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National Art Library, London, MS Forster 48 D.32 MS 23. Previously published: John Forster, Walter Savage Landor. A Biography, 2 vols (London, 1869), I, pp. 361–363.
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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I have reread & re-reread the Commentary.that war, – this is unavoidable, – & so are
the expenses which it necessitates.
We rivet the chain in Sicily, – & we do not break it in Portugal, – but certain it is that in Spain, we have
pressed upon the Government the necessity of liberal measures & popular reform.It is a dismal
subject Those colonies offer a wretched prospect, – they are even more unfit for independence than the Americans were, who
have become independent (by our fault most assuredly) a full century before they xxx were of age. See what it is to have a
nation to take its place among civilized states before it has either gentlemen or scholars! They have in the course of twenty years
acquired a distinct national character for low & lying knavery; – & so well do they deserve it that no man ever had any
dealings with them without having proofs of its truth.
There is now a probability that the damned Junta of Cadiz will be crushed, & the colonial trade thrown open. I have no doubt that what you recommend America is looking to; – but I have as little doubt that it is under the direction of Buonaparte – who keeps the American Government in pay. They dream of conquering Canada on the one hand, & Mexico on the other: & happy would Buonaparte be if he could see them doing his work. But the more palpable consequences of that war with this country into which he is bribing them would be, – the separation of the Northern States, – & the loss of New Orleans, which it would be our first business to secure, & thus seal up the produce of the whole western territory.
You have plucked G Rose most unmercifully.fix name this very hero, who according to a song sung by his company of Ch. Church volunteers to his praise,
while he gets <used to get> drunk with them drinking alternately his own health & his wifes is ‘as brave as
Alexander.”done more good than the whole gang of reformers have even proposed to do. – The
worst I know or think of Canning is that he seems to be laying out for
popularity by showing symptoms of falling in with that party whose oeconomy is injustice, & who never hold out any nobler object to
the people than that of saving pounds, shillings & pence.
But I meant more to confine myself merely to those passages which are either action directly
actionable, or which after a while you would yourself be sorry to have published. They are that about Croker,validity of an unconstitutional and most tyrannical law’;
xx as your
parallel of Wellington with Peterborough substituted as
the Appendix.
Your prose is as much your own as your poetry. There is a life & vigour in it to which I know no parallel. – It has
the poignancy of champagne, & the body of English October. Neither you nor Murray gave me any hint that the Commentary was yours, but I had could not look into those papers without knowing
that it could <not> be the work of xxx any other man.