date

1819 June 3 To Erskine Lett
1819 June 3

To Erskine

Lett. 6. E. Anti Reformist

§.1 Introduction

4

1

1

4

4

In pursuit of the above-mentioned conjoined objects, the first point which on the present occasion it seems to me that I have to bring to view is – the acknowledgment made by Your Lordship – made in sundry passages – of the necessity of parliamentary reform {to good government} as evidenced by the corruptness of the system of government in its present state. Short title. Corruption of Parliament confessed by Lord Erskine.

This acknowledgment seems to have been suggested to Your Lordships eloquence by Your Lordships prudence: for without it, the sincerity of the wishes so entertained (we are to suppose) by Your Lordships Clients and expressed by their learned and Noble Advocate, might have seemed dubious.

The misfortune is that in this course your Lordships eloquence has all along to steer between two breakers. Supposing the confession too sparing, the confidence demanded might not be purchased by it: supposing the confession too ample and explicit, a more efficient and substantial plan of reform might be looked out for by the people than can be afforded by those their self-stiled defenders. /patrons./

In this difficulty it seems to me that I see the cause of the trepidation and vacillation betrayed in some of the ensuing paragraphs, which under the head above denominated I shall have to recall to your Lordship’s observation.
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    Your Lordships prudence will never permitt /never has permitted it never/ Your Lordships eloquence to argue upon this ground: upon the state of interests Your Lordship dares not deny that the greatest interest of the greatest number is the only fit object – the measure of right and wrong in politics Your Lordship dares not deny that the interest of Your Lordships Clients have a separate interest adverse to that universal interest and as being more concentrated, always stronger and more effective.

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    {Among the wrestlers of antiquity In the days of Greece and Rome when two wrestlers were pitted together both being naked it was the care of each so to cover his person with a surface of oil that the grasp of the adversary might be continually eluded, sand being at the same time borne in hand, in the hope of substituting to the adversarys elusive smoothness the desired roughness. Your Lordship is naked enough. Your Lordship is glossy enough: but to take hold of Your Lordship any where requires the sands of Arabia, and the hundred hands of Briareus. {My faculties and my patience sink together under the task. A wrestling match {(I mean of course upon the field of eloquence) A wrestling match} between Your Lordship and Lord Grey would be a truly amusing spectacle.} Barius[?] and Marvius[?] were not better matched: But then David and Jonathan were not more undivided.}

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    Let it be my task, adversary as I am, to clear your Lordship’s fame from such unworthy imputations: Your Lordship’s fame, and in that of their illustrious kind, advocate, and at the Court of public opinion, Representative, the fame of all other moderate reformers. No: – It was by the united powers of Your Lordships wisdom and your Lordship’s genius that these forms to a timely glance so exposed to the imputation of nothingness, were suggested to Your Lordship’s eloquence.

    A great problem was to be accomplished: – to unite the praise of sincerity and consistency with the profit of a course, which, in vulgar eyes might otherwise have seemed not perfectly conformable to the dictates of those virtues. From the beginning of Your Lordship’s career down to the present time Your Lordship has always been an advocate for reform: this is what we are called upon to stand assured, when Your Lordship says, though it be /is/ but in a parenthesis (p. 14) “in my opinion, who am (says Your Lordship) myself devoted as much as ever to a reform in Parliament, .... By the bye, in this parenthesis may be seen another product of Your Lordships genius: game, when on the wing, not being so easily hit, as when perched.

    Well then – immutable in all things, provided they are at once good and attainable ones, your Lordship has at all times been ready to work “heart and soul” in the vinyard of reform. Provided always there be any hope of fruit in it. But if by any means such fruit has become hopeless, what use can there be in any measures of work? lost labour, all of it, to say no worse of it.