PREFACE TO BARNABY RUDGE.
If the object an author has had in writing a book cannot be discovered from its perusal, the probability is that it is either very deep, or very shallow. Hoping that mine may lie somewhere between these two extremes, I shall say very little about it, and that only in reference to one point.
No account of the Gordon Riots having been, to my knowledge, introduced into any Work of Fiction, and the subject presenting very extraordinary and remarkable features. I was led to project this Tale.
It is unnecessary to say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who in their daily practice set at nought the commonest principles of right and wrong; that it is begotten of intolerance and persecution; that it is senseless, besotted, inveterate, and unmerciful; all History teaches us. But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well, to profit by even so humble and familiar an example as the "No Popery" riots of seventeen hundred and eighty.
However imperfectly those disturbances are set forth in the following pages, they are impartially painted by one who has no sympathy with the Romish Church, although he acknow-
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