ΤΟ

HER MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY,

QUEEN VICTORIA.

MADAM,

WITH the warmest emotions of gratitude, I humbly place at your Majesty's feet these Commentaries upon the Constitution and Laws of England.

THE patronage which your Majesty has in so flattering a manner condescended to bestow upon my humble exertions, not only by subscribing to this Work, but also in commanding that it should be dedicated to your Majesty, has called forth these emotions in a degree which it far exceeds my feeble powers adequately to express.

In these Commentaries I have studied to avoid all party feelings and political prejudices, with the fervent hope that they may attract your Ma

jesty's attention, and with the view of affording such useful information to all classes of your Majesty's subjects as shall tend to promote their attachment and veneration for their Country, their Queen, their Religion, and their Laws.

THAT ALMIGHTY GOD may grant your Majesty every DIVINE and human blessing, with protracted length of years, in prosperity, and peace, to govern your Majesty's vast empire, is the ardent prayer of,

Madam,

Your Majesty's

Most devoted and faithful

Subject and Servant,

THOMAS GEORGE WESTErn.

TEMPLE,

(1, FIG TREE COURT,)

May, 1838.

ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE

SECOND EDITION.

THE flattering manner in which the first edition of this Work has been received, and the very illustrious and distinguished support with which it was honored, demands the author's most grateful thanks.

To the gracious patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, the author sensibly feels that he is indebted for much of that support.

"As the mathematician, the better to discover the proportions he investigates, begins with freeing his equation from coefficients, or such other quantities as only perplex without properly constituting it; so it may be advantageous, to the inquirer after the causes that produce the equilibrium of a government to have previously studied them, disengaged from the apparatus of fleets, armies, foreign trade, distant and extensive dominions in a word, from all those brilliant circumstances which so greatly affect the external appearance of a powerful society, but have no essential connexion with the real principles of it.