Charles Dickens was the first popular progressive known throughout the world and may be the most popular progressive who ever lived. It is well known that Dickens affected change in debtor's prisons and orphanages, but his voice was heard on a wide variety of issues. How much influence did he have on the debate over Slavery in the United States? It was likely more than you think. He saw everything and missed nothing. But what would Charles Dickens say about current political positions, popular culture and greedy capitalism? The Tea Party? "Walking while Black"? Libertarians? We caught up with the author today just as he was sitting down to tea. He was gracious enough to answer a few of our questions about progressivism and his critics. Before we get to the Progressive issues, let's see how he felt about literary criticisms he has faced since THE PICKWICK PAPERS were first published in 1837. Our interview started like this:
Charles Dickens, you have been accused of being "wordy," of having been paid by the word. What say you? "To critics who complain that I was 'paid by the word,' I reply that Charles Dickens was underpaid by the word! Six thousand copies sold of what you call A Christmas Carol netted me £230, which you might say was rather a lot for the time; but what about ice sculptures? "Ice sculptures?", you ask. Yes, ice sculptures. The artisan who designs one for your corporate fundraisers and banquet halls of today is paid more money than I was, and their work of art takes a week to erect and lasts forty or fifty minutes; whereas the Carol took a year to create and will be forever!" Some book snobs claim your endings are too happy. Are they? "To those malefactors who suggest that my endings are too happy; I suggest to them that Charles Dickens knew when to end a book! Do you think David Copperfield is still alive? Do you believe that Mr. Pickwick continues to sport about Kent? That Martin Chuzzlewit (the younger) is still designing buildings in his study with happy Mary by his side? I say to you, sir, that they are dead, and they probably died horrible deaths without pain medication and with leeches on their faces and extremities, but I was savvy enough not to end my books then." Do your books contain too many coincidences? Yes, there are those who claim that there are too many coincidences in my novels. Perhaps they should be the greatest writer of all time instead? Well, let me tell you this, things that coincide are interesting. Do you know what's not interesting? People who don't meet by chance. Why are those people uninteresting? Because they don't meet! Moreover, by my count, there were 473 people who lived and worked in London in 1838; so there was a good chance they'd run into one another. Are your books too simple? What those Pecksniffian Quilpsters don't understand is that every gentle emotion in pure form is simple. Every act of kindness is not always an attempt to get over, to build one's self up, or done to avoid looking like a humbug; some acts of kindness are acts of kindness. This is beyond the ken of the person who has never shown up on the doorstep of a friend with a heartfelt and hard-earned gift and honest good cheer; but, instead, arrives with that particularized bottle of wine exactly fashionable, no more and no less, for the host's station in society; given, not out of the goodness of heart, but out of vain motive." |
The Great Master has exerted himself much. He is, after all, 202 years old this year. So, from here on forward, he simply provided quotations from his library of works (and sometimes from the works of his critics) on matters of keen topical and progressive interest. If you have a question for him, please write it below in a comment. Thank you.
ON WELFARE, MEDICAID, MEDICARE, AND FOODSTAMPS VERSUS A THOUSAND POINTS OF LIGHT -- "It is a great and pleasant feature of all such institutions in America, that they are either supported by the State or assisted by the State; or (in the event of their not needing its helping hand) that they act in concert with it, and are emphatically the people’s. I cannot but think, with a view to the principle and its tendency to elevate or depress the character of the industrious classes, that a Public Charity is immeasurably better than a Private Foundation, no matter how munificently the latter may be endowed." Charles Dickens, Chapter Three, Boston, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON THE DEATH PENALTY -- "Death is nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; ... the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention -- it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse...." Charles Dickens, Chapter One, Five Years Later, A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859).
ON THE DEATH PENALTY AGAIN — “[T]his last dreadful and repulsive penalty; which never turned a man inclined to evil, and has hardened thousands who were half inclined to good.” Charles Dickens, Chapter 65, BARNABY RUDGE (1841).
