A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE DURING THE LAST TWENTY MONTHS; VIZ. FROM MAY 1792 TO THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1793. BY FRANCIS PLOWDEN, LL. D. AUTHOR OF THE NATIVE RIGHTS OF BRITISH SUBJECTS, Ne quid falfi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. CICERO DUBLIN: PRINTED BY P. BYRNE, Grafton-STREET. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. THE Hiftory which I have undertaken the ar duous task of writing, is interefting to the Public in proportion as the events of it involve the internal peace, energy, and welfare of this Country. The general good of the State is the common point to which all ministers of all times, and in all circumftances, have always pretended to direct their different fyftems of measures; but there has been within these last twenty months fuch a variety of events, fuch contrariety of judgments, fuch fingularity of public measures, that the mind is nearly overfet in tracing the origin, or in calculating the confequences of them. No juft conception can be formed, no fair opinion can be adopted, no profitable inference can be drawn from any even of the leading facts, if taken fingly, and confidered upon the naked grounds of their infulated merits. The whole train of operations must be collected into one view, and each link of the chain examined with fcrupulous' but unbiaffed severity. The plot of the piece is not so new as the winding up of the catastrophe threatens to be alarming. The general utility then of tracing events to their caufes, of viewing them in their immediate effects, and following them through their remote operations, becomes in the prefent period interesting to the country beyond measure or precedent. |