Imputed Ignorance of the Lower Orders

First published in The Examiner, XII, 1 August 1819, pp. 481–2. Hunt comments extensively throughout the Examiner years on the conditions of the poor in England, particularly in relation to the plight of children of the working poor (see above, pp. 161–3). This article, honouring the intelligence of the poor and the blindness of the privileged orders, comes specifically within Hunt’s ongoing political narrative of 1819 about the inexorable march of knowledge against the crumbling bastions of ancient injustice and power. For background on this evolving argument, see headnote above, pp. 173–5.