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Title: [[copyist’s hand] nd [wm 1818]]

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To return to the Whigs. Notwithstanding this unchangeable determination to keep what power they had, such, as early as the year 1780, was their aptitude for that which they had not, and so deep the game which it was the effect of that appetite to make them play for it that, in 1780, under the lead of Charles Fox, that prince of Gamesters, to which Brooks’s supplied one gaming-table and St Stephen’s another they had actually been brought to continue in their adherence to them, after he had signed a declaration in favour of annuality of elections, even of unlimited universality of suffrage.

If in the course of this contest, this edict of theirs shall be found to have received damage, I am truly sorry for it, but the fault is none of mine. Could his friends but have satisfied themselves with keeping up the image of the amiable man, as I have seen that of a Russian | | all gilt with gold, in a corner Cup-board, on a glass case, for family devotion – nothing of the sort would have happened. But when, like those of Bel and the Dragon, his name is made an instrument of delusion, and the people, whom, while he publickly bowed at, he privately scorned, are called upon, and so indefatigably, to fall down and worship the golden image which party ambition is set up, it will be the fault not of people but of | | if, by the fate of those excellent idols that of the reputation of this modern one shall be found to have been | | and typified.

As to the | | that, on their part, from that time and earlier down to the present, the show of desire of reform, never has been any more than a show – that it has been either their endeavour, or their desire, to help to bestow upon the subject many any the least particle of those means of security which it was in their power to withhold, among the propositions, which by this your Lordship’s defence of them I have been engaged to endeavour to prove: prove more to the conviction than I fear to the satisfaction of a Noble Lord, whose eloquence has lifted him up, as well as so many of his admirers, so much above the sphere of the old philosopher, whose chief study as well as difficulty was as he informs us, to know himself.

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Title: [[copyist’s hand] nd B]

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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.

JB_111_111.xml

Title: [1818 Sept. 23 Things as they are]

Description: 1818 Sept. 23

Things as they are

Introduction

Hanoverian Aristocracy

Morning Chronicle 23 Sept. 1818.

Rehburg in Hanover. The memory of the batle[ sic] of Belle-alliance, or Waterloo, was celebrated here, but in such a manner as to repress every thing like a common feeling of joy or patriotism. Hetel, the Landlord, had built a new and tastefully ornamented room for the bathing visitors, which was to be first opened to the public on this occasion. In this room the Noblesse of the neighbourhood, and a number of persons of respectability of the commonalty (Bürgerliethen Standes), were invited to a diner and ball. The Cook of the Neighbouring Monastery, Sachium[?], had the charge of the arrangement of the Table, and it was disposed in the shape of a horse shoe. When the seats were taken, it was so contrived that one half of the horse shoe was filled by the Noblesse, and the other by the commoners. This division put an end of course to all social enjoyment, and immediately after dinner, all the Commoners left the Room. A similar Event took place at this bathing place last year. For many years it had been the practice for the Visitors to assemble at the sound of the trumpet to tea in the great room, where the company partook of it in common; but last year the Commoners, on entering the room at the given signal, found the Noblesse already assembled in a circle, having taken their tea, so that they were obliged to entertain themselves apart, and to content themselves with the leavings of the others.