, and tells wonderful stories of the great
stick-out and riots of '42.

And thus I conclude the last page of a work, which though its form be
light and unpretending, would yet aspire to suggest to its readers some
considerations of a very opposite character. A year ago. I presumed to
offer to the public some volumes that aimed to call their attention to
the state of our political parties; their origin, their history, their
present position. In an age of political infidelity, of mean passions
and petty thoughts, I would have impressed upon the rising race not to
despair, but to seek in a right understanding of the history of their
country and in the energies of heroic youth--the elements of national
welfare. The present work advances another step in the same emprise.
From the state of Parties it now would draw public thought to the state
of the People whom those parties for two centuries have governed. The
comprehension and the cure of this greater theme depend upon the
same agencies as the first: it is the past alone that can explain the
present, and it is youth that alone can mould the remedial future. The
written history of our country for the last ten reigns has been a mere
phantasma; giving to the origin and consequence of public transactions a
character and colour in every respect dissimilar with their natural form
and hue. In this mighty mystery all thoughts and things have assumed an
aspect and title contrary to their real quality and style: Oligarchy
has been called Liberty; an exclusive Priesthood has been christened a
National Church; Sovereignty has been the title of something that has
had no dominion, while absolute power has been wielded by those who
profess themselves the servants of the People. In the selfish strife of
factions two great existences have been blotted out of the history of
England--the Monarch and the Multitude; as the power of the Crown has
diminished, the privileges of the People have disappeared; till at
length the sceptre has become a pageant, and its subject has degenerated
again into a serf.

It is nearly fourteen years ago, in the popular frenzy of a mean and
selfish revolution which neither emancipated the Crown nor the People,
that I first took the occasion to intimate and then to develope to the
first assembly of my countrymen that I ever had the honour to address,
these convictions. They have been misunderstood as is ever for a season
the fate of Truth, and they have obtained fo