STATESMEN OF THE TIMES OF GEORGE III. INTRODUCTION. THE misstatements which were circulated respecting the first series of these sketches make it necessary to mention that nothing can be more untrue than representing the work as a republication. By far the greater part of the articles which had ever appeared before were materially altered or enlarged, some of them almost written over again; while a great many were entirely new in every part: as those of Lords Mansfield, Thurlow, Loughborough, and North, Chief Justice Gibbs, Sir W. Grant, Franklin, Gustavus III., Joseph II., Catherine II., Queen Elizabeth.-The same observation is applicable in at least the same extent to the second series. Much of George IV., the Emperor Napoleon, Lord Eldon, Sir W. Scott, is new; and Mirabeau's public character, with the whole of Sir P. Francis, Mr. Horne Tooke, Lord King, Mr. Ricardo, Charles Carrol, Neckar, Carnôt, Lafayette, and Madame de Staël, are new. No distinguished statesman of George III.'s time has been omitted, except one very eminent person, Lord Shelburne, afterwards Marquess of Lansdowne, to whom, however, occasion has been taken of doing some justice against the invectives of mere party violence and misrepresentation by which he was assailed. The reason of the omission has been of a personal nature. The long and uninterrupted friendship which has prevailed between the writer of these pages and Lord Shelburne's son and representative, both in public and private life, would have made any account of him wear the appearance of a panegyrist or a defence of his conduct, rather than a judgment pronounced on its merits. If it should be urged that a similar reason ought to have prevented the appearance of other articles, such as that upon Sir S. Romilly, Mr. Horner, and Lord King, the answer is plain. Personal friendship with those individuals themselves gave him the means of judging for himself, and that friendship was only another consequence of the merits which he was called upon to describe and to extol. But in Lord Shelburne's case, friendship for the son might have been supposed to influence an account of the father, who was personally unknown to the author. It is a matter of sincere gratification to find that justice has been very generally done to the impartiality which was so much studied in the composition of the first series. To maintain this throughout the second has been the chief aim of its author; and if he has ever swerved from this path which it was so much his resolution to tread, the deviation has, at least, been unintentional, for he is wholly unconscious of it. It would be a very great mistake to suppose that there is no higher object in submitting these Sketches to the world than the gratification of curiosity respecting eminent statesmen, or even a more important purpose, the maintenance of a severe standard of taste respecting Oratorical Excellence. The main object in view has been the maintenance of a severe standard of Public Virtue, by constantly painting political profligacy in those hateful colours which are natural to it, though |