hire schoolmaster lays claim to being the
original of Mr. Squeers. One worthy, he has reason to believe, has
actually consulted authorities learned in the law, as to his having good
grounds on which to rest an action for libel; another, has meditated a
journey to London, for the express purpose of committing an assault and
battery on his traducer; a third, perfectly remembers being waited on,
last January twelve-month, by two gentlemen, one of whom held him
in conversation while the other took his likeness; and, although Mr.
Squeers has but one eye, and he has two, and the published sketch does
not resemble him (whoever he may be) in any other respect, still he
and all his friends and neighbours know at once for whom it is meant,
because--the character is SO like him.

"While the Author cannot but feel the full force of the compliment thus
conveyed to him, he ventures to suggest that these contentions may arise
from the fact, that Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class, and
not of an individual. Where imposture, ignorance, and brutal cupidity,
are the stock in trade of a small body of men, and one is described
by these characteristics, all his fellows will recognise something
belonging to themselves, and each will have a misgiving that the
portrait is his own.

"The Author's object in calling public attention to the system would be
very imperfectly fulfilled, if he did not state now, in his own person,
emphatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school are faint
and feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept
down lest they should be deemed impossible. That there are, upon record,
trials at law in which damages have been sought as a poor recompense
for lasting agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon children by the
treatment of the master in these places, involving such offensive and
foul details of neglect, cruelty, and disease, as no writer of fiction
would have the boldness to imagine. And that, since he has been engaged
upon these Adventures, he has received, from private quarters far beyond
the reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts of atrocities, in the
perpetration of which upon neglected or repudiated children, these
schools have been the main instruments, very far exceeding any that
appear in these pages."

This comprises all I need say on the subject; except that if I had seen
occasion, I had resolved to reprint a few of these details of legal
proceedings, from cert