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University of Newcastle Library, G. O. Trevelyan MS 185, p. 35, copy in an unidentified hand. Another copy probably in the same hand is in the Somerset Record Office, DD/DU/205. The original letter seems not to have survived; text here is taken from the Newcastle University Library copy.. Not previously published.
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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I cannot be easy in mind unless I write to you on yr plan for leaving England; under this feeling it would be folly to apologize to any man for discharging a duty, & least of all can it be needful to you.
The stuff of which Martyrs & ordinary Saints are made is sufficiently common, the supply of these will be always
equal to the demand; but you are the only man within my knowledge who without a
I believe that you will find no man who will understand yr feelings better than I do – or who will sympathize in them so far. Were it yr belief that all who do not die in the profession of a particular faith are everlastingly lost, & in that belief you should chuse to go & preach the gospel to the most cruel of the negro nations, or even in Japan itself, I might perhaps set forth to you the certain & inevitable danger, but I should hardly dissuade you from it, with such a belief the object is tantamount to the sacrifice & the means would seem adequate to the object. In some degree indeed they would actually be so. He who offers Hell on the one hand, & redemption by the blood of Jesus on the other will make his preaching felt wherever he can make it understood.
But what object do you propose which can counterbalance – I will not say danger to yourself (a thing not to be
considered if the call of duty were clear, & hardly to be urged even in this case) but the pain which yr departure would cause to
your nearest & dearest friends? Is it to Botany Bay that you would go? what could you do there? there are already schools
missionaries & preachers. It is becoming a favourite station of the London Missionary Society.ly as (in the main) their labours must be when the foundation of their faith is so different from your own, &
when the points of difference are precisely those upon which they all insist the most; the true methodist will think you in more need
of conversion than the wildest savage of the woods; what is there you would do for which these men are not better qualified? Opinions
& principles pure as yours are the dish on which children should be fed – the strong drugs & counterpoisons of Methodism &
Popery are the only medicines which will reach desperate cases; they who have lived always under the influence of their passions must
by their passions be worked upon, repentance & redemption they all understand – they are intelligible things they are cauteries
which reach the causes of the soul.
If you propose then to act as a Preceptor to carry knowledge where it may be wanted – for the good which may in this
way be effected, you have a better field at home. England is at this moment the place where the seed of good principles will produce
the best fruit,
Remain in England Reid – make some deserving woman happy & train up children to act on yr principles when you are
departed. – If there be a church with which you could feel yourself in communion, the way in which you could be most useful would be by
becoming a minister of that church. The character gives an influence which is hardly otherwise to be obtained, but if like me you
belong to no particular flock though under the great shepherd continue in the honourable employment in which you have hitherto been
engaged – the good you do is certain, & far greater I sincerely believe than you could effect in any distant part of the world. But
if you are in that state of mind (a state which I can well conceive) that you must like Clarkson have some press on devote yourself, pause
awhile to consider if there be nothing in England which might fully & worthily employ you. I not only think that there is, but I
believe also that I can point out one object of itself perfectly practicable, most desirable for the community, & which will
entitle him who shall effect it to the blessings of thousands from generation to generation. The object which I mean is the
establishment of institutions for women which shall procure them from want & render their talents & industry always available
for their comfortable & respectable support. Richardson
The
I could also point out you to a mission were you of a missionary temper, to a people who live almost without law or gospel, committing crimes of every kind, & doing nothing but evil, yet living in the midst of a Christian country, & that country our own –
Would not the man who should form a society for the purpose of reclaiming the Gipsies, deserve well of his country
& his kind. Surely surely there is work enough at home, let the methodists go abroad – enough of them will be left; but who can
fill your place to yr Mother & yr Sisters,
Mrs Southey & her Sistersrs Reid – note my remembrances also –