Can you find out in your Catalan books why the Somatenes

are so called? I take them to be the posse comitatus

called out for the defence of the country; & have some notion (a vague one) that their name is derived from the Bell which is rung to summons them, – as if Somaten were equivalent to tocsin, – but I cannot where I have read this. The derivation of Miquelet

I have found in D Francisco Manuel,

– but I think he never mentions the Somatenes; – & if that be the case, it must be a word <name> of later growth, & therefore not to be met with in the old laws: – <but the unde derivatur

perhaps may.> I bought at Turin

a French account of the struggle made by the Catalans after they were so basely sacrificed at the peace of Utrecht.

It is a vile book. The word is there explained twice & in two different ways, which just serve to show that the Frenchman chose to explain what he did not understand. Mr Butler the Catholic (Alban Butler’s

nephew) tells a good story of such another Frenchman, who upon <being> asked the difference between the Dryades & the Hamadryades replied with great complacency that it was exactly the same as the difference between les Eveques & les Archeveques.

John May talks of paying me a visit in June, tho his furlough will only extend to a clear fortnight.

There is no person whom I should be more glad to see, – except yourself. I shall get the first volume off my hands in the course of this month, having only to refit two chapters which are nearly written to my hands in the Ed. Ann. Register,

& to insert some corrections from Sir H Dalrymples papers concerning the post-communications with the Spaniards in Andalusia.

This is an awkward job which I am afraid cannot be done in any better way than by appending the new matter as ‘Corrections’.

I think you had better not send the D. of B.

a copy of this book. It will be wormwood to all his party. I have done nothing more in the first volume than simply to characterize them in the introductory chapter;

but that sample shows what they have to expect when their conduct during the succeeding years of the war is to be recorded. – They tell me that in the late duel when the D. fired into the air, he said, it would be a shame to shoot at so-much-too-good-a-mark as the D of Buckingham.

It has long been apparent to me that we are rapidly approaching a much more perilous crisis in society than that of the Reformation. The house of Russell seems to be stricken with a judicial blindness, or they would see how impossible it is that they should keep in a second convulsion, what they gained in the first.

A government which on all occasions is compelled to be directed by popular opinion will soon find itself no government at all. I do not dream of preserving the <our> liberties; – the question is how much shall will it be possible to save from the wreck, & how long before we arrive at that strong & armed government in which all changes of this nature must end, & with which the gradual but sure decay of the nation will begin. The Catholic question

may be staved off for a few sessions, but it will be carried at last; away goes the Test then:

 the Dissenters get into the Corporations, & the first hungry & unprincipled Ministers sells the Tithes, – as Pitt thought of doing.

Parliamentary Reform is become little more than a dispute concerning forms, – the real mischief is already effected; & popular clamour carries every thing in Parliament under a Ministry who cringe to their enemies & destroy their friends: a miserable crew, who divide their voices upon the greatest questions which can possibly come before them, & who for the sake of putting off a difficulty, or even of escaping from a debate, are ready to say or unsay, to do or to undo anything.