[fragment?]
Naples
26 Jan 1832
My dear Henry
I have written to you so often lately that I think I should have left you alone for some time had not your unbotanical & gloomy letter reached me not via F.O. <1> but via post. I hope that with the spring better prospects will open. Everybody here has fresh gloomy news every post with which to regale their friends – even Ld Hertford, <2> tho he has secured they say £20,000 a year in America & has sums here & and Paris & wherever he thinks he can find safer funds than our own, is full of melancholy forebodings. Miss Strahan gives a ball tonight to which she has invited the world chez son tuteur <3> Lord Hertford – an invitation which has been much criticised. Have you pursued your plan of helping the poor of Lacock to emigrate I think you had some scheme of that sort. It is a pity to think we have reached the maximum of our population, for I conclude we must hence forward retrograde. All the continent is in malicious exultation at our unhappy state – & are willing to assist us in going downhill faster, if necessary.
Have you observed how many good articles there have been this year in the Quarterly <4> & how few in the Edinb. <5> it was a far more redoubtable partisan in opposition than in place <6> which is singular. It had four articles on German literature de suite <7> this year if one had nothing of greater moment worthy of our attention. Reform is unfriendly to all liberal arts & feelings, we shall be soon swallowed up in egotism & become like guessing Yankies. I doubt England containing materials for a good republic. The first Act of a reformed Parlt will be to repeal all those of its predecessors & to put things on a new footing, uniform & systematic – A committee will draw up a Charter & instead of being the first on the list of constitutions we shall be next below Baden or Belgium younger than the France of July. <8> You are right that the late ministers ought to have done something & were idiots but I think for the same reason a little would have gone a great way, & by attempting too much, when there was neither merit nor necessity in the attempt, these have put the whole in jeopardy. The chief merit would be the quiet success of such a measure, but & one would bear a good deal to ensure it. but to be unquiet for a year & then fail it is too bad!
We suspect Ld Durham <9> is the great Radical in the Cab <10> some threaten us with him in F. O. What can he know about it? We shall have war yet I think, & what is more I think there will be no peace till we have had war. As for us we are quite secure of keeping out of it, for if the English nation had but one nose it might be pulled with impunity in these times. The Americans have sent a squadron to enforce payment of their claims here & an Envoy who says coolly & properly he is come in amity & to stay four years as Resident, if justice is done to his Govt & if not… Our merchants meanwhile must go without, for fear of exciting a prejudice against us in case of a general war. War is a bad thing, to be avoided, but if it is to be made a bugbear of, I shall think the British Lion is the same as Esops, who had his teeth & nails drawn. What is a general war to us more than a particular war? Of course we care for ourselves, but why is our sickly humanity to care for others who never care for us & who go steadily on to their point, making war just as it suits them, & always contriving to profit by our forbearance which I think little better than canting humbug.
I think Ministers have been very ill served by the press in general or rather that certain newspapers have taken the opportunity to play them a scurvy trick, & whilst they have been saying one word for the Govt they have been saying two for themselves. If there was any point with regard to the peerage, aristocracy, clergy, agriculturists, Crown, &c that one would have wished to leave untouched for the present, they have raked it out, in the most objectionable & intemperate manner. What service they do Govt by that, I cannot see, but it is evidently con permesso de’ superiori. <11> It seems to me that the great evil of this ill concocted & worse conducted bill is that it has frightened many timid tho sincere persons both among its opponents & its friends. A more prudent measure would have brought over the lukewarm Tories, & retained the moderate reformers. As you say, cela fera époque <12> – & that is a vast objection to me, who like incidental, insensible reform. Each provision may be separately very good – who can guess how the whole is to act together? Parliament is a ruminating animal, if you make the dose too strong, the second stomach naturally rejects it. They are by this time chewing the cud, I hope it will agree better with them. How the Times has fallen off in matter & manner. The Herald is much the best written, & has much the best information on foreign subjects, & judgment on home ones I think.
Notes:
1. The Foreign Office.
2. Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford (1777–1842).
3. At her guardian’s.
4. The Tory Quarterly Review.
5. The Edinburgh Review, which supported the Whig party.
6. In office, that is, when the party it supported was in power.
7. At once.
8. The July Revolution of 1830.
9. John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792–1840), statesman. He advocated the creation of peers in order to get the reform bill through the House of Lords.
10. Cabinet.
11. With permission from above.
12. It will be epoch-making.