1819 Apr. 13 +

To Erskine

Lett. II Whig Merits

3

18

But your Lordship, or your Lordships Morning Chronicle friend, may say – though in the middle of our paragraph the junto was “a miserable little” one, yet, at the commencement, it was “a junto who administer Westminster” {to wit “in the name of Sir Francis Burdett”} and again towards /nearer the/ /moreover, towards/ the close it is “the rump that govern Westminster in his name”, and have “dependants looking to them for a seat in Parliament,” and this his rump administration is an object towards which the “pliancy and subserviency” of the Baronet “finds it necessary to manifest itself”. Here then says M r Parry – and here, through the mouth of this your Lordship’s “disinterested, honest, enlightened independent” “intimate” (p 18 l. 17) whose “spirit and eloquence would have added lustre to the bar at any period” (p. 19 l. 5.) Your Lordship may perhaps remember not to forget, that whether the Rump govern the Baronet, or the Baronet the Rump, pure is a thing called power: and this said thing a good thing, which the said Rump have not only possessed but exercised, and by exercising it enjoyed: and forasmuch in that “miserable little junta” the appetite and relish for power is as sharp as in your Lordships Clients it is regulated and subdued, thus it is that the members of that same junto have their reward, and all idea of self-sacrifice: and therefore even according to your own notion says Your Lordship – according to your own notion theoretical as it is and therefore false, all merit is out of the question. Now Of this argument the full advantage shall be left to Your Lordship and Your Lordships said distinguished friends, who being so disinterested might, but for some inadvertence have the shortness of his memory remembered to all the Morning Chronicle gratis, while Your Lordship was fascinating Juries {with eloquence} at the same price.