[152b-421]

Poor Bill Preface

or determinate view to general publication.

Meantime the Penitentiary System, the principal object and subject matter of these letters, the Penitentiary system, after undergoing a variety of impediments in the course of its struggles to come into existence, seemed when viewed in the character of a /general/ national establishment, to have fallen finally asleep. But in the year 1789 the attention of the public in Ireland having been drawn to it by a in some degree Parliamentary notice given about that time by the Right Honourable Sir John Parnell, then and now Chancellor of the Exchequer in that kingdom of a [...?] to make trial of the Penitentiary system in that sister kingdom, a copy of those letters falling in the way of the Right Honourable Gentleman gave birth to a negociation /communication/, in the course of which and for the purpose of it these Letters were committed to the Irish press were first brought to light through the medium of the Irish press.