ABSTRACT
First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 6 October 1827, p. 172. Reprinted Tave, pp. 149–51 (with attribution, pp. 158–60). The arguments on political economy and ‘waste land improvement’ would be very typical of De Quincey, and unusual for a conservative newspaper of the 1820s. As editor, De Quincey would have been responsible for replying to criticisms of the Post from other papers. This piece seems hastily written, but it continues the subjects of ‘political economy’ and ‘waste lands’ from some of De Quincey’s previous contributions. Likely signs of De Quincey include the dashes, italics, use of ‘viz.’, and the sentence beginning with ‘But’. However, the strongest evidence is the following week’s article, ‘Emigration Report’, which indicates in its first paragraph that it was written by the same person as this one (see below, p. 101).
