A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more so.

Background.

‘A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more so.‘ is a quotation from Sketches by Boz, Our Parish, Chapter 6 (The Ladies’ Societies).

Sketches by Boz is a collection of short pieces written by Charles Dickens and published as a book in 1836.

Context.

Taken from the following passage in The Ladies’ Societies:

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage is more so; the three Miss Browns appointed all the old maids, and carefully excluded the young ones. Maiden aunts triumphed, mammas were reduced to the lowest depths of despair, and there is no telling in what act of violence the general indignation against the three Miss Browns might have vented itself, had not a perfectly providential occurrence changed the tide of public feeling. Mrs. Johnson Parker, the mother of seven extremely fine girls—all unmarried—hastily reported to several other mammas of several other unmarried families, that five old men, six old women, and children innumerable, in the free seats near her pew, were in the habit of coming to church every Sunday, without either bible or prayer-book. Was this to be borne in a civilised country? Could such things be tolerated in a Christian land? Never! A ladies’ bible and prayer-book distribution society was instantly formed: president, Mrs. Johnson Parker; treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Misses Johnson Parker: subscriptions were entered into, books were bought, all the free-seat people provided therewith, and when the first lesson was given out, on the first Sunday succeeding these events, there was such a dropping of books, and rustling of leaves, that it was morally impossible to hear one word of the service for five minutes afterwards.

The Ladies’ Societies, which first appeared in The Evening Chronicle on Thursday, 20 August 1835, is a satire on the evangelical societies of the time, with their missionary zeal to get involved in many causes.

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