Acquired as part of a large collection of letters addressed to William Angus Knight, Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and Wordsworth scholar. Items in the collection have been individually accessioned and cataloged.
Writing "I cannot tell you how pleased I was with your last letter, or how much I value its kind expressions - it cheers me so much to find that even when I feel competent to very little - feeling at many times, indeed at most times, an even painful want of hold & grasp upon life & thought, I can still be something mentally as well as affectionately to a friend like you"; explaining that she has been thinking about "the subject of union, true loving union with God through Christ" and saying that she wishes they could talk about this together; writing "It often seems to me that Christianity has still a great advance to make in this direction, when we consider the deep unrighteousness such as slavery in its various forms still tolerated in many Christian countries - also in almost all forms of political & commercial thought what a denial there is of the great primitive principles of justice & morality!"; describing examples of poverty and exploitation in parts of England; asking if he has seen "accounts going the round of the papers of children in the Eastern Fen Counties, working in the field in gangs driven by a ganger, & sleeping away from home - It w'd be foolish to suppose there is anything legally compulsory in this, or to compare it, as the papers do, with negro slavery, but as it is, it is sufficiently cruel & demoralizing, & the poor man, even when legally free, is oppressed because of his poverty, which can drive to as hard tasks as any overseer - I often wish the Church would preach up the great relative duties of life - & to do this, one need not set one class against the other, or keep exclusively to public life"; writing further on the relationship between justice, virtue, and religion; relating details of the "...delightful visit I am having here"; adding, in a postscript, news of mutual friends in Warrington and referring to Welsh poetry.