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PRINTED BY NEILL AND COMPANY, EDINBURGH.

PREFACE.

THE assistance which I have received in preparing this Memoir of Thomas Drummond is amply acknowledged in the text. It is proper, however, to define in a sentence or two the precise extent of it. In regard to his professional life (and not farther) I have had the hearty co-operation of Major-General Sir T. A. Larcom, the present Under Secretary in Ireland, of whose brief but able Memoir of Drummond I have also freely availed myself. Some papers put at my disposal by Sir J. F. W. Herschel illustrate this part of Mr Drummond's life and the first stages of his political employment; on which, also, some light is thrown by Miss Martineau. With regard to the Irish part of the life, I owe most to the Right Honourable Maziere Brady, the late Irish Lord Chancellor, who was Drummond's very intimate friend, and, successively, Law-adviser to the Chief Secretary, Solicitor-General, and Attorney-General, under the Mulgrave and Ebrington Administrations. The aid he has given me has been limited to the determination of obscure facts, and he is nowise responsible either for my opinions, or for the manner in which I have expressed them. Drummond's political correspondence during his tenure of office in Ireland, which was carried on with some of the most important political personages of the time, I have not had at my disposal. His home

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