The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To THOMAS HODGSKIN,1 [4 FEBRUARY 1846]

Text from facsimile on e-Bay, 10 June 2006. Date: CD is responding to Hodgskin’s reply to CD’s letter, 2 Feb 46: Wednesday is 4 Feb 46. 

Private

OFFICE OF THE DAILY NEWS / WHITEFRIARS2

Wednesday Night

My Dear Sir.

I have found it so difficult to make any present arrangement in reference to the subject of your un-answered letter – consulting your feeling in reference to Mr. Danson3 – that I have been constrained to leave the matter where it stands. But there is very little difference between you and me, I assure you,4 on this head.5  

Thomas Hodgskin Esquire

Faithfully Yours always

 CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869), economist and journalist: see Pilgrim Letters 1, p. 53n. He had joined the party of Cobden (below) and free trade and in Dec 45 he joined the Daily News team: see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 445 & n.
• 2. The Daily News began publication, 21 Jan; CD resigned as editor, 9 Feb.
• 3. John Towne Danson (1817-98), journalist; private secretary to Benjamin Hawes, the radical politician, from 1844: see Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 448n. CD had offered him an “engagement to write leaders…on financial and commercial subjects” with the Daily News.
• 4. “in reference” deleted by CD.
• 5. The Corn Laws and Richard Cobden. Cobden (1804-65; Dictionary of National Biography), MP 1841-7, was a strong believer in free trade and a leader of the Anti-Corn Law League; he had published a letter addressed to Tenant Farmers in the Daily News, 31 Jan. Danson, at CD’s suggestion, had visited Hodgskin on the evening of Sunday, 1 Feb, to discuss the leaders, apparently written by both men for the Daily News, on the subject of Cobden’s letter. Hodgskin clearly disagreed strongly with Danson’s approach; he may also have resented Danson’s leader and not his, being published in the first place: see further Pilgrim Letters 4, p. 487, n.2. CD later expressed his disagreement with Danson’s leader of 9 Feb, on the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, and the repeal of the Corn Laws, to which Danson replied that CD’s “objections were not groundless”: see To Danson, 9 Feb 46, Pilgrim Letters 12 (Addenda), p. 600.