JB/036/004/001

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1821 April 26

§. With relation to political function, aptitude is not directly
but inversely, as attitude in the conjunct scale of power, opulence
and factitious dignity – of political prosperity – of political influence.

Factitious dignity is an engine employed by the hand of power for
the manufacture fabrication of groundless respect.

Power, factitious dignity, opulence – of these strict 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 portion absorbed by a despot of ancient or modern times
– 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 plan in
the scale of such appropriate aptitude is as the heighth 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 aptitude in question is not
directly but inversely as the heighth of the place occupied by the individual
in this gorgeous scale: next whence it is that the opposite conception 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.

Identifier: | JB/036/004/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 36.
Date_1	1821-04-26	Marginal Summary Numbering	1-4
Box	036	Main Headings	constitutional code
Folio number	004	Info in main headings field	const. code first lines
Image	001	Titles
Category	text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	c1 / e1
Penner	jeremy bentham; richard doane	Watermarks
Marginals	jeremy bentham	Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	10928
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