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British Library, Add MS 28603. 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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This morning on my usual walk to Friars Crag, old Daniel Crosthwaiter Kenney the President of this College has more money at command than any Bishop in the Kingdom.viper brood of vipers in our gardens, I think we should <not> defer operations against them, till some of
the family had been bitten.
The last newspapers have disheartened me very much. There is clearly a party in the Cabinet who are in the cold fit of
the ague, & are disposed to temporize, & vacillate & negociate, at a moment when we oug they ought to speak in
thunder, & write their manifestoes in blood. Meantimes the old admirers of the Usurper Messrs
Whitbreaddecisive proof demonstrating that
there can be no peace for Europe while Buonaparte lives, & while the army which he has formed after his own heart is suffered to
exist. War must be made upon him as an Usurper & upon them as rebels. I do not mean to say that they are to be put to death when
taken prisoners, – but that they should be sent to Siberia, never to return. Notwithstanding the cowardly language of Ministers, I
think we must have immediate war & this is <felt> by all persons with whom I have any intercourse distinctly felt:
If it be prompt & vigorous it x may be soon terminated: but in regarding <reference to> that moral
order of things which may be distinctly traced throughout the course of history, I should regard any xx sufferings which
might be inflicted upon France, & any catastrophe calamity with which Paris might be visited, as judicial dispensations,
almost to be expected.
I announced last year a series of Inscriptions recording the acts of xxxxx the British Army in the
Peninsula;incumbent upon me became me to seek all worthy occasions for writing upon public
affairs <national topics>, as much as to shun the common-places of court-poetry. But I postponed it during the peace,
because when the French Marshals had been taken into favour, there might have <been> some impropriety in applying to them those
epithets which they deserved, when I was compelled was writing quasi ex officio,No & shall publish as soon as possible. The plan includes an inscription for every battle &
capture of &c, & epitaphs for all the distinguished officers who fell.
In looking for what good may arise out of this new state of things, I think we may promise ourselves the pleasure of
seeing you next summer xx at the Island. Our best remembrances to Mrs
Peachy. Senhouse past a day with us last week on his way Southward.
I am fixed to my desk, & shall hardly travel before the Autumn – Believe me my dear Sir