MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. BY ARCHIBALD ALISON, F. R. S. AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF EUROPE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION." Reprinted from the English Originals, WITH THE AUTHOR'S CORRECTIONS FOR THIS EDITION. PHILADELPHIA: A. HART, LATE CAREY & HART, No. 126 CHESTNUT STREET. 1850. PREFACE. A WISH having been expressed by the publishers of this work to have a collection of my Miscellaneous Essays, published at different times and in different periodical works in Great Britain, made for reprints in America, and selected and arranged by myself, I have willingly assented to so flattering a proposal. I have endeavoured in making the selection to choose such as discuss subjects possessing, as far as possible, a general and durable interest; and to admit those only, relating to matters of social contest or national policy in Great Britain, which are likely, from the importance of the questions involved in them, to excite some interest as contemporary compositions among future generations of men. And I should be ungrateful if, in making my first appearance before the American public, and in a work hitherto published in a collected form only in this country, I did not make my warmest acknowledgments for the liberal spirit in which they have received my writings, and the indulgence they have manifested towards their imperfections; and express at the same time the pride which I feel, as an English author, at the vast and boundless field for British literary exertion which is afforded by the extension of the Anglo-Saxon race on the other side of the Atlantic. If there is any wish I entertain more cordially than another, it is that this strong though unseen mental bond may unite the British family in every part of the world, and cause them all to feel as brothers, even when the time arrives, as arrive it will, that they have obtained the dominion of half the globe. Possel House, Glasgow, Sept. 1, 1844. } A. ALISON 3 |