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ON LIBERTARIANS, SELF-INTEREST, AYN RAND, AND MATERIALISM -- "'I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,' returned Bitzer, 'but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to is a person's self-interest. It's your only hold. We are so constituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are aware.' ... It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or tender anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a political-economical place, and we had no business there." Charles Dickens, Chapter VIII, Philosophical, HARD TIMES (1854). |
ON NATIVE AMERICAN RIGHTS -- "I was very much interested in looking over a number of treaties made from time to time with the poor Indians, signed by the different chiefs at the period of their ratification, and preserved in the office of the Secretary to the Commonwealth..... ... Nor could I help bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon the simple warriors whose hands and hearts were set there, in all truth and honesty; and who only learned in course of time from white men how to break their faith, and quibble out of forms and bonds." Charles Dickens, Chapter Nine, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON MITT ROMNEY, JAMIE DIMON AND GREED -- "No man attaches less importance to the possession of money, or less disparagement to the want of it, than I do." George Gissing, Chapter IV, Art, Veracity, and Moral Purpose, CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY (1898 ) (from a Dickens letter). Editor's Note: The word "want" in that sentence is used in the old sense, as in not having any or much. Dickens may have been cleverly confusing both definitions. |
ON THE LOVE OF NATURE AND THE CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES -- "[W]e come upon an open space where the tall trees are burning. The shape of every branch and twig is expressed in a deep red glow, and as the light wind stirs and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. It is such a sight as we read of in legends of enchanted forests: saving that it is sad to see these noble works wasting away so awfully, alone; and to think how many years must come and go before the magic that created them will rear their like upon this ground again. But the time will come; and when, in their changed ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck its roots, the restless men of distant ages will repair to these again unpeopled solitudes; and their fellows, in cities far away, that slumber now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read in language strange to any ears in being now, but very old to them, of primeval forests where the axe was never heard, and where the jungled ground was never trodden by a human foot." Charles Dickens, Chapter Eleven, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). Editor's Note: Dickens wrote here about the disturbing use of fire to clear-cut whole swaths of forest. He could have been talking about mountain-top removal or giant man-made sink holes or polluted rivers. (He actually does talk about giant man-made sink holes and polluted rivers in his novel HARD TIMES.). |
ON OVER-CROWDED PRISONS AND ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A JUST JUSTICE SYSTEM -- "Prison-doors should be barred on the outside, no less heavily and carefully than they are barred within...." Preface to the Charles Dickens Edition, THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1868). |
ON GUANTANAMO BAY AND TORTURE -- "In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong. ... I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. ... He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair." Charles Dickens, Chapter VII, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON ALEC, UNION-BASHING AND RIGHT TO WORK (for lesser wages and conditions) LAWS -- "'It is much to be regretted,' said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity, 'that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.' 'Yes, ma'am,' said Bitzer. 'Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces against employing any man who is united with any other man,' said Mrs. Sparsit." Charles Dickens, Chapter 1, Effects in the Bank, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's note: When Charles Dickens had two of his villains discuss unions, they weren't fond of them. Those two villains had no problem with that day's ALEC ("the united masters"). |
ON PUBLIC EDUCATION AND THE IMPORTANCE OF IT -- "Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free schools, of which it has so many that no person’s child among its population can, by possibility, want the means of education, which are extended, upon an average, to four thousand pupils, annually. I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys’ department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra; a proposal, which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm." Charles Dickens, Chapter Eleven, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON REJOICING A VICTORY IN THE FIGHT FOR DEBTORS' RIGHTS HE HELPED TO BRING ABOUT -- "[T]he laws relating to imprisonment for debt are altered; and the Fleet Prison is pulled down!" Preface to the First Cheap Edition, THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1847). Editor's Note: After ten years of writing mockingly and heatedly about them, debtors' prisons seem to have spontaneously combusted. |
