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you so, brother. Instantly the letter was snatched violently out of the author's hand, from behind, by Mr. Hiley Addington, and committed to the flames. A dead silence ensued for about a minute. The author with difficulty believed, but fortunately refletted where he was. When ordered to be seated, he observ ed, that, to his mortification, he was received with a very different countenance from that which he had noticed at his last interview. Conscious of having pursued his engagement with unrelenting assiduity and punctilious fidelity, he entreated to be informed of the cause of the difference. He was sternly assured, that it rested with himself: for that he had been the only individual in the nation, who had had the indelicacy to break in upon the minister's feelings by pressing for an interview, when he was suffering under the domestic misfortune of his daughter's illness. The author's embarrassment and mortification were now turned into amazement. After the minister had thrice attended in his place in the House of Commons, the author conceived there could be no indelicacy on that score in an insignificant individual's soliciting an interview upon private bu siness. He had, however, an apology to offer for having unguardedly, and he now found most unwarrantably, presumed to intermix his sympathies with an official application to the prime minister of state: and he then recollected that in one of his notes he had presumed to say, that he made large allowances to family feelings and anxiety, having himself been drenched in domestic ca lamity-(the author alluded to the recent misfortune of his having lost his two eldest children). This interview ended in the minister's consenting to pay the remainder of his engagement, and intimating to the author, who had with him a large folio volume of manuscript, that, if it were perused on his behalf, no responsibility would rest with the author; if otherwise, none would lie with the minister. Mr. Addington appeared unwilling to name a person to peruse the manuscript, and left it to the discretion of the author, who undertook to use it to the best of his judg

ment.

It must be observed, that, before the author went to Ireland, he had made arrangements with Mr. Egerton for the publication of his work; but as he declined going to press, till he had come to a thorough understanding with his employers, Mr. Egerton, from whom the author concealed nothing relating to the work, positively declined the undertaking, lest it might not be agreeable to government; he accordingly wrote to Mr. Hiley Addington, to be distinctly informed, whether, by undertaking the work, he should please or displease the powers, upon which his interests as general bookseller to the army so materially depended. An assurance against any displeasure from government, in a letter from

Mr. Hiley Addington, brought back Mr. Egerton to his old, or induced him to form a new resolution to undertake it. The author's difficulties with his bookseller lasted some months.

The author continued his literary labours; and the printer manifested no ordinary exertions in forwarding the work. In the autumn of 1802, the history had been brought down to that period, at which it became necessary to have access to some modern state papers: and as Irish affairs were frequently debated in the British parliament, the author felt the want of the latter part of the British journals and debates. He had before made an unsuccessful application for them to Mr. Hiley Addington. He now found the necessity of the most guarded caution in all his communications with his employers. On Michaelmas day he wrote the following letter to the minister:

SIR,

Essex Street, 29th September, 1802.

Having reasonable expectations that my history will be published early in the month of November, I feel it my duty to renew my application to you, to know whether it be your wish that I should be admitted to the sight of any of the state papers relating to Ireland for these last twenty years, which I expected to have seen, when I was honoured with your recommendation to the castle of Dublin. Of my disappointment on that head I wrote to you fully from Ireland last year. If not, I must conclude, as I have hitherto proceeded, with the aid of the shop and the stall. I humbly beg leave to repeat my request for the English parliamentary debates from the conclusion of Chandler's. If you have any commands to honour me with, relating to the publication, they shall be faithfully attended to. I have the honour to be, with the highest esteem and respect,

SIR,

Your most devoted and obedient

Humble Servant,

FRANCIS PLowden.

To the Rt. Hon. Henry Addington.

To this letter, after the lapse of six weeks, he received the following answer:

SIR,

Downing Street, November 16, 1802.

I am desired by my brother to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 29th September, and to apologize for having so long delayed to answer it. There seems now no possibility of

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your having access to the state papers which you mention: and my

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brother seems to think that any bookseller's shop can furnish you with the parliamentary debates. I remain, SIR,

F. Plowden, Esq.

Your most obedient humble servant,
J. HILEY ADDINGTON.*

This letter bespoke a change in the mind and counsels of the minister respecting the author's commission. The redundant eagerness in interlining an additional now demonstrated the prominent zeal with which Mr. Hiley Addington conveyed this refusal of the author's request; and is evidence, that there had been a time, when such access to the state papers was intended to have been allowed. As, however, no countermand or fresh instructions were ever communicated to the author, his duty remained the same, from the acceptance of his commission in August 1801, to the close of his labours in June 1803.†

Whoever considers, that a space of about one hundred and thirteen years from the revolution in 1688 to the Union in 1801, was a trackless, unbeaten, and perilous field for an historian to travel over, it will not surprise him, that the latter part of the work should have swollen into a bulk that far exceeded the author's

These two letters are submitted to the public, as conclusive evidence, that the author ardently wished and earnestly endeavoured to lay before them, the whole truth of the Irish history; and that the present minister, his whisperers, advisers, or directors, were determined to suppress as much of it as possible.

The author submits to the reader the following letter to the minister, written about one month before the publication, as a proof of his continued adherence to the spirit and terms of his original engagement.

SIR,

Essex Street, 12th May, 1803.

