2913. Robert Southey to John Rickman, [c. 2 February 1817]
2913. Robert Southey to John Rickman, [c. 2 February 1817] *
My dear R.
I like your hint about the New Times, & write therefore to Bedford for the MS. in which alone the mutilated facts exist. There is stout preachment there about the wisdom of expenditure, – at which faint hearts were frightened. [1] But they suffered the text to stand that it was the power of the democracy which had increased &c –. [2]
This note to Wakefield [3] is in reply to an offer made thro him by Lord Sheffield of papers respecting the operations in the South of Spain. [4]
God bless you
RS.
Notes
* Endorsement: RS/ Febry 2 1817
MS: Huntington Library, RS 310. ALS; 1p.
Unpublished.
Dating note:
Dating from endorsement BACK
[1] Southey’s article ‘Parliamentary Reform’, Quarterly Review, 16 (October 1816), 225–278 argued strongly for the value of increased government expenditure to the economy (277–278), but Southey indicates more of his argument was cut out. Rickman had suggested Southey should make the same point at greater length and without editorial censorship in the new pro-government newspaper, The New Times (1817–1828). BACK
