On this same point, Miss Martineau is of opinion that “Mr. Dickens had better consider, for the sake of his own peace of mind, as well as the good of his neighbours, how to qualify himself for his enterprise before he takes up his next task of reform. If he must give the first place to his idealism and sensibilities, let him confine himself to fiction; and if he will put himself forward as a social reformer, let him do the only honest thing,--study both sides of the question he takes up. How far he is from having done this in the present case, a short, but not unimportant statement may show. He says, by his own pen, or his contributor’s [let us say, then, his contributor’s] ‘But the factory inspectors will proceed for penalties? Certainly they will; and then, if these gentlemen be members of the National Association of Factory Occupiers, they will have their case defended for them and their fine immediately paid.’ Yet while the writer declares his information to be drawn from the papers of the Association, he ignores the following conspicuous passages from their First Report”--the retractation then being quoted. Now, setting aside the likelihood or unlikelihood of Mr. Dickens, to secure his peace of mind, taking ghostly advice from Miss Martineau, there is no doubt that in the said First Report the retractation was conspicuous, and that moreover, it was meant to be conspicuous; but we can hardly think it so conspicuous as to have been visible, not merely before it _was_ visible, but, as we firmly believe, even before it was so much as conceived. On the same line with the page 605 of this journal, upon which we are lectured, are inscribed the words “Household Words, July 28, 1855.” The number dated on that day was, in the usual manner, published three days previously, and issued in Manchester on the twenty-sixth of July, but the report which we failed to do the honest thing by citing was not written--as we find by the date against the chairman’s signature--until the seventh of August! When it reached us in September we at once (in our two hundred and eighty-fifth number) made public its purport; but we did not say what we may now say, namely, that there came with it a remark which we believe to be true, and which dates certainly go far to justify: that the Special Report--a thing not contemplated in the rules--was actually suggested by our comments,--that our journal, containing a wide publication of the illegal position of the recusant mill-owners, having reached Manchester on the twenty-sixth of July, was considered by the committee of the Association to necessitate retreat to safer ground by means of a Special Report, and that by the seventh of August, the report was completed and signed; after which, it has been further suggested to us, that July was put upon the cover, not without a hope that somebody might be misled into believing that it had really been produced several weeks sooner than it was. Be that as it may, we should