The writer, during his residence at Paris in the months of April, May, June and July of the last year, was a spectator of those events and appearances in France, which the journals and orators of his own country pretended to pourtray, but which formed a complete contrast with every thing said or written by the agents or supporters of the Bourbon cause, both in England and on the continent. Feeling persuaded that from a minute description of that which was passing before his eyes, the conclusion to be drawn could not fail to be favourable to the principles which he had been taught to consider the only safe and honourable guides of an English politician; and being shocked at the misrepresentations upon which the policy of the British cabinet appeared to him to be entirely founded, he thought it his duty, as it must be that of every individual, however insignificant, to lose no opportunity of transmitting to his friends a detailed account of passing transactions, accompanied with comments, which he conceived must be allowed naturally to arise from an unprejudiced view

of those transactions, and which he therefore supposed he might take the liberty of intruding upon his correspondents.

In treating the subject of the foreign policy of the British government, the writer could not but frequently touch upon the public character and conduct of those of his fellow countrymen with whom that policy is immediately connected, and particularly of the minister on whom it may be supposed more especially to depend.

Having, in the course of several visits to the continent, been forced into the conviction that our relations with the European cabinets are carried on by such agents as must insure the commission of many errors, and that the real character of our principal representative during the late momentous events is very different from that which the pretensions of himself and his partisans, together with the fortuitous concurrence of some unforeseen successes, would induce us to believe, he has

judged it necessary not to confine himself to the vague censure of measures, without any notice of individual conduct or opinion,but has ventured to characterise certain men, in such terms as he thought suitable to their public career, and not exceeding the freedom with which in his country it has always been judged allowable to speak of dangerous or mistaken politicians.

It would have been easy for him to have erased from his publication the personal animadversions of his private correspondence; and by so doing, he would have exempted it from the obloquy and retaliation of a very powerful and prevalent portion of those who are the most likely to become his readers. He has no resentments to gratify, and not having to complain of ingratitude for services which he never performed, nor of the refusal of favours for which he never applied; he is actuated by none of the animosities arising from disappointment or neglect. He has been placed in none of the circumstances which in party writers not unfrequently

give rise to the malignity which Tacitus himself allows is the more pernicious, as it is sometimes mistaken for a bold impartiality and an honest liberty of speech. He has spoken of men in their public capacity, merely because he is persuaded that the line of policy which his government has thought fit to pursue has depended on the positions and propensities of two or three statesmen-nay, even of one preponderating politician, to a degree so unusual, that the adoption of the “shadow fighting," declared by a great moral poet to be no less inefficacious than safe, would have been a base compromise of the interests of the cause, to which all his endeavours, such as they are, are now devoted and will be for ever applied.

Could the writer of these letters suppose that they would receive any weight from the subscription of his name, he would not hesitate to designate his person as distinctly as his opinions; but not presuming to indulge any such persuasion, he trusts entirely to the truth of his statements for

that credibility which an author of more importance might obtain partly from his personal testimony.

He must also advertise the reader, that he has been exceedingly cautious in inserting the names of any of those individuals, who, when they condescended to communicate with him, had probably no wish nor expectation of appearing before the public in the character of his informants. He should think it too ill a compliment to them, if he did not owe it to himself, to say, that as he never admitted any of their anecdotes to a place in these letters without a conviction of their authenticity, either from the character of the narrator, or from circumstances corroborative of their probability, he is afraid of no investigation to which they may give rise.

Having premised thus much, the writer finds it necessary to subjoin, that his purpose in publishing these letters is similar to that which guided his pen in their original composition, and that if he succeeds