Letter from Charles Dickens
Letter from Charles Dickens
1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate,
Fifteenth December 1840.
My dear Sir,—I am greatly obliged to you for your kind note and inclosure of to-day. I had never seen the Sanatorium pamphlet, and have been greatly pleased with it. The reasons for such an Institution, and the advantages likely to result from it, could not have been more forcibly or eloquently put. I have read it twice with extreme satisfaction.
You have given me hardly less pleasure by sending me the Instructions of the Children's Employment Commission, which seem to me to have been devised in a most worthy spirit, and to comprehend every point on which humanity and forethought could have desired to lay stress. The little book reaches me very opportunely; for Lord Ashley sent me his speech on moving the Commission only the day before yesterday; and I could not forbear, in writing to him in acknowledgment of its receipt, cursing the present system and its fatal effects in keeping down thousands upon thousands of God's images, with all my heart and soul.