Ɛpsilon

To James Torbitt   25 December 1880

Down,

Dec. 25, 1880.

My dear Sir

I will wait till I hear again from you before writing to the subscribers; but I hope that it will not be much after the 10th, as I think that I ought soon to report.1

With respect to your letter to Mr. Gladstone I should think under the present state of affairs, it would be quite hopeless to attract his attention; but I can see no objection to your publishing the letter, that is publickly writing to him. It would aid in calling attention to your work.2 I should fear that the P. Office would object to your plan of distribution, and say that it would give openings to fraud.3 But on all these points my opinion is worth no more than that of any man of common sense.

My dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin

Copy

2
Torbitt had enclosed a copy of a printed letter to William Ewart Gladstone and asked CD for his opinion on whether to make it public (see letter from James Torbitt, 23 December 1880 and n. 2).
3
In his letter to Gladstone, Torbitt proposed distributing new potato varieties through the Post Office (see letter from James Torbitt, 23 December 1880, enclosure).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12938,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12938