[Footnote 147: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his thoughtful books, published in 1845,
made some observations on this point, which are not less applicable now.
He there said: "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.... 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. 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 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 without exertion of their own. You would not desire to
have it so changed. Once elevate your ideal of what you wish to happen
amongst the labouring population, and you will not easily admit anything
in your writings that may injure their moral or their mental character,
even if you thought it might hasten some physical benefit for them. That
is the way to make your genius most serviceable to mankind. Depend upon
it, honest and bold things require to be said to the lower as well as
the higher classes; and the former are in these times much less likely
to have, such things addressed to them."-Claims of Labour, pp. 253-4.]
[Footnote 148: 'Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson' [14Bohn's Ed.], p. 32.]
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