William Hodgson: The Commonwealth of Reason (1795)

Summary

‘The Privileged Orders may pass away,

but the people will be eternal.’

Mirabeau

Plan, &c.

Argument.

Experience having proved corruption to be the most dreadful evil that can possibly affect either public or private life, it is of course that which men should be most studious and zealous to avoid; any endeavour, therefore, to raise up barriers against this all-destructive vice, may be considered as one of the noblest efforts of the human understanding; as from thence has proceeded all those arbitrary and diabolical actions we have at different periods witnessed; and of which such innumerable examples, that have justly called down the execration of mankind, are furnished in the history of the world.

As corruption is generally the result of power long continued in the same individual, and prevention more humane and far better than detection, it is my intention, in this Plan, to make every situation in the Commonwealth, to which is attached either trust or power, revolutionary or rotative; thereby taking what I conceive to be the best remedy for, and precaution against, this most inveterate enemy to public happiness; this epidemic, that has hitherto baffled the most strenuous efforts of the most able physicians; this political Upas, under whose baneful and malignant branches every virtue finds immediate death.