date

Marg ls revised 1819 Apr. 10 + § 2 6
Marg ls revised 1819 Apr. 10 + § 2 6

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 6. E. AntiReformist

§ 7. 5. Petitions Rely on

3

1

36

1

In my eyes vice does not become virtue by being cloathed in power

☞ Employ the language used by E. in speaking of its corruptions &c

Remains now the other branch of the condition: reliance on the only remaining one of the two modes of commencement which the change is to be allowed to have: viz. respectful petitions of the people”.

Now to this mode of commencement, so it be but allowed /capable to have place/, I for my part have not any the smallest objection: no nor, on a little consideration I dare venture to say, any one else who on the subject of parliamentary reform thinks with me.

Respect indeed? respect for a body of men so constituted? respect meaning the inward sentiment? Oh yes for some of them, on my part at least there would be no difficulty. But by the House on this as on every occasion must be meant the majority of the House. But the /Now /And/ this/ majority to what are they indebted for their seats? to the “free spontaneous” to use your Lordship’s words to the “free spontaneous” suffrages of the people, whose /those[?] on whose free/ choice depends the only title which in words they can respectively and individually pretend to? Alas! The contrary is not only is matter of notoriety but has been rendered so by those inquiries labours and disclosures by which the cause of the people has been so richly benefited and for which in happier times the people were /became/ indebted to those parliamentary Whigs who did not then disdain to call themselves the friends of the people or to act as if they had been, M r Erskine and M r Gray then of the number, as well as M r Fox and so many other Whig workers now no more.
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    § 6. Expedient 4. Prescribing reliance the free spontaneous act of Honourable House

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    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.
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    To a man ever so little acquainted with parliamentary language, few tasks surely could be easier than that of laying over the inward sentiment, be it what it may, an outward covering of the opposite hue. So long as there remains any such thing as a King’s Speech neither a justification, nor a model can ever be wanting for such a work.

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