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MS untraced; text is taken from Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850). Previously published: Charles Cuthbert Southey (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols (London, 1849–1850), III, pp. 219–221 [in part]; John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 128–131.Dating note: L&C dates this 16 Feb; Warter dates it 18 Feb.
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.
Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed.
Because of web browser variability, all hyphens have been typed on the U.S. keyboard.
Dashes have been rendered as a variable number of hyphens to give a more exact rendering of their length.
Southey’s spelling has not been regularized.
Writing in other hands appearing on these manuscripts has been indicated as such, the content recorded in brackets.
& has been used for the ampersand sign.
£ has been used for £, the pound sign
All other characters, those with accents, non-breaking spaces, etc., have been encoded in HTML entity decimals.
I should have written to you before this, had it not been for a more unpleasant reason than the permanent one of constant employment. Edith has had a serious indisposition, which at length confined her to her bed for eight days; and it was but yesterday that she was sufficiently recovered to walk from her own room into mine.
I am anxious to hear how your brother bears the climate of Brazil.
Have you seen William Taylor’s defence of the slave trade, in
Bolingbroke’s ‘Voyage to the Demerara’?ingenuous: he weakens the effect of his own
arguments, by keeping the weak side of his cause altogether out of sight. In defending the Slave Trade, as respects the duty of
man towards man, he has utterly failed. He has succeeded in what you and I shall think of more consequence, in showing what the
probable end is for which wise Providence has so long permitted the existence of so great an evil. The ways of man he cannot
justify; the ways of Heaven he has. I know not that this expression is allowable; what I mean is, that he has shown how all this
evil has been necessarily tending to commensurate good.
About twenty sheets of my first volume are printed.