Item 16 - Letter from Robert Belaney

7 pp

Cath: Hall Cambridge - Thanks WW for delivering the course of lectures on Moral Philosophy at Cambridge: RB admires those 'who are able and willing to rescue it from the degradation into which it has fallen'. Moral philosophy and religion cannot be separated. Paley's views 'have done more, than any other man dead or alive, to bring the semi-divine science of morals into disrepute with the religious world and into abuse with the learned'. The holy alliance between the church and state is at stake: 'To displace Paley then, from the place he now so fatally for this country, occupies, I conceive to be the first step towards recovering'. WW should 'publish the lecture which you this morning delivered' - RB believes they would calm the 'troubled waters which are now washing away the foundations of all order, science and virtue; except the order of anarchy, the science of practical atheism and the virtue of selfishness'.