OCCASIONAL ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, CHIEFLY POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL; EXTRACTED PARTLY FROM THE PUBLICK NEWSPAPERS, DURING THE PRESENT REIGN, AND PARTLY FROM TRACTS PUBLISHED IN THE REIGNS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, KING CHARLES I., KING CHARLES II., AND FROM BISHOP BURNET'S HISTORY OF HIS OWN TIMES. LONDON: PRINTED BY ROBERT WILKS, IN CHANCERY-LANE; AND SOLD BY JOHN WHITE, BOOKSELLER, IN FLEET STREET PREFACE. THE Volume here presented to the Publick, consists of several different tracts, relating mostly to Political and Historical subjects and events, that have occurred in the course of the last fifty years, and which have already been printed, either in some of the Publick Newspapers, or in separate Pamphlets or larger Works, (some of which are grown scarce and difficult to be met with,) and partly, of some tracts of a more antient date, (relating also to the subjects of History and Politicks,) published in the times of Queen Elizabeth and Charles the I. and Charles the II. and in the beginning of the last, or eighteenthi, century: and amongst these the reader will find the excellent tract of the celebrated John Milton, on the Liberty of the Press, intitled, Areopagitica, A speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing, addressed to the Lords and Commons of England, in November 1644; which I have never met-with in a separate pamphlet, and which is, I believe, hitherto to be found only in the general collections of Milton's Prose-works. There are also in this volume some interesting papers on the late trade to Africa for Negroe-slaves, and a valuable extract from a work of Mr. John Harriott, in support of the Justice and Wisdom of the late abolition of it, by Act of Parliament; which is a measure cona 3 1426 .628 |