site opinion, believing it to
be a signal hindrance to improvement. Let us not begin a great work with
bitterness. I am not, however, for the slightest concealment of the
truth, and can well understand the righteous indignation that will break
out at witnessing the instances of careless cruelty to be seen daily.
Still, this is not to be done by a systematic and undistinguishing attack
upon any one class: if it requires a bold hand, it requires a just one
also, under a reasonable restraint of humility. I suspect that those
men, if any, who have a right to cast the first stone at their neighbour
in this matter will be among the last persons to do so.

It is a grievous thing to see literature made a vehicle for encouraging
the enmity of class to class. Yet this, unhappily, is not unfrequent
now. Some great man summed up the nature of French novels by calling
them the Literature of Despair: the kind of writing that I deprecate may
be called the Literature of Envy. It would be extreme injustice to say
that the writers themselves are actuated by an envious or malignant
spirit. It is often mere carelessness on their part, or ignorance of the
subject, or a want of skill in representing what they do know. You would
never imagine from their writings that some of the most self-denying
persons, and of those who exert themselves most for the poor, are to be
found amongst the rich and the well-born, including of course the great
Employers of labour. Such writers like to throw their influence, as they
might say, into the weaker scale. But that is not the proper way of
looking at the matter. Their business is not to balance class against
class, but to unite all classes into one harmonious whole. I think if
they saw the ungenerous nature of their proceedings, that alone would
stop them. They should recollect that literature may fawn upon the
masses as well as on the aristocracy: and in these days the temptation is
in the former direction. But what is most grievous in this kind of
writing, is the mischief it may do to the working people themselves. If
you have their true welfare at heart, you will not only care for their
being fed and clothed; but you will be anxious not to encourage
unreasonable expectations in them, not to make them ungrateful or
greedy-minded. Above all, you will be solicitous to preserve some
self-reliance in them. You will be careful not to let them think that
their condition can be wholly changed wi