DEAR SIR--I have received your Pamphlet; and return many
thanks for all your kindness to me. I am sorry to learn, as
I do for the first time from this narrative, what angry
nonsense some of my countrymen see good to write of me. Not
being much a reader of Newspapers, I had hardly heard of the
Election till after it was finished; and I did not know that
anything of this melancholy element of Heterodoxy,
"Pantheism," etc. etc., had been introduced into the matter.
It is an evil, after its sort, this of being hated and
denounced by fools and ignorant persons; but it cannot be
mended for the present, and so must be left standing there.
That another wiser class think differently, nay, that they
alone have any real knowledge of the question, or any real
right to vote upon it, is surely an abundant compensation.
If that be so, then all is still right; and probably there
is no harm done at all!--To you, and the other young
gentlemen who have gone with you on this occasion, I can
only say that I feel you have loyally meant to do me a great
honour and kindness; that I am deeply sensible of your
genial recognition, of your noble enthusiasm (which reminds
me of my own young years); and that in fine there is no loss
or gain of an Election which can in the least alter these
valuable facts, or which is not wholly insignificant to me,
in comparison with them.
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