MISS MARTIN EAU AND THE " PROSPECTIVE RE VIE W."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
S111, —I have not had an opportunity of reading Miss Mar- tineau's " Autobiography," but on my return to England, after a lengthened absence, a friend has drawn my attention to the follow- ing extract from Mrs. Chapman's supplementary volume, relating to an article by Mr. Martineau in the Prospective Review, 1851, on " Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development," by Henry George Atkinson, F.G.S., and Harriet Martineau :—" This excuse was occasionally offered for the reviewer,—that it was his duty as a Christian minister, and his duty to his God, to clear himself and Unitarianism of the burden of imputed heresy. He hid not been able, it was said, to prevail on Mr. Thom and Mr. J. J. Tayler,* his co-editors, to do it for him, and so he was obliged to forget that he was a man and a brother, to discharge what seemed to him a higher duty." In all this there is not a word of truth. It was by the express desire of his co-editors, in their allotment of the work of the Review, that Mr. Martineau con- sented to undertake a subject from which he would gladly have escaped. For the authorship of the article in question the responsibility belonged to his colleagues at least as much as to himself ; and of no portion of its contents did they express or feel anything but satisfaction and admiration for its unanswerable completeness. After having seen the exposure which had to be made of Mr. Atkinson as an oracular authority, they may, con- sidering who was associated with him, have felt some compunc- tions—I cannot affirm that they did—for having imposed on Mr, Martineau the distress of such a task. But the fact is, as any one may see, the article is faultlessly tender towards Miss Mar- tineau ; it deals almost exclusively with Mr. Atkinson's qualifica- tions, and mentions his co-author at all only to lament that she should have surrendered herself to so incompetent a guide.—I am, Sir, &c., Oakfield, Greenbank, Liverpool, April 3. Jon H. 'Rion.
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