gale at table with as much or more variety of plenty than ever; if they are clad in as expensive and changeful a diversity according to their tastes and modes; if they are not deterred from the pleasures of the field by the charges, which government has wisely turned from the culture to the sports of the field; if the theatres are as rich and as well filled, and greater, and at a higher price than ever; (and, what is more important than all) if it is plain from the treasures, which are spread over the soil, or confided to the winds and the seas, that there are as many who are indulgent to their propensities of parsimony, as others to their voluptuous desires, and that the pecuniary capital grows instead of diminishing; on what ground are we author ized to say, that a nation, gamboling in an ocean of superfluity is undone by want? With what face can we pretend, that they who have not denied any one gratification to any one appetite, have a right to plead poverty in order to famish their virtues, and to put their duties on short allowance? That they are to take the law from an imperious enemy, and can contribute no longer to the honour of their king, to the support of the independence of their country, to the salvation of that Europe which, if it falls, must crush them with its gigantic ruins? How can they affect to sweat, and stagger, and groan under their burdens, to whom the mines of Newfoundland, richer than those of Mexico and Peru, are now thrown in as a make-weight in the scale of their exorbitant opulence? What excuse can they have to faint, and creep, and cringe, and prostrate themselves at the footstool of ambition and crime, who, during a short though violent struggle, which they have never supported with the energy of men, have amassed more to their annual accumulation, than all the well-husbanded capital, that enabled their ancestors, by long, and doubtful, and obstinate conflicts, to defend, and liberate, and vindicate the civilized world? But I do not accuse the people of England. As to the great majority of the nation, they have done whatever in their several ranks, and conditions, and descriptions, was required of them by their relative situations in society; and from those the great mass of mankind cannot depart, without the subversion of all public order. They look up to that government, which they obey, that they may be protected. They ask to be led and directed by those rulers, whom Providence and the laws of their

country have set over them, and under their guidance to walk in the ways of safety and honour. They have again delegated the greatest trust, which they have to bestow, to those faithful representatives who made their true voice heard against the disturbers and destroyers of Europe. They suffered, with unapproving acquiescence, solicitations, which they had in no shape desired, to an unjust and usurping power, whom they had never provoked, and whose hostile menaces they did not dread. When the exigencies of the public service could only be met by their voluntary zeal, they started forth with an ardour, which outstripped the wishes of those, who had injured them by doubting, whether it might not be necessary to have recourse to compulsion. They have, in all things, reposed an enduring, but not an unreflecting confidence. That confidence demands a full return; and fixes a responsibility on the ministers entire and undivided. The people stands acquitted, if the war is not carried on in a manner suited to its objects. If the public honour is tarnished; if the public safety suffers any detriment; the ministers, not the people, are to answer it, and they alone. Its armies, its navies, are given to them without stint or restriction. Its treasures are poured out at their feet. Its constancy is ready to second all their efforts. They are not to fear a responsibility for acts of manly adventure. The responsibility which they are to dread, is, lest they should show themselves unequal to the expectation of a brave people. The more doubtful may be the constitutional and economical questions, upon which they have received so marked a support, the more loudly they are called upon to support this great war, for the success of which their country is willing to supersede considerations of no slight importance. Where I speak of responsibility, I do not mean to exclude that species of it, which the legal powers of the country have a right finally to exact from those who abuse a public trust; but high as this is, there is a responsibility which attaches on them, from which the whole legitimate power of this kingdom cannot absolve them; there is a responsibility to conscience and to glory; a responsibility to the existing world, and to that posterity, which men of their eminence cannot avoid for glory or for shame; a responsibility to a tribunal, at which, not only ministers, but kings and parliaments, but even nations themselves, must one day answer.

MY DEAR SIR,

As some prefatory account of the materials, which compose the second posthumous volume of the works of Mr. Burke, and of the causes which have prevented its earlier appearance, will be expected from me, I hope I may be indulged in the inclination I feel to run over these matters in a letter to you, rather than in a formal address to the public.

Of the delay that has intervened since the publication of the former volume, I shall first say a few words. Having undertaken, in conjunction with the late Dr. Lawrence, to examine the manuscript papers of Mr. Burke, and to select and prepare for the press such of them as should be thought proper for publication, the difficulties attending our co-ope ration were soon experienced by us. The remoteness of our places of residence in summer, and our professional and other avocations in winter, opposed perpetual obstacles to the progress of our undertaking.

Soon after the publication of the fourth volume, I was rendered incapable of attending to any business, by a severe and tedious illness. And it was not long after my recovery, before the health of our invaluable friend began gradually to decline; and soon became unequal to the increasing labours of his profession, and the discharge of his parliamentary duties. At length we lost a man, of whom, as I shall have occasion to speak more particularly in another part of this undertaking, I will now content myself with saying, that, in my humble opinion, he merited, and certainly obtained with those best acquainted with his extensive learning and information, a considerable rank among the eminent persons who have adorned the age in which we have lived, and of whose services the public have been deprived by a premature death.

