132-299.xml

Title: [1819 June 16 To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 June 16

To Erskine

Lett. 7. Whigs AntiReformists

§.5. Pos. 4. Whig Excellence

6

Thieves hate Gass-lights

Burke hated Metaphysics.

After all /Meantime/ What is a Whig? Who have been? who are? who have been? the Whigs? The existence of an excellent body of men in such sort and degree as to have always been actuated by this generous desire this desire of reform and self-sacrifice, who have been the individuals of which from time to time it has been composed? To my argument /notions/ the question is a matter of indifference. I say no creature born of woman could ever have entertained any such desire. this being granted the questions what a Whig is and of what individuals compose the body called the body of the Whigs is composed are questions /matters/ of indifference. /nothing to the purpose./ though[?] I have been saying and I think proving that the Whigs have had no desire of reform the Whigs have had no desire to sacrifice their suits[?] But to Your Lordship /Lordships argument/ these are vital questions. On each occasion where confidence is to be reposed, at a parliamentary Election for example, the question is in what individuals is the confidence /it/ to be reposed. Suppose M r Lamb for example coming a second time on the Hustings and saying I am a Whig: I am a Whig as such I am entitled to your confidence. Then comes the question how do you know /know you/ that you are a Whig? if it be worth knowing, how are we to know it? Have you any thing to shew for it? Have you any such thing as a register book in which the names of all Whigs have been entered? Do you know D r Galt[?]? Has he discovered an organ /for you an appropriate organ/ of Whiggism a protuberance that may be seen or felt growing out of your skulls? or is it no other than the general organ of disinterestedness, correspondent and opposite to the organ of rapacity, for the discovery of which we are so much in his debt /which we are one of the discoveries for which we are his debtors?/

132-297.xml

Title: [1819 June 15 To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 June 15

To Erskine

Lett. 7. Whigs AntiReformists

§.5. Pos. 4. Whig Excellence

5

Canning whose sympathies is /are/ […?] and his antipathies pure[?]

whose trust is not in the power of his pen or his tongue, but in the power of head[?] and words[?]

1. Title 3. Whig opulence in the shape of landed property and length of possession of it in the same family. Long possession of landed opulence

Put this argument in the mouth /dress/ of M r Canning and we have Pedigree makyth perfection: or Escutcheons makyth excellence. Good again as against Peoplesmen: but […?], My Lord, as against Tories. Tories have more escutcheons belonging to them, and with more quarters or whatever else they are called, and pedigrees of greater perplexity taken in the aggregate than could have been produced in the aggregate by Edmund Burke’s Whigs.

Much need not on this occasion be said of that species of excellence which is manufactured /made/ out of ribbons of different colours, and the three letters of which the word Sir is composed put before a man’s name. Much stress can hardly have been laid by Burke on this species of excellence: the whole manufacture of it being at the time of his writing and speechifying, in Tory hands.

For the moment only and for the argument only it was Your Lordship will be pleased to observe that I could admitt that these titles any of them or all of them put together in the shape of titles to the reputation of excellence or to the benefit of appropriate confidence are worth a straw. Not that I can very easily prove this. But then on the other hand neither does it lie upon me to prove it. To prove these things would be to prove so many negations. To prove the opposite and correspondent things rests upon Your Lordships Clients: to prove that opulence is excellence, property probity, acres, aptitude, escutcheons excellence and superexcellence: none of all this will they do /prove/ till they have /before they have proved any thing of this they will have/ proved that chalk is cheese.

Of all these aphorisms /maxims/ that by which property and probity are identified and considered as one and the same thing and the terms convertible terms, appears to be the favourite one: by a little aristocratical negligence /slight neglect of overweening /pedantic/ punctitude[?]/ in the article /mode/ of articulation, even the /in/ sound /they/ might be made the same: and at any rate should a prize be ever offered for the highest degree of proficiency in the art of alliteration, I would be in Your Lordships judgment whether between property and probity the analogy is not incomparably /considerably/ closer than between revered and raptured

132-296.xml

Title: [1819 June 15 To Erskine Lett]

Description: 1819 June 15

To Erskine

Lett. 7. Whigs AntiReformists

§.5. Pos. 4. Whig Excellence

4

As to Edmund Burke, lest it should be thought pass that in what he says on this occasion there is something which I feel myself unable to answer, and on that account pass by unnoticed, I will beg Your Lordship forgiveness for observing that in his rhetoric there seems not to be quite so perfect a decidua[?] of logic as in Your Lordships, and that accordingly in the way of marination certain grounds for the title in question are every now and then slipt in by him certain grounds for the title in question – in other words certain supposed proofs of the supposed excellence.

1. Title 1. Whig opulence. Such a quantity of this article have these same Whigs, no confidence which they can claim can justly be withholden from them. For the Right Honourable the Alliterator-General opulence is excellence or as a M r Canning might say – property is probity.

Answer Admitting this for the moment, and for argument’s sake, their opulence will not on the present occasion be of any use to them. For if relative opulence be the opulence in question relation being had to the numbers of the sharers, there has always been more of it in /among/ the Tories: and if absolute opulence be the opulence in question – opulence considered without reference to the number of those who share /are sharers/ in it /among whom it is shared/, and by sharing reduced to driblets, even among peoplesmen though {they have} /their shares in it may be/ less and less of it every day, still the aggregate mass is greater than the aggregate mass perhaps of that which is in the hands of the Tories; at any rate greater than that of which the aggregate mass is in the hands of the Whigs.

1. Table 2. Whig opulence in the shape of landed property. Thus says Burke. Of the opulence which is in the Whigs see what a quantity there is which is in the shape of landed property. If opulence is excellence, landed opulence is super-excellence: or as a M r Canning might say, after turning /rummaging/ over the dictionary /vocabulary/ that supplied him with the joke about the rupture[?] and borrowing a word from the Right Reverend William of Wykeham – acres

maketh

aptitude. Good, too good, as against People and Peoplesmen: but not so against the Tories. For still more excellence in this superfine shape is theirs.