Item 71 - Letter from Richard Sheepshanks

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'.