1821. April 29.
First Lines
Constitutional
Penal Law.
Needless. In the import of the word conspiracy, when the act is treated on the footing of a crime, the idea of secresy is included: to conspire is to exchange /make/ mutual communication of opinions, desires, and eventually intended endeavours, in secret: These desires and endeavours, if they ear any relation to to the Government, have, for their object, the bringing about some change in the government, which change, howsoever desirable in the eyes of those who thus project it, would not (so they are assured) be so in the eyes of the existing rulers. For on the supposition of its being so, the conspiracy /secresy/ has no use. In an absolute Monarchy no change presented by any pair of hands more than one, can be agreeable in the eyes of the Monarch or of any under him. If in itself it be agreeable to them and it had not of itself presented itself to any of them, they may vouchsafe acceptance to it if presented to them by no more than a single pair of hands, and in a cringing attitude: yes and even if presented by any such hands, after conference on the subject between two or more persons in an erect posture. But in this case, while they are availing themselves of the plan, they will punish the authors as being conspirators.
1821 April 29
Needless continued
Constitution
Penal Law
Under an absolute Monarchy, any discourse of a nature otherwise than agreeable to the Monarch, (or any of those by whom execution and effect is given to his will,) is, if uttered by word of mouth in the hearing of any other person, a seditious discourse: if committed to print or writing, a seditious libel: such of course is the character of every discourse by which intimation is given, that in this or that particular, still more if in general, the system pursued, or the conduct of those who act under it, might if different from what it is, be better than what it is -
Under a limited Monarchy the case, is in these respects the same,
Under a Representative Democracy suppose conspiracy not impossible - suppose it not groundless - still there could be no need of it. Under a Representative Democracy, individuals in any numbers, may in any place, at any times, meet and say and here /hear/ whatsoever, (whether in relation to the system pursued or in relation to the conduct of those who act under it), is agreeable to the respective speakers, to whatsoever degree it may be otherwise than agreeable to the hearers, or to their common rulers. Be the purpo/rt/se of what is thus said what it may, the speaking of it will not be seditious speaking: written or printed, unpublished or published, a paper in which it is contained, will not be a seditious libel. Suppose a proposition made for killing, or beating a Judge, a Governor, a President: for pulling down or plundering his house, a proposition to any such effect if followed by any correspondent endeavour will be an offence against person or property as the case may be and punishable as such: for a Judge, a Governor, a President is an individual: But in neither case would it be either true /lese/ Majesty humain[?] or /divine or human or/ so much as sedition: at any rate, if by the Legislature of any such state, the Judge, was suffered to punish it as such, it would be in humble imitation of an original, by the imitation of which on any one occasion, they ought to be covered with shame.
1821 April 29
Needless continued
Constitution
Penal Law
Under Representative Democracy there is no such thing as a seditious libel, /-/ under the General Government of the Anglo American United States there is no such thing as a seditious libel. Charge the President of Congress, charge the Vice President, charge the Chief Justice with having taken a bribe - do this in print, circulate the print all over the United States no one of them will cause you to be punished as for a seditious libel, no one of them will have it in his power so to do: no information granted ex offices, without motion: no information granted on motion: no, nor so much as any indictment. Action civil i.e. non penal, yes, viz. as for defamation. Prove thereupon the imputation to be well grounded, in a man on whom it has been cast, /and he/ will be punished accordingly: tho' such is the effect of blind obsequiousness to a corrupt original, be the evidence ever so complete, it will have to be delivered over again in a needless and worse than useless prosecution, required by lawyercraft for the purpose. If you fail in the proof, you may be punished for the injury by the obligation of paying /being obliged to pay/ money on that account to the individual injured: and it is right you should be so if you had not before you a reasonable ground for believing the charge /imputation/ true; much more, if you are conscious of the falsity of it. In this there would be nothing but what is right: for tho' he is neither a vice-god, nor a Magnate the person in question is an individual, and an individual whom you have injured.