From these causes little progress had been made in our work, when I was deprived of my coadjutor. But from that time you can testify of me, that I have not been idle. You can bear witness to the confused state in which the materials, that compose the present volume, came into my hands. The difficulty of VOL. II.-20

reading many of the manuscripts, obscured by innumerable erasures, corrections, interlincations, and marginal insertions, would perhaps have been insuperable to any person less conversant in the manuscripts of Mr. Burke than myself. To this difficulty succeeded that of selecting from several detached papers, written upon the same subject and the same topics, such as appeared to contain the author's last thoughts and emendations.

When these ditficulties were overcome, there still remained, in many instances, that of assigning its proper place to many detached members of the same piece, where no direct note of connexion had been made. These circumstances, whilst they will lead the reader not to expect, in the cases to which they apply, the finished productions of Mr. Burke, imposed upon me a task of great delicacy and difficulty, namely, that of deciding upon the publication of any and which of these unfinished pieces. I must here beg permission of you, and Lord Fitzwilliam, to inform the public, that in the execution of this part of my duty I requested and obtained your assistance.

Our first care was to ascertain from such evidence, internal and external, as the manuscripts themselves afforded, what pieces appeared to have been at any time intended by the author for publication. Our next was, to select such, as though not originally intended for publication, yet appeared to contain matter that might contribute to the gratification and instruction of the public. Our last object was to determine, what degree of imperfection and incorrectness in papers of either of these classes ought, or ought not, to exclude them from a place in the present volume. This was, doubtless, the most nice and arduous part of our undertaking. The difficulty, however, was, in our minds, greatly diminished by our conviction, that the reputation of our author stood far beyond the reach of injury from any injudicious conduct of ours in making this selection. On the other hand, we were desirous that nothing should be withheld, from which the public might derive any possible benefit.

Nothing more is now necessary, than that I should give a short account of the writings which compose the present volume.

I. FOURTH LETTER on Regicide Peace. Some account has already been given of this letter in the advertisement to the fourth quarto volume. That part of it which is contained between the first and the middle of the page 60, is taken from a manuscript which, nearly to the conclusion, had received the author's last corrections: the subsequent part, to the middle of the page 63, is taken from some loose manuscripts, that were dictated by the author, but do not appear to have been revised by him; and though they, as well as what follows to the conclusion, were evidently designed to make a part of this letter, the editor alone is responsible for the order, in which they are here placed. The last part, from the middle of the page 63, had been printed as a part of the letter, which was originally intended to be the third on Regicide Peace, as in the preface to the fourth volume has already been noticed.

It was thought proper to communicate this letter, before its publication, to Lord Auckland, the author of the pamphlet so frequently alluded to in it. His lordship, in consequence of this communication, was pleased to put into my hands a letter, with which he had sent his pamphlet to Mr. Burke, at the time of its publication; and Mr. Burke's answer to that letter. These pieces, together with the note, with which his lordship transmitted them to me, are prefixed to the letter on Regicide Peace.

II. LETTER to the Empress of Russia.
III. LETTER to Sir Charles Bingham.
IV. LETTER to the Honourable Charles
James Fox.

Of these letters it will be sufficient to remark, that they come under the second of those classes, into which, as I before observed, we divided the papers, that presented themselves to our consideration.

V. LETTER to the Marquis of Rockingham.

VI. An Address to the King.

VII An Address to the British Colonists in North America.

These pieces relate to a most important period in the present reign; and I hope no apology will be necessary for giving them to the public.

VIII. LETTER to the Right Honourable
Edmund Perry.

IX. LETTER to Thomas Burgh, Esq.
X. LETTER to John Merlott, Esq.

The reader will find, in a note annexed to each of these letters an account of the occasions on which they were written. The letter to T. Burgh, Esq. had found its way into some of the periodical prints of the time in Dublin.

XI. REFLECTIONS on the approaching
Executions.

It may not, perhaps now be generally known, that Mr. Burke was a marked object of the rioters in this disgraceful commotion; from whose fury he narrowly escaped. The reflections will be found to contain maxims of the soundest judicial policy, and do equal honour to the head and heart of their illustrious writer.

