PREFACE
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom,
decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating
hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element
of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three
great problems of the century — the degradation of man
through pauperism, the corruption of woman through
hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light —
are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part
of the world; — in other words, and with a still wider significance,
so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books
of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.
HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.