1821 April 29
Constitution
Penal
Under a Representative Democracy tho' there can be no lese-Majesty, divine or human, nor any thing of that stamp there may be hostility: for there may be disagreement: disagrement by men in any numbers on 2 /two/ opposite sides: and how improbable soever, conceivably not the less, such disagrement may rise to hostility. Here then is war: and this war a civil war. War then, will on each side be carried one against the other. But to what purpose? To the same purpose as in the case between 2 nations foreign to each other: possession for example of a portion of territory, or a sum of money in dispute. It will be carried on in what manner? As in the case of ordinary war, carried on between civilized nations: it will be carried on, by each in such a manner as shall present to its view, the fairest promise for the attainment of such its end, with the least damage - in the first place to itself, in the next place to the enemy. Two armies being in array one on each side, the aim of each will be to put an end to resistence on the part of the other. To this effect no other operations being capable of being performed on either side without danger of life and limb to the other, nor any aggregate of such operations upon any such extent without a certainty of such effects termed casualties Some will accordingly, on the losing side at least, be killed others wounded, others in the situation of prisoners left at the disposal of the commander of the victorious army.
1821 April 29
Constitution
Penal
Having them at his disposal, how will he deal with them, does he put them to death in cold blood with a gang of Lawyers to give form and colour to his cruelty? Will he with any such gang for his prompters, tell them that their blood is corrupt and that on that account it was just and necessary that their wives and children should be destitute of subsistence, and in that state kept by law, as far as practicable till they die? No: he will do nothing of all these things, the men he will keep to the best of his power, and custody, their arms, he will as soon as possible take into his custody lest they should turn them against him and his. But sooner or later hostility will give place to peace. On that joyful /healing/ occasion these captives will, the whole remainder of them be sent back to their homes and families, bodies fed, wounds healed, ignominy in no shape either cast upon them or endeavoured to be cast. Whence all these differences? Ans. On neither side has any vice-god been seen or fancied: and on neither side has any such word as order or legitimacy been pronounced
1821. April 28.
First Lines
Penal
Constitutional
Distributive.
In so far as it matches with, and is determined by, the state of the Constitutional branch of law, the state of the remunerative /penal/ branch of law will, under the different forms of Government, wear /present/ the different complexions /aspects/ following.
The state of the penal branch of law exercises an influence on the state and the results of the constitutioal branch of Law in manner following.
Conscious more or less of the opposition that has place between their own particular interests and the greatest happiness of the greatest number - alie, at the same time, to the /a/ sense of the dangers that attach upon the situation from which they derive that sinister interest, - haunted not merely by a correct and adequate but by an exaggerated picture /image/ of those dangers, - under Monarchy whether absolute or limited, under aristocacy, under every form of Government but Representative democracy, never in the imagination of the ruling one, of the sub-ruling or the influential few can the mass /height or breadth/ of securities in which they intrench themselves be sufficient: in that part of the entrenchment which is the work of the penal law, death, substituted to punishment in any less odious and more appropriate form - torture antecedent and concomitant added to simple death /destruction of life/ - punishment of the acknowledged innocent added to that of the reputed guilty - confiscation and interception under pretence of corruption of blood, interception of inheritance for that and other purposes - pains of hell in prospect under the sad necessity of not being able to apply /give/ them in present reality possession and existence, - all these penal securities put together are insufficient to produce that inward tranquillity which conscience keeps for ever banished from those misery-bound and misery-producing situations. Hence it is that every act which in those distempered imaginations, threatens to substitute to the superlatively mischievous form of government in which they behold the source of their sinister profit /benefits/ a form in any degree less mischievous is, by that same distempered imagination, elevated to a rank towering above the highest /most mischievous/ of those offences, by which real mischief is produced.
1821. April 28.
First Lines
Constitutional
Distributive.
Political offences - state offences - offences against government - are the denominations by which acts bearing this character are, in these days, commonly designated: lese majesty divine and human is of the number of the denominations by which, in former days /days of yore/, offences of this same description were by the wisdom of the ancestors of those who number ancestry among their possessions, denominated and distinguished. Of lese majesty a division was made but with little difference, between the /its/ parts - between that which was human and that which was divine: lese Majesty human, an offence against the power, crown, dignity and majesty of that but too visible god, whose throne was upon earth: lese majesty divine, an offence against the power, crown, dignity and majesty of the invisible god whose throne is in heaven, and whos likeness may be seen at all times in any one of those earthly thrones filled at present by the Frederick's, the Ferdinands, the Alexanders, and the George's.
