from the details in this passage, choose the inference that dickens most likely wants readers to make about the members of the board in charge of the workhouse

Charles Dickens commonly used his writings to make the public aware of how boys where being abused under the current child labor laws in England. Dickens specifically uses Oliver being placed in a workhouse to create sympathy for the real life conditions that many children faced at the time that Oliver Twist was written. In many ways, Dickens used his writings as a social satire for the times.  

Workhouses were nineteenth-century institutions that provided food, lodging, and employment for the poor. However, they were excellent examples of the moral hypocrisy of the upper and middle classes.

The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered—the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work.

Explanation:

i suggest it is anadiplosis

first of all the mood needs to be defined: it is obviously a mood of deceitful relief and serenity. why? because the cape horn is one of the most violent maritime regions of earth and although it has been left behind, it is a personification of ahab’s delirium and the fact that the end of the passage speaks about it about being “hidden” but “raving” immediately conveys the feeling the calm is not permanent but fleeting.

furthermore, the oxymoron “mild stun'sails” is the first instance of such feeling as the adjective “mild” is associated with “stunned” underscoring the fleeting nature of this “tranquil” moment. and the contrasts keep piling up, with the opposition between “dark den” and “blessed light and air” to end with the final conclusion that leaves the reader with the uneasy knowledge that this is just a reprieve.