3080. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 21 February 1818
3080. Robert Southey to John Rickman, 21 February 1818*
My dear R.
I have a sort of note apologetic from Gifford. Murray it seems told Courtenay [1] that I was waiting for Parl: Proc: – & Courtenay told Murray they would not be ready for three weeks. – However this is no matter.
What I now want to know is, whether I may send to the press, without waiting for the said Proc: – in full assurance that they will be published before the review can by possibility appear. Gifford promises it by the end of March – which will be the middle of April, – probably not later. [2] The sooner it goes to the Printer, the sooner of course you can have the proofs; – & perhaps there is not much occasion to wait for the foolish bill which you anticipate, – – it may as well be attacked by anticipation.
I have not seen the Bankruptcy & Insolvent Reports. [3]
I am coming on rapidly with Brazil, in full expectation of compleating it before the end of the summer [4]
There is a tremendous blunder in Arrowsmiths great map – which I am frightened to see in mine also. [5] He has put the Diamond Demarcation (Districto Defeso dos Diamantes in the middle of the continent, – Mato-Grosso, – whereas it ought to be in the Captaincy of Minas Geraes, – more than 1000 miles distant!!! Tejuco is the capital of the district. If there are two demarcations of this kind I never heard of the second. And the one which I know is not marked. How this can have arisen I cannot conceive.
God bless you
RS.
21 Feby. 1818.
Notes
[1] Rickman and Southey’s article ‘On the Poor Laws’, had not been ready in time to be included in Quarterly Review, 18 (October 1817) (the issue published on 21 February 1818) – it would appear in the next issue, 18 (January 1818), 259–308. Thomas Peregrine Courtenay was the author of A Treatise upon the Poor Laws (1818), one of the works discussed in Southey’s article, ‘On the Means of Improving the People’, Quarterly Review, 19 (April 1818), 79–118. Courtenay had advised Murray that the Parliamentary Proceedings detailing debates on the issue would not be ready in time for Southey to take them into account. BACK
[3] The Insolvent Debtors Act of 1813 attempted to reduce the number of debtors languishing in jail by providing means for a compact to be reached with creditors. The Report from the Select Committee on the Insolvent Debtors Act (1816) recommended alterations in its operations. ‘On the Poor Laws’, Quarterly Review, 18 (January 1818), 264, condemned the operation of the Act without referring to the Report. Reports from the Select Committee on the Bankrupt Laws appeared in 1817 and 1818. BACK
[5] Outlines of the Physical and Political Divisions of South America: Delineated by A. Arrowsmith Partly from Scarce and Original Documents (1811) was the basis of the map of Brazil and Paraguay that Arrowsmith had been commissioned to make for the second volume of Southey’s History of Brazil (1810–1819). The diamond demarcation was a special area under direct government control since 1772 because of the mineral wealth it contained – it is indeed in Minas Geraes. BACK
