Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
that, if they still remain my political enemies, they are at any rate
liberal and generous foes; but I would fain hope that they have by this
time convinced themselves from observation, that I am more deserving of
their support than their hatred and opposition. They will have seen
that I have, ever since they first saw me at Bristol, been the steady
persevering friend of Radical Reform; they will see that I have always
advocated the same principles; and they will acknowledge that the very
principles and sentiments that I promulgated, during the first election
for Bristol, are become almost universal now; that the very same
language which I made use of upon the pedestal, in the front of the
Exchange, has lately been made use of, and repeated almost verbatim, by
Noblemen and Members of Parliament, at county meetings; that the very
remedies which at Bristol I declared, in 1812, to be necessary, to
restore the country to freedom and happiness, are now almost universally
allowed to be the only remedies in 1822. These letters, which were
written by Mr. Cobbett, I do not publish for the sake of raking up any
old grievances; far from it but I do it for the purpose of maintaining
and proving my consistency, and also that, whatever I may have erred in,
my errors have sprung from the head and not from the heart.
The reader has seen in these letters, that I promised the electors of
Bristol that I would always be a candidate for Bristol, at all future
elections; but this, of course, was _conditional_. When the proper time
comes I shall, I think, give a very satisfactory reason why I did not
keep this promise, or at least why I was prevented from doing so;
although perhaps, it would, as it turned out, have been much better for
me, personally, if I had gone there again, under all the disadvantages
which I had to anticipate, rather than have destroyed my health
and wasted my property in opposing Sir Francis Burdett for the City of
Westminster. Still, however much I may have suffered upon that occasion,
I must persist in thinking that a great public good was effected by it.
These things, however, I shall at least honestly account for, whether
my explanation prove satisfactory or not, at the proper epoch of my
history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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