By many well-kn active methods,and by all manner of passive methods,you can.Strive thitherward,I advise you;thither,with whatever social effort there may lie in you!The well-head and "consecrated"thrice-accursed chief fountain of all those waters of bitterness,--it is they,those Solemn Shams and Supreme Quacks of yours,little as they or you imagine it!Them,with severe benevolence,put a stop to;them send to their Father,far from the sight of the true and just,--if you would ever see a just world here!
What sort of reformers and workers are you,that work only on the rotten material?That never think of meddling with the material while it continues sound;that stress it and strain it with new rates and assessments,till once it has given way and declared itself rotten;whereupon you snatch greedily at it,and say,let us try to do some good upon it!You mistake in every way,my friends:the fact is,you fancy yourselves men of virtue,benevolence,what ;and you are even men of sincerity and honest sense.I grieve to say it;but it is true.Good from you,and your operations,is to be expected.You may go down!
Howard is a beautiful Philanthropist,eulogized by Burke,and in most men's minds a sort of beatified individual.How glorious,having finished off one's affairs in Bedfordshire,or in fact finding them very dull,inane,and worthy of being quitted and got away from,to set out on a cruise,over the Jails first of Britain;then,finding that answer,over the Jails of the habitable Globe!"A voyage of discovery,a circum-navigation of charity;to collate distresses,to gauge wretchedness,to take the dimensions of human misery:"really it is very fine.
Captain Cook's voyage for the Terra Australis,Ross's,Franklin's for the ditto Borealis:men make various cruises and voyages in this world,--for want of money,want of work,and one or the other want,--which are attended with their difficulties too,and do make the cruiser a demigod.On the whole,I have myself hing but respect,comparatively speaking,for the dull solid Howard,and his "benevolence,"and other impulses that set him cruising;Heaven had grown weary of Jail-fevers,and other the like unjust penalties inflicted upon scoundrels,--for scoundrels too,and even the very Devil,should have more than their due;--and Heaven,in its opulence,created a man to make an end of that.Created him;disgusted him with the grocer business;tried him with Calvinism,rural ennui,and sore bereavement in his Bedfordshire retreat;--and,in short,at last got him set to his work,and in a condition to achieve it.For which I am thankful to Heaven;and do also,--with doffed hat,humbly salute John Howard.A practical solid man,if a dull and even dreary;"carries his weighing-scales in his pocket:"when your jailer answers,"The prisoner's allowance of food is so and so;and we observe it sacredly;here,for example,is a ration."--"Hey!Aration this?"and solid John suddenly produces his weighing-scales;weighs it,marks down in his tablets what the actual quantity of it is.That is the art and manner of the man.
A man full of English accuracy;English veracity,solidity,simplicity;by whom this universal Jail-commission,to be paid for in money but far otherwise,is set about,with all the slow energy,the patience,practicality,sedulity and sagacity common to the best English commissioners paid in money and expressly otherwise.
For it is the glory of England that she has a turn for fidelity in practical work;that sham-workers,though very numerous,are rarer than elsewhere;that a man who undertakes work for you will still,in various provinces of our affairs,do it,instead of merely seeming to do it.John Howard,without pay in money,did this of the Jail-fever,as other Englishmen do work,in a truly workmanlike manner:his distinction was that he did it without money.He had 500pounds or 5,000pounds a year of salary for it;but lived merely on his Bedfordshire estates,and as Snigsby irreverently expresses it,"by chewing his own cud."And,sure egh,if any man might chew the cud of placid reflections,solid Howard,a mournful man otherwise,might at intervals indulge a little in that luxury.--money-salary had he for his work;he had merely the income of his properties,and what he could derive from within.Is this such a sublime distinction,then?Well,let it pass at its value.There have been benefactors of mankind who had more need of money than he,and got e too.Milton,it is kn,did his Paradise Lost at the easy rate of five pounds.Kepler worked out the secret of the Heavenly Motions in a dreadfully painful manner;"going over the calculations sixty times;"and having only public money,but private either;and,in fact,writing almanacs for his bread-and-water,while he did this of the Heavenly Motions;having Bedfordshire estates;hing but a pension of 18pounds (which they would pay him),the valuable faculty of writing almanacs,and at length the invaluable one of dying,when the Heavenly bodies were vanquished,and battle's conflagration had collapsed into cold dark ashes,and the starvation reached too high a pitch for the poor man.
Howard is the only benefactor that has worked without money for us;there have been some more,--and will be,I hope!For the Destinies are opulent;and send here and there a man into the world to do work,for which they do mean to pay him in money.
