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Trinity College - WW will be voting for [James] Scarlett in the forthcoming election: 'the least evil and as likely to be most frequently on the right side when there is one'. If RJ is 'not a whig I hope you are anti-Tory enough to join us. Woodhouse [Robert Woodhouse] has taken the lead a good deal in bringing Scarlett here'. WW is glad RJ's 'book goes on prosperously and I think you are right to hasten it as much as you can for it will be both more easy and most honourable to knock down Ricardo's errors while they are new'. WW does 'not fear so much discrepancy between our views of the philosophy of science as you anticipate - I shall I assure you be the most inductive of men; and if, instead of deriving some of my principles from the nature of things, I tell you that they are the results of definitions, and hope you will be pacified and it will answer my purpose as well'.

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'.

RS was unable to persuade Lens to stand as a candidate for the Cambridge election: 'what is the least of the evils presented to us. I cant help thinking Robert Grant after all. He has taken his regular degrees (which I think is a considerable point for it is high time to undeceive the young sprigs of nobility and to alter that system) he was highly distinguished amongst us, he was a fellow of a college and is I fancy a man of highly respectable character'. Besides which they can always change him when someone better comes along: 'the high church men sooner than have a saint would join us to throw him out and bring in a Xman of looser religious and (in our way of thinking) stricter political principles. The game is I fear too fine but I think something may be made of it. Scarlett will not do for a constancy and yet it would [be] awkward bringing another candidate forwards if he were once in. Now there can be little doubt that we could bring Grant in and there would be no delicacy about kicking him out again'. Edward Troughton has begun work on the 'our circle and will soon draw upon us for some money' [Cambridge Observatory].

RS's views on the forthcoming Cambridge election [see RS to WW, 28 Oct. 1822]. If Scarlett retires as RS trusts then WW should canvass for Robert Grant: 'To keep the speaker out is a matter of the highest importance so high that I think all other matters (now that Lens will not stand) are comparatively trifling. Only think what a triumph for the master's Toryism! He is ruined for any liberality and so are we, as far as he has any influence, if such a thing should take place. But two years in college and kicked out the Morning Chronicle and the Whig member for so he and his friends will think what may not be expected in a few years more'. AS thinks 'there must be yet time if a good majority of the Whigs vote for Grant'. 'On every ground a liberal Whig and as Trinity men you must do your best to keep out the speaker and as I said before Shore and Hervey are not to be thought of'.

RS offers his first vote to Scarlett and Grant if the former retires [see RS to WW, 31 Oct. 1822]: 'After all this is the safer way and though I don't like the principle of going through with a party one must go a certain way. If only Scarlett would retire I should be quite clear and as it is upon reflection I have not much doubt. Grant has everything but politics but then politics in an MP are almost everything'. RS will try to convert Greenwood to the same course. He will certainly vote for Scarlett, I doubt his coming down for a man who is not a whig'. Lawyers are 'a set of weak or nothing men they must either have all their own way or none. If they can't have a whig they say they won't vote and they don't see the short sightedness of such sentiments'.

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'.

RJ explains why he will not be voting in Cambridge at the forthcoming election [see RJ to WW, 11 November 1822]: 'to come and help turn out whichever you may elect at the next election and to be able to do this with a clear conscience it is surely best to give no vote at all now - with a view to this good purpose I hope Scarlett may get in - it will be easy to turn him out and not so easy any of the others[.] as to Herschel [John Herschel] he votes merely because he thinks Peacock [George Peacock] takes the thing to heart whatever other views he may talk about'. With regard to the Saints [the Saints candidate is Grant] - 'respectable and well meaning as some of the leading ones are if ever it is your lot to witness the hypocrisy and fanaticism exhibited while living and while dying by a set of people almost invariably the converts of some silly man who fortifies himself in doing mischief because he thinks he has the countenance of Mssrs - Wilberforce[,] Baring[,] Stephens etc. etc. you would I am sure scrupulously avoid helping to place in any situation of conspicuous weight an individual of their class and whoever or whatever he might be in himself - I think with you that Grant personally is by far the most eligible of the four but I earnestly hope he may not be successful'.