PRINTED FOR BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY; OTRIDGE AND RACKHAM; J. CUTHELL; LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, PREFACE. IN giving to the world a volume of DODSLEY'S ANNUAL Register, which has to set out with recording the commencement of a new reign, we naturally look back on the great political changes of the long series of years over which we have already passed. We began our career at a very interesting epoch. The popular administration of the elder Pitt; the exploits of Frederick the Great; the expulsion of the French from America; the acquisition of a vast empire in India-afforded us the materials of our early volumes. The events which succeeded, though less dazzling to the imagination, were scarcely less interesting to the subjects of a free government - the cabals and contentions of parties at home, and the plans of internal administration adopted by the different countries of Europe. Then came the struggle between Great Britain and her colonies, and the various vicissitudes of war and negotiation, which led ultimately to the establishment of a free, independent, prosperous nation, on the other side of the Atlantic, English in every thing except in their refusal of obedience to English authorities; and, by this very circumstance of apparent difference, proving more surely their genuine British descent. Scarcely was peace restored to the world, when the contest between popular factions and the old government of France began to attract notice; a series of changes of administration and of system ended in the annihilation of the monarchy; all the horrors of the Revolution followed; and a military despotism sprung up, which, under the successive names of Directory, Consul, and finally of Emperor, oppressed France herself, swallowed up Holland and the minor states of Italy, subverted the Germanic empire and the Papal dominions, seated upstarts on the thrones of |