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MS untraced; text is taken from John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856). Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), II, pp. 239–242.
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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Thank you for the Buenos Ayres papers.occasion of the civil war there, and
the characters of the leading individuals, when I receive a journal which Mr. Kinder has promised to lend me, – kept by himself in
that country.
The fact is, Neville, that there is a French party in these colonies. To my knowledge, the
deputies from the Caraccas have expressed their sorrow that England does not recall her troops from Portugal, because they say,
then the contest would be over; the mother country must fall, and there would no longer be any obstacle to a free trade between
this country and Venezuela.
It is evident to me that the Anglo-Americans separated from the parent state at least a century too soon. They became independent before they had a race of scholars or of gentlemen among them. Their independence is not yet thirty years old, and see what a national character they have obtained and deserved. But the Spanish Americans are even less fitted to form a new state, for they are far more ignorant; and the morals of the worst part of the United States (Virginia and the other southern states) are less depraved than those of the best parts of Spanish America; but the one main cause of inevitable depravity exists in both – the practice of slavery. The idleness of the Spaniards leads them still more to sensuality, and the Roman Catholic religion demoralises every people among whom it takes root.
This is a subject which would lead me on to a great length were I to pursue it; you will, however see it treated
(if I live) in the third year’s “Register.”
I was sorry to learn how ill that unpleasant affair, in which you took so manly and honourable a part, has
terminated. Yet, if the man be thus utterly unprincipled, it is better for the poor girl to be thus rid of him than yoked for life
to a villain.
When the new edition of “Kehama” is ready,am reviewing Montgomery’s volume.