...sprinkled doubtless here and there with honest zealots but composed for the most of the very scum and refuse of London, whose growth was fostered by bad criminal laws, bad prison regulations and the worst conceivable police.
It is clear that Dickens did not have a very high opinion of the participants in the Gordon Riots. Although he concedes some were genuinely concerned about the Papists Act, and wanted repeal, these were the people who participated in the quiet and peaceful demonstration, before it escalated into a riot, with looting and pillaging and very little that actually related to the matter in hand.
He cites a broken penal system, and the fact that criminals learned nothing whilst in jail other than how to be more productive criminals. He also believed that people were let out of prison too soon and allowed to resume their nefarious activities.
We must leave the discovery of this mystery, like all others, to time, and accident, and Heaven's pleasure.
Almost every stranger who comes to town is told the mystery of the murder of Reuben Haredale. When Daisy re-tells it, the mystery is over a quarter of a century old, and no closer to being solved. The comment about solving the mystery is really quite prophetic, and implies that it is karma that will reveal the truth in the end. He is right; the mystery is solved when Barnaby Rudge Senior inexplicably returns to the village and confesses, clearing up a case that would likely never have been solved had he not decided to unload himself of the truth.
