Brief description: Manuscript of 'Our Commission', 1855, satirical article by Dickens published in Household Words on the 11 August 1855.
Label: In 1850 The Lancet, a medical journal still publishing today, raised concerns about widespread food adulteration – adding cheaper substitutes to staples like flour or coffee. Dickens uses the Lancet’s recommendation of a Sanitary Commission to satirise the government in his magazine Household Words, treating ‘government’ as a food which has been adulterated with politicians and bureaucrats. Dickens preferred writing in blue ink in the latter half of his life as seen here.
Collection: Archives & Manuscripts
Object number: AA6
Object type: manuscript
Production person: Charles Dickens
Production date: 11 August 1855
Inscription content: OUR COMMISSION.

THE disclosures in reference to the adulteration of Food, Drinks, and Drugs, for which
the public are indebted to the vigor and spirit of our contemporary THE LANCET, lately inspired us with the idea of originating a Commission to inquire into the extensive adulteration of certain other articles which it is of the last importance that the country should possess in a genuine state. Every class of the general public was included in this large Commission; and the whole of the analyses, tests, observations, and experiments, were made by that accomplished practical chemist, MR. BULL.

The first subject of inquiry was that article of universal consumption familiarly known in England as "Government." Mr. Bull produced a sample of this commodity, purchased about the middle of July in the present year, at a wholesale establishment in Downing Street. The first remark to be made on the sample before the Commission, Mr. Bull observed, was its excessive dearness. There was little doubt that the genuine article could be furnished to the public, at a fairer profit to the real producers, for about fifty per cent less than the cost price of the specimen under consideration. In quality, the specimen was of an exceedingly poor and low description; being deficient in flavor, character, clearness, brightness, and almost every other requisite. It was what would be popularly termed wishy-washy, muddled, and flat. Mr. Bull pointed out to the Commission, floating on the top of this sample, a volatile ingredient, which he considered had no business there. It might be harmless enough, taken into the system at a debating-society, or after a public dinner, or a comic song; but in its present connection, it was dangerous. It had not improved with keeping. It had come into use as a ready means of making froth, but froth was exactly what ought not to be found at the top of this article, or indeed in any part of it. The sample before the Commission, was frightfully adulterated with immense infusions of the common weed called Talk. Talk, in such combination, was a rank Poison. He had obtained a precipitate of Corruption from this purchase. He did not mean metallic corruption, as deposits of gold, silver or copper; but, that species of corruption which, on the proper tests being applied, turned white into black, and black into white, and likewise engendered quantities of parasite vermin. He had tested the strength of the sample, and found it not nearly up to the mark. He had detected the presence of a Grey deposit in one large Department, which produced vacillation and weakness; indisposition to action to-day, and action upon compulsion to-morrow. He considered the sample, on the whole, decidedly unfit for use. Mr. Bull went on to say, that he had purchased another specimen of the same commodity at an opposition establishment over the way, which bore the sign of the British Lion, and proclaimed itself, with the aid of a Brass Band, as "The only genuine and patriotic shop;" but, that he had found it equally deleterious; and that he had not succeeded in discovering any dealer in the commodity under consideration who sold it in a genuine or wholesome state.

