1819 May 10

To Erskine

ult o

Lett 6. Whigs Anti Reform

17

6

How should they have done otherwise? As to the conjunct points of economy and influence of influence that is to say of power in its sweetest and least obnoxious shape the principles of the most plausible and popular of the two parties – I mean the Whigs had already been declared.

In two papers published in two successive numbers of the Pamphleteer I have already denounced two publications, one from a Whig the other from a Tory source in which principles were advocated, by the observance of which as by a painful dedication I there observed the financial ruin of this or any other country how much more wealthy so ever would, sooner or later with unerring certainty be accomplished. In this rain of ruin, the Whigs started first. I mean in the person of Edmund Burke. The course he took was of the most artful kind. The character in which he stood forth was that of an advocate of Economy, it was in his pamphlet on the subject of the Economy. His object was to disserve the cause he professed to serve: in other words to betray it. I have shewn with what effect and ingenuity he betrayed it: every proposition advanced by him for the purpose of reconciling their[?] people as to the boundless encrease of waste and its inseparable concomitant sinister and corruptive influence, was given /produced/ in the character of a confession wrung from him. You hear from the Tories side comes forth on the same side /for the same purpose/ the pamphlet of George Rose. But his path had been prepared and made straight for him by his Whig primer by Edmund Burke.