Early in 1838 she wrote a work called _How to Observe in Morals
and Manners_. It forms a crown octavo volume of two hundred and
thirty-eight pages, and was published by Mr. Charles Knight. The book
is an interesting one, both for the reflections which it contains upon
the subject of its title, and as indicating the method which she had
herself pursued in her study of the morals and manners of the country
in which she had been travelling. There is certainly no failure in the
courage with which she expresses her convictions. She admits elsewhere
that the abuse which she received from America had so acted upon her
mind that she had come to quail at the sight of letters addressed in a
strange handwriting, or of newspapers sent from the United States. But
there is no trace in this her next considerable work of any tendency
to follow rather than to lead the public opinion of her time. One
paragraph only may be quoted to indicate this fact:
Persecution for opinion is always going on. It can be inflicted
out of the province of Law as well as through it.... Whatever a
nation may tell him of its love of liberty should go for little if
he sees a virtuous man's children taken from him on the ground of
his holding an unusual religious belief; or citizens mobbed for
asserting the rights of negroes; or moralists treated with public
scorn for carrying out allowed principles to their ultimate
issues; or scholars oppressed for throwing new light on the sacred
text; or philosophers denounced for bringing fresh facts to the
surface of human knowledge, whether they seem to agree or not with
long established suppositions.[8]
[8] _How to Observe_, p. 204.
The next piece of work that Harriet did in this spring of 1838 was of
a very different order. The Poor-Law Commissioners were desirous of
issuing a series of "Guides to Service," and application was made to
Miss Martineau to write some of these little books. She undertook
_The Maid of All Work_, _The Housemaid_, _The Lady's Maid_ and _The
Dress-maker_. These were issued without her name on the title-page,
but the authorship was an open secret.