" THE MORALITY OF 'PICKWICK.' "

 A paragraph with the above heading, copied into a recent number of the " Northern Whig," from a publication styled " Agatha," provokes me to lift my pen in protest against one of the most monstrously unjust accusations that has ever been brought against a public writer. I can most easily understand that the Pecksniffs, the Chadbands, and the Stigginses of society should hate Mr. Dickens with that intensity of hatred which only " vessels " which have boiled over in their wrath can conceive, and only the conspicuously "pious" can efficiently express; but for others than these to say and to write that, by holding up to scorn and contempt the men of whom Stiggins is the type, Mr. Dickens has done an injury to the cause of true religion and morality, in either a gross falsehood, or a not less gross self-deception. I, for one, maintain that the iconoclast who drags down and smashes into atoms the false gods who lead captive silly women, and still sillier men, under the outraged names of religion and of Heaven, does a good service alike to God and man. I say Mr. Dickens has done that service; and I say more, that no writer of fiction in modern times has done so much for the advancement of a healthy, moral, and truly Christian feeling in society, or for the destruction and the utter demolition of that Baal of selfish hypocrisy and cunning cant which has corrupted the ranks of our teachers of the Gospel, and, I fear, brought direct contempt on Christianity itself—leading only too many to estimate the importance of the religion by the moral standard of some of its functionaries.

 Mr. Dickens has satirised the clergy. Has he ? Does the clerical body at large accept and and champion the Reverend Mr. Stiggins— that worthy man whose burning and shining light manifested itself chiefly through his nose, and whose influences of the spirit were derived mainly through the medium of pineapple-rum? Do the ministers of the Gospel admit, as a clergyman and a brother, the Reverend Mr. Chadband ? Or will the elect and sanctified laity of any class recognise Mr. Pecksniff as one of themselves, whose character is so like their own that anything said against him is said equally against them ? If they do—if they take up the cause of Stiggins, Chadband, Pecksniff, and Company, and make it their own —they prove themselves to be just as bad, and they deserve the fullest measure of satire, sarcasm, and scorn that can be poured out upon them. If they do not—if they disapprove, condemn, and with holy hate and divine hatred those infamous vices which these characters personify—why blame Mr. Dickens for denouncing them ? Is he not doing with tenfold power what it is their duty to do themselves ? and is he to be blamed for saying openly and manfully what they in their hearts both know and feel to be true and to be merited ?

 Or, are there no Stigginses, no Chadbands ? Alas! I fear me there be many still. There is nothing in the clerical class to exempt it from the common lot of all other classes. Pray, what have we of perfect in this world of ours ? Are there not spots even upon the sun himself? I no more hold the Christian ministry accountable for the exceptions to its general rule of earnest morality and Christian zeal, than I would hold the Royal College of Surgeons responsible for the peculiarities of Mr. Bob Sawyer or Mr. Ben Allen. Are there no good, kindly nurses in the world because of Mrs. Gamp ? Do we find the whole race of schoolmasters up in wrath because of Mr. Squeers ? There is not a class in society which has not its exceptions of eccentricity or of immorality; there is not one of these exceptions that Mr. Dickens has not satirised with more or less power or prominence; yet it is only from the clergy and from the " saints" that we hear the anathema pronounced against Mr. Dickens, and Boz and all his works denounced as enemies to the Christian ministry and to religion.

 Now, take the other side. Let any man, or, better still, let any woman who has read the voluminous works of this great English novelist, look back over the thousands of passages of truth and tender beauty he has penned— passages that breathed the very soul of peace, good-will, and Christian charity. Read the "Carol,'' read the death of little Dombey—nay, read where you will, and you shall find ten thousand phrases pleading to the heart for love and sympathy. You shall find the highest lessons of immortal hope, and the deepest feelings of human love and tenderness, so woven through his works, that you shall read no book of his in which you shall not feel through all the kindly beating of a Christian heart. When I look back on those hours of happiness and high delight which the works of Charles Dickens have given me, and when I think of all that hundreds of thousands of readers of our English tongue owe to his heart, his hand, and his genius, I feel that to me and them he has been a teacher and a benefactor. And then I feel most acutely how unequal I am to the task of defending him from the monstrous injustice of the accusations that have been made against him.—Belfast Northern Whig.

Advertiser (Hobart, Tas. : 1861 - 1865), Thursday 27 March 1862, page 3