date

1819 June 4. To Erskine ult
1819 June 4.

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 6. E. Anti Reformist

§.1. Introduction

7

3

7

7

4. Having these[?] and your endeavours with the Tories in administration to engage them to destroy us in whatever form of law may be most proper in the event of our taking any measures for the framing in any sort of concert any petitions having reform for their object, the next task assigned by Your Lordships genius to Your Lordship’s eloquence is the persuading us, that the presentation of Petitions, so as they be but respectful ones, {is} a course that affords us a trustworthy promise of producing the desired effect: that the presentation of such petitions is a course that the people may safely take – that it is the only course which towards the end in question they can take – and that it affords a promise of being productive of the desired effect /it is in the nature of the case a promising one/. Short title. {By Petitions,} if respectful {reform will be produced. or Respectful Petitions will produce Reform: or From Respectful Petition will come Reform} /Reliance on respectful Petitions prescribed. Your Lordship having previously employed Your Lordship’s influence in the endeavour to consign to timely destruction before the presentation of any such petitions those by whom they would have been presented.

5. But though the presenting of these petitions, after we /by those who/ have been killed for attempting to get them up /signed/ is the only course which the people themselves can take for producing reform and thus saving themselves, and though it is at the same time a promising one, yet it is not the only means that affords a promise of being productive of that desirable effect. For the production of it by the act of the Parliament itself, and that a “ spontaneous” one, is another. Short title – Reform will spontaneously be produced by Parliament, or Parliament will spontaneously reform itself. Reliance on spontaneous reform by Parliament prescribed.
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    and in particular on the occasion of the phrase “ it shall be the free spontaneous act of the House of Commons, or through respectful petitions” as above, after hunting through more than a page for the antecedent substantive, on which the import of the pronoun relative it depends, I have been forced to give up the pursuit as hopeless.

    Be this as it may, in this condition I see a sort of alternative: the designation of two sets of operations or courses, by either of which the so highly desirable disposition may be brought into act. These are – 1. “the spontaneous act of the House of Commons; 2. “respectful petition of the people”, meaning, I presume, the acts respectively performed, in and by the presentation of such respectful petitions.

    This I find in p. 29: and in p. 28. at more than a page distance, in the course, but still far removed from the beginning, of this breath-exhausting pair of sentences, in which all things imaginable are strung together, I observe accordingly these other words – “if Parliament should be disposed, either spontaneously, or in compliance with respectful petitions of the people, to consider &c and should fearlessly enact,” and so forth.

    Here then are two causes /incidents/ presented to us, each of them as a cause likely to come into operation, each of them as an incident which we are called upon to regard as being to a certain degree probable: namely to such a degree, that the existence of one or other of them ought to be relied on by us as being sure to take effect; acted on; and that in such sort as to prevent our harbouring a thought of bringing about a state of things confessedly so desirable.

    In this place that one of the two which calls for consideration is the alledged /supposed/ “free spontaneous act” of Honourable House. Why? – because the sort of instruments in question, namely petitions from the people, though easily spoken of, are, as I shall have occasion to remind Your Lordship, not quite so easily brought into existence and presented; and because if on the part of Honourable House any such […?] beneficent despotism really has place, it would be a loss to both parties if it were prevented from {manifest}ing {itself}, and ripening into act, and thus displaying before the eyes of – an admiring and grateful people.
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    { §.2[?] Erskine means[?] of reform: Compare[?] Spontaneous Acts: Peoples respectful Petitions

    Now as to Your Lordships means /instruments/ for the bringing about a Reform: spontaneous acts of the House of Commons and respectful petitions of the people.

    As to any such spontaneous act I will look for it as soon as I look for effects without causes: or rather for effects produced not only without causes, but against the whole inoperable[?] form of opposing causes. I will look for it, when I look for the Thames to run uphill all the way above the side I can not look for any such thing /act/ /event/ any sooner. I will look for it when I see that or any one other public body, spontaneously sacrificing any one tithe of any thing which in their eyes /con/ was their conceptio[?] was their interest: according to their conception of their own interest. If in the whole history of man there be a single instance of any such sacrifice, inform me of it my Lord and if I am book[?] receive[?] /can obtain the[?] samples/ I will go over[?] and abet[?] myself under Your Lordship’s business.}

    If, in the framing of my /any/ plan of reform I had taken any such counters for sovereigns, that would indeed have been true of it, which my learned and honourable friend, sweetening with every mark of kindness the vein of elegant pleasantry with which the side, he had some time or other in that day taken, rendered it necessary to pour forth upon it, began with saying of it – that “it shewed the author had dealt more with books than men”. But, be that as it may, on this point I would beg leave to observe to Your Lordship, that whether it be men or things that are the subject, knowledge depends not so much upon the multitude of the objects that have passed before a man’s eyes, as upon the attentiveness of the observations he has taken of them: I can moreover assure Your Lordship and my learned friend, that in the course of such observations as I have taken I have not been less attentive to men than to books; that, neither in this nor in any other countrey, in one of which I had once the honour of meeting Your Lordship, have opportunities of taking observation of men been altogether wanting to me; and that it is by the observation I have been led to take of such men as I have this moment in my eye two of the fairest samples that the class of Whig men at least, not to speak of other men, can afford – it is by these observations that I have been led to those opinions, which have furnished the chief matter as well for that plan as for this defence.
  • Title: [Marg ls revised. 1819 Mar. 27 + §.6]
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    § 6. Expedient 4. Prescribing reliance the free spontaneous act of Honourable House

    {From eloquence such as Your Lordship’s on a subject such as the present, nothing ought to appear extraordinary.} In the midst of those confessions that have been noticed, in the very next sentence (p. 29) to the most explicit of things perpetually interwoven with the whole thread of them – {in the midst of all this it is that} /do/ we see two /three/ other intimations given: 1 one that, spite of all those imperfetions and corruptions {producing} /productive of/, and {produced} /as above confessed, produced/ by this same corrupt influence Parliament either is[?] actually entertains, or at least may reasonably be expected to entertain {at any time} a disposition to amend itself: 2 that in virtue of this same […?] disposition {it is a fit object of the most unqualified and universal affliction and respect: 3} /this same corruptly influenced body “changed or unchanged as to the general form of election should {says Your Lordship p. 32.} have the habitual confidence of all ranks and classes throughout the kingdom”/ and 3. all /that at the same time all persons/ who, not being in Parliament, seek to encrease, or if necessary to produce a disposition of that sort on the part of Parliament, are replete with such undescribable wickedness, that even Your Lordships eloquence sinks under the attempt to find description for it.

    In pursuance of the persuasion professed to be entertained of the existence of this generous and self-denying disposition – of the actual or probable or at any rate the potential, existence of it – {for I am surely[?] afraid of not being warranted in attributing any such design as that of say something to a passage which has so much the appearance of having for its object the saying nothing} – in pursuance at any rate of this profession, one condition I must not omitt to confess my having observed annext to the ripening of this disposition into act, in such sort that to the good people of this country it shall not be altogether without fruit. This is that the act into which the disposition shall have ripened shall have been, (to use Your Lordships words p. 29.) “the free spontaneous act of the House of commons, or” (an act performed) “through respectful petitions of the people”: through, meaning I presume in consequence of: for to my eyes the […?]ness of this portion of Your Lordships rhetoric does not shew quite so clear as to secure me against all apprehensions of doing unintentional injustice to it.