date

1819 July 5 To Erskine ult
1819 July 5

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 7. Whigs AntiReformists

§.5. Pos. 4. Whig Excellence

2

{2}

1

He seems moreover to have yet to learn that epithets such as wild and visionary, or absurd, visionary and senseless, applied to a plan of any kind to which while plain and specific reasons are attached for its support while no such reasons have been opposed to it, is a virtual confession of its unassailab[?] aptitude, uncontrovertible aptitude: that the course taken by the use made under such circumstance /in such a case/ is, if any thing be, itself “wild, and visionary” “absurd and senseless, and that the language by which they are employed is much more apt for the mouth of a magpie or a parrot, than for that of a Statesman, who has any pretensions to the /make to/ praise of any one of the three branches of appropriate aptitude.

Well then Sir, of all those securities for good behaviour to speak in the too plain /little dignified/ language of Common Law well possessed in the degree in which the great body of the Whigs possess these will not constitute in your estimation constitute a sufficient title to the praise of preeminence – if with reference to a parliamentary seat or other office to indulge you with your own language they are not to be admitted in the character of elements of appropriate aptitude, pray what are those that will?

Ah, my Lord – I have said it over and over – nothing either more or less than the distinction conferred by the having been appointed to the seat by the free suffrages of a proportionate section of the people, voting on the principle of virtually universal suffrage, under the assurance of their being /with security for their being/ removable at any time after a short time of trial, say one year or two years. This, and nothing less: /else:/ pretensions /claims/ not only to appropriate probity but to appropriate intellectual aptitude, and appropriate active talent, having been heard and determined and certified, by some by means of a self-formed judgment, by others by means of a derivative judgment, derived from those whose situation has rendered them best qualified for pronouncing a self-formed judgment, as in the case of the freely though not formally chosen members of an American Circus or a Westminster Rump – an institution at once uncontrovertibly beneficial, and happily unavoidable. {an association, to which, should disappointment or envy or disappointment render a man passionate and unadvised enough without a shadow of proof to accuse of /impute to it/ corruption in any shape in this last mentioned instance, he would hurt as a man would hurt a stone wall by running at it {head foremost} at full speed, head foremost.}
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  • Title: [+ 1819 Oct. 10 Parl. Reform Bill.]
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    Go to Westmoreland! Go to Cumberland! according to his conscience! To vote according to conscience! /learn there how good and joyful it is, brethren to vote according to conscience! how sad a thing to vote against conscience! how wicked a thing to force men to it!/ Good: but how? by voting out of the sight of tyrants? of tyrants on one side, as well as on the other? Oh no, that would be “wild and visionary, absurd, visionary, and senseless”: practice in America is not practice: never could any a man have thought of such a thing, had he been as conversant with men as with books.

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