eturn. It is sowing of your wheat
upon Irish quagmires; laboriously harrowing it in upon the sand of the
seashore. O my astonishing benevolent friends!

Yonder, in those dingy habitations, and shops of red herring and
tobacco-pipes, where men have not yet quite declared for the Devil;
there, I say, is land: here is mere sea-beach. Thither go with your
benevolence, thither to those dingy caverns of the poor; and there
instruct and drill and manage, there where some fruit may come from it.
And, above all and inclusive of all, cannot you go to those Solemn human
Shams, Phantasm Captains, and Supreme Quacks that ride prosperously in
every thoroughfare; and with severe benevolence, ask them, What they
are doing here? They are the men whom it would behoove you to drill a
little, and tie to the halberts in a benevolent manner, if you could!
"We cannot," say you? Yes, my friends, to a certain extent you can. By
many well-known 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, Now 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 not; and you are not
even men of sincerity and honest sense. I grieve to say it; but it is
true. Good from you, and your operations, is not 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 habitabl