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Preface.
confess I see not with what propriety it contrasts with
those others which in the same breath it is thought not
improper to avow. These are — " a sense of public duty,"
and "a wish to "facilitate a business of much national expediency."
But how any "business of much national expediency"
that never was proposed before, is to be facilitated or carried
on but by a "disposition to promote novelties" is more than
I am able to conceive. "A wish then to facilitate a business
of much national expediency" can never be inconsistent with,
in short can scarcely but originate from, " a disposition to
promote novelties:" a sense of public duty, " (if the effect
of such a sense be the "wish to facilitate businesses of
much national expediency") can not but lead a man to
promote and even to propose novelties.
If indeed by "novelties be meant such novelties only
as are inexpedient, the import will be explicit enough,
it is true, but such as it were hardly worth expressing.
The import will be, that the Author has no disposition
to promote measures he looks upon as inexpedient. But
the wish of not being thought to entertain such a disposition
(which is all that the passage is calculated to express
) is a wish which a man may at all times save himself
the trouble of expressing: the public being altogether
in the habit of giving any man whatsoever credit for it
All new measures, that is all measures whatsoever, have
thus much in common, that they are novel.
Identifier: | JB/119/010/003 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 119.
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119 |
panopticon |
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010 |
preface a view of the hard-labour bill |
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003 |
note |
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copy/fair copy sheet |
4 |
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recto |
f9 / f10 / f11 / f12 |
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[[watermarks::[jb monogram] [britannia with shield motif]]] |
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john heide koe |
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39521 |
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