*** The rapidity with which the following Strictures have been hurried through the press, must be pleaded by their Author as an apology for a defective arrangement, and for several verbal inaccuracies which will be found in them. Printed by T. Ratt, Shacklewelt. A LETTER TO THE AUTHOR, ON THE INADEQUACY OF THE POOR LAWS, FOR EMPLOYING, Mr. HALE'S REPLY. BY Mr. BLAIR, Surgeon of the Lock Hospital, &c. London: Published by Messrs. Williams and Smith, Stationers'-court; T. Conder, 169, Fleet-street; and J. Burditt, No. 60, Paternoster-row. SIR, STRICTURES, &C. THE very pointed manner in which you have noticed certain observations contained in my former Letter seems to call upon me for a vindication, but I should feel comparatively little disposition to consult my personal feelings, were I not still firmly persuaded of the fallacy of your reasoning as to the principle and tendency of the Institution in defence of which I have written. My surprise that men of superior sense and discernment should adopt your views is not at all abated, but I feel no objection to admit that both your pamphlets, but particularly the last, are adapted to produce a considerable im→ pression upon persons of a different character. This effect I impute not to the strength of your arguments, but to the falsehood of your representations; not to the evidence of facts, but to the specious manner in which they are adduced-to the intrinsic justness of several of your positions, not to any connexion which they really have with the subject under discussion. B It appears to me probable also, that much of the weight which your books have had with the public, is to be ascribed to the stress which has been laid upon your "personal experience," and 66 practical observation"-and if these had relation to pernicious effects actually produced by the Penitentiary weight they certainly ought to have, but in no part of the evidence which you have brought forward am I able to discover a single fact which evinces, in the smallest degree, the "dangerous tendency" of that Institution. It must be acknowledged, likewise, that you possess some important advantages, peculiar to yourself, as the opponent in this controversy. You crowd together a number of very serious and, I am compelled to add, very false charges; you give them a specious colouring; you blend with them the appearance of an ardent, and, I have no doubt, genuine, zeal for the cause of public morals—you repeat these charges so often, and so positively, that common readers are induced to think that there must be some truth in them; not because they are really convinced, but because they conceive that no man of character, who can say such strong things, so positively, so zealously, and so repeatedly, can be in the wrong. Now in order to invalidate some of these charges, it may be sufficient to oppose a simple denial, sustained by a correct contra-statement. But it is obvious that the error and futility |