How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined, when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. (2.1.3)
Here, the narrator tells us that the entrepreneurs and capitalists hold the real power in the country. Whenever something doesn't go their way, they complain to Parliament that their businesses will fall and threaten that these businesses are too big to fail. Then they hold out their hands for a government bail-out.
Quote #5
'Our people are a bad lot, ma'am; but that is no news, unfortunately.' 'What are the restless wretches doing now?' asked Mrs. Sparsit. 'Merely going on in the old way, ma'am. Uniting, and leaguing, and engaging to stand by one another.' 'It is much to be regretted,' said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity, 'that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations […] I do not pretend to understand these things,' said Mrs. Sparsit, with dignity, 'my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and that it's high time it was done, once for all.' (2.1.18-25)
Mrs. Sparsit's Roman nose makes everything she says sound like she is an old Roman emperor. The people should be "conquered" and her "severity" is "Coriolanian" (Coriolanus was a famous Roman military commander).
Quote #6
Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school, there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors') view of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever known, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on the best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded thirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole system would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow, and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow's cap. And the honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any serious reference to the Coroner's Inquest, and brought the railway off with Cheers and Laughter. (2.2.3)
Instead of holding the Directors of the train company responsible for the accident caused by their train, the House of Commons (part of Parliament) dismisses the whole case because they are amused at the idea of a dead cow. That's a pretty searing accusation of government right there.