date

1819 May 11 To Erskine ult
1819 May 11

To Erskine

ult o

Lett 6. Whig Anti Reform

Barnstaple Debate

10 May 1814

2

The cup of that Circe – the flesh-pots of that Egypt.

What is become of Sir Francis Burdett. Why was he not there to bring all those same opinions which have been declared to be his &c

H. of Commons Debate on the Barnstaple Disfranchising Bill 10 May 1819. Morn g Chron 11 May.

The worthy Alderman Washbourne[?] has no confidence in the rabble: his confidence in respectable men seems to be entire: and by respectable men he means rich ones.

The seat of my confidence is the reverse. My confidence bestows itself preferably on the rabble. On any constitutional question I should have beyond comparison more confidence in 658 men taken by lot from the rabble of Westminster than in the 658 men that compose the population of the Honourable House.

My reason is a very simple one: the rabble are out of the reach of every particular interest distinct from and opposite to the universal interest: the 658 Honourable Gentlemen those who are still more Honourable than Honourable Gentlemen included are every one of them within the ashes /hottest fire/ of their particular interests – the greater part of them acting notoriously in subjection to it.
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    The Barnstaple bribery case comes upon the carpet, and here is /comes/ /we see/ an occasion on which in the promoting or at any rate in speaking up for a sham reform men from both sides of Honourable House came[?] Whigs as well as Tories /in/

    Well might they do so: they have the same interest: that have the same object: they have even the same[?] declared object: the keeping up the reputation of the Honourable House. Why (supposing it possible) why keep up the reputation of Honourable House? Oh to be sure to keep the people /country/ from ruin: from that ruin which would be sure to fall upon them, if the reputation of Honourable House were to be laid low.

    Alas! how severe is my misfortune! how uncomfortable my opinion! no sooner did I look /[…?] a little/ into the subject than my opinion was that the salvation /preservation/ of the country depends not upon the preservation of the reputation of Honourable House, but upon the extinction of it. If it ever /it/ condescended to acknowledge a trust – that trust has over and over and for ever been forfeited: the forfeit is day by day repeated, the forfeiture I have proved, the proof is in the eyes of every Member: it was once[?] deemed[?] act[?] the […?] of a large proportion of the members: it has never been contested by any one: read and never contested /heard without contestation/, and for this plain cause because with any colour or shadow of reason it never can be contested. What? still put in a claim for confidence for any the smallest speck of confidence on the part /at the hands/ of the people? never has that claim been so much as attempted to be supported upon principle other than that principle in which is included the assertion of a fact known by all those who assert it as well as by all who hear it to be replete with falshood ninety grains of falshood to one of truth, viz that at the instrument by which they have been placed in their seats or the free choice expressed of the real wishes of the majority of the people: of that people for whom they still profess forsooth to serve

    Keep up the reputation of Honourable House! No, before you do that, fit up in every other street a brothel, keep up the reputation of the {brothel}, that virgins may enter /flock to/ it and be ruined in it.
  • Title: [1819 May 11 {C} E To Erskine]
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    The state of interests! the state of interests! theirs[?] is the true – the only true ground of argument. Honourable Gentlemen know it is: in vain would they deny it. On the memorable | | 1812 it was forced upon them /the book on which that ground was for the first time laid down/ by the Hon. ble M r Ward. The Whigs thought the triumph was there: they found they thus were triumph was over themselves: they were confounded After a pause like that in Pandæmonium Romilly at length acting the part of the ruler[?] of it rose for their conciliation: admirable was the prudence he displayed: neither party interest /connection/ nor personal friendship though so opposite to each other he could find cause for complaint: sorry he said he was for the part his friend had taken – sorry he truly was, and well he might be: Honourable House Tories and Whigs together was not dissatisfied: I, new /unpræcommunicated[?]/ and unexpected by me, was richly satisfied.

    [marginal insertion:] Yet were his party sorrow ever so sincere there was a mixture of public comfort as well as of private sympathy at the bottom of it.

    I repeat it – /Among those individ/ not an individual who possesses the faculty of thought (and it is not even one who does in any degree possess it) not an /a single/ individual to whom it can be unknown that the question has been placed upon that ground and that it is the only true ground. Not an individual unless M r Francis Burdett be an exception who dares argue the question upon that ground
  • Title: [Marg ls revised 1819 June 7 + + ┴]
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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.

    In the course of the debate on the Parliamentary Reform Resolutions, which, from a draught of mine, after such amendments as had been deemed expedient, Sir Francis Burdet did me the honour to propose to Honourable House, – of which Resolutions the basis was composed of the declaration made for these last three hundred years by the Monarchs of this country that the universal interest of the people was the object of their most anxious care – in the course of this Debate it was insisted that, Kings being the sort of persons by whom those things were said, they meant nothing, and ought not to be taken for true: at any rate to this or any other practical purpose. Such was the ground, on which It was the Resolutions were negatived: and, so palpable (it was intimated) was the falsity of all such declarations, that by my learned and Honourable friend M r Bingham, my Honourable friend Sir Francis as well as his obscure and unhonourable draughtsman were in the warmth of his eloquence, pointed to as if labouring under a sort of infantine weakness, as betrayed by the weakness of supposing, that any thing better than transparent hypocrisy had place in those most high and solemn of all high and solemn parliamentary declarations. Had it been such as could have stuck upon me, could I have been seriously suspected of having, at this time of life any the smallest tendency to regard them in any other light than that in which the Honourable House, following as above the lead set to it by my Honourable friend, testified its receiving them any such imputation would indeed have sufficed to call the blood into my cheeks.