it involves, and the experiments it demands,--not indeed according to the
dreams of an insane philosophy, but according to the immutable laws which
proportion the rewards of labour to the respect for property,--a
Government must be formed at last.

There is in this work a subtler question suggested, but not solved,--that
question which perplexes us in the generous ardour of our early
youth,--which, unsatisfactory as all metaphysics, we rather escape from
than decide as we advance in years; namely, make what laws we please, the
man who lives within the pale can be as bad as the man without. Compare
the Paul Clifford of the fiction with the William Brandon,--the hunted
son with the honoured father, the outcast of the law with the dispenser
of the law, the felon with the judge; and as at the last they front each
other,--one on the seat of justice, the other at the convict's bar,--who
can lay his hand on his heart and say that the Paul Clifford is a worse
man than the William Brandon.

There is no immorality in a truth that enforces this question; for it is
precisely those offences which society cannot interfere with that society
requires fiction to expose. Society is right, though youth is reluctant
to acknowledge it. Society can form only certain regulations necessary
for its self-defence,--the fewer the better,--punish those who invade,
leave unquestioned those who respect them. But fiction follows truth
into all the strongholds of convention; strikes through the disguise,
lifts the mask, bares the heart, and leaves a moral wherever it brands a
falsehood.

Out of this range of ideas the mind of the Author has, perhaps, emerged
into an atmosphere which he believes to be more congenial to Art. But he
can no more regret that he has passed through it than he can regret that