ON RACISM, ON STEREOTYPES, AND ON NATIVE AMERICANS -- "He took his leave; as stately and complete a gentleman of Nature’s making, as ever I beheld; and moved among the people in the boat, another kind of being." Charles Dickens, Chapter Twelve, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). Editor's Note: This was what Charles Dickens had to say after meeting "Pitchlynn, a chief of the Choctaw tribe" on a steamboat bound for Louisville. |
ON POLLUTION AND CLIMATE CHANGE AND HOW THE OWNER CLASS SEES THEM -- "First of all, you see our smoke. That's meat and drink to us. It's the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs." Charles Dickens, Chapter II, Mr. James Harthouse, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's Note: That's the villainous factory owner Josiah Bounderby speaking. The chapter is entitled "Mr. James Harthouse." |
ON TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL -- "It is obvious that one great feature of this system, is the inculcation and encouragement, even among such unhappy persons, of a decent self-respect." Charles Dickens, Chapter Three, Boston, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON SLAVERY, LIBERTY, EQUALITY & RACE RELATIONS -- "'A slave!' cried Martin, in a whisper. 'Ah!' said Mark in the same tone. 'Nothing else. A slave. Why, when that there man was young--don't look at him, while I'm a telling it--he was shot in the leg; gashed in the arm, scored in his live limbs, like crimped fish; beaten out of shape; had his neck galled with an iron collar, and wore iron rings upon his wrists and ankles. The marks are on him to this day....' ... '... In years and years he saved up a little money, and bought his freedom, which he got pretty cheap at last, on account of his strength being nearly gone, and he being ill. Then he come here. And now he's saving up to treat himself, afore he dies, to one small purchase; it's nothing to speak of; only his own daughter; that's all!' cried Mark Tapley, becoming excited. 'Liberty for ever! Hurrah! Hail, Columbia!'" Charles Dickens, Chapter 17, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1844). |
ON TAMPERING WITH VOTING, FOX NEWS, ETC... -- "I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers...." Charles Dickens, Chapter Eight, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT OF MINING AND MANUFACTURING -- "... I ha' read on 't in the public petition, as onnyone may read, fro' the men that works in pits, in which they ha' pray'n and pray'n the lawmakers for Christ's sake not to let their work be murder to 'em, but to spare 'em for th' wives and children they loves as well as gentlefo'k loves theirs." Charles Dickens, Chapter VI, The Starlight, HARD TIMES (1854). |
ON EXTREMIST RELIGIONS (OR EXTREMIST ANYTHING, FOR THAT MATTER) -- "I so abhor, and from my soul detest that bad spirit, no matter by what class or sect it may be entertained, which would strip life of its healthful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from maturity and age their pleasant ornaments, and make existence but a narrow path towards the grave: that odious spirit which, if it could have had full scope and sway upon the earth, must have blasted and made barren the imaginations of the greatest men...." Charles Dickens, Chapter Fifteen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). Editor's Note: This was after Dickens' observation of the Shaker Village in New York, but, as he wrote, it could be any extremist "class or sect." |
ON POOR HEALTHCARE -- "In all my writings, I hope I have taken every available opportunity of showing the want of sanitary improvements in the neglected dwellings of the poor. Mrs. Sarah Gamp was, four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness. The Hospitals of London were, in many respects, noble institutions; in others, very defective. I think it not the least among the instances of mismanagement, that Mrs. Betsy Prig was a fair specimen of a Hospital Nurse...." Preface to the Charles Dickens Edition, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1868). |
ON MICHAEL BROWN, FERGUSON, POLICE BRUTALITY, AND JUDICIAL COMPASSION FOR ILLEGAL AND DEADLY ACTIONS -- "Public opinion has, within a few years, burned a slave alive at a slow fire in the city of St. Louis; and public opinion has to this day maintained upon the bench that estimable judge who charged the jury, impanelled there to try his murderers, that their most horrid deed was an act of public opinion, and being so, must not be punished by the laws the public sentiment had made. Public opinion hailed this doctrine with a howl of wild applause, and set the prisoners free, to walk the city, men of mark, and influence, and station, as they had been before." Charles Dickens, Chapter Seventeen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE AND CARBON POLLUTION -- "Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeard impervious to the sun's rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth...." Charles Dickens, Chapter 1, Effects in the Bank, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's note: The blotchy mass was "aspiring to the vault of Heaven." It's there now. |
