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. I said, or intended to say, if shavings and loose chippings of
wood are of little value for fuel in Scotland, they are acceptable in
England; and why, if the proprietors of new houses choose during their
erection, to save the fuel they produce, and of which I repeat I have
seen vast quantities burnt, and bestow it as a charity on such persons
as might think it worth acceptance for sale, "over the Border;" why they
should not do so, I have yet to learn.[5] However, waiving this scheme,
which _S.S._ may be inclined to think rather Utopian, and conceding,
that if Scotland needs not for fuel, her refuse chips and shavings, they
would not answer in that light as a marketable commodity in the sister
country, still wood and wood-ashes have become of late years, agents so
valuable and important in chemistry, and other sciences and arts, as to
furnish another, and all-sufficient reason why no reckless destruction
should be allowed of an article, every species of which may be rendered,
under some modification, of utility.