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not add , to those acquainted with her writings , that she is likely to be neither a servile ] follower npr a dogmatical teacher . The present little volume is put forth as the first of a series of illustrative tales . It is introduced by an explanatory preface , and a statement of the principles which it is intended to elucidate . We heartily wish it such success as shall stimulate the author to the immediate and energetic completion of her plan .
This is no attempt to trick the idle into knowledge , by offering it in the semblance of mere amusement . The design is fairly avowed . The object is to impart instruction in the mode best adapted to reach and enlighten the minds of those who have not been accustomed to continued and severe thought . They are previously told the truths of
which the nature and proofs are to be evolved by the narrative . Polite cal economy was first learned by the study of history and the observation of facts : why should it not be taught in a similar way , and communicated by tales which are substantially true , though circumstantially fictitious ?
For showing the nature of wealth , and the power and progress of unaided labour in its production , the author has framed a story which may be read with interest on its own account . She has imagined a colony of Crusoes ! They are not shipwrecked indeed ; the storm which makes their settlement a desert , is the irruption of a tribe of savages . Their cattle are carried off ; their stores , tools , and houses demolished ;
no help can be had till after an interval of many months ; and they are completely thrown upon their natural resources , their limbs and their wits , to preserve them from perishing with cold or hunger . The reader must get the book to see how they managed . * The obvious dangers of such a plan are , that either the inculcation of the principle should be lost sight of , in endeavouring to maintain the
interest of the story ; or that the interest of the story should be destroyed by incessant effort to exhibit the principle . Those who , have noted the characteristics of the writer's mind in former publications , will deem her safe from the first ; and those who are anxious about the second , may be in some measure relieved by the following description of the death of an intelligent boy , who has been bitten by a hornedsnake in a wood , at a considerable distance from the settlement . Arnall ,
his companion , had been the shopkeeper of the village , when it was a village ; had disgusted his comrades by endeavouring to sustain the respectability of idleness when all were reduced to dependence upon manual labour ; and had at length compromised between his dignity and his hunger , and discovered the best sphere for his capabilities in becoming ( with no better weapons than the primeval bow and arrow ) the hunter and forester of the community .
* Arnall was too much grieved to speak . He exajnined the wound , and tried to ease the swollen limb by cutting off the trowser which confined it . He gathered some leaves of a particular plant , and bruised them , and applied them to the part , as he had seen the natives do on such an occasion , and then told George that he would carry him home
as fast as possible . . * Can you carry me three miles ? ' said George . g I do not feel as if I could help myself at all , but I will try . I should like to see father and mother aorain . '
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Critical Notices . —Political Economy and- Legislation . 137
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Fo . 62 . h
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 137, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/65/
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