XII. LETTER to the Right Honourable
Henry Dundas; with the Sketch of a
Negro Code.

Mr. Burke, in the letter to Mr. Dundas, has entered fully into his own views of the slave trade, and has thereby rendered any further explanation on that subject, at present, unnecessary. With respect to the code itself, an unsuccessful attempt was made to procure the copy of it transmitted to Mr. Dundas. It was not to be found among his papers. The editor has therefore been obliged to have recourse to a rough draught of it in Mr. Burke's own handwriting; from which he hopes he has succeeded in making a pretty correct transcript of it, as well as in the attempt he has made to supply the marginal reference alluded to in Mr. Burke's letter to Mr. Dundas.

XIII. LETTER to the Chairman of the
Buckinghamshire Meeting.

Of the occasion of this letter an account is given in the note subjoined to it.

XIV. TRACTS and Letters relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland. These pieces consist of,

1. An unfinished TRACT on the Popery Laws. Of this tract the reader will find an account in the note prefixed to it. 2. A LETTER to William Smith, Esq. Several copies of this letter having got abroad, it was printed and published in Dublin without the permission of Mr. Burke, or of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.

3. SECOND LETTER to Sir Hercules Langrishe. This may be considered as supplementary to the first letter, addressed to same person in January, 1792, which was published in the third volume. 4. LETTER to Richard Burke, Esq. Of this letter, it will be necessary to observe,

that the first part of it appears to have been originally addressed by Mr. Burke to his son, in the manner in which it is now printed, but to have been left unfinished; after whose death he probably designed to have given the substance of it, with additional observations, to the public, in some other form; but never found leisure or inclination to finish it. 5. A LETTER on the Affairs of Ireland, written in the year 1797. The name of the person to whom this letter was addressed, does not appear on the manuscript; nor has the letter been found to which it was written as an answer. And as the gentleman, whom he employed as an amanuensis, is not now living, no discovery of it can be made; unless this publication of the letter should produce some information respecting it, that may enable us in a future volume to gratify, on this point, the curiosity of the reader. The letter was dictated, as he himself tells us, from his couch at Bath; to which place he had gone, by the advice of his physicians, in March, 1797. His health was now rapidly declining; the vigour of his mind remained unimpaired. This, my dear friend, was, I believe, the last letter dictated by him on public affairs:here ended his political labours. XV. FRAGMENTS and Notes of Speeches in Parliament.

1. SPEECH on the Acts of Uniformity. 2. SPEECH on the Bill for the relief of Protestant Dissenters.

3. SPEECH on the petition of the Uni

tarians.

4. SPEECH on the Middlesex election.
5. SPEECH on a bill for shortening the
duration of Parliaments.

6 SPEECH on the Reform of the Repre-
sentation in Parliament.

7 SPEECH on a Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels.

*7. LETTER relative to the same subject. 8. SPEECH on a Bill for repealing the Marriage Act.

9. SPEECH on a Bill to quiet the possessions of the Subject against dormant Claims of the Church.

With respect to these fragments, I have already stated the reasons, by which we were influenced in our determination to publish

This applies to the London Edition in quar. to, from which this is printed.-Publishers.

them. An account of the state, in which these manuscripts were found, is given in the note prefixed to this article.

XVI. HINTS for an Essay on the Drama. This fragment was perused in manuscript by a learned and judicious critic, our late lamented friend Mr. Malone; and under the protection of his opinion, we can feel no hesitation in submitting it to the judgment of the public.

XVII. We are now come to the concluding article of this volume-The ESSAY on the History of England.

At what time of the author's life it was written cannot now be exactly ascertained; but it was certainly begun before he had attained the age of twenty-seven years; as it appears from an entry in the books of the late Mr. Dodsley, that eight sheets of it, which contain the first seventy-four pages of the present edition,* were printed in the year 1757. This is the only part that has received the finishing stroke of the author. In those who are acquainted with the manner in which Mr. Burke usually composed his graver literary works, and of which some account is given in the advertisement prefixed to the fourth volume, this circumstance will excite a deep regret; and whilst the public partakes with us in this feeling, it will doubtless be led to judge with candour and indulgence of a work left in this imperfect and unfinished state by its author.

Before I conclude, it may not be improper to take this opportunity of acquainting the public with the progress that has been made towards the completion of this undertaking. The sixth and seventh volumes, which will consist entirely of papers, that have a relation to the affairs of the East India Company, and to the impeachment of Mr. Hastings, are now in the press. The suspension of the consideration of the affairs of the East India Company in parliament, till its next session, has made me very desirous to get the sixth volume out as early as possible in the next winter. The ninth and eleventh reports of the select committee, appointed to take into consideration certain affairs of the East India Company in the year 1783, were written by Mr. Burke, and will be given in that volume. They contain a full and comprehensive view of the commerce, revenues, civil establishment, and general policy of the company; and will, therefore, be peculiarly interesting at this time to the public.

The eighth and last volume will contain a narrative of the life of Mr. Burke, which will