1820 Oct. 9 Spanish liberticide measures Lett. 3 Public discussion Meeting

licensing Speeches 2. Colony Minister

If there be no want of probity, […? …?] is the want of logic here. But by want

of logic not less than by want of probity must […?] be destroyed.

Still Worse than this if there be any thing worse must the people of Spain have

to forgive ere their salvation is accomplished.

The Minister of the Colonies according to the reports made of his speech, makes

reference to England. As to the state of the law in this respect in England, and

nothing can be more notorious, either my conception of the matter is altogether

erroneous, or his is. ‘Permanent Societies’ (says he) ‘are unknown unless

authorized by the Law.’ Permanent societies not authorized by the Law are well

known: that of the Free Masons for example, the permanence of which has been –

in the world as long (say they) as from Solomon’s time to the present, if that

is long enough for him, and in England really so long that nobody knows the

commencement of it. In England to establish a Society for any purpose not

expressly forbidden by Statute Law, nor by the sham Law called Common Law

treated as if it were so, requires no more authorization than eating and

drinking does: and when once established, whatsoever permenence the members

agree in giving to it belongs to it of course. The statement given by this

Minister is a curiosity in its kind: seldom at the expence of so little

falsehood asserted has so much been insinuated. Next time it is his pleasure to

make reference to Representative Governments I would submit it to him, whether

it might not be as well /better/ to take an instance where Representation is a

reality than where it is an imposture. In the United States there are two and

twenty such realities for him to choose out of: in England there is this one

imposture. After this will he stand up in his place and say that he does not

know it to be an imposture: he will be a bolder man than from this speech of his

I should

The Free Masons who in England at least never hurt a worm nor so much as

threatened one. But why mention the Free Masons Society? Only because of its

existence and its innocence not even Mr Gorelli could have been ignorant. For if

he is curious to see any more such, let him give me a notice a piece for as many

as I can shew him his salary as Deputy will soon find its way out of his pocket.

Till the late liberticide Acts, penned as if Mr Gorelli had been penman, there

was no other limit to the number of those Societies than to the number of those

who took it into their head to form them.