2 Jan y 1810

Parl y Reform

Ch.14 Electors

'.4. Borough settling

15

3

3

Little character. Good heavens, how unfortunate! Could I have thought it! {Oh that I had been a hundred miles distance!} Oh yes, sure enough: The Devil created those colchicums, at that very instant, for that very purpose. I will write to Linnæus this very instant to blot out the whole tribe of them. That I should have been such a Marplot! Yet who could have thought it? I shall never see a colchicum again without bestowing a curse upon it. - Oh the cursed colchicums!

This scene /The conversation/ is reported with a degree of fidelity such as in lives and memory is not often exemplified /equalled/, and which in all circumstances in the least material can /could/ not be exceeded.

Had it not been for the colchicums, the living might have been obtained - who knows but it might?, the borough settled, and the breast /bosom/ /case[?]/ of the great character eased of /freed from/ all disturbance. Now upon what sort of footing would it have been settled? the illegitimate or the "legitimate"? upon the footing of any illegitimate or upon the footing of the " legitimate rights of influence"? Not the illegitimate assuredly: for in the shape of " dry and sordid

gain" where would any thing have been to be sure in /throughout/ the whole business? In the first place the expecting youth, the man of future /[...?]/ contingent piety, would have received the Holy Ghost. Nothing " dry" or " sordid" here[?]. After the Holy Ghost he would have received the benefice: nothing dry or sordid in the benefice. Last of all /Lastly/ he would have received the tithes: and now indeed, now, afar[?], and in virtue of the godliness comes the " gain": true the gain: but still nothing " dry" (it is to be hoped) or " sordid" in it.