avarice¹²; I claim him as the legitimate¹³ issue of the father upon whom those vices are seen to recoil¹⁴. And I submit that their recoil upon that old man, in his unhonoured age, is not a mere¹⁵ piece of poetical¹⁶ justice, but is the extreme exposition of a direct truth.

I make this comment, and solicit¹⁷ the reader’s attention to it in his or her consideration of this tale, because nothing is more common in real life than a want of profitable reflection on the causes of many vices and crimes that awaken¹⁸ the general horror. What is substantially true of families in this respect, is true of a whole commonwealth¹⁹. As we sow, we reap. Let the reader go into the children’s side of any prison in England, or, I grieve to add, of many workhouses, and judge whether those are monsters who disgrace our streets, people our hulks and penitentiaries²⁰, and overcrowd our penal²¹ colonies, or are creatures whom we have deliberately²² suffered to be bred for misery²³ and ruin.

The American portion of this story is in no other respect a caricature than as it is an exhibition, for the most part (Mr Bevan expected), of a ludicrous side, only, of the American character—of that side which was, four-and-twenty years ago, from its nature, the most

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