Letter from Arthur Hallam, London, to William Henry Brookfield, 1832 March 31 : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Replying to his request and discussing, at length, Southey's position on the church; saying "...I vow & protest to you I can give you no light on the subject but what I might extract form the windows of Southey's Church, a process which you will perform much more satisfactorily for yourself. The 'cheese' of my knowledge is unfortunately more filled with maggots of my own imaginations than with sober mouldiness of facts. It does not seem to me that, if you take Southey's statement of the case as a true statement whereon to found your argument, you need be much embarrassed about the difficulty of defending persecution. For, according to worthy master Robert, there was not a shadow of persecution from beginning to end. A Sovereign defended her realm against traitors within and avowed enemies without : in the course of this necessary and therefore just defence it happened that many Catholics suffered the penalties of the law, but they suffered not as professing a different religion, but as adhering to a different allegiance. Southey gives a large detail of instances, which, for the purposes of your declamation, will sufficiently warrant the inference that the mass of the English Catholics was disloyal, and that with the Head of their Church her open enemy, the seductive Queen of Scots, her declared rival & claimant of the English throne, in the very heart of her dominions; the fierce fanaticism of the French Catholics, reeling from the carnage of St. Bartholomew; and the recent, still lively remembrance of the Marion persecution, Queen Bess could hardly have acted more wisely than by passing & enforcing these restrictive statutes. I really cannot think of anything more to hint, besides, when I read formerly on the subject, I was on the other side, & I am not yet lawyer enough [to] plead very warmly against my cons[cience];" relating news of the whereabouts of some of the Tennysons and asking "...if thou art in a writing mood sit down and tip me a line. Jog Tennant's elbow also, that he write. I am groaning grievously under the burthen of London. I cannot get well, and the Blue Devils (not cholera), gripe hard. Will thy face be visible in London, thinkest thou? I am going to eat a term in the Temple, me miserable. So fare thee well."