h the
exception of the Letter to Lord Kenmare on the Penal Laws against Irish
Catholics, which was probably inserted where it stands from its relation
to the subject of the Letter addressed by him, at a later period, to Sir
Hercules Langrishe. With the same exception, too, strict regard has been
paid to chronological order, which, in the last edition, was in some
instances broken, to insert pieces that wore not discovered till it was
too late to introduce them in their proper places.

In the Appendix to the Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts the
references were found to be confused, and, in many places, erroneous.
This probably had arisen from the circumstance that a larger and
differently constructed appendix seems to have been originally designed
by Mr. Burke, which, however, he afterwards abridged and altered, while
the speech and the notes upon it remained as they were. The text and the
documents that support it have throughout been accommodated to each
other.

The orthography has been in many cases altered, and an attempt made to
reduce it to some certain standard. The rule laid down for the discharge
of this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived to have
been uniform in his mode of spelling, that was considered as decisive;
but where he varied, (and as he was in the habit of writing by
dictation, and leaving to others the superintendence of the press, he
was peculiarly liable to variations of this sort) the best received
authorities were directed to be followed. The reader, it is trusted,
will find this object, too much disregarded in modern books, has here
been kept in view throughout. The quotations which are interspersed
through the works of Mr Burke, and which were frequently made by him
from memory, have been generally compared with the original authors.
Several mistakes in printing, of one word for another, by which the
sense was either perverted or obscured, are now rectified. Two or three
small insertions have also been made from a quarto copy corrected by Mr.
Burke himself. From the same source something more has been drawn in the
shape of notes, to which are subscribed his initials. Of this number is
the explanation of that celebrated phrase, "the swinish multitude": an
explanation which was uniformly given by him to his friends, in
conversation on the subject. But another note will probably interest the
reader still more, as being strongly expressive of that parental
affection which f