But for the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland.

It is confused and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the situation in Ireland.
Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge.
To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, in making the visits, of which this book is a record.

More than this I could not hope, in the time at my disposal, to do.

With very much less than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, must have found it possible to rest content..