1820 Feb. 16

Radicalism not dangerous

III. Experience

II. Ireland

3

If felicity in fiction be not equivalent to felicity in fact, Britain is not a country Ireland is not a country in which any such felicity in any such shape as alledged has place and therefore on this supposition, the alledged excellence vanishes. If felicity in fiction is an equivalent for felicity in fact, then neither on this supposition has any such excellence place. For in fiction the existence popular representation, dependence of alledged representatives on alledged constituents, conformity of the proceedings of those representative to the wishes and thence to the interests of those constituents is just as easily affected as of Great Britain and Ireland, and might at any time be affected with as much veracity /entire sincerity/ and sincerity in the one case as it is or can be in the other.

From truths may either truth or falshood flow /come/ /or truth or falshood may ensue /accrue//

From falshood nought but falshood ever can flow /can ensue/.

In this couplet in addition to rhyme may be seen though not poetry, what is somewhat better worth than fiction in that or any other shape, sound reason: reason applicable to whatsoever subjects are in relation to human happiness most important. The original come last from Bishop Saunderson Bishop of Lincoln /one of Charles the first Bishops/ in his Logical compend, but of all compends of the current logic Bishop Saunderson who with this or any other useful matter would have thought over and again in his head ere he would have let it fly, /would no more have let it fly than any Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of London would/ had he been prophet enough to have seen /foreseen/ that any such use as this would have been made of it.

Ex veris virtute[?], falsumque aliquando sequitur

Ex falsis poterunt nil nisi falsa sequi

+ in /of the case of/ Spain, or Morocco, or in Bambarra