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British Library, Add MS 47890. 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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Tonights news is Buonaparte at Lyons, – & it is sufficiently evident that he could not have got there unless
the soldiery had joined him. The next accounts will be of his issuing orders from Paris. Louis
The first fault was in sparing his life, – this no doubt was Austrias doing,xxx had no choice. The second was
allowing him to take his own guard,armies, which comes
strongly in aid of my old doctrine that no country can ever be safe from foreign & domestic enemies till every man in it be
trained to the use of arms. But what a world of reforms does this presuppose, for before this can be done, all men must be
properly educated, & all men made to feel that their own individual interests are inseparably connected with the continuance
& preservation of <the> existing order of things.
It is I fear no longer to be doubted that another desperate contest must be waged. And I fear that there
are advantages on the side of France which she did not possess twelve months ago. In the first place some 300,000 troops who were
then prisoners! Worse than this is the feeling of the Italians & Swiss, – perhaps of the Saxons. Had Italy been made an
independent kingdom as it ought to have been, Buonaparte durst not have moved, for on every side Louis would have had allies.
However At him Trojan! There is but one course to pursue, the Allies must steer clear of the sin of the Anti
Jacobin war; they must stick to Louis, & fight his battles in France, where there is certainly a Bourbon party in some
provinces. I could almost persuade myself that the work of retribution was imperfect as long as Paris should be left standing, –
that Marshal must fight Marshal, Frenchman kill Frenchman in battle, hang all prisoners on both sides be hanged, &
the Accursed City be burnt to the ground, before all is settled.
I am, as I dare say you are also, much disquieted at the news. The work is to do over-again, – the Income Tax must
be renewed,
But away with politics while we may: only let me execrate the folly of provoking a quarrel with the mob upon
Bread
___
I suppose the second edition of Roderick will soon be published.the public education, & colonization.
The next Quarterly will have Lewis & Clarkes Travels,t Perkins.x the bill has been dishonoured & has cost me £29–5. to take it up. I do not suppose
he intended to defraud me, but he ought not to have drawn with any such possibility of such a having the
bill protested, & I think my money is in a fair or foul way of being lost – Three weeks have elapsed, & I can not
<yet> find him out, – but I have letters lying for him at his Coffee House & at his Agents. This has happened at a very
ill time. To be sure it will insure me against ever seeing him again, & that must be accounted as some set off.
I have been getting on with Brazil,rs Hill is on the point of increasing the number of our cousins.
Your reports about the fortune of your intended sister Louisa are, as usual, greatly
exaggerated. Her actual fortune is 6000 £. On the death of her motherdiffering little fro may almost be called a miser, & bears the ominous name of Thomas.done late discovered latent heat.