The bitter drug called Public Offices, formed the next subject of inquiry. Mr. Bull produced an immense number of samples of this drug, obtained from shops in Downing Street, Whitehall, Palace Yard, the Strand, and elsewhere. Analysis had detected in every one of them, from seventy-five to ninety-eight per cent of Noodledom. Noodledom was a deadly poison. An over-dose of it would destroy a whole nation, and he had known a recent case where it had caused the death of many thousand men. It was sometimes called Routine, sometimes Gentlemanly Business, sometimes The Best Intentions, and sometimes Amiable Incapacity; but, call it what you would, analysis always resolved it into Noodledom. There was nothing in the whole united domains of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, so incompatible with all the functions of life as Noodledom. It was producible with most unfortunate ease. Transplant anything from soil and conditions it was fit for, to soil and conditions it was not fit for, and you immediately had Noodledom. The germs of self- propagation contained within this baleful poison, were incalculable: Noodledom uniformly and constantly engendering Noodledom, until every available inch of space was over-run
by it. The history of the adulteration of the drug now before the Commission, he conceived to be this:-Every wholesale dealer in that drug was sure to have on hand, in beginning business, a large stock of Noodledom; which was extremely cheap, and lamentably abundant. He immediately mixed the drug with the poison. Now, it was the peculiarity of the Public-Office trade that the wholesale dealers were constantly retiring from business, and having successors. A new dealer came into possession of the already adulterated stock, and he, in his turn, infused into it a fresh quantity of Noodledom from his own private store. Then, on his retirement, came another dealer who did the same; then, on his retirement, another dealer who did the same; and so on. Thus, many of the samples before the Commission, positively contained nothing but Noodledom - enough, in short, to paralyze the whole country. To the question, whether the useful properties of the drug before the Commission were not of necessity impaired by these malpractices, Mr. Bull replied, that all the samples were perniciously weakened, and that half of them were good for nothing. To the question, how he would remedy a state of things so much to be deplored, Mr. Bull replied, that he would take the drug out of the hands of mercenary
dealers altogether.

Mr. Bull next exhibited three or four samples of Lawn-sleeves, warranted at the various establishments from which they had been procured, to be fine and spotless, but evidently soiled and composed of inferior materials ill made up. On one pair, he pointed out extensive stains of printer's-ink, of a very foul kind; also a coarse interweaving, which on examination clearly betrayed, without the aid of the microscope, the fibres of the thistle, Old Bailey Attorneyism. A third pair of these sleeves, though sold as white, were really nothing but the ordinary Mammon pattern, chalked over - a fact which Mr. Bull showed to be beyond dispute, by merely holding them up to the light. He represented this branch of industry as overstocked, and in an unhealthy condition.

There were then placed upon the table, several samples of British Peasant, to which Mr.
Bull expressed himself as particularly solicitous to draw the attention of the Commission, with one plain object: the good of his beloved country. He remarked that with that object before him, he would not inquire into the general condition, whether perfectly healthy or otherwise, of any of the samples now produced. He would not ask, whether this specimen or that specimen might have been stronger, larger, better fitted for wear and tear, and less liable to early decay, if the human creature were reared with a little more of such care, study, and attention, as were rightfully bestowed on the vegetable world around it. But, the samples before the Commission had been obtained from every county in England, and, though brought from opposite parts of the kingdom, were alike deficient in the ability to defend their country by handling a gun or a sword, or by uniting in any mode of action, as a disciplined body. It was said in a breath, that the English were not a military people, and that they made (equally on the testimony of their friends and enemies), the best soldiers in the world. He hoped that in a time of war and common danger he might take the liberty of putting those opposite assertions into the crucible of Common Sense, consuming the Humbug, and producing the Truth - at any rate he would, whether or no. Now, he begged
to inform the Commission that, in the samples before them and thousands of others, he had carefully analysed and tested the British Peasant, and had found him to hold in combination just the same qualities that he always had possessed. Analysing and testing, however, as a part of the inquiry, certain other matters not fairly to be separated from it, he (Mr. Bull) had found the said Peasant to have been some time ago disarmed by lords and gentlemen who were jealous of their game, and by administrations - hirers of spies and suborners of false witnesses - who were jealous of their power. "So, if you wish to restore to these samples," said Mr. Bull, the serviceable quality that I find to be wanting in
them, and the absence of which so much surprises you, be a little more patriotic and a little less timorously selfish; trust your Peasant a little more; instruct him a little better, in a freeman's knowledge - not in a good child's merely; and you will soon have your Saxon Bowmen with percussion rifles, and may save the charges of your Foreign Legion."

Having withdrawn the samples to which his observations referred - the production whereof, in connection with Mr. Bull's remarks, had powerfully impressed the assembled Commission, some of whom even went so far as to register vows on the spot that they would look into this matter some day - Mr. Bull laid before the Commission a great variety of extremely fine specimens of genuine British Job. He expressed his opinion that these thriving Plants upon the public property, were absolutely immortal: so surprisingly did they flourish, and so perseveringly were they cultivated. Job was the only article he had found in England, in a perfectly unadulterated state. He congratulated the Commission on there being at least one commodity enjoyed by Great Britain, with which nobody successfully meddled, and of which the Public always had an ample supply, unattended by the smallest prospect of failure in the perennial crop.

