Letter from J. W. H. Pritchard to Mary Anne Rawson (English MS 414/64)
Attercliffe April 11th 1834.
My Dear Madam
Gratified and honoured as I must necessarily feel by the task you have assigned me I cannot reject that you have left me so little to do. As, however, you are pleased to say that the more the corrections that are made the better you will be pleased, I will venture to suggest one or two alterations, which after all I am not satisfied will be improvements.
In the sentence beginning "acknowledgments are also due &c" the words "oppressed" & "expressed" happen to be so situated as to occasion a sort of jingle in the sound; perhaps the former might be changed for ? with advantage. In the next sentence I fancy that the word
everyhand which has taken a prominent part [or been actively em- ployed] in pulling down the prison house, & in striking off the fetters of the bondsmen, could have put &c"
In speaking of Slavery in America you say that "two millions of wretched slaves groan beneath the lash of the oppressor ." There is nothing in the last expression that I think either in- applicable or too severe; but as the lash is more especially & more cruelly employed in the West Indies than in America, while there are other & perhaps more degrading evils con- nected with it in the latter place, you will pardon me for being so hyper-critical as suggesting whether you could approve of the substitution of a clause instead of "groan beneath the lash of the oppressor." It might be –– "the doomed to suffer its X brand & its curse" –– or something to that effect.
I am really ashamed to make these observations as the exceptions are so trifling & even questionable. There is one sentence which you have left unfinished, but I have not presumed to add anything. The Preface appears to me just what the case required, & if you had not made it a sort of duty to me to look out for something to correct, I should not have found anything that in my view would have called for alteration. The lines of Montgomery are very beautiful & appropriate. Would you have the sentence placed above the two passages of Scripture in the same position which is now occupies?