“I write a line to thank you for the little pamphlet you have sent me which I read and like very much.
“There is no end of good that you may do by writing in that simple and touching style upon social questions.
“But don’t go to war with Political Economy. 1st. Because the P. E.’s are a powerful and dangerous class. 2nd. Because it is impossible for ladies and gentlemen to fill up the interstices of legislation if they run counter to the common motives of self-interest. 3rd. (You won’t agree to this) Because the P. E.’s have really done more for the labouring classes by their advocacy of free trade, &c., than all the Philanthropists put together.
“I wish that it were possible as a matter of taste to get rid of all philanthropic expressions, ‘missions, &c.,’ which are distasteful to the educated. But I suppose they are necessary for the Collection of Money. And no doubt as a matter of taste there is a good deal that might be corrected in the Political Economists.
“The light of the feelings never teaches the best way of dealing with the world en masse and the dry light never finds its way to the heart either of man or beast.
“You see I want all the humanities combined with Political Economy. Perhaps, it may be replied that such a combination is not possible in human nature.
“Excuse my speculations and believe me in haste,
“Yours very truly,
“B. Jowett.”
About the same time that we began to visit the Bristol work house, Miss Louisa Twining bravely undertook a systematic reform of the whole system throughout the country. It was an enormous task, but she had great energy, and a fund of good sense; and with the support of Lord Mount-Temple (then Hon. William Cowper-Temple), Mrs. Tait, and several other excellent and influential persons, she carried out a grand reformation through the length and breadth of the land. Her Workhouse Visiting Society, and the monthly Journal she edited as its organ, brought by degrees good sense and good feeling quietly and unostentatiously to bear on the Boards of Guardians and their officials all over the country, and one abuse after another was disclosed, discussed, condemned, and finally, in most cases abolished. I went up for a short visit to London at one time on purpose to learn all I could from General Twining (as I used to call her), and then returned to Bristol. I have been gratified to read in her charming Recollections published last year (1893), that in her well-qualified judgment Miss Elliot’s work and mine was really the beginning of much that has subsequently been done for the sick and for workhouse girls. She says: