his memory. The confident pretensions with which many of those publications were ushered into the world, may have given them some little circulation at the time; but the internal evidence of their falsehood was sufficiently strong to counteract any impression which their contents might be calculated to produce. It is not, therefore, with a view of exposing such misrepresentations, that any authentic açcount of the life of Mr. Fox can be deemed necessary. On the other hand, the objections to such an undertaking at present are obvious; and after much reflection, they have appeared to those connected with him to be insuperable, A compilation of his speeches, or of such transactions of his public life as are well known, might be, and probably has already been, executed with as much fidelity and success by others, as it could be by those who had the advantage of a closer intimacy or nearer connection with him. If more were attempted, either many interesting passages of his life must be omitted, and truth in some instances suppressed, or circumstances which might wound the feelings of individuals yet living, must be unnecessarily and wantonly disclosed to the public, No allusion is here made to any particular period, transaction, or person. The observation is general; it applies to the memoirs of every public man, and must therefore be true in the instance of Mr. Fox.

These considerations have induced his family and friends to relinquish, for the present, any such design, It is, however a duty to the public, as well as to the memory of any great and good man, to preserve with the utmost diligence, all the materials which may enable a future biographer to do justice to the events of his life, and the merits of his character. With this view, the private letters of Mr. Fox have been carefully collected; and I am already indebted

to several of his correspondents for the originals or copies of such as were in their possession. It is hoped, that by these and further communications, the means will be secured of perpetuating the remembrance of his public and private virtues, and of conveying a faint, but just notion of his character to posterity.

In the mean while, his friends will contemplate with some satisfaction this monument, however imperfect, of his genius and acquirements; they will recognize throughout the work those noble and elevated principles, which animated his own conduct in life, and in the simplicity of the thoughts, as well as in the nature of the reflections, they cannot fail to discover a picture of his candid and amiable mind.

Holland House, April 25th, 1808.

VASSALL HOLLAND.

POSTSCRIPT.

MAY 4.

SINCE the preceding pages were printed, Serjeant Heywood has obligingly communicated to me copies of several letters which he received from Mr. Fox, on subjects connected with his History. They evince the same anxiety about facts, and the same minuteness of research, which have been remarked in his correspondence with Mr. Laing. But some of his readers may be gratified with the perusal of the following, as it contains his view of the character of Lord Shaftesbury, upon which so much difference of opinion has existed among historians.

"DEAR HEYWOOD,

"I am much obliged to you for your letter; of the hints "in which I shall avail myself, when I return to this place,

(as I hope,) before the end of the week. I go to town "to-morrow, and shall be in the House on Tuesday.

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"I remember most of the passages in Madame de Sevigné, and will trouble you or Mrs. Heywood to hunt "for another, which I also remember, and which in some "views is of importance. If my memory does not deceive "me, in one of the early volumes, while Barillon is in England, she mentions the reports of his being getting a แ great deal of money there; but I have not lately been "able to find the passage. Pray observe, that notwithstanding the violence against the Prince of Orange, Ma"dame de Sevigné's good sense and candor make her allow, "that there is another view of the matter, in which the "Prince of Orange, fighting and conquering for a religion, qu'il croit la vraye, &c. &c. appears a hero. Her account "of James, both for insensibility and courage, is quite at "variance with his apparent conduct before he went off. "Here he appears to have been deficient in courage, and "by no means in sensibility.

"I am quite glad I have little to do with Shaftesbury; "for as to making him a real patriot, or friend to our ideas "of liberty, it is impossible, at least in my opinion. On the "other hand, he is very far from being the devil he is de"scribed. Indeed, he seems to have been strictly a man “of honour, if that praise can be given to one destitute of

public virtue, and who did not consider Catholics as fel“low-creatures; a feeling very common in those times. "Locke was probably caught by his splendid qualities, his courage, his openness, his party zeal, his eloquence, his

"fair dealing with his friends, and his superiority to "vulgar corruption. Locke's partiality might make him, "on the other hand, blind to the indifference with which "he (Shaftesbury,) espoused either Monarchical, Arbitrary, or Republican principles, as best suited his ambition; "but could it make him blind to the relentless cruelty with "which he persecuted the Papists in the affair of the Popish Plot, merely, as it should seem, because it suited "the purposes of the party with which he was then enga

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ged?.... You know that some of the imputations against "him are certainly false; the shutting up the Exchequer, "for instance. But the two great blots of sitting on the (6 Regicides, and his conduct in the Popish Plot, can never "be wiped off. The second Dutch war is a bad business, "in which he engaged heartily, and in which (notwith"standing all his apologists say,) he would have persevered, if he had not found the King was cheating him. Your's ever,

Sunday, St. Ann's Hill,

Chertsey, November 20, 1803.

Serjeant Heywood, Harpur Street.

"C. J. FOX.”

A HISTORY, &c.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

Introductory Observations.....First Period, from Henry VII. to the year 1588.....Second Period, from 1588 to 1640.....Meeting of Parliament.....Redress of Grievances.....Strafford's Attainder..... The commencement of the Civil War.....Treaty from the Isle of Wight.....The King's Execution....Cromwell's Power;....his character.... Indifference of the Nation respecting Forms of Government....The Restoration....Ministry of Clarendon and Southampton.....Cabal.....Dutch War.....De Witt.....The Prince of Orange..... The Popish Plot.....The Habeas Corpus Act.....The Exclusion Bill....Dissolution of Charles the Second's last Parliament....His Power.....his Tyranny in Scotland; in England.....Exorbitant Fines....Executions.... Forfeitures of Charters....Despotism established.....Despondency of good Men.....Charles's Death..... His Character....Reflections upon the probable Consequences of his Reign and Death.

tions.

IN reading the history of every country, there are CHAP. I. certain periods at which the mind naturally pauses, to Introductory meditate upon, and consider them, with reference, not Observaonly to their immediate effects, but to their more remote consequences. After the wars of Marius and Sylla, and the incorporation, as it were, of all Italy with the city of Rome, we cannot but stop, to consider the consequences likely to result from these important events; and in this instance we find them to be just such as might have been expected.

a

The reign of our Henry the Seventh, affords a field of more doubtful speculation. Every one who takes retrospective view of the wars of York and Lancas ter, and attends to the regulations effected by the po

A

First Period,

from the ac

cession of Henry VII. to the year

1588.