History of the Peace

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

PREVIOUS to undertaking the republication of the "HISTORY OF THE PEACE," we wrote to MISS MARTINEAU soliciting from her pen a PREFACE for this edition.

She responded with promptness, not only supplying the desired Preface, and making sundry corrections in the text of the work, but proposing to write, EXPRESSLY FOR THIS EDITION, AN ENTIRE NEW BOOK, continuing the History of the Peace down to the Russian War in 1854: making the present work a complete History of England from 1800 to 1854. This offer we gladly accepted. The present publication has, consequently, a value and completeness largely in advance of the English edition.

The reproduction of this work may be regarded as peculiarly opportune at the Crisis through which this Nation is now passing. Our people are studying anew the great Problems which have been agitated in England for more than half a century. The questions connected with an Extension of the Suffrage; the Emancipation of the Blacks ; a Paper Currency; the Removal of Restrictions on Trade; the Increase of Taxation and of the National Debt; have to-day their direct analogies for the consideration of the citizens of the United States. To a certain extent, the solution may be found in these volumes.

In addition to a masterly elucidation of all the topics relating to the government of England, there will be found attractive statements of the Progress of Art, Science, and Literature.

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PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

The INTRODUCTION contains a view of the state of Europe in the first fifteen years of the century. It is valuable for its concise examination of all the important. elements that were long discordant, but finally were sufficiently harmonized to produce Thirty-nine Years of Peace.

The personal opinions of the distinguished Author on all the prominent movements of the Epoch are forcibly stated, but the expression of them is characterized by an admirable fairness.

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