JB/120/013/003

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No. 7
Mr Bentham to Sir C Bunbury.

11th August 1802.
Dear Sir,

If no particular time is mentioned, within which it is expected
that notice should be taken of my papers, no notice will ever be taken
of them, until some adverse step on my part is known to have been
taken, and then it will be said of me — the fault lies in his own
rashness — for had his patience lasted him but a day longer, the notice
he was wishing for would have come. Therefore it is, that I set pen
to paper once more, for the purpose of begging of you to say in your
letter to Lord Pelham, that on your promising to write to his Lordship
on the subject, it was my special request to you, that you would
have the goodness to give his Lordship to understand very distinctly, that if,
within a week from this date 11th August 1802 I were not fortunate enough
to receive the honour of a letter in his Lordship's hand addresses to myself,
my conclusions would be that no such good fortune ever would
befall me, and that my future proceedings would be built on that declared
ground. If the papers at length were sent in the first instance,
the length of it might afford a plea for taking it ad referendum:
but when the question is merely whether he will or will not read a paper
of which these are the marginal contents, that excuse has no place. As
to dictating a time to his Majesty's Secretary of State, most certainly I
have no such absurd pretensions: but as to any conclusions of my own,
presented to my own judgment, by my own memory and my own reflections,
they depend upon the premises, and are as independent even of my own
will, as they are of that of his Majesty's Secretary of State. —

Question (possible) on the part of Lord Pelham. How came Mr. B.
never to apply to me all this time?

Answer 1. One reason is given in the correspondence (Mr B. with
Messrs Addington and Vansittart) which you had the goodness to transmit
to Lord Pelham. — 2. Another is — Mr. B. had no pretence to the honour
of being remembered by his Lordship. Mr. B's Brother the General had:
he was on speaking terms. When Genl. B, after permission asked and
obtained, waited on Ld P., at his house in Stratton Street, for the purpose
of speaking to him on this subject as well as another (it was
before he had possession of his office in the Treasury) his Lordship gave
him to understand by a servant, that it was not convenient to see him
then, and did not give him to understand, that there would be any
other time at which a visit might be less unacceptable.

In a

Identifier: | JB/120/013/003 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 120.
Date_1	1802-08-12	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	120	Main Headings	panopticon versus new south wales
Folio number	013	Info in main headings field
Image	003	Titles	no. 8 / sir charles bunbury to mr bentham
Category	correspondence	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f8
Penner	john herbert koe	Watermarks	1800
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1800
Notes public	copy of letter 1713, vol. 7	ID Number	40417004
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