PREFACE. T would be a bad return to the con IT tinued favours we experience from the Public, if our zeal and induftry was not proportioned to the importance of the fubjects on which we treated, and to their intereft in them. The tranfactions of foreign nations, however general or extenfive their confequences, however connected by intereft or alliance we might be in them, or however brilliant the matter which they afforded for hiftory, are not only of a fecondary but very remote confideration, when placed in any degree of comparison with the fubjects of which we now treat. Our public affairs are unfortunately at prefent the hiftory of all that part of the world which affords materials for any. Britains, however deeply, are not alone interested in the confequences. They may extend, not only to the refined, but |