In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have endeavoured to
avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have undertaken to develop.
Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents
I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If
I have hold them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books
which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of
what is passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much,
by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It
is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty
authors have done before! If I had foreseen from the first all the
difficulty of my project, my courage would have failed me to undertake
the execution of it.

Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed inconsistencies the
favourite object of their research, will perhaps remark with exultation
on the respect expressed in this work for marriage, and exclaim, "It was
not always thus!" referring to the pages in which this subject is
treated in the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" for the proof of
their assertion. The answer to this remark is exceedingly simple. The
production referred to in it, the first foundation of its author's claim
to public distinction and favour, was a treatise, aiming to ascertain
what new institutions in political society might be found more
conducive to general happiness than those which at present prevail. In
the course of this disquisition it was enquired whether marriage, as it
stands described and supported in the laws of England, might not with
advantage admit of certain modifications. Can anything be more distinct
than such a proposition on the one hand and a recommendation on the
other that each man for himself should supersede and trample upon the
institutions of the country in which he lives? A thousand things might