Threatening Letter - Page 2

degeneration of the human species in England, and its reduction into
a mingled race of savages and pigmies.

That is my proposition. That is my prediction. That is the event
of which I give you warning. I am now going to prove it, sir.

You are a literary man, Mr. Hood, and have written, I am told, some
things worth reading. I say I am told, because I never read what is
written in these days. You'll excuse me; but my principle is, that
no man ought to know anything about his own time, except that it is
the worst time that ever was, or is ever likely to be. That is the
only way, sir, to be truly wise and happy.

In your station, as a literary man, Mr. Hood, you are frequently at
the Court of Her Gracious Majesty the Queen. God bless her! You
have reason to know that the three great keys to the royal palace
(after rank and politics) are Science, Literature, Art. I don't
approve of this myself. I think it ungenteel and barbarous, and
quite un-English; the custom having been a foreign one, ever since
the reigns of the uncivilised sultans in the Arabian Nights, who
always called the wise men of their time about them. But so it is.
And when you don't dine at the royal table, there is always a knife
and fork for you at the equerries' table: where, I understand, all
gifted men are made particularly welcome.

But all men can't be gifted, Mr. Hood. Neither scientific,
literary, nor artistical powers are any more to be inherited than
the property arising from scientific, literary, or artistic
productions, which the law, with a beautiful imitation of nature,
declines to protect in the second generation. Very good, sir.
Then, people are naturally very prone to cast about in their minds
for other means of getting at Court Favour; and, watching the signs
of the times, to hew out for themselves, or their descendants, the
likeliest roads to that distinguished goal.

Mr. Hood, it is pretty clear, from recent records in the Court
Circular, that if a father wish to train up his son in the way he
should go, to go to Court: and cannot indenture him to be a
scientific man, an author, or an artist, three courses are open to
him. He must endeavour by artificial means to make him a dwarf, a
wild man, or a Boy Jones.

Now, sir, this is the shoal and quicksand on which the constitution
will go to pieces.

I have made inquiry, Mr. Hood, and find that in my neighbourhood two
families and a fraction out of every four, in the lower and middle
classes of society, are studying and practising all conceivable arts
to keep their infant children down. Understand me. I do not mean
down in their numbers, or down in their precocity, but down in their
growth, sir. A destructive and subduing drink,