IT

PREFACE.

is with extreme regret that we find ourselves under the neceffity of apologizing for the late appearance of the present Volume. In confequence of

MR. DODSLEY'S advanced time of life (whose zeal and affiduity in effecting regular publication of many preceding volumes will not, we truft, be forgotten by the Public) we have been unwillingly compelled to engage with a new Publisher, and that too at a period when the Volume ought to have been actually in the prefs. Reduced to the unpleasant alternative, either of relinquishing the Work entirely, or of profecuting it with redoubled and unremitting vigour, we hefitated not a moment to adopt the latter determination; but it was impoffible to form a contract, and fettle arrangements of fome extent, without incurring a confiderable delay.

The juncture, too, was peculiarly unfavourable to the recovery of our loft time. Such was the importance of the fubjects to be treated in the History of 1791, that we could not in conscience run them over lightly, nor confuse them by an affected brevity. The parliament of this year was inceffantly occupied by business of the utmoft confequence, not only to the individual interefts of Great Britain, but to the general balance of power, as well in Europe as the East Indies, both which demanded not a little introductory explanation. We have alfo taken more than common pains to draw, from a minute comparison of different authorities, a more faithful reprefentation, than any before given, of the dispute between Mr. Fox and Mr. BURKE, because it has been productive of a powerful influence on our domeftic affairs, and becaufe we confider it lefs as a breach between two friends, than as a political fchifin, involving public principles

ciples of the firft magnitude. But above all, that great conftitutional queftion, the abatement or non-abatement of Impeachments on a diffolution of parliament, feemed to require the minutest investigation. Not merely confining ourselves to the statement of the principal arguments advanced in parliament upon this longagitated question, we have traced the matter a little higher, and have had re'courfe to the Rolls of Parliament for information, from whence we have spared no labour to collect what we flatter ourfelves may a little tend to the elucidation of an interefting constitutional point, as well as of a remarkable period in English History.—In addition to these impediments, which the nature of the fubjects threw in our way, an unforeseen circumftance of fome moment ftill further retarded us. After our State Papers were printed, two material articles in them (the Declaration of the King of France on his leaving Paris, and the An

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