PREFACE. FEW subjects present a higher interest than inquiry into the political and domestic condition of our own country. The practical operation of our foreign and internal policy affects in so large a degree the happiness of the community, that whatever tends to awaken that spirit of useful inquiry, which leads to improvement in the management of the national resources, is in the highest sense useful and interesting. As preliminary to the general subject of the following pages, we have appropriated a short chapter to the review of the foreign policy of the British government, in which our relative position to the leading continental states is briefly developed. The political, domestic, and financial condition of Great Britain is so essentially influenced by that of other European nations, that we have deemed it necessary, in limine, to give a brief outline of the resources and politics of the four continental powers which, in connexion with Great Britain, preside over the destinies of Europe. It is impossible to predict from what quarter may originate the impulse which may give a different course to the current of affairs; and every work which purposes freely to purposes_freely investigate the condition of any leading European nation, ought, in some degree, to comprehend the a 2 2-14 -34 |