ubmit to certain privations.'

"How often have I heard," said Jemima, interrupting her narrative, "in
conversation, and read in books, that every person willing to work may
find employment? It is the vague assertion, I believe, of insensible
indolence, when it relates to men; but, with respect to women, I am
sure of its fallacy, unless they will submit to the most menial bodily
labour; and even to be employed at hard labour is out of the reach of
many, whose reputation misfortune or folly has tainted.

"How writers, professing to be friends to freedom, and the improvement
of morals, can assert that poverty is no evil, I cannot imagine."

"No more can I," interrupted Maria, "yet they even expatiate on
the peculiar happiness of indigence, though in what it can consist,
excepting in brutal rest, when a man can barely earn a subsistence, I
cannot imagine. The mind is necessarily imprisoned in its own little
tenement; and, fully occupied by keeping it in repair, has not time to
rove abroad for improvement. The book of knowledge is closely clasped,
against those who must fulfil their daily task of severe manual labour
or die; and curiosity, rarely excited by thought or information, seldom
moves on the stagnate lake of ignorance."

"As far as I have been able to observe," replied Jemima, "prejudices,
caught up by chance, are obstinately maintained by the poor, to the
exclusion of improvement; they have not time to reason or reflect to
any extent, or minds sufficiently exercised to adopt the principles
of action, which form perhaps the only basis of contentment in every
station."*

* The copy which appears to have received the author's
last corrections, ends at this place. [Godwin's note]

"And independence," said Darnford, "they are necessarily strangers to,
even the independence of despising their persecutors. If the poor are
happy, or can be happy, _things_ _are_ _very_ _well_ _as_ _they_ _are_.
And I cannot conceive on what principle those writers contend for a
change of system, who support this opinion. The authors on the other
side of the question are much more consistent, who grant the fact; yet,
insisting that it is the lot of the majority to be oppressed in this
life, kindly turn them over to another, to rectify the false weights
and measures of this, as the only way to justify the dispensations of
Providence. I have not," continued Darnford, "an opinion more firmly
fixed by observation in my mind, than