132-154.xml

Title: [1819 Mar. 26 To Erskine ult]

Description: 1819 Mar. 26

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 6. E. AntiReformist

§. 4. 2. Reformists threatened

2

21

2

2. The other use is to save from reproach this call for arbitrary punishment. What says Your Lordship do you presume to give it as any wish of ours that Parliament should punish all animadversions upon its conduct? Calumny! calumny! when in so many words I had expressly told you it was only for “ indecent ones. And would you have indecent animadversions upon any body – indecent animadversions upon Parliament be made with impunity? That would be striking at the very form and condition of social life And thus it is that the profit of tyranny is put in for without prejudice to the reputation of the love of justice. {The recipe for thus combining oil and vinegar is as old and as much practised as any in Buchan’s domestic medicine or M rs Glass’s cookery.} Wrapt up in a cloud of words, Your Lordship has given us a confession or rather a Declaration /profession/ that the whole system /state/ of government in this country is as rotten as ever Borough was. + This Your Lordship has said: and all the time Your Lordship would have me punished for saying the same thing. It is to be deemed rotten for the purpose of a Whigs being lauded for the sagacity of destroying the rottenness and the virtue of wishing to see it corrected. /cured./ It is to be deemed not rotten for the purpose of justifying the Whig when instead of following up his /those/ wishes with any endeavours, his endeavours are employed in frustrating all /other peoples/ endeavours to give effect to those same wishes It is to be deemed rotten for the purpose of allowing every Whig to say so. It is to be deemed not /to be/ rotten, for the purpose of punishing any bad man, who is not a Whig if he presumes to say that it is.

Inserendum?

Your Lordship is I am quite certain for the admission of liberty: but if this little light I think I have spied does not deceive me Your Lordship is quite decided for the exclusion of all licentiousness: licentiousness, not only in animadversions upon Parliament, but in animadversions upon public men: upon all Whigs, and therefore as there is no sure mark by which a Whig can on one[?] occasion be distinguished from another man /a Non-Whig/, upon all public men.

Now I my Lord, in so far as /concerns/ libel law is concerned specific lies knowingly or with inexcusable rashness disseminated excepted, am for liberty and licentiousness both. Why? because it is impossible to draw the line between the one and the other: so that to permitt a man to punish licentiousness is to permitt him to extinguish liberty. Now I had rather see licentiousness rise /swell/ to the greatest height that imagination can give to it, than lose a single grain of this same liberty.

+ ☞ Give the passage underneath

132-153.xml

Title: [1819 Mar. 26 B + §.4 A To Erskine]

Description: 1819 Mar. 26 B + §.4 A

To Erskine

ult o

Lett 6 E’s Anti Reform labour

§. 4. 2. Reformists threatened

1

20

1

☞ 7 June 1819. Stet, all but verbal revision.

§. 4. Expedient 2. Threatening Reformists if they act for themselves.

Amidst all this caution a little expression {has by Your Lordship’s wisdom been suffered to escape} is observable from which it appears that for a supply to /to make up for/ the weakness of arguments Your Lordship has always been looking for the strength of punishments. {Not to speak of Right Honourable and Honourable Just so is it with all Lords, and in particular with all Law Lords. In p 32. amidst a profusion of words and topics in[?] confusion what I observe is – that according to Your Lordship’s plan no impunity is to be expected for indecent animadversions upon its character and conduct: The pronoun its is here the representative of Parliament: would that Parliament were as adequate a representative of the people. But here as well as every where else Your Lordship means nothing but what every body ought to mean. This is proved by the word indecent prefixt to the word animadversions

Now my Lord does /is it known to/ Your Lordship what Lord Erskine’s view was in the stepping in with so much /such/ exemptions decency the word indecent? So little do eloquent men and noble and learned Lords possess of that time and patience which would be necessary to their possessing any tolerable knowledge of themselves.

On the occasion In Your Lordships noble mind the word indecent had two uses. 1. One is the exempting the power of punishment in this case from all restraint: for, under the instruction of Your Lordship, to justify itself in punishing or visiting a man as the phrase is a man to the utmost of its power for any animadversion he may have made, a Parliament formed upon Your Lordship’s plan would then[?] have no /nothing/ more to do than to say, they were indecent, and from this I conclude, that Your Lordship, like Lord Grey, or Lord Granville or Lord Eldon, or the late Lord Ellenborough, or the present Lord Chief Justice Abbot, or Lord Castlereagh, or Lord Sidmouth or Lord Any-body-else would have no objection to see Your Lordship discourse or conduct taken for the subject of animadversion, so long as you chose the words of it.

132-162.xml

Title: [1819 Mar. To Erskine ult o]

Description: 1819 Mar.

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 6. E. AntiReformist

§ 5. 3. Reformists Luddites

6

2

29

7

As to myself, my scheme of reform goes to the full length of that pattern on which the vituperative branch of Your Lordship’s eloquence has exerted itself /poured itself forth/ with so much energy. Yet, with submission, neither for the destruction of machinery, nor for mischief in any shape meaning always that which in my eyes was mischief have I ever used any more endeavours than has been and in that same view by Your Lordship who I am sure has no appetite for any such mischief.

Now if there were one course /sort of language/ better calculated than another to arrest the hand of mischief it seems to be that taken as above by Major Cartwright: and such are the thanks he has for it.