piety, a
humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and
offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest
dissensions and meanest affairs of life, to the extraordinary confusion of
ignorant minds, let them understand that it is always the latter, and never the
former, which is satirized here. Further, that the latter is here satirized as
being, according to all experience, inconsistent with the former, impossible of
union with it, and one of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods existent in
society - whether it establish its head-quarters, for the time being, in Exeter
Hall, or Ebenezer Chapel, or both. It may appear unnecessary to offer a word of
observation on so plain a head. But it is never out of season to protest against
that coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip, and idle in
the heart; or against the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons
who, in the words of SWIFT, have just enough religion to make them hate, and not
enough to make them love, one another.
    I have found it curious and interesting, looking over the sheets of this
reprint, to mark what important social improvements have taken place about us,
almost imperceptibly, since they were originally written. The licence of
Counsel, and the degree to which Juries are ingeniously bewildered, are yet
susceptible of moderation; while an improvement in the mode of conducting
Parliamentary Elections (and even Parliaments too, perhaps) is still within the
bounds of possibility. But legal reforms have pared the claws of Messrs. Dodson
and Fogg; a spirit of self-respect, mutual forbearance, education, and
co-operation for such good ends, has diffused itself among their clerks; places
far apart are brought together, to the present convenience and advantage of the
Public, and to the certain destruction, in time, of a host of petty jealousies,
blindnesses, and prejudices, by which the Public alone have always been the
sufferers; the laws relating to imprisonment for debt are altered; and the Fleet
Prison is pulled down!
    Who knows, but by the time the series reaches its conclusion, it may be
discovered that there are even magistrates in town and country, who should be
taught to shake hands every day with Common-sense and Justice; that even Poor
Laws may have-mercy on the weak, the aged, and unfortunate; that Schools, on the
broad principles of Christianity, are the best adornment for the length and
breadth of this civilised land; that Prison-doors should be barred on the
outside, no