1819 Mar. 26

To Erskine

ult o

Lett. 6. E. AntiReformist

§. 4. 2. Reformists threatened

2

21

2

2. The other use is to save from reproach this call for arbitrary punishment. What says Your Lordship do you presume to give it as any wish of ours that Parliament should punish all animadversions upon its conduct? Calumny! calumny! when in so many words I had expressly told you it was only for “ indecent ones. And would you have indecent animadversions upon any body – indecent animadversions upon Parliament be made with impunity? That would be striking at the very form and condition of social life And thus it is that the profit of tyranny is put in for without prejudice to the reputation of the love of justice. {The recipe for thus combining oil and vinegar is as old and as much practised as any in Buchan’s domestic medicine or M rs Glass’s cookery.} Wrapt up in a cloud of words, Your Lordship has given us a confession or rather a Declaration /profession/ that the whole system /state/ of government in this country is as rotten as ever Borough was. + This Your Lordship has said: and all the time Your Lordship would have me punished for saying the same thing. It is to be deemed rotten for the purpose of a Whigs being lauded for the sagacity of destroying the rottenness and the virtue of wishing to see it corrected. /cured./ It is to be deemed not rotten for the purpose of justifying the Whig when instead of following up his /those/ wishes with any endeavours, his endeavours are employed in frustrating all /other peoples/ endeavours to give effect to those same wishes It is to be deemed rotten for the purpose of allowing every Whig to say so. It is to be deemed not /to be/ rotten, for the purpose of punishing any bad man, who is not a Whig if he presumes to say that it is.

Inserendum?

Your Lordship is I am quite certain for the admission of liberty: but if this little light I think I have spied does not deceive me Your Lordship is quite decided for the exclusion of all licentiousness: licentiousness, not only in animadversions upon Parliament, but in animadversions upon public men: upon all Whigs, and therefore as there is no sure mark by which a Whig can on one[?] occasion be distinguished from another man /a Non-Whig/, upon all public men.

Now I my Lord, in so far as /concerns/ libel law is concerned specific lies knowingly or with inexcusable rashness disseminated excepted, am for liberty and licentiousness both. Why? because it is impossible to draw the line between the one and the other: so that to permitt a man to punish licentiousness is to permitt him to extinguish liberty. Now I had rather see licentiousness rise /swell/ to the greatest height that imagination can give to it, than lose a single grain of this same liberty.

+ ☞ Give the passage underneath