Coleridge gives only "Sunday Night" for the date of writing. However, the letter is postmarked "April 8, 1833" (a Monday), suggesting that this letter was written on the 7th. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
Place of writing taken from the postmark.
This collection, MA 1856, is comprised of 48 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green and 2 autograph manuscripts, written between 1817 and 1834. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1856.1-50).
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged as MA 1848-1857.
Address panel with seal and postmarks: "J.H. Green, Esqre / &c &c / Lincoln's Inn Fields."
Saying that he rarely disagrees with Green's judgment on any matter and particularly medical matters, but "in the instance, you spoke of this afternoon, viz. your persistent rebuttal of the Temperance-Society Man's Request, tho' I do not feel sure that you are not in the Right, yet I do feel as if I should have been more delighted, and more satisfied, if you had intimated your compliance with it"; arguing that Green had a chance to do considerable good and suggesting that he could have begun his talk to the society with "your own remark of the superfluity of any Light of Information afforded to a habitual Dram Drinker respecting the unutterable evil and misery of his thraldom. As wisely give a physiological Lecture to convince a man of the pain of Burns, while he is lying with his head on the bars of the Fire-grate, instead of snatching him off"; saying that he feels Green could have effectively described "the misery of that condition in which the impulse waxes as the motive wanes"; mentioning places in his own work where he has written about this subject, including in The Friend and in a "School boy theme of mine [...] written when I was fourteen, with the simile of the treacherous Current & the Maelstrom"; suggesting that perhaps there ought to be an institution to deal specifically with this issue, a "Maison de Santé (what do the French call it?) for Lunacy & Idiocy of the Will," to which patients could commit themselves; adding "I am convinced, that London would furnish a hundred Volunteers in as many days from the Gin-shops [...] And a similiar Institution might exist for a higher class of Will-Maniacs or Impotents. -- Had such a House of Health been in existence, I know who would have entered himself as a Patient some five & 20 years ago"; offering the idea that for young people, for people who are only recently addicted or those more likely to be capable of curing themselves, an alliance between the Temperance Society and the "Christian Churches, of all denominations" could be important, supplying them with "strength from religion. This is a beautiful part or might have been made so of the Wesleian Church"; saying that they will talk the subject over, particularly "the reasons why Spirits in any form, as such, are so much more dangerous morally & in relation to the forming [of a] Habit than Beer or Wine"; adding "If a Government were truly paternal, a healthsome and sound Beer would be made universal -- aye, and for the lower Half of the middle classes Wine might be imported, good and generous, from 6d to 8d per quart --."