PREFACE. 



of the House for the exclusion of strangers, lo tlie 21st 

 of June, when Sir Francis Burdett was liberated, by the 

 dissolution of Parliament, from the Tower, and Mr. 

 Gale Jones was driven out of Newgate. In relating the 

 debates about Walcheren, and the different matters that 

 grew out of it, we have observed our usual method of 

 arranging transactions under different heads or classes, 

 and passing as much as possible from one subject to ano- 

 ther, according to the relations they bear to one another, 

 and not merely that of abridging parliamentary debates, 

 whatever the subject, in the order of time. It may be 

 permitted to the imagination of a poet, " rolling in a fine 

 phrenzy from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," to 

 carry his reader where and when he pleases ; " and set 

 him down now at Thebes, and now at Athens."* The 

 poet, however various or rapid his flight, keeps still on 

 the wing ; still bears us smoothly along by transitions 

 founded in strong associations of ideas. To pass ab- 

 ruptly, to skip backwards and forwards to a thousand 

 heterogeneous motions, bills, and debates in both Houses 

 of Parliament, could not, properly speaking, be called 

 even Parliamentary History, far less the History of 

 Europe. It must be admitted, however, that our state- 

 ments of what passed annually in our Parliament, have 

 been carried to details altogether disproportionate to an 

 Annual Register of the great affairs of various nations. 

 This will be excused by the candid critics of even foreign 

 nations, on the ground that they are principally intended 

 for English readers. But we are not inattentive to free 

 assemblies in other countries. We have entered suffi- 



* Herat. Epist. 1. 



