the earlier chapters) was to show that there is nothing essentially
different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that the slang of
the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant of the other.

The Supplementary Essays, entitled "Tomlinsoniana," which contain the
corollaries to various problems suggested in the Novel, have been
restored to the present edition.

CLIFTON, July 25, 1840.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1848.

Most men who with some earnestness of mind examine into the mysteries of
our social state will perhaps pass through that stage of self-education
in which this Novel was composed. The contrast between conventional
frauds, received as component parts of the great system of civilization,
and the less deceptive invasions of the laws which discriminate the
_meum_ from the _tuum_, is tempting to a satire that is not without its
justice. The tragic truths which lie hid in what I may call the
Philosophy of Circumstance strike through our philanthropy upon our
imagination. We see masses of our fellow-creatures the victims of
circumstances over which they had no control,--contaminated in infancy by
the example of parents, their intelligence either extinguished or turned
against them, according as the conscience is stifled in ignorance or
perverted to apologies for vice. A child who is cradled in ignominy,
whose schoolmaster is the felon, whose academy is the House of
Correction,--who breathes an atmosphere in which virtue is poisoned, to
which religion does not pierce,--becomes less a responsible and reasoning
human being than a wild beast which we suffer to range in the wilderness,
till it prowls near our homes, and we kill it in self-defence.