Speeches. Literary and Social by Charles Dickens

[On presiding at a public Meeting of the Printers' Readers, held at the Salisbury Hotel, on the above date, Mr. Dickens said: -]

THAT as the meeting was convened, not to hear him, but to hear a statement of facts and figures very nearly affecting the personal interests of the great majority of those present, his preface to the proceedings need be very brief.