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The Creevey Papers
Henry Brougham to Thomas Creevey, [March? 1823]
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Introduction
Vol. I. Contents
Ch. I: 1793-1804
Ch. II: 1805
Ch. III: 1805
Ch. IV: 1806-08
Ch. V: 1809
Ch. VI: 1810
Ch. VII: 1811
Ch. VIII: 1812
Ch. IX: 1813-14
Ch X: 1814-15
Ch XI: 1815-16
Ch XII: 1817-18
Ch XIII: 1819-20
Vol. II. Contents
Ch I: 1821
Ch. II: 1822
Ch. III: 1823-24
Ch. IV: 1825-26
Ch. V: 1827
Ch. VI: 1827-28
Ch. VII: 1828
Ch. VIII: 1829
Ch. IX: 1830-31
Ch. X: 1832-33
Ch. XI: 1833
Ch. XII: 1834
Ch XIII: 1835-36
Ch XIV: 1837-38
Index
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“Durham, Saturday.

“. . . As to Joseph, I hope it may do good. I know that things may with safety be brought on by him, which in any other man’s hands wd. do harm. Therefore I always thought the attack on the Church was safer in his hands than in any others. But I fear he may throw away a great case, and (except your testimony) I see nothing in the other night’s debate to change this opinion. Don’t let us deceive ourselves. There are millions—and among them very powerful and very respectable people—who will go a certain way with us, but will be quite staggered by our going pell-mell at it. The people of this country are not prepared to give up the Church. For one—I am certainly not; and my reason is this. There is a vast mass of religion in the country, shaped in various forms and burning with various degrees of heat—from regular lukewarmness to Methodism. Some Church establishment this feeling must have; and I am quite clear that a much-reformed Ch. of Engd. is the safest form in which such an establishment can exist. It is a quiet and somewhat lazy Church: certainly not a persecuting one. Clip its wings of temporal power (which it unceasingly uses in behalf of a political slavery)* and

* I.e. against Reform.

1823-24.]TWO VERY DIFFERENT DUKES.67
purify its more glaring abuses, and you are far better off than with a fanatical Church and Dominion of Saints, like that of the 17th century; or no Church at all and a Dominion of Sects, like that of America . . . . The Irish case is a great and an extreme one, and by keeping it strictly on its own grounds and abstaining from any topics common to both Churches, a body blow may be given. But if any means are afforded to the Ch. and its friends here of making common cause with the Irish fellows, I fear you convert a most powerful case into an ordinary one, which must fall. . . . I write this in court, and in some haste. Let me hear whether I am still in the wrong.”