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INTRODUCTION.

THE

HE following work carries with it too great a degree of internal evidence to require the aid of argument to demonstrate its genuineness, or to remove any doubts of its authenticity. It abounds with information far beyond the reach or researches of any writer, who had not a confiderable share in the events which he relates; and who was not admitted, as it were, behind the fcenes, to view the machinery of court intrigues, to examine the fprings of each political measure, and to affift in managing the wires, that put every ftate-puppet in motion. Here alone the materials of hiftory are to be collected. Without an eafy access to the fecrets of government the most attentive obferver is liable to be dazzled and deceived by the false glare of outward appearances. An artificial fplendor furrounds the actions, as well as the

thrones

thrones of princes, while their cabinets and their councils are hid in almoft impenetrable darkness.

It is much to be lamented that thofe, who enjoyed in the fullest extent fuch opportunities of accurate knowledge, have feldom taken up the pen to transmit a faithful record of their own times to pofterity. Some may have been prevented by the want of leisure; others by the want of talents; but the difinclination of far the greater number may be ascribed to the want of that pure and exalted patriotifm, which alone could raise them above every felfish confideration, and prompt them to facrifice their friendships, their enmities, their imaginary confequence and false glory to the public good. . Even the writer of the work before us, though perhaps it approaches nearer to perfection than any thing of the kind which has ever yet appeared, was not wholly uninfluenced by private views and private attachments. We often find him relating facts with aukward reluctance, and endeavouring to foften the moft odious features in the character of a king, whom he could not but cenfure and defpife. When

we

we also confider, that he wrote this history, not for the information of his country, but for the use of his own family, out of whose hands he declares that it should never pass by his confent*, we cannot compliment him on the fcore of public fpirit, nor can we feel ourselves under any obligations for a favour, which he fo selfishly intended to withhold from us,

But happily thofe very faults, which leffen our gratitude for the author, tend confiderably to increase the value of his performance. It is a series of the most interesting truths, extorted, as it were, from the lips of an unwilling evidence: it is an undefigned, yet unanswerable fatire on the folly of trusting to the profeffions of kings: it is a royalist's dreadful warning to the people of England never to be betrayed by their affection for any family into a furrender of their inestimable privileges: it is, in fhort, a full and convincing refutation of all the falfehoods which have been invented, and of all the fophiftry which has been devised by prostituted genius in defence of arbitrary power.

* See page 6.

No

No part of our annals has been more diffigured by the ignorance, prejudices, and mifrepresentations of party-writers than the reigns of the Stewarts. By fome those princes have been raised to the rank of gods, and by others degraded to a level with dæmons. The hirelings of defpotism and the advocates for the rights of men were likely to exhauft upon fuch a fubject their ingenuity and their eloquence. Mr. Hume has given the name of a history to his funeral oration on the death of Charles I. and to his artful apology for the mifconduct of that king's fucceffors. Mrs. Macauley thought the like title due to her beautiful, but rhapfodical effufions on the fame events. But no man of common fenfe will place an implicit confidence in either. He knows that the beft minds are liable to be warped by the heat of political controversy. He wishes therefore for a dispaffionate statement of facts, which may lead to the discovery of truth, and afford just grounds of rational conviction.

Such is the narrative we are now in poffeffion of. The author expresses himself with the greater candour, from a perfuafion that

his fentiments would never be made known to the world, and that he was intrusting the fecrets of his heart to those only, whofe intereft it would be not to divulge them. Sometimes, indeed, as we before hinted, he seems afhamed to tell the whole truth; but his weak fuppreffions ferve only to give a greater degree of credit to the other parts of his teftimony. It is very evident, that he attempts to conceal nothing from his children, which he did not wish, if it were poffible, to conceal even from himself. In many of the details he must have felt the fentiment of the Trojan exile, when relating the ruin of his country;

66 -Animus meminiffe horret, luctuque refugit."

There are, however, a few defects, which arofe from the nature of the plan itself, or rather, from the confined views of the writer. The fole end, he fays*, of this relation being to ferve for a private memorial, and not for a public record of the transactions of the times, he means to take notice of fuch particulars only as furnished matter for important reflection. A work executed according

See the fecond and fixth pages.

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