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Untitled Article
troduction—a step to a * Russian Catechism in the English Tongue . ' Throughout the Rev . Charles Tayler ' s one hundred and twenty pages there occur indications of the estimate he makes of the
poverty of information and intellectual culture of the mechanic ' s mind . He is surprised at one of them using the wor < I metaphysics — ' a fact ! ' says he , in a note— a wheelwright once asked me what I thought of Voltaire ' s Candide ? ' no doubt Mr . Tayler was astonished . And what a source of mirth will that ' metaphysical mechanic' be to the select circles !
He has also spoken some wholesome truths—truths which many an unsophisticated reader will acknowledge , at page 25 and 26 . ' Look at our parson now—I cannot say he is much of a shepherd but many a bad shepherd makes a rare shearer / Mr . Tayler puts this into the mouth of a coarse , burly , fat farmer—in order to make it appear like a falsehood , or a bit of grumbling
spite ; but how true it is of many , most of these reverend shepherds , there are thousands ready to avouch . I remember hearing a very pretty , gentle-toned lady quoting the severest scandals which were in circulation against herself , in order to convince her circle of hearers of their falsehood—to show the extravagant pitch
to which malicious scandal stretched its inventions ; yet the worst of her quotations was short of the truth . I knew her well , but her auditors acquitted her on the very ground that they were too bad to be believed . Her success was most triumphant ; she was from that moment spotless—till , they found her out .
We are ever and anon told that the advocates of national and social improvement , of the great measures of glorious and universal reform , are fiercely anxious to excite the hatred of the c lower orders' against the * upper classes . ' Few works which have issued from the press of late years , are so well calculated to excite the contempt of the poor and labouring towards the wealthy and
enjoying , as is this of the Rev . Charles B . Tayler , A . M ., country parson of the church of England . But the contempt will not leave their other senses to inertness . They will actively employ their expanded and expanding faculties to prevent the advent of that to which his book is a prolusion , an avant courier , —the English version of the Russian catechism . In the time of the good old Church and King—the fire and faggot and pillory era ,
this book would have helped us bonnily along the current ; to day it is good , inasmuch as it puts us on our guard . It will be read , or purchased , by many , for there are many who will wish it success , but the readers will be any but those for whom it is ostensibly written ; not one in a thousand of them will get beyond the preface . This is to be regretted , for the poor man and the mechanic would have his perceptions brightened by a perusal of it : and he might find much to amuse him : which would be so
Untitled Article
742 Social Evil * and their Remedy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 742, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/10/
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