132-150.xml

Title: [1819 June 6 + To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 June 6 +

To Erskine

Lett 6. E. Anti Reformist

§ 3.1 Reformists AntiReformists

2

**19

*2

6

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.

132-049.xml

Title: [1819 Apr. 13 + + To Erskine]

Description: 1819 Apr. 13 + +

To Erskine

Lett. II Whig Merits

1

16

Well, my Lord I have told Your Lordship where merits are not: I will now tell you where they are. Direct instruction commences the work of instruction: contrast perfects it.

Merits are not in Your Lordship’s “great body” of the Parliamentary Whigs: they are in the 3883, against whom these Whigs, with their Tory helpmates prevailed on the Westminster Hustings in March 1819.

In the “great body” of Your Lordship’s Clients, pretensions abundant: good deeds: unavoidable and uncostly not a few: merits, none. In the 3883 – “in the miserable little junto” – “in the Rump who administer Westminster in the in the name of Sir Francis Burdett” [*] ... there it is that merits may be seen – seen in an abundance by which I am the more astonished the more I think of it:- seen by those whose eyes allow them, not only to see merits, but to see them where they are. In that miserable little junto, would you see labour without profit – labour with expence instead of profit – would you even uncalculable loss – would you see in a word see self-sacrifice? there you may see self-sacrifice: there you may see what a may look for, till his eyes water, and not find it, in Your Lordship’s calumniated Whigs of England (p. 9 l. 1.) in your Lordship’s band of patriots (p. 7. l. 9) in your Lordship’s “men of honour, manliness and wisdom” (p. 13. l. 29) in Your Lordship’s “men of true wisdom” (p. 23 l. 11) – in your Lordship’s men who follow the dictates “of a pure and honest sense of duty, conscious of their talents and their honest disposition” (p 24. l. 15) in your Lordship’s “acknowledged possessors of the highest sense of honour” (p. 24 l. 24) in your Lordship’s “enlightened and independent men” (p. 30. l. 12.) and so forth.

“Shade of Hampden! look down, and in a host of Tradesmen and Shop-keepers, behold thy yet living and altogether worthy successor”. [+] Such was the exclamation called forth by the contemplation of the merits of these my fellow citizens of Westminster – of such their merits as in the year 1817 had already manifested themselves. Now in 1819, do I see any reason for lowering this voice? No: I see encreased reason for raising it.

[*] Morn. Chron. 11 March 1819

[+] Parl. Cat. Introd p cxxix

132-050.xml

Title: [1819 Apr. 13 + To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 Apr. 13 +

To Erskine

Lett. II Whig Merits

2

17

And was this mere froth? was it an attempt at an anticipation of Your Lordship’s eloquence? was it a substitute to reasoning? No, my Lord: it was the result of determinate facts brought together by reasoning: it was produced by a picture of the conduct of the person in question, detailed and correct to dulness, ranged under 12 heads. There it has been to be seen these two years: – there it has been actually seen by purchasers in thousands: – by vendors in thousands more: – by every body I had almost said but your Lordship and M r Parry: – seen even by M r Cobbet, who, with gnashing of teeth and unlocked jaws, unable to lock his eyes as Your Lordship’s and M r Parrys are locked, confesses in his agony his knowledge of the existence of the work, of which the merits of this real band of patriots from the most striking object.

But Your Lordship is a very slave to duty: and above all to professional duty: – duty as towards clients – the first trouble of the whole duty of man in learned eyes: and with an energy rising in proportion as he is convinced of its being unanswerable, whatsoever is advanced on the other side, it is the duty of the advocate to keep his eyes fast closed against: Yes: fast closed against it: or if haply for any one purpose the object has been seen, yet if, for any other purpose, it requires to be forgotten, the last thing he forgets is to forget it.