Even were I to suppose some design to gain me over to the
high-Tory principles which seem to pervade them all, I should be grateful for
the attempt, though perhaps further than ever from surrendering, or from
putting in my calendar such a saint as the Duchess
of Angoulême. It is in a system every way opposite that I
have finished my history [‘Républiques Italiennes’],
and am ready to print the five last volumes, from xii. to xvi. I had no
agreement with my bookseller at Paris; but from the complete downfall of
freedom on the continent, I begin to doubt whether such a book as mine, under
the protection of its enormous bulk, will be allowed in France, though there
would be no suspicion in a country which preserved even a shade of liberty. I
had once made you a proposal for printing the preceding volumes in England. You
thought then that it would be impossible to vie with continental booksellers.
Now it may very well be that the Holy Alliance would
grant you a kind of exclusive privilege by prohibition for which I shall not be
in the least disposed to thank them. However, it would change entirely the
condition of the English bookseller who should take my work. An extensive sale
in England, and a probable smuggling over, though not to a great extent, on the
continent, would be the necessary consequences of the suspicions of the police.
If that alteration in the case should change your mind, and if a price of
£300 per volume of about thirty sheets, or £1500 for the whole, would
be agreed to, I should go over to England in
| MRS. GRAHAM AT BROUGHTY FERRY. | 37 |