Under a Monarchy, offences of this class, together with the pile of securities raised for defence against them, throws the the whole groupe of offences really mischievous as it were into the shade.
In the persons of authors, printers, publishers, circulators, readers, lenders, borrowers, hirers, readers, hearers, - if not denunciators, of libellous discourses, - utterers and hearers if not denunciators of seditious discourses uttered in the way of oral converse, all discourses either actually displeasing to the God upon Earth /Monarch/, or any of hi chosen servants, or presumably displeasing to that likeness of his which is in heaven have long ago /always/ been extirpated /punished/ by halter, ball or bayonet /or impisonment./, but that it is from the labour of subjects that power, crown, throne, dignity, might majesty and dominion of Monarchs are derived from the labour of subjects, and that to labour men must live.
1821. April 27.
First Lines
Constitutional
Distributive
Under a Representative Democracy, scarcely for offences of this class it has been seen can so much as a place be found. On the one hand stand offences of individuals against individuals: on the other hand, acts of hostility by enemies against enemies. Rulers being individuals - rulers and subjects at the same time, for persons reputation, property and condition in life rulers receive the same protection as subjects, and of no other protection have they or can they conceive themselves to have any need. Under a Monarchy by sudden death inflicted upon the chief of the government, changes, to the importance of which no limit can be assigned, may be produced. By an operation to the same effect upon the person of a chief Magistrate in a Representative Democracy, no such effect - scarce any such effect as would in any sinister estimate be worth producing, would ever be produced: another as good as he and no better nor of any better would there be any need would, as soon as the election had run its course, step into his place.
In a Monarchy, especially if absolute, take possession of the Chief Magistrate you take possession of an immense part if not the whole of the power which is in his hands. He signs what laws and orders you give him to sign, he utters whatever speeches you give him to utter - he takes whatever oaths you give him to take: reserving to the first moment, after he is out of your hands, the signing of repealing laws and counter orders, the utterance of counter speeches, the declaration that the former oaths were null and void, and the taking of as many counter oaths, if any, as shall oresent themselves in his eyes afford a promise of being contributory to the purpose of the moment, whatsoever that purpose be. Whatsoever engagement he have /has/ taken with this ceremony for a sanction to it. Whatever course of conduct he has given a promise to pursue, with this ceremony, or sanction to the promise, if at any moment being called upon to pursue a different course, it be more agreeable to him to persevere in the original course, he will assure you that oaths, all oaths, are things sacred and inviolable.
1821. April 28.
First Lines
Constitutional
Distributive.
If, at the moment in question, it be more agreeable to him to violate the oath than to keep it, he will take a distinction: all proper oaths he will assure you are sacred and inviolable, and as such ought to be fulfilled: all improper oaths are in their own nature null and void, and as such ought not to be fulfilled.
Break into the capitol,
Make your way into the capitol some dark night, steal into the Presidents bed Chamber through one of the windows, drag him out through it and convey him into the hut or boat you have provided for the purpose, then see what you can make of him: what power you can get possesion of by this exploit: what money, what arsenals, what fortresses you can get possession of: what change you can by this means make in the constitution to /of/ that pest of all legitimate and regular government. But no: whoever you are, you will do no such thing: if you are a thief, you will ransack his pockets - the man you will not meddle with, for no use whatever could you make of him: his free negro, if you could lay hold of him, might be of some use to you: for him you could convert into a slave.
Under a Monarchy, accept the invitation of the wife of the Chief Magistrate, you beget a future possessor of the throne, taking your chance for keeping your head or losing it: in a Representative Democracy, accept the like invitation from the wife of a Chief Magistrate, you beget a future possessor of a farm or a Counting house: your head is not in danger: your purse is or is not, according to circumstances.
1821. April 28.
First Lines
Constitutional
Distributive.
A monarchy at any rate an absolute monarchy is the natural and self-erected theatre /hot bed/ of conspiracies.