533, p. 83.) Permit me, for the satisfaction of
your readers to state, that I was no "flying tourist," when the fact of
a very considerable waste of fuel in Edinburgh, (fuel which would, I
thought, sell in England, if not wanted in Scotland,) came repeatedly, I
may say, almost daily, under my own personal observation. A residence of
two years in Edinburgh (yes, it certainly was "the Scottish capital,"
for I had previously resided during a longer period in the Irish one,)
enabled me to state what I then beheld, with a scrutiny which certainly
would not have been warranted by a mere casual visit of two days, two
weeks, or two months; that the circumstance should have irritated _S.S._
I cannot consider any fault of mine; my statement was correct. The
possibility of Irish labourers being employed to build in Scotland, as
they are very generally in England, does not seem to have occurred to
your correspondent; I confess it did to me, but considered, to mention
it in my trifling "Domestic Hint," quite unnecessary, since, had their
wastefulness been hitherto unknown to their employers, it might
henceforth, if they pleased "to take a hint," be by them materially
checked. In days when the complaint of poverty is universal, when the
working classes find it difficult to carry on any employment which shall
bring them bread, and when thousands wander over the united kingdom with
no apparent means of subsistence, I did not imagine that a "Hint," as to
a possible source of emolument (were it confined but to half a dozen
individuals) to the poor, would be considered a meet subject for
ridicule.
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