1819 Mar. 26 B + §.4 A

To Erskine

ult o

Lett 6 E’s Anti Reform labour

§. 4. 2. Reformists threatened

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☞ 7 June 1819. Stet, all but verbal revision.

§. 4. Expedient 2. Threatening Reformists if they act for themselves.

Amidst all this caution a little expression {has by Your Lordship’s wisdom been suffered to escape} is observable from which it appears that for a supply to /to make up for/ the weakness of arguments Your Lordship has always been looking for the strength of punishments. {Not to speak of Right Honourable and Honourable Just so is it with all Lords, and in particular with all Law Lords. In p 32. amidst a profusion of words and topics in[?] confusion what I observe is – that according to Your Lordship’s plan no impunity is to be expected for indecent animadversions upon its character and conduct: The pronoun its is here the representative of Parliament: would that Parliament were as adequate a representative of the people. But here as well as every where else Your Lordship means nothing but what every body ought to mean. This is proved by the word indecent prefixt to the word animadversions

Now my Lord does /is it known to/ Your Lordship what Lord Erskine’s view was in the stepping in with so much /such/ exemptions decency the word indecent? So little do eloquent men and noble and learned Lords possess of that time and patience which would be necessary to their possessing any tolerable knowledge of themselves.

On the occasion In Your Lordships noble mind the word indecent had two uses. 1. One is the exempting the power of punishment in this case from all restraint: for, under the instruction of Your Lordship, to justify itself in punishing or visiting a man as the phrase is a man to the utmost of its power for any animadversion he may have made, a Parliament formed upon Your Lordship’s plan would then[?] have no /nothing/ more to do than to say, they were indecent, and from this I conclude, that Your Lordship, like Lord Grey, or Lord Granville or Lord Eldon, or the late Lord Ellenborough, or the present Lord Chief Justice Abbot, or Lord Castlereagh, or Lord Sidmouth or Lord Any-body-else would have no objection to see Your Lordship discourse or conduct taken for the subject of animadversion, so long as you chose the words of it.