IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1839.
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
I dedicate to you the following pages, written by one of your fellow-citizens, who, though a European by birth, is firmly and devotedly attached to his adopted country.
If their contents should in any way offend you,—if the serious or ironical arguments contained in them should meet with your displeasure,—I entreat you to consider the purity of the Author’s intention, who, even where he employs personal satire, wishes but to expose error for the purpose of reform, not of ridicule.
Neither must you look upon them as containing aught against the laws and institutions of your country. Not those glorious monuments of the virtue and wisdom of your fathers, but the men who would turn them to vicious and selfish purposes are justly upheld to derision.
A people like yourselves, great, powerful, and magnanimous, is as much beyond the reach of personal satire as it is proof against the weapons of its foes: not so the men who, claiming for themselves a specific distinction, cannot properly be considered as identified with your principles and character.