1819 May 11 + E

To Erskine

pen {ult o}

Lett 6. Whig Anti Reform

Barnstaple Debate

10 May 1814

{4} 1

The Barnstaple bribery case comes upon the carpet, and here is /comes/ /we see/ an occasion on which in the promoting or at any rate in speaking up for a sham reform men from both sides of Honourable House came[?] Whigs as well as Tories /in/

Well might they do so: they have the same interest: that have the same object: they have even the same[?] declared object: the keeping up the reputation of the Honourable House. Why (supposing it possible) why keep up the reputation of Honourable House? Oh to be sure to keep the people /country/ from ruin: from that ruin which would be sure to fall upon them, if the reputation of Honourable House were to be laid low.

Alas! how severe is my misfortune! how uncomfortable my opinion! no sooner did I look /[…?] a little/ into the subject than my opinion was that the salvation /preservation/ of the country depends not upon the preservation of the reputation of Honourable House, but upon the extinction of it. If it ever /it/ condescended to acknowledge a trust – that trust has over and over and for ever been forfeited: the forfeit is day by day repeated, the forfeiture I have proved, the proof is in the eyes of every Member: it was once[?] deemed[?] act[?] the […?] of a large proportion of the members: it has never been contested by any one: read and never contested /heard without contestation/, and for this plain cause because with any colour or shadow of reason it never can be contested. What? still put in a claim for confidence for any the smallest speck of confidence on the part /at the hands/ of the people? never has that claim been so much as attempted to be supported upon principle other than that principle in which is included the assertion of a fact known by all those who assert it as well as by all who hear it to be replete with falshood ninety grains of falshood to one of truth, viz that at the instrument by which they have been placed in their seats or the free choice expressed of the real wishes of the majority of the people: of that people for whom they still profess forsooth to serve

Keep up the reputation of Honourable House! No, before you do that, fit up in every other street a brothel, keep up the reputation of the {brothel}, that virgins may enter /flock to/ it and be ruined in it.