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Keswick Museum and Art Gallery, KESMG 1996.5.235. ALS; 4p. . Previously published: John Wood Warter (ed.), Selections from the Letters of Robert Southey, 4 vols (London, 1856), III, pp.183–185.
These letters were edited with the assistance of Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt
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Immediately on the receipt of your letter the order for the char was given, & accepted; so that I thought myself
sure of executing the commission. But I now learn that the fish would not be caught, & that it was not thought desirable to catch
them; the fish, the fishermen, & the fish-potters being xxx unanimously of opinion that this is not the season. The
proper months are October & November.
What a world of events since the date of your letter, tho it is scarcely a month old! A new King, – an ugly question about the new Queen, – the preparations for a new
Parliament, which bring on a relapse of the Election fever, before this part of England has recovered from the ill blood which the last
left behind it, & this assassination in France!
You will be compelled, sooner or later, to agree with me concerning the Press, & you cannot be more unwilling to
come to that opinion than I have been. There will be no security for government or society, till the constituted authorities all over
Europe have the controul of the Press. The question is whether this shall be conceded to an equitable Government, which consults the
public good, & regards public opinion, – as the means of preventing revolution, – or whether it will be taken by the military
Autocrat to xxxx xxxxx xxxx they who escape from <who will put an end to> the series of massacres proscriptions & civil
wars which this miserable country must inevitably undergo, unless the Press be curbed. We have no statesman courageous enough to
venture upon the remedy, tho I cannot believe any of our statesmen can be so blind as not to understand the danger. What then is to
preserve <save> us? Perhaps a premature rebellion, before the army is corrupted: this is not so likely as it was three
months ago, when a day for the attempt was fixed, & when any government but ours would have caught the ring leaders in a trap.xx xx Do you know that John Hunter was of opinion that our manufactories would engender for us
some new plague?
My departure for the South is delayed for about a month, – chiefly because of the Kings death. I must produce some ex officio verses.xxx
influenced them, in a very material point.
All here desire their kindest remembrances