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National Library of Wales, MS 4813D. Previously published: Kenneth Curry (ed.), New Letters of Robert Southey, 2 vols (London and New York, 1965), I, pp. 464–466.Dating note: from Curry and internal evidence.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Carol Bolton, Tim Fulford and Ian Packer
For permission to publish the text of MSS in their possession, the editor wishes 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.
A research grant from the British Academy made much of the archival work possible, as did support from the English Department of Nottingham Trent University.
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Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
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Here is a piece of trickery inclosed which I will beg you to frank up to Bedford, & desire him to dispose of it according to direction.
Your notions respecting the Criminal Laws seem to me very just & sensible: yet I should be sorry to see less use
made of transportation, which as you say, does not deter criminals, but is certainly the best means of employing them. Wise &
extensive plans of colonization would be, I am fully persuaded, the best means of preventing not only petty offences, but <also>
imminent danger to society; – the huge steam engine of the body politic needs such safety valves. Enlighten the poor, & find
employment for all who want it, – that these are the preventatives. – I am inclined to think the punishment of death might
in cases be best dispensed with; not from any horror at the thought of sending a criminal into eternity with all his unrepented sins
upon him, – for if the man would have repented had life been granted him I cannot but suppose the will will be accepted for the deed, –
but because I think imprisonment for life more terrible than death, – & the reverence for life which it would exhibit in the law
would tend to produce & or strengthen the same reverence in the people. The only main objection seems to be
that a criminals are thus made burthensome to the state as long as they lived: – this might be obviated by making
them do prison work, – there are enough zealous clergymen of every persuasion who would look after their spiritual concerns, & I am
mistaken in all my views of human nature, if the spectacle of one true penitent for such a crime as murder would not have more effect
than fifty executions, – he might be made a spectacle by having the prison <church> service public.
The malice in the Critical comes from a man whose name is Le Grice, a school fellow of Coleridges; he hates him & therefore abuses me.
Thank you for the Lunatic Report:As Protestant
Establishments do not make enough use of religion, – xxx hospital & such asylums as this never can be so well
superintended as by those who do it for the love of God. There is a good deal to be said about this, & a good deal might be
done.
I hear of Espriellait is an invention of my own &
a very ingenious invention it is. That book wants only a hearty shove to get it into a sale which would be very agreabell to its author
I think. I shall make ‘a Clergyman of the Established Church’ quote him in the Gentleman’s Mag. against the Catholicks. –