1819 June 8

To Erskine

§ 7.5. Spontaneity rely on

2

If Your Lordship Lord Grey were the same man with himself in 1794, what would his Lordship in his high-charactered eloquence say to the expectation thus held out to us of this same free spontaneous act. He would pronounce it in the words of his Fox-deum – Newcastle – Speech “absurd, visionary and senseless”. For proof of it – and for what that high-charactered eloquence is pleased to say, self-say is always sufficient proof – he would repeat his 1794 Honourable House speech and say “This House will never reform itself, or destroy the corruption by which it is upheld, by any other means than those of the resolutions of the people acting upon the prudence of the House; and that point they could only accomplish by meeting in bodies as recommended by a Minister (Pitt) in 1782.” At that time it is the notion of a parliamentary reform produced by the free spontaneous act of Honourable House that was “absurd, visionary and senseless”: at this time a parliamentary reform produced by this same free spontaneous act is one of the two sheet authors in which our hope is bad to repose itself: and now it is, that (ask him else) the idea of producing that change by any other means than that same free spontaneous act or respectful petitions of the people – and in particular by any such “resolutions of the people” as were capable of acting upon the prudence of the House – resolutions of the people met in bodies as recommended in 1782 by Minister Pitt just before he became Minister, is absurd visionary and senseless.