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BL Add. MS 28268, ff. 419–20
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editors wish to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; the Bodleian Library Oxford University; the British Library; Boston Public Library; the Syndics of Cambridge University Library; the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge; Haverford College, Connecticut; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Hornby Library, Liverpool Libraries and Information Services; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the John Rylands Library, Manchester; the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas; Luton Museum (Bedfordshire County Council); Massachusetts Historical Society; McGill University Library; the National Library of Scotland; the Newberry Library, Chicago; the New York Public Library (Pforzheimer Collections); the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the Public Record Offices of Bedford, Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds) and Northumberland, the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; the Trustees of the William Salt Library, Stafford, the Wisbech and Fenland Museum; the University of Virginia Library.
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Excuse me once more because I fear I have hardly quite made myself understood.
Nothing could be more proper than your resolution made in 1800. Nothing can be more proper than that you should now adhere to it. I should perhaps be as unwilling as you to enter into any ‘disputation or disquisition’ on either religion or Politics—had you stated any opinions of yours, & had they differed from mine, it was my intention to have recommended to your perusal the books on which mine had been formed, or by which they had been confirmed, but I think nothing should have induced me to have gone further.
I am sure of the truth of what I said in my last—viz that the opinions which I there stated have occasioned you the loss of some valuable friends. I must decline mentioning their names or the sources of my information. If without stating what your opinions on either subject are you will merely say that they are not hostile to the Church or Government of this country as each now exists, I am inclined to hope that something may yet be done for you, but my Dear Sir you must be aware that it would be highly wrong in any person who is contented with the blessings he enjoys, & is willing to defend them, if necessary, with his life, to associate with, & to give countenance to a man whom he knows to be desirous of depriving him of them. I even yet hope you are not among these, & if so it seems to me impossible that you should not be able easily to convince your friends who are unwilling to believe the contrary, that you are not so I regret with you that opinions should be so often formed without sufficient information, but when certain facts are known & others withheld, it is impossible it should be otherwise. It is with a view of obtaining the remainder of this information & of applying it to your use that I am giving you this trouble. You will give me such an answer as your own good sense shall point out as most likely to answer this end.
I go to Clare Hall tomorrow I shall return here on Saturday