I have the honour to inform you, that I have at length come to the end of my laborious undertaking. But although I have finished the manuscript, it will be some time before the printer will have completed his part, as the Index and other matter of that sort proceed more slowly than the body of the work. When the whole is finished, I shall entreat your leave to present you a copy. The work has grown very considerably and very unexpectedly under my pen. It contains the quantity of four usual quarto volumes. Although its bulk have retarded the publication far beyond my expectation, yet I cannot help feeling that the present moment is providentially critical for its publication. As you, sir, must know, better than I can, the powerful and artful means that are at present employed in Ireland to alienate the public mind and affections from the British government, it is now imperiously necessary, that the Irish should feel the effects of the union. I speak as I judge and feel, and I hope I may say without offence, Discite justitiam moniti et non temnere Iernam. I take this opportunity of acknowledging your kindness in patronizing the work, and of assuring you of the punctilious fidelity with which I have endeavoured to comply with the terms of my undertaking.

I have the honour to be, with the most profound respect and deference,

SIR,

Your devoted and obedient humble servant.
FRANCIS PLOWDRN,

To the Right Hon. Henry Addington.

original expectations. It is now before the public, as the British Critic observes, with all its imperfections upon its head. From the imperfections more or less incidental to all literary productions, it is not the intent of the author to undertake its defence. He has endeavoured throughout to use the unadorned language of simplicity, as the appropriate vehicle of truth.* But as the truth of facts was the substantial object of his undertaking, he again asserts that he is guilty of no intentional, and, he confides, of no actual deviation from this sacred duty of the historian.

After the work had made its appearance, it soon became evident to the author, from the total silence of the minister and several of his colleagues, to whom he had sent it, that it had not altogether met that approbation, which the author once expected, and incessantly endeavoured to merit. The reluctance of his publisher to advertise, his slackness in subscribing, and backwardness in pushing the sale of the work, after the most urgent importunities of the author, became so many proofs of his acting under an influence, if not an indemnity to check the circulation of it. The work appeared in June 1803, and its subsequent fate has created the necessity of this Postliminious Preface. It is no longer a private case; it is a public cause: it involves the dearest interests of the most important, because the most vulnerable part of the British empire. It will develop in detail, and fitting it is, that Ireland, that Great Britain, that the world should know who are the men, who oppose the emancipation of Ireland; what are their views and motives for such opposition, and what the ways and means of effectuating it.

In the intermediate time between the publication of the work and Michaelmas last, the author frequently and urgently solicited the minister for an interview It was at last accorded on the 28th of September, 1803. The circumstances under which the Historical Review was written and published, and the conduct of the minister with reference to it, since its publication, render every act that affects the work a matter of public concern, and sanctions, therefore, the publication of what passed in Downing street upon the subject of it. The author submitted to the minister, that, after the Herculean labour of bringing before the public such a body of history so peculiarly relevant to the critical circumstances of the day, it was a painful disappointment to him to have brought upon himself the displeasure and offence of the minister, not for having disobeyed, but for having punctiliously adhered to the spirit and tenour of the terms of his commission and undertaking. Mr. Addington admitted the displeasure and of

* Nihil est in historiâ purâ et illustri brevitate dulcius. Cic. in Brut.

fence, and went the length of assuming no small portion of merit for suppressing his indignation; he had not read a line of the work himself, but he was informed by others (who may have rested their charges upon report, as the minister did his feelings), that the most unwarrantable freedom had been taken in speaking of certain characters to which government looked up for the salvation of Ireland; that the general bearing and uniform spirit of the work diametrically contravened his intentions and expecta tions in countenancing and encouraging the undertaking; that the errors and faults (if any had ever existed) of his majesty's servants ought to have been suppressed, not exposed; in a word, that the author should have striven to render his work palatable to his employers; and he then sorely lamented, that he had not procured it to be perused on his behalf. To these observations the author replied, that he had been most explicit in disclosing the spirit, views, and motives of his undertaking, when he first made overtures to the minister on the subject; that in addition to his verbal statement, he had left with him the written document laid before Messrs. Pitt and Dundas in 1792, as a pledge of his sentiments upon the state of Ireland, and the expediency of her being united with Great Britain. [Had these sentiments not been then approved of by the minister, the work would not have been taken in hand.] That whatever subsequent changes had been produced in his mind, he had never condescended to communi cate any of them to the author: that at all events, without revo cation or countermand, his original instructions continued to bind and guide him in the execution of his commission. That it was moreover impossible for the author to suppose he meant to have an untrue and unfaithful history given to the public; that the ve ry commission to write history was, to a man of character, a special commission to write a true one; that had he written a partial, unfaithful, time-serving history, he might perhaps have looked up to him for grace, favour, or remuneration; but he must for ever have renounced the character of the historian: that it was beyond the powers of man to write a faithful history of recent events, especially of such as had lately been exhibited in Ireland, without wounding the feelings of many of the actors in those scenes; but to meet those desagremens, the mind of the man, who took the pen in his hand to write modern history, was to be made up in the first instance. The author gave a solemn assurance to the minister, remarking that he believed few historians would join him in the declaration, that he was ready to call God to witness, that he had not throughout the work related one historical fact, which he did not believe to be true, nor made an observation, by

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