A person can be a gentleman in rags, but nobody can be genteel.
{332} The writer has been checked in print by the Scotch with being a Norfolk man.

Surely, surely, these latter times have not been exactly the ones in which it was expedient for Scotchmen to check the children of any county in England with the place of their birth, more especially those who have had the honour of being born in Norfolk--times in which British fleets, commanded by Scotchmen, have returned laden with anything but laurels from foreign shores.

It would have been well for Britain had she had the old Norfolk man to despatch to the Baltic or the Black Sea lately, instead of Scotch admirals.
{351} As the present work will come out in the midst of a vehement political contest, people may be led to suppose that the above was written expressly for the time.

The writer therefore begs to state that it was written in the year 1854.

He cannot help adding that he is neither Whig, Tory, nor Radical, and cares not a straw what party governs England, provided it is governed well.