ere act and intention of
publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in
that memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed to the
friends for whose use alone I intended it. Had I designed it for the
public, I should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone
of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club,
which were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned
our secession from that club; which is the last act of my life that I
shall under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations
there would have been, if I had ever had a notion that it should meet
the public eye."

In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it is believed, to three
thousand copies, had been dispersed over the country. To recall these
was impossible; to have expected that any acknowledged production of Mr.
Burke, full of matter likely to interest the future historian, could
remain forever in obscurity, would have been folly; and to have passed
it over in silent neglect, on the one hand, or, on the other, to have
then made any considerable changes in it, might have seemed an
abandonment of the principles which it contained. The author, therefore,
discovering, that, with the exception of the introductory letter, he had
not in fact kept any clean copy, as he had supposed, corrected one of
the pamphlets with his own hand. From this, which was found preserved
with his other papers, his friends afterwards thought it their duty to
give an authentic edition.

The "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity" were originally presented in the
form of a memorial to Mr. Pitt. The author proposed afterwards to recast
the same matter in a new shape. He even advertised the intended work
under the title of "Letters on Rural Economics, addressed to Mr. Arthur
Young"; but he seems to have finished only two or three detached
fragments of the first letter. These being too imperfect to be printed
alone, his friends inserted them in the memorial, where they seemed best
to cohere. The memorial had been fairly copied, but did not appear to
have been examined or corrected, as some trifling errors of the
transcriber were perceptible in it. The manuscript of the fragments was
a rough draft from the author's own hand, much blotted and very
confused.

The Third Letter on the Proposals for Peace was in its progress through
the press when the author died. About one half of it was actuall