William Rathbone : a memoir / by Eleanor F. Rathbone.

  • Eleanor Rathbone
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: William Rathbone : a memoir / by Eleanor F. Rathbone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/546 (page 21)
    that purposes of worldly interest and preferment would not in such a Character lead to a conduct so justly degrading. By the way, I should write with caution on this and all other subjects, for who now knows by whom his letters are to be read, and especially those between Liverpool and Glasgow, now that the secret Committee have denounced both places as the residence of Traitors and Conspirators. . . . W. R. Harrowgate, July 9, 1799. How enormous have been all our political Speculations, and how different is the present state of things from what in the earlier, or even in the more advanced periods of the War, any of us would have predicted ! Who could have thought that such expedients as those the Minister hath from time to time adopted, could have not only kept him up so long, but exalted him beyond his former popularity ; and that a Government avowedly supported by Corruption and encroaching so rapidly upon the Liberty and Property of its subjects, should still be not merely the most popular, but perhaps the most truly free and respectable of any now existing ; and this, too, after the theories of Liberty have had so fair a trial both in America and France ? How humiliating is this reflection, and what is there now in Politics with which a virtuous man would wish to connect himself? We have thought the measures of administration wrong in point of Morality — that they were at variance with the un¬ changeable principles of justice and the regard due to the essential Rights of Man. On these grounds I trust we shall always differ from him [Pitt] ; for I own