The Great Baby
Charles Dickens rails at the way Parliament and do-gooders treat the public like an irresponsible child.
1855
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Charles Dickens rails at the way Parliament and do-gooders treat the public like an irresponsible child.
1855
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
In 1855, a Bill to restrict Sunday trading provoked riots in Hyde Park; Charles Dickens hosted his own in ‘Household Words’. His objection was not to Sunday Observance, a venerable Christian custom which he actively encouraged, but to politicians and campaigners who treat the General Public like a helpless child.
THERE are two public bodies remarkable for knowing nothing of the people, and for perpetually interfering to put them right. The one is the House of Commons; the other the Monomaniacs. Between the Members and the Monomaniacs, the devoted People, quite unheard, get harried and worried to the last extremity.*
Is it because the People is altogether an abstraction to them; a Great Baby, to be coaxed and chucked under the chin at elections, and frowned upon at quarter sessions,* and stood in the corner on Sundays, and taken out to stare at the Queen’s coach on holidays, and kept in school under the rod, generally speaking, from Monday morning to Saturday night?
Is it because they have no other idea of the People than a big-headed Baby, now to be flattered and now to be scolded, now to be kissed and now to be whipped, but always to be kept in long clothes, and never under any circumstances to feel its legs and go about of itself? We take the liberty of replying, Yes.*
For background, see The Brewery History Society. Dickens’s outspoken criticism of Sunday observance laws was developed at length in ‘Sunday Under Three Heads’, in which he contrasted Sunday as it is now, as the reformers would have it, and as it should be. He held that bad habits came from idleness and boredom, and that the right solution was to encourage wholesome Sunday recreations (following Church) such as countryside walking, outdoor sports, making music and visiting museums — all of which required society to function on a Sunday more than the badly-framed legislation allowed.
The Quarter Sessions were courts traditionally held four times a year to hear all but the most serious criminal and civil cases. They were replaced in 1972 by the Crown Courts.
Dickens was of course opposing only nannying state interference, not the principles of a day of rest or of Sunday observance. See our extract The Economic Case for Time Off, in which the great Scottish economist Adam Smith warmly encourages employers to impose their own generous working time limits.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
In Dickens’s opinion, why did Parliament have trouble dealing with the public?
Because it neither understood nor heard them.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Campaigners wanted London’s shops closed on Sundays. Lord Grosvenor complied. He placed a Bill before Parliament.