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