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MEN AND CANDLES. 



" An able cliymist and physician declares his conviction, that it would be possible to transmute 

 dead bodies into CANDLES." Times, Jan. 1, 1828. 



Now this idea, which the philosopher cannot sufficiently admire, has 

 already been practically illustrated. Voltaire tells us, that, during the 

 Irish rebellion, the bodies of the English slain were most economically 

 worked up into candles. A good wife complaining at the huckster's that 

 the candles were not so good as they were wont to be, " That arises," 



replied the tradesman, " from the scarcity of tallow ; we can get but few 

 dead Englishmen!" We cannot but regret that this important chemical 

 truth was not enforced on the attention of the late Emigration Com- 

 mittee. The idea of transporting ten thousand human beings from their 

 native land is shocking to every benevolent breast ; but what a grand work 

 of political economy to transmute this superflux of humanity into candles ! 



There is a sublimity in the idea, together with evident profit. With 

 this truth in view, and with a redundant Irish population, we may snap 

 our fingers for the future at any chance of war with Russia. We will 

 not, at the present moment, bring into figures the number of candles 

 which every Irish family allowing one able-bodied man, one woman, 

 and nine children to each would produce ; but it is evident the pro- 

 duct would be immense. To be sure, from the natural irritability of 

 the people, we do not believe an Irishman would burn as well as a Hol- 

 lancfer: there would doubtless be an occasional spluttering from the 

 taper. But, after gravely considering the matter, we do not see why 

 England (it being ordered to such effect by the solemnity of an act of 

 parliament), having on her hands a heavy Irish population, might not 

 become a great exporting country. Nothing remains for the govern- 

 ment but to advertise for contractors, to furnish a certain number of 

 journeymen tallow-chandlers, with a sufficiency of pipe-staving, to be 

 shipped immediately for Ireland ; when, a due portion of the people 

 being melted and hooped in the allotted casks, ships may be ordered to 

 take in the produce at the several sea-ports ; and the work is finished ! 



In considering this question, one knows not which sufficiently to admire 

 its ingenuity, or its evident humanity. But we would now speak of 

 the philosophy of the question; or, rather, of those incidents which, in 

 the adoption of the melting system in England, must give rise to philo- 

 sophical disquisition. The dust of Alexander in a bung-hole is a startling 

 mockery of human greatness j and yet we know not if a more painful 

 sense of debasement, mingled with a touch of the ludicrous, would not 

 be in the thought of the tallow of an Alexander formed into the soli- 

 tary rushlight of the wretched poor depending from a nail in the 

 empty cupboard. Cowper speaks of a candle in a strain which asso- 

 ciates the taper with the most chilling and miserable attributes of want : 

 it is in The Winter Evening 



" The taper soon extinguished, which I saw 

 Dangled along at the cold finger's end, 

 Just when the day declined." 



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