ON POLICE DISCRIMINATION, "WALKING WHILE BLACK," THE RIGHT TO COUNSEL, AND DISCRIMINATION IN SENTENCING -- "Public opinion has made this law.—It has declared that in Washington, in that city which takes its name from the father of American liberty, any justice of the peace may bind with fetters any negro passing down the street and thrust him into jail: no offence on the black man’s part is necessary. The justice says, ‘I choose to think this man a runaway:’ and locks him up. Public opinion impowers the man of law when this is done, to advertise the negro in the newspapers, warning his owner to come and claim him, or he will be sold to pay the jail fees. But supposing he is a free black, and has no owner, it may naturally be presumed that he is set at liberty. No: HE IS SOLD TO RECOMPENSE HIS JAILER. This has been done again, and again, and again. He has no means of proving his freedom; has no adviser, messenger, or assistance of any sort or kind; no investigation into his case is made, or inquiry instituted. He, a free man, who may have served for years, and bought his liberty, is thrown into jail on no process, for no crime, and on no pretence of crime: and is sold to pay the jail fees. This seems incredible, even of America, but it is the law." Charles Dickens, Chapter Seventeen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). Editor's Note: Dickens attacked Slavery in wildly popular books like MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT and AMERICAN NOTES. His disgust flies off the page and overwhelms the reader. If you have not read Chapter Seventeen of AMERICAN NOTES, you should do so now. He must have had an effect on the debate. |
ON A DEFINITION OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE AND TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS (and then on a working definition of Laissez-Faire and Trickle-Down Economics) -- "Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way -- tend to his own power and pocket." Charles Dickens, Chapter Seven, Monseigneur in Town, A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859). |
ON AMERICAN MORALITY AND THE VERY AMERICAN PURSUIT OF CAPITALISM -- "It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affectations, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars.... Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars.... Do anything for dollars! Chapter 16, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1844). Editor's Note: That was pretty obviously plagiarized by the Casino, Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street screenwriters. |
ON THE OWNER CLASS, CITIZENS UNITED, ALEC AND OTHER INEQUALITIES -- "[W]hat class of men have an immense preponderance over the rest of the community, in their power of representing public opinion in the legislature? the slave-owners. They send from their twelve States one hundred members, while the fourteen free States, with a free population nearly double, return but a hundred and forty-two. Before whom do the presidential candidates bow down the most humbly, on whom do they fawn the most fondly, and for whose tastes do they cater the most assiduously in their servile protestations? The slave-owners always." Charles Dickens, Chapter Seventeen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON FOX NEWS AND PROPAGANDA AND STEREOTYPES -- "'Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I'll show you a man that's fit for anything bad, I don't care what it is.' Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been taken to disseminate--and which some people really believed." Charles Dickens, Chapter VIII, Explosion, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's Note: "Hand" was the sarcastic term used by Dickens in the book HARD TIMES to denote a factory worker. |
ON WOMEN'S ISSUES, EQUALITY AND THE CURRENT CONSERVATIVE WAR ON WOMEN -- "A woman is only inferior to man in the matter of being not so manly; she is inferior in nothing else. Man is inferior to woman in so far as he is not a woman, there is no other reason." G.K. Chesterton, APPRECIATIONS AND CRITICISMS OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS, at p.254 (1911) Editor's Note: In that passage, G.K. Chesterton was explaining how Dickens was a real democrat, seeing everyone as equal and equally interesting. |
