JB_116_049_002.xml

Title: [Letter 3 (1 What says Your Lordship]

Description: Letter 3 (1

What says Your Lordship to this passage? Is Your

Lordship ready to subscribe proposition of the public spirited

and truly noble Duke? Is it a treasure ?

Is it sound doc trine? or is ini

it in Utopia only that it is to pass for tor ture?

Would the founders and supporters of improved colonies

subscribe to it? Does Your Lordship know of any other person

who would subscribe to it true or is it romance? The

What says Your Lordship to this question? Has any such light

as the noble writer speaks of ever found its way into

? the seat of government here? One pair of

stairs — two pair of stairs — Garret or any other floor

of the Treasury Chambers

In the mind of the noble writer the idea of obligation

it is evident from this passage had some how or other become

connected with the idea of the seals of State. Your Lordship

smiles: but Your Lordships candour will observe

in his behalf where he was writing — in America;

writing in America, and living in low company — amongst

Quakers.

What is rather more to the purpose there was once a time

when an idea not very dissimilar appears to have been floating

must have been floating in the mind of an Honourable

Gentleman whose official seat is not many Yards distant from Your Lordship's. "With

"respect to Your Convict plan (says M r

Vansittart in "the last letter I have been honoured

with by that gentleman dated 10 th

September 1800)" I have not yet had an opportunity

"of consulting with Lord Pelham, on whose decision the

business

JB_003_192.xml

Title: [8 Decr 1801 Maximum 7 Minimum]

Description: 8 Decr 1801

Maximum

7 Minimum

2

prefer two shillings to one, it being what had never occurred to him before.

Would it easily have been guessed that it was from the one[?] pair[?] of stairs

window of the Treasury Chamber that such a picture had been sketched of the

commercial world?

... “and if any thing could produce a combination among corn-dealers, and

furnish them with a pretext for combining, it would be this very measure.

In this part of the argument /observation/ two /three/ things are assumed

/implied/: - that combination among corndealers is practicable - that it waits

for nothing but a pretext - but that it does wait for a pretext - and that this

is the pretext it waits for.

In regard to this first point, any /the/ leaning of my opinion is pretty

strongly on the side of the better and more shady /divided/ opinion of the Hon:

Gentleman. all I find myself compelled by some express evidence to believe in

the existence of a combination amongst such parties, I shall[?] for the reasons

given by Adam Smith and others, continue to disbelieve in it, not regarding any

price to which corn has ever risen or can ever rise as affording the smallest

proof of it. But as in the eyes of the Hon: Gentleman the existence of any such

combination appears as improbable as in those of any body who has considered it,

the argument /reasoning/ I am inclined to think would not be the less legitimate

or conclusive /would not be much the weaker/ if this point were to be left out

of it. Gentlemen on the other side /Those who think differently/ - {those whom

he speaks of as seeing only a very small part of the question which they

pretend

JB_116_494_001.xml

Title: [21 Dec 1802 Letter 3 (2 they might]

Description: 21 Dec 1802 Letter 3 (2

they might submit to the calamity thus passing upon them —

a murrain among Convicts, as they would to any other calamity, such as

a murrain among the cattle: they might look upon it as a sort of momentary

and passing scourge, and ascribe it rather to a want an absence

of thought rather than to any such exuberance and profundity and for

a construction an interpretation to their effect of this evil,

surely my Lord, there could not be any great want of grounds. of

thought. But if As it was not in the nature of the case that

gentlemen thus plagued should find out what his Grace the noble

arbiter of their fate had in view in plaguing them, much less is

it in proof or in probability that his Grace should ever have condescended

to bestow upon them any such information of himself. Were

even the fact of proposed and anxious concealment out of the

question, no man surely who should have read this letter,

can have conceived it possible that it should have been the

intention of +

+ any person who either

argued it or wrote it, or if there were any such

other person other person, thought about it 2 It is converted

into a plan, only by the very fabrication of it the noble

writer that the contents of it or any part of them should

ever travell a safe beyond the

two floors from between which it passed. one of

which to the other it was transmitted. [If this be true, and if the

knowledge of the existence of a plan be necessary to the execution of it on

the part of those who by that plan are to be drawn or led to

execute it, a

matter result

in no small degree beyond any natural course of expectation

of no small degree of response will be sure to follow. The

accomplishment of this design

of this high-born and super-official design for its

accomplishment will after all be due in no small degree to such

an homunico as myself. If it be to his Grace alone that

the law behest of his Grace is indebted for its conception,

origination to me, my Lord, (Your Lordship starts and

smiles) Yes to me, my Lord to the poor worm

Your Lordship he treads on, that the law is indebted for its

promulgation. What irregularities anomalities what

vicissitudes will sometimes be displayd by the tide which

manifests itself in the affairs of men."

How

whimsical and paradoxical and unexpected will be the contrasts

and