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Trinity College - RJ should not keep 'a dignified neutrality' and should come and vote [see WW to RJ, 3 November 1822]: 'Herschel [John Herschel] comes to vote for Hervey because he thinks him the easiest to turn out next time'. WW will be voting for [James] Scarlett, though he thinks the candidate Grant [Robert Grant] 'most likely of any to do us credit'.

Brasted - On the Cambridge election: 'Scarlett I have a strong and invincible personal objection - his politics are all in the way of trade'. He 'is a bad tempered aristocrat who finds it convenient to oppose men who at bottom he very much resembles in all their bad points too not perhaps in their few good ones'. WW says Hervey is a dull boy. Grant is a Saint - 'I hope not a Bigot yet as I conscientiously believe that party are making the people immoral and miserable (without meaning it) as far as their influence reaches. I will not add to that influence even indirectly by any act of mine. I am sorry for this for I should have otherwise preferred him'. RJ would have voted for the speaker if he had stood. Then there is Bankes - 'an independent country gentleman and clever and literary they say but then he is as you observe an anticatholic candidate. I am sorry for this for I am not anticatholic and am disgusted at either timidity or bigotry on the subject's being made a merit of, but in the present state and temper of both countries I do not think that question are of such overwhelming importance practically as to overbalance all other things and of the 4 candidates I think him the least objectionable'.

Letters dated 12 Oct. 1860 - 17 May 1862.