ON THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, FOX NEWS, RUSH LIMBAUGH, AND ANTI-GOVERNMENT RHETORIC -- "[W]hile the newspaper press of America is in, or near, its present abject state, high moral improvement in that country is hopeless. Year by year, it must and will go back; year by year, the tone of public feeling must sink lower down; year by year, the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men; and year by year, the memory of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, in the bad life of their degenerate child. Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, there are some ... of character and credit.... But the name of these is Few, and of the others Legion; and the influence of the good, is powerless to counteract the moral poison of the bad." Charles Dickens, Chapter Eighteen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842) |
ON THE POOR, BEDEVILED OWNER CLASS WHICH HAS TO DEAL WITH SILLY GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS -- "They were ruined when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke." Charles Dickens, Chapter 1, Effects in the Bank, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's note: (1) Insert the minimum wage, emission limitations requirements or ObamaCare. (2) Repeat. |
ON GOVERNMENT -- He said that he had "little or no faith in the people governing, but faith limitless in the people governed." Charles Dickens, Public Address delivered at the Birmingham and Midland Institute. |
ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND HOW THE ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS EVERYBODY -- "As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the neighbourhood's too--after the manner of those pious persons who do penance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth--it was customary for those who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air, which is not absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to get a few miles away...." Charles Dickens, Chapter VI, The Starlight, HARD TIMES (1854). |
ON HOW TO LIVE ONE'S LIFE -- "'Never,' said my aunt, 'be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel.'" Charles Dickens, Chapter Fifteen, I Make Another Beginning, DAVID COPPERFIELD. Editor's Note: This was the only advice that Betsy Trotwood gave to David Copperfield as he went out into the world. |
ON FOX NEWS PROPAGANDA ABOUT HOW THE WORKER AND WELFARE CLASS REALLY GETS ALONG -- "You don't expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of 'em do!" Charles Dickens, Chapter XI, No Way Out, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's Note: A "coach and six" was the Rolls Royce of the day. |
ON LAISSEZ-FAIRE ECONOMIC POLICIES -- "It is known, the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servents.... Supposing we were to reverse our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!" Charles Dickens, Chapter XI, No Way Out, HARD TIMES (1854). |
ON THE TEA PARTY -- "By repelling worthy men from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the suffrage, who, in their very act, disgrace your Institutions and your people’s choice." Charles Dickens, Chapter Eighteen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842) Editor's Note: In Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens describes a "loco-foco" party in America. That really happened. |
ON THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE ONE-PERCENT -- "Dickens was destined to show with inspired symbolism all the immense virtues of the democracy. He was to show them as the most humorous part of our civilization; which they certainly are. He was to show them as the most promptly and practically compassionate part of our civilization; which they certainly are. The democracy has a hundred exuberant good qualities; the democracy has only one outstanding sin — It is not democratic." G.K. Chesterton, APPRECIATIONS AND CRITICISMS OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS, Chapter 3, The Youth of Dickens (1911). |
ON URBAN SPRAWL, OVER-CROWDING AND POLLUTION AND HOW THOSE AFFECT THE HEALTH OF HUMANS -- "In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man's purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it...." Charles Dickens, Chapter X, Stephen Blackpool, HARD TIMES (1854). Editor's note: And on city planning, zoning, birth defects (?), and on taking into account society before one man's greedy plans. |
ON GAMBLING (LIKE "THE SOUTH CAROLINA ED-YOU-KAY-SHUN LOTTERY) -- "I vow to God that I can see nothing in it but cruelty, covetousness, calculation, insensibility, and low wickedness." Charles Dickens, Letter to a Friend. |
ON BEING A PROGRESSIVE RADICAL AMONGST OBSTRUCTIONIST REACTIONARIES -- "[H]e was a Radical. This meant, of course, one who was discontented with the slow course of legislation, moving decorously 'from precedent to precedent', and with the aristocratic ideas underlying English life; one who desired radical changes, in the direction of giving liberty and voice to the majority of the people." George Gissing, Chapter X, The Radical, CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY (1898) |
