1819 Mar. 30 + + C

To Erskine

Lett. I Plan

Conclusion

I Whig Merits

7

11

On this occasion, as on every other, so far as the state of my opinion will allow my representation of them to take a favourable direction, that direction it will always take with pleasure.

1. First then as to Whig Merits: Of these I see in Your Lordship’s account a good dozen. As yet a dozen and no more, but these a sample of the rest. Now for my poor opinion: of the […?] intimation has been given already. Good deeds all, or thereabouts: merits, none. Now as to the grounds of it. Merit, if in effect as well as in intention, it requires two things: service rendered, and sacrifice more or less made: sacrifice of immediate self-regarding interest. As to Merit in intention, that indeed may have place without actual service rendered. Now then as to Whigs. That of which, neither in these, nor in any other of their good deeds have I ever been able to discover any the least particle of, is this same sort of thing called self-sacrifice. So far as in their view of the matter, the pursuit of the people’s interest has coincided with that of the interest of the party, the party has pursued the people’s interest: in so far as, in their view of the matter, the pursuit of the people’s interest would have led their course into a direction adverse to the interest of the party, the direction pursued by it has been that which has been conducive to the interest of the party, adverse accordingly to the peoples interest.

Such being my opinion, yet do I not find myself necessitated – and, not being necessitated, neither am I disposed to decry and apply to my own use, and cast back upon your Lordship’s Whigs, any of the contents of the dark-coloured packet of Your Lordship’s flowers. If they have not been better, than others would have been – the Tories for example – in the same situation, yet neither have they been worse. Considering men in the abstract – whether taken in bodies or taken singly, conduct depends on situation, that is on the state of interests: on the state of their supposed interests; and thence, in so far as nothing appears to make an exception, on the state of their real interests. Such, my Lord, is my creed. This creed I have already confessed /justified/, and as above applied. This in a word entituled Plan of Parliamentary Reform &c A o 1817, to which I may have further occasion to make reference. But, the work having no eloquence in it, Your Lordship notwithstanding the scene it gave rise to in Honourable House, never knew of its existence: and now it is out of print.