ABSTRACT
First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 20 October 1827, p. 188. Reprinted Tave, pp. 161–2 (with attribution, p. 163). The article is part of a series on economics and over-population, during De Quincey’s editorship. Its first sentence also links it to recent articles in the Post about the Standard (see pp. 74–5, 76–8, 99–100, and 101–5) and other English papers. Other internal clues include the allusions to Gulliver’s Travels and to several English authors, the sentence starting with ‘But’, colloquialisms like ‘clod-hopper’ and ‘breeches’ and ‘camarilla’ (which recurs in a manuscript of De Quincey’s of 1828; see Vol. 6, p. 304). The suggestion that James Mill might be ‘sent to graze amongst the beasts of the field’ recalls the allusion to Nebuchadnezzar, in the review of Observations on Diet (see above, p. 4).