ON LAISSEZ-FAIRE ECONOMIC POLICIES, MATERIALISM AND THE MITT ROMENYS OF THIS WORLD -- "[A]fter eight weeks of induction in the the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high for returning to the question, 'What is the first principle of this science?' the absurd answer, 'To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.'" Charles Dickens, Chapter IX, Sissy's Progress, HARD TIMES (1854). |
ON UNDUE INFLUENCE IN POLITICS -- Even in the Sketches he writes satirically of the House of Commons, and at a later time his attitude towards Parliament was no less contemptuous than Carlyle's. A letter, bearing the date 1855, declares his grave belief that Representative Government was a failure in England, owing to the national vice which was then known as "flunkeyism". George Gissing, Chapter X, The Radical, CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY (1898) |
ON GRIFTING IN GENERAL AND PONZI SCHEMES IN PARTICULAR -- "'No, no. It was my idea,' said David. 'Hang it, let a man have some credit. Didn't I say to you that I'd saved a few pounds?--' 'You said! Didn't I say to you,' interposed Tigg, 'that I had come into a few pounds?' 'Certainly you did,' returned David, warmly, 'but that's not the idea. Who said if we put the money together we could furnish an office, and make a show?' "And who said,' retorted Mr. Tigg, 'that provided we did it on a sufficiently large scale, we could furnish an office and make a show, without any money at all?.... ... It will have been already gathered from the conversation of these worthies, that they were embarked in an enterprise of some magnitude, in which they addressed the public in general from the strong position of having everything to gain, and nothing at all to lose; and which, based upon this great principle, was thriving pretty comfortably." Chapter 27, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1844). Editor's Note: And with that, Charles Dickens had his say about Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Enron and all of the too-big-to-fail enterprises of today ... 170 years ago. |
ON THE RUDE, RACIST AND EVIL TREATMENT OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (AND ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES) -- "Any man who attains a high place among you, from the President downwards, may date his downfall from that moment; for any printed lie that any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly against the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well deserved; but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, or likely to elevate the character of the governors or the governed, among you?" Charles Dickens, Chapter Eighteen, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |
ON GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, OPEN CARRY, STAND YOUR GROUND AND PROTECTING LIBERTY -- "Mr. Chollop was, of course, one of the most remarkable men in the country; but he really was a notorious person besides. He was usually described by his friends, in the South and West, as 'a splendid sample of our na-tive raw material, sir,' and was much esteemed for his devotion to rational Liberty; for the better propagation whereof he usually carried a brace of revolving pistols in his coat pocket, with seven barrels a-piece. He also carried, amongst other trinkets, a sword-stick, which he called his 'Tickler;' and a great knife.... He had used these weapons with distinguished effect in several instances, all duly chronicled in the newspapers; and was greatly beloved for the gallant manner in which he had 'jobbed out' the eye of one gentleman, as he was in the act of knocking at his own street-door." Chapter 33, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1844). Editor's Note: Liberty, as fragile and dainty as an ego, must be protected vigorously with guns, lots of guns. |
ON EDUCATION -- "He knew that the vices of society could for the most part be traced to these bad beginnings. A leader in this as in so many other directions, he taught readers to think much of children just at the time when England had especial need of an educational awakening. Not his satire alone, but his so-called sentimentality, served a great purpose...." George Gissing, Chapter VI, Satiric Portraiture, CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY (1898). |
ON CLICK-BAIT JOURNALISM -- "'Here's this morning's New York Sewer!' cried one. 'Here's this morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York Papers! Here's full particulars of the patriotic loco-foco movement yesterday, in which the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the Political, Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are! Here they are! Here's the papers, here's the papers!'" Chapter 16, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1844) Editor's Note: Insert Fox News, the National Enquirer, TMZ, Ebola, the Tea Party movement, missing airplanes and Kim Kardashian, and you watched it last night! |
