Pièce 144 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

Trinity College - WW had hoped to hear from RJ about the King's College Professorship in Political Economy. WW hardly knows 'what to say about the man with the long name Carn- in Rose's magazine so far as you rest merely on the unpopularity and inconvenience of the tithe system, in a discussion which is itself to affect popularity, I do not see how you are to make out a very triumphant case, because the mere fact of referring to popularity as a principle seems to me to knock up all settled economic relations'. The weak part of the letter is at the bottom of the first page: 'after seeming to profess to discuss the commission and allowing that objections on this score must be admitted, he flies off to exclaim against the monstrosity of doing away with a thing a thousand years old at the eleventh hour etc etc'. However, WW does not think it really worth RJ answering such letters: 'If your plan make any way it will not be from such objections that it will find any serious obstacles'.