1819 Apr. 13 + +

To Erskine

Lett. II Whig Merits

1

16

Well, my Lord I have told Your Lordship where merits are not: I will now tell you where they are. Direct instruction commences the work of instruction: contrast perfects it.

Merits are not in Your Lordship’s “great body” of the Parliamentary Whigs: they are in the 3883, against whom these Whigs, with their Tory helpmates prevailed on the Westminster Hustings in March 1819.

In the “great body” of Your Lordship’s Clients, pretensions abundant: good deeds: unavoidable and uncostly not a few: merits, none. In the 3883 – “in the miserable little junto” – “in the Rump who administer Westminster in the in the name of Sir Francis Burdett” [*] ... there it is that merits may be seen – seen in an abundance by which I am the more astonished the more I think of it:- seen by those whose eyes allow them, not only to see merits, but to see them where they are. In that miserable little junto, would you see labour without profit – labour with expence instead of profit – would you even uncalculable loss – would you see in a word see self-sacrifice? there you may see self-sacrifice: there you may see what a may look for, till his eyes water, and not find it, in Your Lordship’s calumniated Whigs of England (p. 9 l. 1.) in your Lordship’s band of patriots (p. 7. l. 9) in your Lordship’s “men of honour, manliness and wisdom” (p. 13. l. 29) in Your Lordship’s “men of true wisdom” (p. 23 l. 11) – in your Lordship’s men who follow the dictates “of a pure and honest sense of duty, conscious of their talents and their honest disposition” (p 24. l. 15) in your Lordship’s “acknowledged possessors of the highest sense of honour” (p. 24 l. 24) in your Lordship’s “enlightened and independent men” (p. 30. l. 12.) and so forth.

“Shade of Hampden! look down, and in a host of Tradesmen and Shop-keepers, behold thy yet living and altogether worthy successor”. [+] Such was the exclamation called forth by the contemplation of the merits of these my fellow citizens of Westminster – of such their merits as in the year 1817 had already manifested themselves. Now in 1819, do I see any reason for lowering this voice? No: I see encreased reason for raising it.

[*] Morn. Chron. 11 March 1819

[+] Parl. Cat. Introd p cxxix