132-062.xml

Title: [[copyist’s hand] nd B]

Description: [copyist’s hand]

nd

B

To Erskine

1

7.

III. Foundation laid for efficient Parliamentary reform.

That of this means of national salvation there has been at different times, no small shew is to a certain degree matter of notoriety: though such are the | | indirectly applied by these self stile protectors of liberty upon the liberty of the press not near so notorious as could be wished.

Whether, from first to last, there has even been any thing in intention, howsoever it may have been in effect, more than show, it will be the endeavour of these letters to render manifest to every eye that can endure to keep itself open to the enquiry.

Against misrule, there never has been, there never can be, any tolerable security, any further than in proportion as the choice of those by whom rule is exercised, is in the hands of those who, in proportion to the enormity of the misrule, are sufferers. But with the exception of a case in which it falls as above upon their own heads and shoulders, in no shape can misrule exercise itself the Whigs are as | | shearers in the profits of it: theirs being the expectancy of that which their more prosperous antagonists are in possession. In the mean time they are, and even in possession, sharers in the channel through which that profit in proportion as it is acquired flows: viz the part they have in Saint Stephen’s. In proportion as they lost their seats, they would lose not only that prospect as above, of a share in the more tangible profits of misrule, but moreover no small share of profit in possession: profit by the sweets of that domestic tyranny, which they are thereby enabled to exercise over their neighbours; and whether in fact they do or do not exercise it, profit by the gratification, which the faculty of exercising it at any time is continually administering to their pride. It therefore is, and ever was, and ever will be, inconsistent with the nature of man, that, in a body or in any considerable proportion of that body they should be made to relinquish such shares as they respectively have in the mass of aristocratic power by any other means, than those by the force of which the British Parliament were in 1782 engaged to give up a part of the tyranny they had so long been exercising over the Irish Nation, and those by which, in 1789, the aristocratical body composed of the 80,000 French Noblesse gave up – all in one day, so large a portion of that power under the | | of which the thirty millions had for so many centuries been crushed.

131-176.xml

Title: [1819 Aug. 28 Defence ag t Ed. Review]

Description: 1819 Aug. 28

Defence ag t Ed. Review

Beginning

6

The holders of those offices to which the greatest share of power is attached, are stiled Members of Administration, and in the aggregate are called the Ministry: and that all punishment in case of abuse of the powers of office may be plainly impossible, are holders likewise of seats.

Those who without being holders of offices are holders of seats, being of course desirous of Offices coalesce naturally into a party, called in the aggregate the Opposition, and from a name which had been given to the Opposition in former days, the Whigs.

In proportion to the number of seats which they can command they are thus sharers in possession of all that mass of power to which no immediate profit is attached, and in expectancy even of that to which all immediate profit is attached They are thus at all time part and parcel of those by whom the power of government is exercised partakers of that power and at the same time of that sinister interest by which by means of the power a constant sacrifice is made to their own interest of the interest of the subject many over whom the power is exercised.

Being descended some of them, from some of those of whom under Charles the 2 d the Opposition was composed, and who had a principal share in the Revolution by which his immediate successor was dethroned, they commonly as a means of /for a ground of/ obtaining popular favour, make profession of a congeniality of opinions and affections with those of their ancestors.

In interest and consequently in affection they are little if any thing less decidedly hostile to the subject many than their most successful adversaries, the Administration, called by a correspondent allusion, the Tories. But so unfortunate and embarrassing is their situation, in the course of the perpetual attack which they are perpetually making on their Tories, in the hope of causing them to be removed from their offices, and themselves placed in their stead, they have no means of operation but such as consist in the exposure of misrule with its sinister profits: and thus, while supporting the interests of the subject many, who are alike the objects of contempt and in so far as they […?], of aversion to both parties, they have no means of endeavouring to serve their own interest in one shape but by disserving them in another.

132-231.xml

Title: [1819 May 9. To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 May 9.

To Erskine

Lett. Es /Whigs/ Anti-Reform Labours

3

6

3

7. 4 Sacrifice of the advantage which in the character of a person holding an official situation invested with power in various shapes, and /enriched by emolument in various shapes and/ affording incitement and means to abuse coupled with the character of Members of Parliament professing to be at all times upon the watch for instances of abuse, for the purpose of causing it to cease and providing for the prevention of it in future, but entitled at the same time to sit in judgment in the character of judge on the occasion of every complaint of abuse suspected to have been committed either by himself or by any of those who are linked with him in power and interest – sacrifice of the advantage which by the means of these two repugnant characters of defendant and judge he possesses by being able to give effectual impunity to himself and them: thus securing to the conduct of all Members of Parliament, and to those of his own party and himself the faculty of exercising a tyranny at all times and on all occasions without any controul afforded by the nature and constitution of the Government: a tyranny void of all controul except such as may be applied by the apprehension of the effects of sudden and occasional and sudden exasperation on the part of the people without doors, void of all controul except that sort of controul which has place in Constantinople, and which is applied in and by fire a part of the inhabitants setting fire in various places /this or that place/ to the City to which the residence of the despot is contiguous

{A sacrifice of this sort it seems to be as reasonable to expect at the hands of any set of men having in possession and expectancy the power attached to administrative department of the Empire from any cause other than that of fear such as in the year 1783 produced in the shape of the emancipation of the Irish from the authority of the English Parliament a mitigation of the system of misrule in Ireland, any more than at the hands of a set of defendants in an ordinary suit or prosecution, civil or criminal, on the supposition of their composing a majority of the Jury or of the Judges of the judicatory by which they are to be tried, a voluntary surrender of that advantage.}