132-231.xml

Title: [1819 May 9. To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 May 9.

To Erskine

Lett. Es /Whigs/ Anti-Reform Labours

3

6

3

7. 4 Sacrifice of the advantage which in the character of a person holding an official situation invested with power in various shapes, and /enriched by emolument in various shapes and/ affording incitement and means to abuse coupled with the character of Members of Parliament professing to be at all times upon the watch for instances of abuse, for the purpose of causing it to cease and providing for the prevention of it in future, but entitled at the same time to sit in judgment in the character of judge on the occasion of every complaint of abuse suspected to have been committed either by himself or by any of those who are linked with him in power and interest – sacrifice of the advantage which by the means of these two repugnant characters of defendant and judge he possesses by being able to give effectual impunity to himself and them: thus securing to the conduct of all Members of Parliament, and to those of his own party and himself the faculty of exercising a tyranny at all times and on all occasions without any controul afforded by the nature and constitution of the Government: a tyranny void of all controul except such as may be applied by the apprehension of the effects of sudden and occasional and sudden exasperation on the part of the people without doors, void of all controul except that sort of controul which has place in Constantinople, and which is applied in and by fire a part of the inhabitants setting fire in various places /this or that place/ to the City to which the residence of the despot is contiguous

{A sacrifice of this sort it seems to be as reasonable to expect at the hands of any set of men having in possession and expectancy the power attached to administrative department of the Empire from any cause other than that of fear such as in the year 1783 produced in the shape of the emancipation of the Irish from the authority of the English Parliament a mitigation of the system of misrule in Ireland, any more than at the hands of a set of defendants in an ordinary suit or prosecution, civil or criminal, on the supposition of their composing a majority of the Jury or of the Judges of the judicatory by which they are to be tried, a voluntary surrender of that advantage.}

132-033.xml

Title: [1819 May 1. + To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 May 1. +

To Erskine

Lett. II. Whig Merits

2

To make out their claim, what then, Sir, according to this notice of your’s, (I hear /I think I hear/ Your Lordship saying) must my Client’s do? My Lord – It is with unfeigned concern I think of it – on their part there would require to be – and that to no small an amount – a self-sacrifice, a sacrifice of their own particular interest to the interest of the whole. Seats, and in a number not exposed to calculation – Objects of still more extensive desire – and to an unlimited amount – ulterior objects to the eventual prospect of which those seats are indebted for the greater part of their value: power to wit in all its other shapes – factitious dignity in all its shape – money from all sorts of sinister sources – useless places, needless places overpay of over paid places and sinecures: – convenience of being the only persons to sit in judgment on any little transgressions into which it may now and then be the lot of any such of them to fall, if any such there be as are not altogether exempt from human frailty: – convenience of not /never/ having to bestow any of their time, on attendance at what is called the seat of parliamentary duty, except when nothing more interesting, either in the shape of business or in the shape of amusement, is to be found any where else: convenience, in a word, of possessing all this power, unclogged with the smallest particle of really efficient obligation: – in the above Your Lordship sees a sample at least of the matters of which the self sacrifice would or might have to consist. With this view of the amount of it before my eyes, it will scarcely be matter of wonder, that all hope should be denied me of seeing it made, except under an impossibility real or supposed, of being able to avoid making it: and that therefore the scene is in my eyes so melancholy an one.

131-260.xml

Title: [1819 May 14 To {Erskine} Disfranchising]

Description: 1819 May 14

To {Erskine} Disfranchising

Lett 5

Lett 6

Disfranchising extension

On the part of true reformers Transparent hypocrisy would it be to say the Election franchise is a trust – the men who deal thus by it are betrayers of this trust – a trust to which some such epithet as sacred would not fail to be added by Your Lordships eloquence. Of such logic and such eloquence /as/ the object and /so/ the effect is to persevere in the betraying of the trust of vastly superior importance, in the execution of which the trust in question depends for the whole of its importance The situation of Member of Honourable House though on occasion if towards and for the purpose of deception it is spoken of as a trust is scarce ever really considered so by any one to trust is power coupled with obligation That no obligation is considered as attached to the situation of Member of Parliament I have shewn elsewhere. + that the charge /imputation/ /words/ of absurdity and utopianism, theory and so forth could be thrown at the head of any man who should propose a measure grounded on this supposition: any measure having for its object the rendering attendance /presence/ at the only scene /field/ of duty any thing short of completely optional: the proposal would be called disgusting, and the proposer coughed down: disgusting, the highest point on the modern scale of reprobation

+ Supra or infra: Plan Cat.