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Untitled Article
mind into the state produced by the previous history of these two men ; of all that they had thought , felt , and done , together and for each other ; of privations conjointly endured , and temptations conjointly resisted ; and of all that had cemented that lowly friendship which required for its dissolution no less a power than
the evil principle of national degradation . To those who have arrived at the scene through the previous narrative , there will seem nothing absurd , in what else might be accounted ludicrousa comparison of it with the famous farewell of Burke and Fox in the House of Commons , to which , in our minds , it is certainly not inferior in genuine dignity and pathos .
If any thing could lighten the gloom of this story by a laugh , it would be the utterly incredible manner in which Miss Martineau disposes of her country squire , the justice of the peace . By a miracle , such as of old used to cut the gordian knot of romance in the last chapter of the third volume , she has actually completed her catastrophe by enlightening and converting thesquire ;
by making him confess , in the church , that , with his commission and his charities , he had only been doing mischief in the parish , and announce his wise and magnanimous determination , to abstain in future from any intermeddling with the management of the poor . Credat Judeeusaut Athanasius . Milton by his Areopagitica
converted a licenser of the press , but that was a result much less extraordinary . The squire would have made no such speech ; nay , we verily believe that if the worthy rector , even after the excellent sermon which he had that morning delivered , had introduced Miss Martineau ' s name into his lucid statement of the condition of the parish ,, the squire would most likely have exclaimed , — Miss Martineau ! Miss Martineau ! as my cousin , the barrister says ,
let her go home to her mother and make gooseberry pies . ' The whole species is incorrigible . The instructress of a nation can scarcely do better with them , than put them in a corner with a foolscap on their heads . The chancellor might do something more effective . The materials of this , and of the other three tales which are to
follow it and complete the series , are selected from the immense mass of facts which have been accumulated by the agents of the Commission appointed by his Majesty ' s Government to inquire into the administration and operation of the Poor Laws . A vo ~ lume of extracts from their reports has already been published by authority , and we believe that more may speedily be expected .
This volume , which consists of between four and five hundred octavo pages , and which is sold for four shillings , ought to be in the hands of every man who cares , or pretends to care , about the welfare of the community . It contains matter with which Miss Martineau might indefinitely prolong her series without exhausting it . Even in its original state much of it possesses all the interest of fiction , while bearing indubitable evidence of fact . The con-2 D 2
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Poor Law and Pauperi * 363
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1833, page 363, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2616/page/3/
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