Some apology may be judged necessary for a work which assumes real characters, tho’ in the title-page it acknowleges itself to be a fiction.

I have not indeed made free with the names of any of the Penitents; for tho’ some may imagine, that little ceremony is requisite towards persons who have broke thro’ all the forms of decency, and decorums of virtue, yet I cannot apprehend that that gives me a title to endeavour to bring those again on the stage of the world, who have, for so good a reason, retired from it: But I may perhaps be thought by others to have gone too far in making my imaginary persons assume their characters; and if I can find any excuse for myself, it must be in the motives which induced me to do so.

My first aim in the following work was to plead the cause of the Penitents in the Magdalen-House, who by many are represented as persons too intirely abandoned to guilt and infamy, to deserve relief, to which surely distress alone is a sufficient title. Judgment is not intrusted with us: ‘Every man must stand or fall to his own master.’ Shall We be more rigid than HE who knoweth the heart, and hath a right to our obedience? ‘He maketh his sun to shine on the just and on the unjust.’ Virtue alone can merit our esteem; but misery deserves our pity, and indigence may claim our bounty.

Tho’ the profession of a prostitute is the most despicable and hateful that imagination can form; yet the individuals are frequently worthy objects of compassion; and I am willing to believe, that if people did but reflect on the various stratagems used at first to corrupt them, while poverty often, and still oftener vanity, is on the side of the corruptor, they would smooth the stern brow of rigid virtue, and turn the contemptuous frown into tears of pity.