3415. Robert Southey to [John Wilson Croker], 9 January 1820⁠* 

My dear Sir

I am much beholden to Lord Bathurst for this intended & unsolicited kindness [1]  to a perfect stranger. Express to him my sense of the favour when you have an opportunity. It is better that my thanks should be conveyed by you, than that I should write upon the occasion, which would seem as if I were desirous of introducing myself.

The Guardian goes on well. [2]  I enclose some stanzas for it, which Wordsworth has sent me, to be inserted or cast aside, he cares not which. [3]  The thought is good, striking & original; but the movement of the verse is to my ear unpleasant & the expression is sometimes forced & awkward. Such as it is, however, I send it.

Government has done well, [4]  except in conceding any thing to an Opposition which was never more compleatly opposed to the general feeling of the whole property of the country. Concessions should never be made to such opponents. They assume a consequence from them, which if it were not thus given xxxx they would not know where to look for. The Seditious Meeting Bill [5]  must be made perpetual at last, & you will have the whole trouble of debating it again. Instead of substituting banishment for transportation, it would have been better to have given a discretionary power of sentencing to either; [6] accxx – Hobhouse for instance is a fit subject for banishment; Carlile for transportation. [7] 

The danger, I doubt not, is for a while averted. But it will the disease continues in the system, & will break out from time to time, till alteration measures are adopted & begin to take effect. A good beginning is made by the Saving Banks [8]  & the encouragement to colonization; [9]  & I am inclined to hope for extensive benefit from the Dartmoor scheme. [10]  If the principle were established that children who are brought up at the public expence belong to the public, means might easily be devised of disposing in the best way of the surplus population as it rises. I am putting together speculations of this kind; such of them as are good, will sooner or later have their effect. Owen [11]  has wrecked himself upon the shallows where I told him he would strike, & endeavoured vainly to direct him in a safer course. His Lanark experiment (I was there in the Autumn) [12]  proves nothing but that children are very happy & very docile under the most indulgent treatment, & that the kindest treatment is the best. He is wrong in all his principles except one, but that one is of main importance, – it is this, that the national character may be exactly what will always be what the institutions of the country make it, & that men are as clay in the hands of their legislators. At present indeed we have a great stock of coarse crockery on hand, made in the very worst pattern & applied to the vilest purposes. With this nothing can be done; – but we must learn to model better for the future.

Farewell my dear Sir

Yrs very truly

Robert Southey.

Keswick. 9 Jan^y. 1820.