towards the author of it can scarcely fail, in some way or other, to be the accompaniment of it. In action as well as discourse, more particularly in discourse as being the cheaper article, will this gratitude, real and figned[?] tgether, find expression and give itself vent.