On the subsidence of the sensation of pleasure with which this gratifying announcement
was received, Mr. Bull informed the Commission, that he now approached the most serious
and the most discouraging part of his task. He would not shrink from a faithful description of the laborious and painful analysis which formed the crown of his labors, but he would prepare the Commission to be shocked by it. With these introductory words, he laid before them a specimen of Representative Chamber.

When the Commission had examined, obviously with emotions of the most poignant and painful nature, the miserable sample produced, Mr. Bull proceeded with his description. The specimen of Representative Chamber to which he invited their anxious attention, was brought from Westminster Market. It had been collected there in the month of July in the present year. No particular counter had been resorted to more than another, but the whole market had been laid under contribution to furnish the sample. Its diseased condition would be apparent, without any scientific aids, to the most short sighted individual. It was fearfully adulterated with Talk, stained with Job, and diluted with large quantities of coloring matter of a false and deceptive nature. It was thickly overlaid with a varnish which he had resolved into its component parts, and had found to be made of Trash (both maudlin and defiant), boiled up with large quantities of Party Turpitude, and a heap of Cant. Cant, he need not tell the Commission, was the worst of poisons. It was almost inconceivable to him how an article in itself so wholesome as Representative Chamber,
could have been got into this disgraceful state. It was mere Carrion, wholly unfit for human consumption, and calculated to produce nausea and vomiting.

On being questioned by the Commission, whether, in addition to the deleterious substances already mentioned, he had detected the presence of Humbug in the sample before them, Mr. Bull replied, "Humbug? Rank Humbug, in one form or another, pervades the entire mass." He went on to say, that he thought it scarcely in human nature to endure, for any length of time, the close contemplation of this specimen: so revolting was it to all the senses. Mr. Bull was asked, whether he could account; first, for this alarming degeneracy in an article so important to the Public; and secondly, for its acceptance
by the Public? The Commission observing that however the stomachs of the people might revolt at it - and justly - still they did endure it, and did look on at the Market in which it was exposed. In answer to these inquiries, Mr. Bull offered the following explanation.

In respect of the wretched condition of the article itself (he said), he attributed that result, chiey, to its being in the hands of those unprincipled wholesale dealers to whom he had already referred. When one of those dealers succeeded to a business - or "came in," according to the slang of the trade - his first proceeding, after the adulteration of Public Office with Noodledom, was to consider how he could adulterate and lower his Representative Chamber. This he did by a variety of arts, recklessly employing the dirtiest agents. Now, the trade had been so long in the hands of these men, and one of them had
so uniformly imitated another (however violent their trade-opposition might be among themselves), in adulterating this commodity, that respectable persons who wished to do business fairly, had been prevented from investing their capital, whatever it might be, in this branch of commerce, and had indeed been heard to declare in many instances that they would prefer the calling of an honest scavenger. Again, it was to be observed, that the before-mentioned dealers, being for the most part in a large way, had numbers of retainers, tenants, tradesmen, and workpeople, upon whom they put off their bad Representative Chamber, by compelling them to take it whether they liked it or not. In respect of the acceptance of this dreadful commodity by the Public, Mr. Bull observed, that it was not to be denied that the Public had been much too prone to accept the coloring matter in preference to the genuine article. Sometimes it was Blood, and sometimes it was Beer; sometimes it was Talk, and sometimes it was Cant; but, mere coloring- matter they certainly had too often looked for, when they should have looked for bone and sinew. They suffered heavily for it now, and he believed were penitent; there was no doubt whatever in his mind that they had arrived at the mute stage, of indignation, and had thoroughly found this article out.

One further question was put by the Commission: namely, what hope had the witness
of seeing this necessary of English life, restored to a genuine and wholesome state? Mr.
Bull returned, that his sole hope was in the Public's resolutely rejecting all coloring matter
whatsoever - in their being equally inexorable with the dealers, whether they threatened or cajoled - and in their steadily insisting on being provided with the commodity in a pure and useful form. The Commission then adjourned, in exceedingly low spirits, sine die.

Manuscript of 'Our Commission', 1855