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Observations continued.
The quantum of a qualification is capable of being limitable to exactness on the side of increase by the number
of qualified persons to be found: a fact capable of being established, & which when established, cuts
off all dispute! It is altogether otherwise on that of diminution; on that side, any such arguments that
shall point to any certain degree in the scale in exclusion of the rest, are what it is plainly
not in the nature of the subject to afford. What exact fortune shall be sufficient to exempt fortify a man
against the temptations to which the office may expose him, or to serve as a presumption of his possessing
the talents & entertaining the sentiments required for it, are questions that must ever be abandoned to
conjecture.
The 2d of these problems, to judge of facility by success, is far from being the easiest in the science to
resolve with accuracy. The names for the several divisions of property, however familiar they may
have become, by use, are unhappily, as we have already seen in one instance, so tainted with equivocality
as to be unfit for it; and those which might be substituted in the room of them, should they
even be univocal and determinate, would, for a time at least, be appear obscure for want of being familiar.
For all this there is no other remedy than definition; that capital expedient of legislative
discourse, so highly needed, & so little used.
For the purpose of the 3d of them, in this and most other Qualification Acts 2 separate sanctions
are provided; the one, civil — a penalty; the other religious (as it is usually termed) an oath.
On this occasion, it may be asked (since it seems it has been asked, why not trust to the ordinary
sanction of the civil penalty. To this question, as it is of considerable extent & importance, I will endeavour
to give an answer on behalf of the law.
In order to give to any Law its' effect against those who disobey it, it is necessary than some person
or other should be found to put it in motion, who, if, as here, he have no special interest already
to stimulate him to enforce it as a party grieved, must have it given to him in character of
informer. Now so odious invidious is that character, &, in the eyes of most men (fearful not without reason of
plunging in the unknown gulph of litigation) so precarious the profit of assuming it; that this expedient
motive of itself might prove a weak dependance. The business is therefore is to find some means to
strengthen it; & these means are to be met with in an oath.
In proof of this one may it is to be hoped without any very extravagant compliment to human
nature venture to suppose that there are many persons who, sensible of the considerations that
have been alledged, would for the sake of getting into an office run the hazard of the penalty;
who yet would not run such lengths for it, as over and above that penalty to incur the peril
and the guilt of Perjury. The number of such persons is the measure of the accession of strength
which the provision derives from this expedient.
But it's utility as a bare sanction is not it's only utility: it is in the nature of it to forward
the enforcement of the other against those delinquents whose temerity it was itself insufficient
to restrain
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