ON MENTAL ILLNESS AND THE TREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL -- "Mr. Dick's presence in such a book as David Copperfield would seem waste of space, but for certain considerations. He illustrates the formidable lady's goodness and common-sense; he served a very practical purpose, that of recommending rational treatment of the insane; and he had his place in the pages of an author whose humanity includes all that are in any way afflicted, in mind, body, or estate. George Gissing, Chapter V, Characterization, CHARLES DICKENS: A CRITICAL STUDY (1898). |
ON GUN CONTROL IN AMERICA -- "'Why,' said Mark, 'I didn't like him much; and that's the truth, sir. I thought he was a bully; and I didn't admire his carryin' them murderous little persuaders, and being so ready to use 'em.' ... "... [Martin then said:] Are pistols with revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things, Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal combats, savage assaults ... your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next, that Dishonour and Fraud are among the Institutions of the great republic!'" Chapter 34, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT (1844). Editor's Note: It can be fairly stated that, about America, Dickens hated Slavery in the name of Liberty the most, followed by chewing tobacco and spittoons (or the lack of them) in the name of Liberty, and then guns and gun violence in the name of Liberty! |
ON OBAMACARE AND REPUBLICAN EFFORTS TO REPEAL IT -- "[T]he universal diffusion of common means of decency and health is as much the right of the poorest of the poor, as it is indispensible to the safety of the rich, and of the State; that a few petty boards and bodies--less than drops in the great ocean of humanity, which roars around them--are not for ever to let loose Fever and Consumption on God's creatures at their will, or always to keep their jobbing little fiddles going, for a Dance of Death." Preface to the Charles Dickens Edition, THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1868). |
ON DEBTOR LAWS -- "But, that my view of the Poor Law may not be mistaken or misrepresented, I will state it. I believe there has been in England, since the days of the STUARTS, no law so often infamously administered, no law so often openly violated, no law habitually so ill-supervised. In the majority of the shameful cases of disease and death from destitution, that shock the Public and disgrace the country, the illegality is quite equal to the inhumanity--and known language could say no more of their lawlessness." Postscript, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (1865). |
ON CHAMBER OF COMMERCE LAWS AGAINST THE HOMELESS -- "[I]n some villages large painted boards were fixed up, warning all persons who begged within the district, that they would be sent to jail." Charles Dickens, OLIVER TWIST. |
ON SARAH PALIN, ISIS AND THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION VERSUS THE CANT OF RELIGION -- "Lest there be any well-intentioned persons who do not perceive the difference ... between religion and the cant of religion, piety and the pretence of piety, a humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest dissensions and the meanest affairs of life, to the extraordinary confusion of ignorant minds, let them understand that it is always the latter, and never the former, which is satirized here. Further, that the latter is here satirized as being, according to all experience, inconsistent with the former, impossible of union with it, and one of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods existent in society.... It may appear unnecessary to offer a word of observation on so plain a head. But it is never out of season to protest against that coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip, and idle in the heart; or against the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons who, in the words of SWIFT, have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another." Preface to the Charles Dickens Edition, THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1868). |
ON PURITANISM, THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, AND THE EQUALLY IMPORTANT SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND BUSINESS -- "It is the seat of the local legislature of Connecticut, which sage body enacted, in bygone times, the renowned code of ‘Blue Laws,’ in virtue whereof, among other enlightened provisions, any citizen who could be proved to have kissed his wife on Sunday, was punishable, I believe, with the stocks. Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists in these parts to the present hour; but its influence has not tended, that I know, to make the people less hard in their bargains, or more equal in their dealings. As I never heard of its working that effect anywhere else, I infer that it never will, here. Indeed, I am accustomed, with reference to great professions and severe faces, to judge of the goods of the other world pretty much as I judge of the goods of this; and whenever I see a dealer in such commodities with too great a display of them in his window, I doubt the quality of the article within." Charles Dickens, Chapter Five, AMERICAN NOTES (1842). |