This book was written to exhibit a useful moral to the country. It will
startle, I humbly trust, many a hard-hearted Landlord and flagitious
Agent into a perception of their duty, and it will show the negligent
and reckless Absentee how those from whose toils and struggles he
derives his support, are oppressed, and fleeced, and trampled on in his
name.

It will also teach the violent and bigoted Conservative--or, in other
words, the man who _still_ inherits the Orange sentiments of past
times--a lesson that he ought not to forget. It will also test the whole
spirit of modern Conservatism, and its liberality. If there be at the
press, or anywhere else, a malignant bigot, with great rancor and little
honesty, it is very likely he will attack my book; and this, of course,
he is at liberty to do. I deny, however, that modern Conservatism is
capable of adopting or cherishing the outrages which disgraced the
Orangemen of forty years ago, or even of a later period. And for this
reason I am confident that the Conservative Press of Ireland will
not only sustain me, but fight my battles, if I shall be ungenerously
attacked. Let them look upon these pictures, and if it ever should
happen that arms and irresponsible power shall be entrusted to them,
perhaps the recollection of their truth may teach them a lesson of
forbearance and humanity toward those that differ from them in creed,
that may be of important service to our common country. If so, I
shall have rendered a service to that country, which, as is usual, may
probably be recognized as valuable, when perhaps my bones are mouldering
in the clay, and my ear insensible to all such acknowledgments.

As for, myself, I have been so completely sickened by the bigoted
on each side, that I have come to the determination, as every honest
Irishman ought, of knowing no party but my country, and of devoting such