1822 April 6.

Rid Yourselves

Letter 15 Relinquishment honorable

continence: glory of self mastery and self-sacrfice. Yes: of the very

purest kind: for pure is not

here, as so commonly it is, an unmeaning, or what is worse a mischievously deceptious

expletive: pure from all alloy uncontaminated by human suffering - uncontaminated by

evil in any shape - this is its meaning here: It belongs not to the number of those

vague generalities, which fly into the clouds to make their escape from scrutiny: it

fears not either moral, logical, or arithmetical scrutiny: it shrinks not from the

probe, it invites it.

Straining still to reign - these rulers of yours - to reign in

countries placed by nature beyond their reach - straining with frog-like ambition,

coupled with frog-like impotence, they would make you

burst, and after all, not reign over any thing, unless it were over you, after they had ruined you: abdicating, they would nobly reign:

reign along with you - reign in the hearts of millions -

reign in the page of history - reign to the end of time.

Of this only true political glory, let Portugal - let even Naples -

let even Piedmont - as they have already been a source, be in their turn a school to

you. From all these countries already have you reaped two harvests of this pure

glory. In you they beheld and followed the first example of national self-defence: of

national and successful insurrection against regal despotism: preserving with

unexampled magnanimity - preserving, and even fixing, upon the throne, the man by

whom were they to fail, they were but too sure they would be destroyed or ruined, as

so many others that went before them, had been, and as they had actually been, since.

In this, you out-shine even the men of the Anglo-American United States. For neither

crowns, nor sceptres, not thrones, nor coronets, nor mitres, nor any other of those

instruments of state witchcraft, by which their European kinsmen continue still

blinded and entralled, had ever been in their view, as they have all along been in

your's.

This