translations and extracts from my author, and with occasional, though short views of the great contemporary occurrences in the

state.

For the political sentiments discoverable in my work I am neither inclined, nor, indeed, able to offer an apology. They flow directly from those principles which I imbibed with my first efforts of reflexion, which have derived force from my subsequent reading and observation, which have " grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength." If they should, therefore, unhappily be erroneous, my misfortune, as I fear, is hopelessly irremediable, for they are now so vitally blended with my thought and my feelings, that with them they must exist or must perish. The nature of these principles will be obviously and immediately apparent to my readers; for I have made too explicit an avowal of my political creed, with reference to the civil and the ecclesiastical system of which I am fortunately a member, to be under any apprehensions of suffering by mis

Construction. If any man should affect to see more deeply into my bosom than I profess to see myself; or to detect an ambush of mischief which I have been studious to cover from observation,-that man will be the object not of my resentment but of my pity. I shall be assured that he suffers the infliction of a perverted head or a corrupt heart, and to that I shall contentedly résign him, after expressing a simple perhaps, but certainly a sincere wish for his relief from what may justly be considered as the severest of human evils.

I belong to a fallible species, and am probably to be numbered with the most fallible of its individuals: but I am superior to fraud, and am too proud for concealment. TRUTH, religious moral and political, is what alone I profess to pursue; and if I fancied that I discerned this prime object of my regard by the side of the Mufti or the grand Lama, of the wild demagogues of Athens or the ferocious tribunes of Rome, I would in

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stantly recognize and embrace her. As I find her however, or find a strong and bright resemblance of her in my own country, I feel that I am not summoned to propitiate duty with the sacrifice of prudence, and that, conscious of speaking honestly, I can enjoy the satisfaction of speaking safely. Without acknowledging any thing in common, but a name, with that malignant and selfish faction which, surrendering principles to passion, inflicted, in the earlier periods of the last century, some fatal wounds on the constitution; or with those men who in later times, abandoning their party and its spirit, have struggled to retain its honourable appellation, I glory as I profess myself to be a WHIG, to be of the school of SOMERS and of LOCKE, to arrange myself in the same political class with those enlightened and virtuous statesmen who framed the BILL OF RIGHTS and the ACT OF SETTLEMENT, and who, presenting a crown, which they had wrested from a pernicious bigot and

his family, to the HOUSE OF HANOVER, gave that most honourable and legitimate of titles, the FREE CHOICE OF THE PEOPLE, to the Sovereign who now wields the imperial sceptre of Britain.